40.

Predecessor

Dominic couldn’t tell how long he was down there. He guessed that it had been maybe two days. Every moment was punctuated with another blow to his body, another burn from a mage, impossible to tell from the last and impossible to remember after the next. Every time they hurt him, he healed immediately. Every time he hit back, so did they. It was a never-ending stalemate, and at this rate, he was going to lose. A statue couldn’t get mentally exhausted. A statue would never give up. But Dominic was slowly getting worn down, the unknown time ticking by with no sign of their assault letting up.

He dodged another fireball and kneed a warrior statue in the face, its head flying off. He was starting to get used to their attack patterns, but the warrior’s head clicked back into place as expected. It struck Dominic in the stomach with its fist, sending him flying back—again.

His back hit one of the statue pedestals, his head cracking against the stone. He groaned. He couldn’t feel most of the pain, but it still sent a jolt through him, a sharp burning sensation stabbing at his nerves through the haze of the numbing spell.

Dominic was about to push himself up again when something on the pedestal caught his eye.

“Li-Linara…?” he said.

The name on the pedestal was referring to the legendary cleric Linara, who had formulated the first portable healing spells. But he knew all of the statues that had been attacking him for the last couple of days—and she wasn’t one of them.

He glanced up. The pedestal was empty. The statue had awoken, but he didn’t know where it had gone.

Dominic threw himself to the side as another fireball landed where he had been, but, unexpectedly, he stepped on a loose stone and slipped, crashing to the ground again. He pushed himself up and looked down through the thin layer of water. Below his feet were several shards of stone, pieces of a statue that wasn’t making any move to heal itself back into place. He looked further, around the pedestal, and there were more.

He ducked and ran as a sword whizzed over his head.

Linara hadn’t disappeared. She had crumbled.

He looked around frantically, trying to determine if there were more like her. Statues that had activated, but never made it off their pedestals. There had to be some reason for it. There had to be some way to keep them from reviving.

He spotted another pile of rock shards, lying just under the water’s surface on the other side of the room. He ran to it, dodging the magic that was thrown at him, one fist made of water catching him in the side and sending him tumbling close to the pavilion. He got up and kept running.

He skidded to the pedestal on his knees, looking for the name. Inang, a legendary doctor and herbalist. A huge broadsword smashed him in the side, cracking the pedestal and sending him flying away.

He ignored the ringing in his ears and dashed to the next one. Helsted, a cleric. Umia, an ancient high priest. They were born in different eras and lived wildly different lives, but there was one thing connecting all of them.

They were all healers. Out of all of the statues that were attacking him, not a single one was a healer. The healers had somehow all crumbled before they could get anywhere. Why? Why only them?

Dominic gasped in pain as a spiked ball on a chain hit him in the chest, flinging him across the room. He rolled across the floor, coming to a sudden stop when he crashed into one of the pavilion pillars.

He looked up. Kali, still standing there peacefully smiling, stared back. And for a moment, a fleeting idea passed through his mind. Then tree roots latched onto his ankles and dragged him away. He cut them quickly with his threads and backed off, making some distance.

Kali had been the archmage, her legend surpassing all the heroes in the room because ‘archmage’ was not a title simply given to somebody who was good at magic. Being an archmage meant having control over all affinities. The elements, the energies, the manipulation magics, healing included. Regular people couldn’t even have two affinities, let alone every single one.

He clung onto that idea as he blocked a blow from a club to his side, bones in his arms shattering. The reason the healers had crumbled. The reason the others remained. The reason he hadn’t yet been able to get rid of them. The reason she was looking at him like that, like she was encouraging him to do something.

His hand clenched into a fist, the shallow pool rippling around his wrists. One of the water mages, a man with long hair and pointed horns, aimed a first made of ice at Dominic. It flew towards him.

Dominic dug his feet in, raised his hands, and struck back.

Water suddenly rose from the pools around him, forming spears that spiraled with power. They shot through the ice, stopping its momentum, leaving clean holes through it. One blew out the mage’s head, one his torso, one taking out his left leg. They impaled themselves into the floor behind him, then melted back into the pools.

The mage statue froze in place, stumbling forward weakly. Then it crumbled. It broke into tiny shards, falling to the floor like a landslide. Across the room, every water mage did the same. They didn’t revive.

Dominic stared at the pile of shattered rock, then broke into a coughing fit. Blood gushed out of his mouth, the taste and smell of iron invading his senses. Here it was—the reflux. When the body refused an affinity foreign to it. Even if that was your affinity, the body would do the same if you hadn’t used it in a long time. It was the natural reaction to something that shouldn’t have been there, that was suddenly introduced. Rejection. Self-destruction. Blood splattered across the shallow pools, dyeing them crimson.

He scrambled back, dodging a broadsword that landed between his legs, falling into the water as he covered his mouth, trying to stop the coughing. This couldn’t be healed with magic. His body had to get accustomed to it on its own.

