“...as a personal favor, I will not hit you with a spell named ‘blue fish’ next,” Mordred smiled slightly. “I think I will rename a spell blue fish though. I hadn’t done it before, but I like the idea of, how did you phrase it? ‘Doctor Seussing’ someone to death?”

Aidan was grateful when Mordred paused his magical assault to converse with him again. This was really not going the way he’d envisioned this fight going, and a quick glance at his health, 59%, revealed that the spells were powerful. “You know, in the worst case scenario I sort of thought you could be pretty good? It was outside my expectation that your toolkit would have this much of an advantage over mine!”

Mordred smiled slightly and his shoulders slumped, as if he were relaxing. He pointed a finger at Aidan and laughed, “that’s a trap! You’re trying to get me to admit that I’ve been studying you or some equally obvious trope. I’m sorry, but this toolkit of mine just happened to come about because of my playstyle and my love of meddling with spell shapes and names. You’re the one that came up here to seek me out! If it were anyone else that might have come up here I’d be hiking up my robe like a skirt and booking it out of here.”

“Tyromancy is really strong, huh?” Aidan’s shoulders slumped. “No wonder I feel like I’m getting cheesed.”

Mordred winced visibly. “Please, I’ve lost no health but you have wounded me nonetheless.”

“What do you actually call it?” Aidan asked casually, eyes drifting to his left as he looked through his spell list. There were a lot of things he could do, actually, if… he wanted to run.

“Magician! In a world with real magic, it doesn’t have to exactly be a bunny I pull from a hat!” Mordred bowed slightly.

“Uh huh,” Aidan studied Mordred for a long moment, trying to work through how to fight him. What really bothered him was that Mordred was unexpectedly strong. It would be one thing if the guy was blustering and managed to convince a bunch of people to go along with him because he held the key to activating the quest. It was somewhat outside his expectation that Mordred was keeping up with, no, dominating him when Aidan had been traveling worlds and playing nonstop. More than that, the humility that Mordred seemed to put out gave Aidan goosebumps. It would be one thing if Mordred was really strong and talked a lot of trash, or was overconfident. The vibe Aidan got from Mordred was just guarded confidence, with a willingness to adapt as the situation progressed.

Then it occurred to Aidan that if that was true, he might have made a serious mistake.

“Haha, so, we’re having a fair fight. Traditional wizardry against your newfangled magic!” Aidan spread his arms wide, smiling broadly. Nothing to do but double down and never admit your mistakes. “Just one on one, you and me, empire versus rebel.”

“Seems so,” Mordred’s lips curled near the edges in a slight smile.

“You called a bunch of your friends, didn’t you? I’m stalling for health but you’re just stalling,” Aidan asked as he struggled to maintain the smile on his face. There had been something about that smile.

“What makes you think that? Would I, villain extraordinaire, have need of others when dealing with one such as yourself? Is Tyromancy so weak?” Mordred clutched a hand to his chest looking hurt. The glowing red name above his head seemed to be shuddering violently. It even looked a little bigger than it was when they had started their encounter.

“So you absolutely did, the second we started talking,” Aidan grimaced.

“Forgive me for not taking chances with a guy who dropped a meteor the size of Nepal on this very same city,” Mordred scratched his nose, not looking contrite at all.

“Aw crap,” Aidan muttered, noting the mischievous smile his opponent was starting to form.

“They’re climbing the observatory stairs as we speak. They’re flooding through the library,” Modred gave a very slow and careful glance over his shoulder to the street far below. “It’s a long drop, I don’t think you’d survive. You could, of course, try and cast a slowing spell or something like that but I’ll shoot you immediately and that will cancel it, you’ll fall, blah blah blah, same result. You could give up I suppose? You’re close enough that you’ll respawn--”

Lightning flashed and interrupted him. Speaking as low as possible Aidan cast [One], hoping to catch his opponent off-guard while he was speaking. On the tail of that, he sent more lightning. Already he was looking at his job list, getting ready to use the overlay he’d used on Tenebrim.

Mordred decided to start using a similar trick, because when Aidan saw him start casting he heard nothing, just saw his lips move. Instead of the fish that Aidan had been expecting, wooly sheep composed of golden sparks and electrical threads formed and started skipping happily toward the channeled lightning, their faces making happy little smiles and mouthing ‘bah’ even if they couldn’t make the noise themselves. C-cute.

Explosions of light rang out, probably announcing to anyone in the city that hadn’t already been paying attention to the top of the observatory that something seriously heavy was going on uptop.

Aidan activated his graphic design job overlay, [Many Me], stepping back into one of the other Aidan’s that appeared on the roof. It wasn’t quite as impressive without anyone else on the roof, but twenty or so images of Aidan populated, standing like silent wraiths. Even with the explosion of light, Aidan was able to tell that Mordred was easily able to keep track of him, making his expression sour. The overlay was mostly for anyone that arrived at the top of the observatory, but it would have been nice to take a potshot at Mordred.

Oh no, where are you Aidan! That would have been nice.

A pool of blue that extended around his feet in a circle started to bloom before Aidan hastily froze the ground. He didn’t know what terrible thing involving fish Mordred was going to use from the ground, but he didn’t see any need to find out.

