Perhaps sensing that the situation was starting to turn abnormal, Lord Rush actually ceased actively tearing chunks out of the guard he was eating to look up and get a feel for the blonde-haired woman that had appeared within the gated courtyard. He briefly took a look at the foods and dumbs on the other side of the gate too, but none of them really caught his interest.

Rush was always on the lookout for new minions but he didn’t see anyone out there that was worth recruiting.

Tamara though. Tamara with her blonde hair and her cocky grin. There was something about her that really irritated him.

Lord Rush narrowed his eyes as he chewed. His mouth movements slowing down as his small brain started to make an association.

She really reminded him of his arch-nemesis, the crow.

His small eyes narrowed and he spit out the rest of the hand that he had been gnawing on. Ruth was getting emotional and Rush was beginning to feel the effect of rage as it echoed out from soul space.

His Ruth was right. This woman could not be allowed to exist.

↢↦

Despite every fiber of his being demanding that he just douse her with something flammable and set her on fire, dancing to the song of his crazy laughter, Ruth knew that the Tamara creature would be a formidable opponent. He didn’t know what this ‘hug it out’ referred to but he knew that it was probably some sort of trick.

Ruth was underground and was uncertain as to whether he could use Thunder Struck here. There was a fog cover up above him that seemed to move around in air currents that resembled clouds, but was that enough? Did he need some sort of atmospheric help in order to cast Thunder Struck? This didn’t seem like the time to be standing still pointing at what was probably the most dangerous enemy he had ever faced while finding out.

Rush moved in the corner of his vision. Ruth watched the small lizard as it floated gently to the ground. His tail and body were low to the ground, absolutely silent, as he slowly moved behind Tamara; it seemed like he was getting ready to attack her from behind since she was focused solely on Ruth. The clandestine lizard was even doing his very best not to rattle as he moved. Even straining his ears Ruth couldn’t hear so much as a click of his claws on the ground.

Ruth looked behind him and immediately found that Sikes was, as expected, going to be completely useless. The fool was on his knees and had his hands out with the knife in them, an obvious submission pose. Pathetic.

“I approve of the way you are looking around and considering your advantages,” Tamara said, gaining his brief attention as he continued to look around. “Don’t worry about the crossbow men behind the walls. I hear them behind me. If they fire, I’ll kill them all.”

This proclamation was said in draconic, as evidenced by the fact that no one seemed to be stopping behind the walls. Men and women were beginning to step up to the slotted port holes and crossbows were being readied to be put to task.

Sikes immediately called out to them in a language that Ruth didn’t understand. Apparently the useless and sorry Durvgar was at least telling relaying Tamara’s message to them.

“Hurry up!” Tamara said with a smile. “I’ve things to do. I know it isn’t fair to you, but this is a teachable moment. I’ve been watching for some time now.”

“Then you should know to be wary.” Ruth said quietly. Preparations were almost complete.

“Ruth, my sweet Ruth,” Tamara smiled widely. “If you can even hurt a hair on my head, I’ll give you my fealty and do my best to get you back into a dragon body. Your attacks are, indeed, quite ferocious. They don’t lack for killing intent or for follow-through.”

Ruth lowered his body and spread his legs. He didn’t know why she was insisting on talking to him. He would make his move the moment Lord Rush was directly behind her.

“...there’s just one thing, really,” Tamara held up a single finger and tilted her head slightly. “Imagination. Part of it is my fault, I suppose, for having your spells arranged with numerical values that tell you the consumption. You think in terms of casting a spell and how many times it is available for use.”

“Mmmhmmm?” Ruth wasn’t really paying much attention. It would be just another moment.

“When you were a dragon, did you pay attention to using only what you would consider to be ‘one’ or ‘two’ mana when you used mana to fly? No, you used enough mana for whatever you were doing. It was instinctive and natural, not a system that you paid attention to. In short, with your thinking now, you can’t even make the all or nothing attack you need for situations like this.” Tamara’s expression went cold, her eyes beautiful as they were, dimming somewhat. “Wasteful.”

