“You can come out now. I’m surprised it took you this long,” Mordred didn’t turn around as he continued to survey the city from the top of the Royal Library Observatory.

The top itself was just an open floor with a stairway that led back into the building itself. It was completely dark except for a single mage light that hovered dutifully near Mordred’s arm. Though the globe itself appeared to be dark and black, it still produced something that could be called illumination simply because you could see things in a dim area around it.

“How did you know I was here? I kind of guessed your class to be a mage, wizard, or spellcaster since you have the light globe,” Aidan stepped out warily, Fred popped into existence beside him. Fred was fielding a sporty yellow globe and looked ready for anything.

“I… am a Cheddarmancer,” Mordred turned around slowly, folding his arms in front of him and smiling slightly. “The wheel turns for everyone, even for you, Aidan, or should I call you…” He hesitated and trailed off, eyes seemingly searching.

“You couldn’t think of anything, could you?” Aidan watched him for a moment, his own lips turning in disgust. “You overdid it with that cheese wheel joke.”

“I don’t know a whole lot about you,” Mordred admitted, bursting into sudden laughter. Like a child that had been caught lying about something innocuous. “Tyromancy is a very real thing though, and I think you should respect the power of cheese.”

“I am tiring of your mancy, that much is true,” Aidan raised his staff and pushed his robes cuffs up a bit. “Do you want to say anything really cool before I blow you off this building?”

“How did you even get up here?” Mordred said, confusion causing frustration to bleed through into his voice.

“Okay, I’ll answer yours if you answer mine.”

“Deal.”

“I walked,” Aidan grinned. “I stuck to the shadows and skittered between barrels and dark windows. I rolled and internalized my theme music instead of humming it as I moved. Your turn.”

“Did you kill the two people in the stairwell?” Mordred asked, still looking as if he couldn’t believe this.

“What two people in the stairwell?” It was Aidan’s turn to look confused.

“My henchmen wandered off. Ugh. They got bored and left!” Mordred threw his arms up in the air. “Well, one was a Henchwoman. It is hard to find good henchpeople. How did you know where I was?”

“Well, I’m pretentious, arrogant, and full of myself, and I thought -- if I were going to find a place to stand and watch everything burn, where would that be?” Aidan then waved his hands slowly and majestically in an all encompassing circle. “Tada! Now, really, how did you know I was here?”

“I just say ‘you can come out now. I’m surprised it took you this long’ every five minutes. I have it on a timer. After a while, you just get used to saying it. Kind of like, ‘bless me’ when you sneeze,” Mordred scratched the back of his neck. “You would be amazed at how often that works.”

“I’m amazed that it worked even one time!” Aidan blurted out, disbelief clear on his face. Timer, huh?

“Okay, for real, do you want to say anything cool? I’m going to murder you for realsies. Your ominous boss floaty name thing is seriously beginning to creep me right out.” His eyes narrowed.

********************************

“Boss!” Suresh, a new camera operator and general okay guy, slid into Elias’ office. For a brief moment, Elias looked up over his desk and even though he knew that his staff wouldn’t bother him or just barge in without knocking without a damn fine reason, he couldn’t quite contain the scowl that immediately clouded his expression. He was holding his two-year-old son up in the time honored Lion King pose, trapped in the gesture, thoroughly caught. Timothy, the son in question, wiggled after a moment to let Elias know that he was becoming impatient with the gesture. By the laws of physics regarding children and cats it was becoming exceedingly hard to hold him, like he was turning into a liquid.

Elias slowly lowered Timothy to the desk and placed him gently on his back. This did nothing because at two years old, Timothy had left his turtle years behind. This was his time. He had things to put in his mouth. Patriarchy to vanquish. He rolled over immediately and propelled himself forward right into Elias’ chest. Take that Patriarchy.

Elias gave up and just fake wrestled with him for a moment, looking over at Suresh with an expression that indicated Suresh better be suffering from 3rd degree burns or he would be when Elias set him on fire.

“Mordred is on the Royal Library Observatory and is facing off against Aidan. They’re alone and are about to duke it out!” Suresh said breathlessly, desperately trying to remain professional and still impart the sense of urgency he no doubt felt.

