I turned around and burst the first of the two which were almost upon me and my longsword immediately started pulsating with glow and power. If I had my other sword, I might have been able to burst the second bubble in time, but it was impossible with this shield.

I discharged my sword in the direction of the paragon so that I could at least stop him from creating additional ones, while I tried to push the second bubble away from me with the shield.

To my surprise, the shield wasn’t sucked into it, but instead was able to push it back. My opponent clearly didn’t expect this—both that I could attack him from a distance, and that my shield could repel the bubbles. I wasted no time and ran toward him, pushing one bubble into another as I got closer to where he was launching the spell.

As soon as one bubble touched another, they merged and doubled their size. When I reached the third bubble, I noticed the paragon had just started chanting his next spell, which meant I only had a few moments to spare to help Myriam. I burst it and turned my head to face Haad without decelerating at all, my charged sword pointing at him.

My brother was now on his feet again, casting what looked like a defensive spell while Myriam was aiming to interrupt it. And she was doing a pretty good job of it, since I saw a sudden gust of wind sweep my brother clear off his feet and stop him from casting whatever protection he was aiming for. In the meantime, the energy projectile from my charged sword traveled to him almost instantly and hit him on his side.

That should keep him down long enough for Myriam to pin him.

I redirected my attention back to the paragon and saw that he was still chanting. The bubble I was pushing in front of me was now big enough to envelop a small group of people so instead of colliding it with another yet again, I burst one more, and shot the mana back to my aggressor.

In an effort to avoid the discharge of my sword without stopping his spellcasting, he bent his body sideways. However, he was not swift enough, and the bright flame of my missile hit him in his left shoulder and brought him to the ground.

With one final push, I managed to bring the bubble to him and was satisfied to see his body levitating inside of it. I had never seen this spell in action, but I had studied it enough to know that as long as he remained in there, he was out of the battle for good.

I turned around to see Myriam weaving a series of mana webs around my brother’s body. He didn’t seem to have moved since my strike. I ran toward Kai, who was still struggling under the net and tried to cut it open with my sword.

Before I could tear through it, the void above us suddenly turned from pitch black to bright, as if the sun had materialized close to us. But there was no trace of the sun’s usual warmth. It was a cold hard light which prevented us from looking upward.

“Foolish, brother,” Haad’s voice boomed from above. “You really thought a year of training would make you strong enough to face an archon of The Divine?”

I tried to look up, but the light brightened even more, as if to prevent me. Instead, I tried to look at Myriam and saw her looking at me, using her hands to block the light.

“I was going to spare the two of you,” the voice continued, “but in disabling the body of an archon, especially as you are a citizen of Leka An now, you have created the grounds for war.”

“You’re beaten, brother!” I shouted at him, without moving my eyes from the brightly-lit ground in front of me. “Go back and let us finish this!”

“Beaten? My body does not define me anymore,” he chuckled. “I do not expect you children to understand the magnitude of serving The Divine, but neutralizing my body means nothing to me. An archon does not need a body to cast spells.”

I heard the sound of the big bubble holding his paragon pop, and then a thud of a body being dropped to the ground. I was sure that even though the paragon was not trapped anymore, the damage he had sustained should keep him down anyway. To my surprise, I saw him cast a shadow next to me as he started walking in my direction, albeit with a limp.

I immediately brought my shield up in front of me but the man didn’t even seem to pay me any heed. Instead, he passed me by and moved toward where Haad’s body lay on the ground.

“Myriam, is it?” the thunderous voice asked. “‘The last of the mages’. That’s what they call you. We have been looking everywhere for you. Thank The Divine we captured you before you and your pet did any more damage.”

“We’ve found a way to release The Divine without hurting Kai,” Myriam shouted. She tried to turn her face up, but immediately regretted it.

“You? You found a way to extract Its Essence?” Haad laughed. “The Holy Order, with all of its vast resources, has found no way to do it safely, and yet a young spellcaster did?”

“It was in a spellbook—” Myriam tried to say, but the light shined even harder.

“Silence!” Haad’s voice thundered. “The vessel needs to be destroyed and, with it, we shall all perish as well. But The Divine will be restored and order will return.”

“You mean to kill us all?” I shouted at him. “Why don’t you just listen to her?”

“Does anyone ever die, brother?” Haad asked, and I could now see his paragon, who had mindlessly walked toward his body, now picking it up. “Even so, wouldn’t you die to restore order?”

“That’s not what The Divine wants!” Myriam shouted at him again. “It’s protecting Kai. It won’t let you kill him, because it’s not the right way!”

“Where is Its protection now that the boy is squirming like a worm on the ground?” he retorted. “My means of killing does not terminate the body, but only the soul of the vessel. The Divine will take over afterward.”

“No!” Myriam shouted, and turned her face up as a blue stream of mana was catapulted upward from the tip of the fingers on her right hand.

The light brightened once more but Myriam didn’t turn her sight away from its source this time.

My brother is about to kill Kai, and possibly bring death upon us all.

I was not sure of the specifics of my brother’s spell, but if it was like any of the soul projection spells I had read about, he was still bound to his body—the body that was being carried by his now mindless paragon.

I started walking toward him then I heard Myriam scream in agony when her stream of mana was reflected back at her and hit her in the chest.

I made another step, getting closer to the paragon who didn’t react at all, when I heard Myriam’s body hit the floor.

Just a bit more.

I flipped the hourglass that was sitting safely in my pocket. Pulling the same trick on Haad twice had a certain beauty to it.