“Wasteful?” Ruth laughed. He tried to ignore the note of fear he heard in his own laughter. “Keep your fealty! Keep your perfect hair! Keep your promise of finding me another body! Your life is good enough for me!”

Rush was finally in position and he drove toward the center of her back with all the talons on both of his front feet stretched out. Eyes perfectly focused on the prize as his mouth opened wide showing sharp teeth that still contained bits of meat. He drove himself through the air by bounding off the ground at the last minute with a clear plan to attack her spine while she was standing around so carefree.

Ruth sprinted forward himself, hands outstretched as lightning from shock blasted out from his fingertips. The world brightened once more as a deafening crackle filled the air. The lightning surged forward and encountered resistance a meter from Tamara. It pooled in on itself as if it were momentarily being turned into a bright and angry yellow gold liquid. It ran over the surface of an invisible plate that seemed to surround her, and when it finally dripped to the ground only then did it return to its former majestic lightning glory. Billions of joules of energy crashed into the ground all around her doing nothing other than scorching the earth and causing superheated sand and dirt to sizzle and crash in all directions. Shouts of horror could be heard beyond the gate as the incredibly hot material flew everywhere.

Despite the sinking feeling that the lightning would never have reached her, Ruth still became a little more desperate seeing this. He bridged the gap between them and grabbed her shoulders. Both hands landed roughly down and a cruel smile covered his face as he looked down at her. Opening his mouth wide he leaned down and bit down on the front of her throat as hard as he could.

Finally, as he felt his teeth make contact with her skin, he activated his last spell slot. In his memory, and in the one instance he had used it, Lightning Ward had proven that it didn’t discriminate between weapons or creatures. Anything within a meter of him would be decimated by lightning. Now that he was trying to rip her throat out and was holding her, Lightning Ward activated. All along his body ropes of thick energy began lashing at Tamara in a frenzy.

For the briefest of moments with all the deafening blasts of sound and the blindingly bright flashes, Ruth thought he’d won. She had let her guard down. She had been too arrogant.

It was over, and he, Ruth, was the survivor.

All good dreams come to an end. His vision cleared and he saw behind her. Lord Rush was struggling to remove a golden crow that had appeared from on top of him. One avian foot casually crushed Lord Rush to the ground and held him there. From the way the creature was shaking his rattle and trying to bite at the crow, it was clear that he was frantic and helpless.

Ruth felt a stabbing pain from his mouth and realized that his teeth and tongue were still on Tamara’s throat but he couldn’t bite down. It was like trying to bite into extremely dense bone. His brain told him that her skin was soft and malleable but he couldn’t puncture her skin no matter what his brain told him should be happening. The whips of lightning were smashing into her with full force but he didn’t feel any sort of resistance or thrashing from her body. She was standing still under his hands while he growled and bit and clawed at her like an animal.

“See what I mean? Look at how much mana you still have!” Tamara said cruelly.

She reached up and pushed one of his arms away from the space between them. Her fingers found purchase under his chin and lifted him up and away effortlessly. She held his chin and looked into his eyes. She wasn’t tall enough to be holding him off the ground so she settled for holding him slightly above her and made it a point to make sure he knew he couldn’t escape her grasp.

A soft thump came from behind her and she turned her head slightly.

Ruth followed her gaze and found that Lord Rush had tried to teleport away from the crow. He had succeeded but was immediately recaptured. The crow was once again pressing the heroic soul shape into the dirt, its head tilted at a jaunty angle and a wide grin on its beak.

Tamara returned her attention to Ruth and the fingers cupping his jaw seemed to tighten into an inescapable vice. “You could cast those feeble spells at me all day long and do nothing to me. Do you think no one else in the universe has ever seen magic before? You must either be more imaginative or more powerful. You can’t cast your templated stock magic without modification and hope to prevail against even the most basic of countermeasures.”

