Jalen pulled himself free from the rubble and dropped to the ground with a pained groan. It had been quite some time since he’d last gotten his shit rocked this badly. As it turned out, hanging around in an Empire where everyone else was completely and utterly incompetent tended to make a man complacent.

The back of his skull throbbed like a rung gong. A searing pain burned in his broken arm and any attempts to call on his domain amounted to nothing. He’d have had better luck trying to light a candle underwater. Father had completely and utterly crushed out everything he’d had.

But Jalen wasn’t dead.

For that matter, he couldn’t feel Father at all. It was silent.

Father isn’t the kind of guy to leave an enemy alive. There’s only one reason I could possibly still be alive… and that’s if the bastard is dead.

Garina must have gotten his ass.

He pushed himself upright, dust and debris raining down from his hair as he dragged his gaze up to scan over the room — only to find Garina slumped against the wall, blood splattered in a wide arc around her and her severed arm several feet away from her.

Across from her were Noah and Father.

The two of them both laid on the ground, as if they’d charged headfirst at each other and managed to knock themselves out.

Jalen couldn’t tell who was dead. His domain was still completely spent, which meant the only thing he had to go off was the sad, pathetic powers of the normal mortal senses.

So, as any sane man would have done, Jalen grabbed a loose stone from the ground with his good hand and took several loping steps forward. He practically skidded across the ground as he came to Father, bringing the stone down with all the force he could muster.

It struck the old man’s skull with a loud crunch. Blood splattered and bone shattered. Father didn’t even flinch.

Jalen brought the stone crashing down again. One could never be certain with Father, after all. Blood splattered across the ground and arced through the air as he lifted the stone again. He stared down at Father’s limp corpse.

There was no movement in it. No reaction. No breathing.

Jalen brought the stone down once more. One could really

never be certain with Father.

The third strike caved the other man’s skull in. Its sound was wetter than the previous ones had been as the blow drove deep into his brain.

Slowly, Jalen let his stone lower. Blood and viscera dripped from it to splatter across Father’s desecrated face. There was no mage, no matter how powerful, that could survive that. Not unless Father had somehow gotten access to Noah’s magic.

Jalen staggered to his feet. He glanced at Noah’s body, then turned to Garina. The bloodied stone slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground with a crack that split the silence hanging around them.

He dragged himself toward her, scooping her severed arm from the ground on the way over. Then he knelt at her side, studying the woman intently. Jalen was no doctor. Without access to his magic, telling if someone was dead or not wasn’t the easiest.

But he was pretty sure living people were meant to breathe.

“Hey,” Jalen said. He nudged Garina in the shoulder. “You here?”

There was no response. Her skin was pale and pallid — but that was how it always was. The woman really needed to get herself some sun. Assuming she wasn’t dead, of course. If she was, leaving her in the sun would probably be ever so slightly rude.

“Hey,” Jalen said again. “Wake up. You in there, you old hag? Don’t tell me that Father was the one who punched your ticket. You didn’t live this long to get killed by some paranoid bastard.”

There was no response.

Jalen rocked back on his haunches, sucking his teeth.

Garina was still. She hadn’t responded to his presence in the slightest.

He put a thumb on one of her eyelids and pulled it up. All he found were the whites of her eyes. There was no thought or emotion within them. Jalen slowly let his hand drop — and then let Garina’s severed one do the same.

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He swallowed.

You can’t be serious. She’s dead? Her magic felt drained when I met back up with her after the barrier around Arbalest fell… but there’s no way I can accept that she’s just dead. Here, of all places.

She’s Garina.

“Hey!” Jalen yelled, slapping Garina across the face with all the force his good hand could muster. “Wake up!”

Her head snapped to the side and her body went with it, slumping toward the ground.

Jalen grabbed her with his broken arm before she could hit it. Pain shot through him, but he ignored it. He couldn’t just dump her body on the ground. It was wrong.

A knot twisted in his throat. It had been a long time since he’d given a shit about anyone’s life. He’d seen so many friends die that the meaning of both words had largely lost its meaning.

Jalen wouldn’t have even said he’d been close with Garina. But he’d respected her. That was a hell of a lot more than what he could say about most other mages. A heavy sigh built in his chest and fell from his lips.

He took Garina by the side of the face, pushing her back into a seated position, his thoughts drifting as he started to turn back toward Noah and Father. He’d have to—

Garina’s eyes snapped open.