The warrior statue brought its sword back down, but when Dominic lifted the hand from his mouth, he was smiling.

“I got you, you son of a bitch.”

He charged mana into his hand, and, from his position on the floor, slammed his palm into the flat of the stone blade. A huge BOOM rang out at the impact, the weapon shattering. The pieces flew with such velocity that they wiped out the statues they hit. The water in the path of his strike exploded even though he hadn’t touched any of it, the droplets showering down across the room.

He had used reinforcement magic, just like Ian. He watched as the warrior statue before him froze, then broke into pieces. It crumbled, becoming just a pile of old stone. Several others across the room did the same simultaneously—the knight, the paladin, the brawler, even the sculptor. Dominic jerked to his side, blood surging up his throat as his body rejected it.

He threw up blood across the floor, but he was laughing all the while. This was it. He could end this. A little blood was not going to stop him.

One by one, he picked them off. Earth. Fire. Lightning. He went through the list in his head, coughing up fresh blood every time, head getting lighter and lighter. He knew that he could make it. Just a little more.

He summoned up his strength and cast his mana out over the entire room, building invisible lattices and scaffolds with it. Territory magic. An affinity he hadn’t known existed before he met the king. An affinity that allowed you to build mana over long distances and leave it there, separate from yourself.

The statue of an elderly woman in front of him, stone scrolls filled with spells floating around her, froze and finally crumbled. The last few left standing around the room did as well. It was done. Dominic fell to his knees, spitting blood across the floor, the pool beneath him turning redder than it already had been.

He dragged himself to the path, laying his head down on it so he wouldn’t drown pathetically in a few inches of water. It was over. He had absolutely shredded his insides, but he had made it. The side effects from forcing affinities he hadn’t touched before would fade given time. He turned and looked towards the pavilion.

Kali was still standing there, looking peacefully over the carnage, smiling.

It was not completely over yet. Dominic heaved, forcing himself to his feet. He stumbled slightly, struggling to regain his balance. Slowly, one careful step at a time, he made his way over to her.

He met her gaze, and it felt strangely warm. No, perhaps it had always been that way, but he hadn’t been able to tell through the sheer power of her mana. Now, that aura had faded away—weakened—as she looked at him with her unchanging smile.

She brought her hand up to his cheek and cupped it. The stone was cold against his skin.

“Did I pass?” Dominic asked. His voice was terribly hoarse, barely able to make a sound above a whisper.

She inspected his face, then nodded. Kali retracted her hand and turned around, moving back inside. Dominic followed.

She walked over the stone carving of the maze, stepping onto her pedestal. She looked over her shoulder towards Dominic, tilting her head as if asking why he hadn’t come up as well.

He hesitated a moment, then carefully walked onto the map of the maze. Kali offered him a hand, and he cautiously took it, letting himself be pulled up beside her. The pedestal was wide, and there was plenty of room for two people, but Dominic didn’t know why he was being asked to stand there, and he didn’t know why it felt so much like he didn’t belong.

He looked out, the carnage in the giant room apparent from the center of the pavilion. Piles of stone littered the floor. Water had splashed everywhere. The formerly picturesque pools and paths were destroyed by the craters left by the long fight. The pedestals that had once held those beautifully carved statues were empty, some cracked and crumbling.

Suddenly, for a moment, Dominic felt a deep sense of regret. They were all gone, and they weren’t coming back. They had been pieces of rock—the real people long dead—but in the past couple of days, he had come to understand each of them. Their unique styles. Their personalities. They were physically ingrained into his body. And now they were all gone. From the very beginning, there had never been any other possible outcome.

Kali raised her hands. He felt mana gather around the pavilion, then click into place. Gears began to grind, magic circuits carved long ago finally activating and moving the stone. On the border of the circular map of the labyrinth, the floor fell away, revealing a huge staircase. It spiraled around them, then down into darkness.

A great rush of dense, ancient mana rose up from the deep. It washed over Dominic like a cold wind.

Kali put down her hands and turned to him. He waited for her to do something—gesture, cast a spell, perhaps speak—but she just looked at him, that warm smile still unchanged, and started to crumble.

Her head went first, the top of her hair cracking and shards dropping off. He tried to catch them as if it would help, reaching out to hold her, but she shattered quickly. The cracks spread through her in an instant, pieces sliding away, her body cascading down in a landslide. It was as if she had been designed to die this easily. It was as if she had been waiting a long time to let go.

In just a few seconds, what had once been Kali was gone. It was over, but for some reason, Dominic was not at all feeling relieved.

The last shard, a piece of her hair, slipped out of his hand and landed in the small pile of stone that now covered the pedestal. It bounced once, then settled into place.

A deep, boundless silence fell across the room.

Dominic was completely alone again.

He collapsed—his side draped over that pile of rock shards, the pointed edges poking into his skin—and blacked out.