“Healing!” Otto removed the candle from Abel’s torso and desperately tried to heal his wound.

A feeling of nausea came over him as he cast his mana-regenerating spell.

“There must have been another way to hand over the insignia!” Otto exclaimed seeing Abel’s peaceful albeit gruesome body.

“I could have…”

“I could have… tried to deactivate the barrier! Or the collar!”

Otto gritted his teeth.

He grabbed the book from his sack and opened it.

“There must be something I missed!” he exclaimed, he scanned through all the chapter names and all the sub-sections.

All of Murlin’s old notes fell out of the book, none of them new.

“How long did he stay here waiting to be killed?!”

“There must be a resurrection spell!” Otto thought.

He scanned the entire book start to finish again.

Once he reached the end, he began reading over all the notes and the message at the end.

Slowly, bit by bit Otto began to lose faith in his ability to revive Abel.

“If an Archmage couldn’t think of a better solution then, how could I?”

As he was on the cusp of giving up Otto decided to try one last thing, he tossed the magic book aside as he reached into his sack for his journal.

On a new page, he scribbled words down frantically.

“Revive – resurrects a target, healing their wounds and placing their soul back into their body.”

Otto practically broke the pencil as he wrote down the full stop at the end of his sentence.

“I came up with the gibberish that is the magic language, right?!”

“Watch and learn, past me!” Otto exclaimed as he placed a hand on Abel’s wound.

He shut his eyes.

“BatteryCreate « SetBatterySize 1000β « SetManaOutputAmount 100β « SetManaOutputPlace RevivalSpell « SetPlace Here «”

“Revival « SetPlace Here « SetName RevivalSpell «”

He called all the words out loud.

Suddenly Otto felt his entire body burn as the mana got dragged into the battery and all the matter around him became mana deficient.

The entire tower began to crumble all around him, a building powered by mana, its very bricks were infused with strengthening magic.

Otto saw the prismatic circle appear on his hand, it looked see-through with flakes of different sparkling colour bursting in and out of existence, it slowly began to spin and more and more mana was being drained from all around.

Otto’s vision began to blur as his mana-regenerating battery was being starved of all mana, the mana in his body was being sucked out into the manaless air around him and then into the spell.

The tower began to fall down as the big, oval-shaped top began to descent onto the crumbling tower below.

From outside the tower, it looked as if a massive vortex of air being pulled into the falling structure, the magic lamps, the only spell that never wavered was the shield around the castle.

Finally, the tower fell to the ground with a massive crash and a gust of wind created by the fall blew tons of rocks into the air.

The tower itself was hovering over the ground, like a piece of metal that was allowed to melt before being cooled just as it began leaning over to the ground.

That could only mean one thing, the mana returned to the reinforcement spells.

Guards surrounded the tower and the ruined building below, shields, spears and maces in hand.

From the tower leap out a figure, clad in a light brown tunic with a large hole in it, dirty white trousers and rectangular glasses.

Over his shoulder was a passed-out albeit satisfied-looking Otto.

“I’m going to have to ask you all to step back!” Abel said, his voice sounded full of vigour as if the short “nap” helped him recover his strength.

From the crowd of regular knights and guards appeared an individual wearing shining, silver armour.

Their hair was bone-coloured.

“Archmage of light, cease your foolishness, that man is a criminal!”

Abel breathed a sigh.

“I’m giving everyone who wants wishes to step aside ten seconds to run away,” he exclaimed as he lifted a hand into the air.

“F…”

“L…”

“A…”

“S…”

“H…”

A few of the men dropped their weapons and turned to run, not wanting to face the Archmage in combat.

“O…”

“F…”

A few more guards turned to run as the one clad in silver grit his teeth.

“That’s about enough!” the man grabbed a rapier from the hilt located at his hip and charged at Abel.

“Light!” Abel finished as the entire district of the town became enveloped by a white light which blinded those who didn’t turn to flee.

In an instant, Abel put Otto down and ran up to the attacker, easily breaking his wrist and grabbing his rapier, all with his eyes closed.

With the butt of the blade, he hit the now defenceless attacker’s back causing them to pass out on the ground.

Once the light faded away the remaining knights saw Abel, unarmoured, standing next to the vice-captain of the court mages, passed out on the ground.

Abel walked back to where he put Otto down and placed him over his shoulder.

“It took the old Murlin days to make every new spell…” Abel thought as he turned to face the small army before him.

“I’m going to give the rest of you five seconds…” he said slowly making his way towards them, weapon in one hand and Otto in the other.

“The non-mages don’t get collars so intimidation still works on them…” Abel confirmed seeing all the knights stumbling over each other to escape.

Abel set his eyes on the castle in the distance as thunder began to rumble.

“Looks like we might have made a little too much noise…” he laughed looking up and seeing the Archmage of storms making his way towards them.

“ABEL!” the man roared.

“Hey…” Abel waved.

“You don’t think you could let me go get my armour and weapons real quick, do you?” Abel asked.

A bolt of lightning struck the ground where he stood only a moment earlier.

“I’ll take the as a no…” he remarked.

Otto opened his eyes.

He was being carried by Abel who sprinted with the speed only obtainable by someone who walked up the hellish stairs for the last two-hundred years.

“Oh cool… The spell worked…” Otto remarked, his speech slurred.

“Yeah, I’m not sure how you did it, but I’m alive!” Abel replied, he spoke with the confidence and exuberance you wouldn’t expect of a man trying and somehow managing to outrun lightning.

“Though your spell kind of attracted someone really strong!” he explained.

Otto looked back and saw the lightning crashing into the ground.

“Oh… shit…”

Otto looked forward again and saw that they were running out of the city.

“We’re leaving the city!?” Otto demanded seemingly regaining his strength.

“As much as it pains me to say this, you’re half-alive, I’m armourless!”

“I’ve waited two-hundred years for an opportunity half a good, I’m not letting it slip!” Abel replied.

“Close your eyes!” he said as he lifted a hand into the air.

Otto did as commanded.

“FlashOfLight!” cried Abel as the gate to the city became bathed in white.

When Abel’s pursuers could see again, Otto and Abel were gone, so were their magic vacuums.