Ruth lifted his hands and brought them up to her face, startling her with how gentle and slow he was moving. For a moment, he saw the briefest hints of confusion in her eyes. He caressed her cheeks as he cradled her face and he smiled.

His voice, when it came, trembled with barely controlled wrath.

“Just die.”

Both of his thumbs moved upward slightly as he changed his position. He jammed them directly toward her eyeballs and pressed as hard as he possibly could on her face trying to gouge them out. He also spent the remainder of his mana casting shock with both hands into her skull until his mana ran dry.

The explosive report and echoes of the four quick successive bursts startled screams from the crowd behind the gate. Townspeople, guards, Solace, Sikes, Merriweather, Lord Rush, and even Arathan all briefly shielded their eyes or squinted and looked up with different expressions of expectation.

They saw Ruth with his hands still placed onto Tamara’s face, his expression one of slack disbelief.

He lowered his hands dumbly and stared down at her eyes. He couldn’t penetrate them with his fingernails or finger strength, something he found to be impossible. The lightning that he had poured directly into her face hadn’t even singed her skin, let alone wounded her in any significant way. Ruth wasn’t even sure he had blinded her, however briefly it might have been. Her hair didn’t even have the courtesy of being out of place. It should have at least stood up or something after his display of awesome power.

Nothing.

Cold and merciless eyes regarded him and turned his head slightly by using his chin as a lever. She looked at him thoughtfully, quietly, and the tiniest of smiles broke out as her lips turned upward.

“Merciless. Savage. As I said, these are your strong points. Imagination? No. Look over there, and then listen to me very carefully Ruth…”

Ruth felt his head being forcibly turned to the right. He didn’t even try to resist.

The immortal and deadly text explained his current situation to him.

Planar Tiefling: Ruth (Level 11) (Young Adult/Lord Rush) (Lightning Specialized)

Mana: 0/20

★Lightning Ward: 50%

★Lightning Chain: 50%

0 of 5 spell slots

“Sometimes you can’t just throw as many rocks as you can get your hands around…” Ruth half-listened to Tamara, trying to think of a way to turn this around.

“You could always kill yourself if you want to die so badly,” Ruth rasped.

“Don’t worry,” she crooned, ignoring his comment. “I told you this is a teachable moment. To learn something. First…”

Ruth felt a strange warmth in the center of his body. He blinked rapidly and then squinted down at her in confusion. “What are you…”

“Shh. Try not to bite your tongue.”

Ruth began to really scream then. The raw unfiltered mana poured into his body. Mana accrued slowly through natural means for a reason. Having it dumped into him all at once was a pain he couldn’t have accurately described. From having nothing left and being the bottom of the tank dry to overbrimming with mana in a mere second. He almost blacked out.

“There we go!”

Planar Tiefling: Ruth (Level 11) (Young Adult/Lord Rush) (Lightning Specialized)

Mana: 20/20

Ruth hung limply in her grasp, panting even as his body started to emit steam. His body temperature had briefly soared.

“Now Ruth. Ruth? Ruth, focus.” Tamara shook him slightly trying to get his attention.

Ruth looked down at her wondering what could possibly have happened to Tamara to have driven her to this kind of insanity.

“Go ahead and put your hand on my head. Kind of like when you tried to murder me just now. Don’t worry. This is your chance to hurt me. Don’t you want to hurt me?” Tamara smiled softly.

Ruth really did want to murder her but it seemed somewhat unwise to admit that. His hand shook slightly as he placed his palm on her forehead.

“That’s right. Just the one. Now listen. When you were a dragon…”

This again. Ruth didn’t understand what she meant.

“You didn’t care about mana consumption in terms of number? You got tired and you slept. You used as much of your strength as needed for any given situation. You’re overthinking this new spell system. Close your eyes.”

Ruth closed his eyes, shaking and trembling and sweating.

“Forget about how much mana you need to cast the spell. Think about your mana. All of your mana.”