“Whatever awful thing that was you don’t need to do it!”

“Spoilsport!”

Lightning met electric sheep, sunbirds began frantically colliding with fire curtains, hail the size of golfballs was met with an earth wall that came up and curved. The furious exchange of spellcraft continued until Mordred suddenly made what Aidan considered a mistake.

Mordred stepped to the left and started to summon the fire curtain that would explode into fish when Aidan stepped forward immediately and cast [One]! Lightning arced out while Mordred was midspell, slamming into him with the subtlety of a tree falling on a house. The fire curtain fizzled out and Mordred staggered, beginning to recover so he could cast electric sheep to counter the immediate secondary lightning that Aidan cast.

Or would have cast.

Something slammed into Aidan from behind near his back left shoulder. Turning his head slightly he saw a shaft was sticking out of it. He spun slightly, trying to keep Mordred in his field of vision on his left and the newcomer on his right.

“You shot me in the back!” Aidan complained loudly, scrambling backward.

“I can try to shoot you in the front now, if you like,” came the amused answer. Aidan sized up this newcomer. His privacy pane wasn’t on, so he knew his name was Lector. Simple leather tunic over a white short-sleeved shirt revealed bulging if modestly sized biceps. He was wearing some serious thigh-high brown leather boots over the same colored pants and had one of those goatees that Aidan somehow associated with every movie archer ever. The bow he held, even strung, was easily his height. It was a monstrous looking weapon. It probably had a dumb name.

“Look Hannibal, Clarice and I are having an adult discussion over here. Butt out and you can live to talk about it,” Aidan huffed. He reached for the arrow in his shoulder, twisting slightly in order to reach it, and pulled it out.

Lector’s easy smile started to sag slightly. “You know…”

Aidan held up a hand, “yeah, yeah, I’m unpleasant…”

“No, I was going to say there aren’t many people that are going to get that reference? You could have called me Fordra, since Fordra Lector won the first ever international underwater basketweaving competition twenty years ago. Even that is more recent.”

Aidan’s shoulders sagged as he eyed Lector suspiciously, “are you being serious right now? Is that really a thing?”

Lector smiled, raised his bow in one smooth motion, and shot at Aidan without answering.

Aidan fell on his butt, his perception allowing him to pick out the individual colors of the feather as the arrow passed above his head. Electric sheep were, of course, bouncing happily toward him from where Mordred was standing. Aidan started to scramble away in a fairly undignified all fours position when they bounced on him, exploding happily with silent ‘bah’s. Freaking adorable.

“There’s nowhere to go now,” Mordred called out, looking a little unhappy for the first time. “Wizards just aren’t equipped for this kind of escape.”

Aidan began laughing loudly, the sound grating and angry as he slowly pushed himself to his feet. Lector lowered his bow after Mordred waved him off. They both watched as Aidan straightened, swaying even more as his health started to fall into the red zone.

“Maybe a magician, with their reliance on sleight of hand and children’s tricks couldn’t get out of this, but I’m a wizard…” Aidan spread his arms and smiled. “So, I’ll be seeing you real soon.”

“Uh huh,” Mordred frowned thoughtfully, “What you lack is passion. I can see it now. You’re just here amusing yourself, but you’re not taking this seriously at all. That’s why you lost. That’s why you’ll die.”

“Lost, yes,” Aidan grinned. “Die? Maybe.”

“Alright,” Mordred’s shoulders slumped, and for the first time he looked exhausted. “You really can talk.”

Lector readied an arrow and Mordred began softly casting his next spell.

Aidan used his last trick. Using his graphic design job, he activated another overlay. A huge opaque black cube spread out around him, startling both Mordred and Lector. It was easily four meters on all sides. Even the top and bottom were covered. Aidan couldn’t see outside but he knew that they couldn’t see in, either. He quickly moved a few feet to the left to the side of the cube. The cube was never intended to be used as a personal blind, or he would have made it see-through from the inside. Next time.

From outside he heard Mordred call out, “it’s just a job skill. Shoot.”

A fiery fish sailed majestically through the black wall about the same time an arrow flew completely through the cube from the opposite side.

“Good thing I, you know, moved!” Aidan called out sarcastically.

“We’ll just keep shooting. There’s no way I can think of to get off the roof, you’re just delaying this. Which is fine! I don’t mind. More people are arriving. When Brooks gets here, if you’re still alive, we’ll send him into that cute black cube of yours!”

“Who the crap is Brooks? I was just getting used to Forbidrina out there!” Aidan called back.

Aidan looked at the black walls and then lowered himself into a crouch near one of the corners, trying to think. He had… an idea.

But it was a really bad idea. Petty and duplicitous.

“Hey Aidan, did you finish killing Mordred yet?” Elisha’s sweet voice sounded across his friend channel making Aidan falter for the first time.

“Uh! Just about! Haha, he’s so bad it’s pitiable,” Aidan replied over the friend channel.

“Wow! Let us know when you do, we’re all going to be super impressed!” Elisha laughed after a moment. “Try to get a screen shot of his face when he’s like, all, uggggh!”

“Ugggh,” Aidan muttered aloud. He was wise enough not to transmit it to Elisha though.