“Well, that’s fine. It doesn’t have to be in real time. Let’s just get the footage and we’ll clean it up a little bit before we play it,” Elias blinked a few times, bobbing his son up and down. What was the big deal? They used footage. Even exciting footage was okay to delay sometimes.

“No, boss, Mordred is fighting Aidan on OWL Studios’ feed, right now.” Suresh emphasized the immediacy of the situation once more.

Elias stood up, babbling baby turning to liquid held in front of him as he stared expressionlessly at Suresh, trying to work out what his new cameraman was telling him. Was this… could it be?

It had been so long…

“Did we just get scooped in AAO?” Elias couldn’t help but sputter it out, grimacing immediately as he realized he hadn’t been able to stop himself from saying it. “Nevermind. Get everyone to the broadcast room. We’re going live with this right now.”

“What about the rights? OWL Studios claimed that Mordred is one of their streamers and we don’t have any sort of paperwork saying we’re allowed to show him on our feed?”

“Well, then they shouldn’t have shown Aidan without asking us first!” Elias barked. Baby cradled securely into his shoulder, Elias stormed passed Suresh. Timothy waved once over his shoulder at Suresh.

"Bye bye."

Suresh blinked rapidly, resisting the urge to wave back at the toddler, then followed after him.

“Alright, where are we at?” Elias walked into the broadcast room, nicknamed the war room after the last domineering world quest involving the Half and Void.

“We’re ready to go. Just need you to say broadcast,” Philip called out.

Elias looked up, and sure enough, Mordred stood with the city of Blutonsi backdropped behind him, mouth moving. It was one of the most beautiful foreground shouts a broadcaster could have asked for without setting it themselves. “Going live!”

“Going live!” Philip yelled out. The sound engineers across the room gave the thumbs up. It wasn’t actually that dramatic. It was a simple slider bar that changed a black screen on an internet thumbnail into a live feed.

Timothy began babbling excitedly as he looked around. He had never been in this room. Already his eyes were gleaming with avarice. There would be no stopping him from trying to get into this room with every fiber of his being anytime he was in the office. Elias felt pride and deep regret at the same time.

“...ked even one time! Okay, for real, do you want to say anything cool? I’m going to murder you for realsies. Your ominous boss floaty name thing is seriously beginning to creep me out.”

“Why does his name look like that?” Philip asked.

Elias frowned, taking a moment to adjust his hold on Timothy and bounce him up and down a few times as he considered the question. The answer? He had no idea. Mordred’s name was lit up a deep and dark crimson maroon. It pulsed in a way that suggested there was some sort of animation attached. Occasionally it, for lack of a better word, trembled as if it would crawl off and gain sentience. People would probably pay money to get their names to do it.

Mordred laughed, silencing all the speculation that started in the war room.

“How can it be? I’m not a fighter! I haven’t killed anyone since this began!”

Aidan paused for a moment, considering this information, and then very calmly spoke to the empty air in front of him. “Hold on a second Elisha. Let me kill Mordred and then you can tell me whatever you want.” Aidan looked back to Mordred and mouthed ‘sorry’, pointing with exasperation to his ear in the time honored 'had to take this' motion.

Mordred stared blankly back for a moment before his expression deadened. He raised his staff -- “[Two Fish]” -- and fired a blast of lightning. The lightning looked to be some derivation of white lightning’s final form.

Aidan swept his own staff, the Unfair Stick, and cast “[One].”

Lightning raced out, the distance between the two on the roof large enough and the video game magic slow enough that both were going to reach each other in the middle.

Before that could happen the lightning from Mordred split up and down and formed the elegant forms of two large fish. The first fish swam forward and slammed eagerly into Aidan’s lightning, the explosion of energy and force starting a shockwave. The second fish, almost appearing to leap out of that shockwave, rose above the original casting lines and then descended toward Aidan, smacking him square in the chest.

The electricity arced across his body and he flew backward. On the ground, hood up, robes smoking. The war room was dead silent. No one believed that the blow was enough to one-shot Aidan, but there was a new concern in the room. They were streaming their boy, live. What if he lost? Craaaap.