Ruth thought about the mana that was circulating through his mana system. When he was a dragon there wasn’t anything like numbers. That was true. Now that he was paying attention to his inner mana again there weren’t any weird messages or strange numbers. There was just his mana. A brilliant cycle and pool of it that simply existed inside of him.

“Two mana is the consumption necessary to make your shock ability go off, right?”

Ruth nodded slightly, once again only half-paying attention to her words. Whether it was a side-effect of focusing on his mana or exhaustion, he couldn’t even really feel Tamara under his hand anymore. It was like she had disappeared and was just a voice in his consciousness now.

“But you have so much more than two. Why can’t you just use all of it?”

That was a good question. Why couldn’t he?

“Think about your spell. Think about pushing all your mana into your hand and holding it there like… like a gem. Push all your mana into that one spot before you release it. Wouldn’t that be bigger? Isn’t bigger better?”

The incredible heat he had been feeling was starting to fade. The voice was suggesting that he use all of his mana. Why couldn’t he? It was his mana. He could do whatever he wanted!

Rush pulled all the mana from his mana circulation into his hand. It was frighteningly quick. Once it was placed within his palm there was a moment of panic. The intense feeling of cold and tired was back. He started to panic. He thought about taking the mana back into his body but knew that was incorrect. He had channeled all that mana into a destructive force and he had to do something with it, and that something was definitely NOT putting it back inside of him.

Ruth’s face began to grimace. What should he do?

“Remember, I make the decisions so you don’t have to? Just send it all away from you. Kill that bitch Tamara!”

That’s right! His enemy was under his hand!

He opened his eyes to gloat just as he released every bit of mana he had. His hand, palm outward, was pointed off to the side. Tamara stood guiding his arm off to the side and away from her with an innocent and suspiciously forced blank face. Ruth had just enough time to realize that she had taken his hand off her head and redirected it at some point before he totally lost control of the incredible amount of mana that seemed crystallized in his grasp.

“I hate yo-”

If Thunder Struck was a curtain of lightning bolts that flowed down like a waterfall and his normal Shock was several ropes of blinding light, then this new, all-out, mana consuming Shock, was a solid beam of light.

Ruth felt the tips of his fingers starting to heat up to an uncomfortable degree, and the clothing on the front side of his body actually started to retreat toward his sides. The sense of danger the clothing got from the light, even as it was directed away, had been considerable enough that part of it had actually flowed behind him to hide.

“Well done,” Tamara said dryly. She and everyone else stood there admiring the three meter hole that had just been drilled into the side of the cave wall. Solid rock still glowed dimly around the edges of the near-perfectly circular drilled depression.

Mana: 0/20

Tamara released his arm and took a step backward. She put her arms behind her back in an almost girlish pose and smiled. “See? We all learned things today! Yay!”

Ruth almost fell over when she removed her hand from his arm and from under his jaw. She had been supporting a great deal of his weight. His cowardly clothing was now sneaking back into the position over his shoulders and chest, pretending that it had never run in the first place.

His arm was still outstretched even as he turned and pointed toward her once more.

Ruth felt his vision swimming. Once more… just once more and he would… definitely…

Ruth tried to find the pool of his mana. There was nothing left. There was nothing left to pull.

The last thing he saw before the black claimed him was Tamara smiling mischievously at him, staring at his outstretched hand with the barest hint of polite curiosity.

.

.

.

As Ruth collapsed and everyone turned their attention toward him, Tamara very casually reached up and removed a broken eyelash from her cheek. She stared down at it between her fingers with a grave look. She flicked it away and looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

Arathan, of course, stared straight back at her and they both shared a silent moment of contemplation.

IDT

Planar Tiefling: Ruth (Level 12) (Lord Ruth/Lord Rush) (Lightning Specialized)

0 of 5 spell slots

Mana: 0/20

★Lightning Ward: 50%

★Lightning Chain: 50%

★Lightning Wings: 0%