“Start figuring out audio! There was too much squawk when their spells intersected. Someone go find me someone else who can figure out music for two wizards dueling. Someone else call my wife, tell her I’ll need some snackies for Timothy or she can take him, I don’t know, let me know what she wants. Fei Hong, get me the feeds of our other regulars in the area and see if anyone has any point of view to add to this fight,” Elias wasn’t so easily cowed.

Like a spell being broken, the war room broke into a flurry of activity. No one even batted an eyelash at their boss saying snackies.

“Amelia is still… uhhh. She’s still in the research facility.”

“Doing what?” Elias looked over casually. It wasn’t important sounding, but he was still mildly curious.

“That weird crazy Epsilon puppet is murdering wave after wave of mermen…”

“Okay, make sure you get that and we’ll put it up tonight.” Elias turned away.

“Hunter, Forsythe, Raven, and Elisha are in the Palace being normal.”

“Normal?”

“For them, sir.”

“Oh, okay. Let me know if they start moving toward the Royal Library,” Elias said after some consideration.

“New footage coming in!” Suresh was in the back manning the social media station and keeping an eye on their other streaming associates.

“Alright, let Philip know which feed you’re looking at and we’ll take a look,” Elias drawled, slightly surprised at the source of the call out.

“No, it’s from OWL Studios!” Suresh said, wincing as he said it.

“What is it?” Elias blinked.

“They have several streams showing people heading toward the observatory. It looks like the Rebellion is sending some heavy hitters and they’re working with OWL as streamers.”

Elias blinked. OWL again? Then he shrugged. “Alright, thank you.”

“Keep this for now, let’s see how it plays out.”

Aidan was just getting to his feet, slowly using his free hand to dust off the front of his robes. His hood had come up when he was thrown unexpectedly to the ground by a lightning fish. He slowly pushed it back and tilted his head, seemingly trying to think of something to say. Just as he opened his mouth--

“[Red Fish].” Mordred stepped to the left and made a sweeping gesture. A curtain of fire formed in front of him a meter wide and started forward.

With little choice but to respond in short order, Aidan once again sent out a spell to counter Mordred’s. “[Aeth Aeth Aeth]!”

A plume of bright red and orange blossomed in front of Aidan taking the form of a sunbird. The original spell was actually named sunbird for this reason. Wings spreading, it leapt through the air toward the curtain of fire.

The colors lit up the dimly lit studio room, the monitors immediately capturing Timothy’s attention. His mouth formed a small ‘o’ as excitement began to gurgle in his throat.

The curtain, like the earlier spell, transformed at a quarter of the distance. The meter wide and meter tall curtain folded in on itself in the form of a big headed fish. Mouth opened, wide, it swallowed the sunbird. A great big portion of the back end of the fish vanished, obviously countered by the sunbird spell. The majority of the front half of the fish head broke off from the ruptured spellwork and continued toward Aidan.

“[Aeth Aeth Aeth]!” Aidan waved his staff desperately, looking like he had already been preparing for this eventuality. Another sunbird formed and started toward Mordred and the remainder of his spell. Despite how fast he had reacted the fish face was almost in front of Aidan when the sunbird formed in that spot.

The spell exploded, much of the backlash blasting back toward Aidan. Though the actual power of the spells was evenly matched, the shape and disposition of Mordred's seemed to have a severe advantage.

The white robed wizard stumbled back several times, a spare hand shielding his eyes. His health waned further downward.

“Didn’t you make fun of someone once? Aeth aeth aeth!” Mordred called, looking a little amused. Maybe he wasn’t trying to actually heckle Aidan, or maybe he was. It was hard to tell. His voice was one of those voices that was just hard to read.

Aidan straightened up, swaying slightly. A frown crossed his face as he considered Mordred. Then he shouted, “did you say something? You keep talking but I think I got deafened by the explosion! Hey! You’re not going to Doctor Seuss me to death are you? If you cast blue fish for your next spell I swear I will just walk right off this roof myself!”