Perhaps it was the lack of his domain, or perhaps he’d just been caught completely off guard. But, whatever it was, Jalen leapt nearly a foot into the air as he let out a rather unmasculine scream of surprise.

“Shit!” Jalen yelled, nearly tripping over his own feet. “You’re alive?”

“Don’t cradle my face like that,” Garina said with a pained smile. She spat blood onto the floor beside her. “The disgust pulled me right back from the grave. I’ve got someone, you know. And it isn’t you.”

“Thank any god listening for that,” Jalen said, a grin crossing his own lips. “I like my women less corpse-adjacent. You ever heard of a tan, woman?”

“Shut up,” Garina said with a weak laugh. She jerked her chin to her arm. “Give me that. What the fuck happened? Father’s dead. Did you kill him?”

“No. I thought you did,” Jalen said. He grabbed Garina’s hand off the ground and offered it to her. She took it, then drove it into the weeping wound on her shoulder and gave it a few sharp twists. Tiny threads of black magic twisted out from her flesh to secure the limb.

“Wasn’t me,” Garina said. She pushed herself upright, and her gaze drifted past Jalen to land on Father. She paused. Then her eyes flicked to the bloodied rock on the ground before landing on the very same blood dripping from Jalen’s fingers and smeared across her cheek. “You sure it wasn’t you?”

“Fairly. He was a corpse by the time I got to him. Nothing in those dead eyes of his,” Jalen said with a shake of his head. “I think Noah got him.”

“Noah,” Garina repeated, disbelief dripping from her words as the two of them stumbled their way over to the pair of bodies lying on the ground before them. “You’re telling me a Rank 5 defeated a Rank 7? That would be difficult to accept under normal circumstances. But he defeated Father of all people?”

“Well, looks like he died along the way,” Jalen said.

“Noah probably gets himself killed while getting his morning tea,” Garina muttered. “Hardly a drawback. It’s odd, though.”

“What is?”

“I would have expected to sense the fading remnants of Father’s Runes dissipating,” Garina said. “And maybe it’s because my magic is so spent… but I can’t pick it up.”

Unease twisted Jalen’s stomach. “You’re not saying you think he escaped, are you? Because I swear to any god listening, that would be a big steaming load of horse shit.”

“No,” Garina said, sending relief flooding through Jalen. She tapped her nose. “He didn’t leave this cave. I know that for certain. There would have been traces of his magic. A long time ago, Father slipped out from under my nose. I took extreme care to make sure that would never happen again. I could sniff him out anywhere within the range of the entire Arbalest Empire now. His magic signature ends here.”

“So he’s dead,” Jalen said.

“I… don’t know if that’s true either,” Garina said slowly. Something passed through her features. It was hard to tell just what it was, but it wasn’t good. “Death comes with its own traceable effects.”

“What are you saying, then?” Jalen asked. “I’m trying to figure out if I need to throw a celebration or a consolation here, Garina. I’m doing one of the two, but I’d vastly prefer the former.”

“There are no signs of Father’s soul being broken,” Garina said. She swallowed. “It’s like he ceased to exist. His trail just vanishes. Everything that used to be Father is gone. All that’s left is this.”

She nodded to Father’s broken body.

“So he’s… dead?” Jalen said again, but less confidently this time.

“Do you know what comes after death?” Garina asked.

“Not exactly,” Jalen replied. “Never thought about it too much.”

“You’ll find out some day,” Garina replied. She nodded to Father. “He won’t. There’s nothing left of him. He may as well have never existed. No judgement. No peace or second chances or torture. Just… nothing.”

The two of them were silent for several long seconds.

“That sounds pretty shit,” Jalen said. “I can’t think of anything worse than nothing.”

“Nor can I,” Garina agreed. “Noah is… something. I don’t know how he managed to do that. I’m not sure if I want to. There are very few things that scare me. But I think he might be one of them. I don’t even want to think about what he might become once he reaches Rank 7.”

“Or 8,” Jalen said. “Don’t underestimate him — or any of them. Lee, Moxie, all those students of theirs and the hot, sexy bastards that join up with their cause… you mark my words, Garina. There’s a new faction arriving from the Arbalest Empire. And the Church of Renewal doesn’t have shit on it.” ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel·fire·net

Garina’s eyes narrowed. “I take it you’ve included yourself in that list?”

“You didn’t miss the hot and sexy qualifiers, did you?” Jalen asked. “Of course I did. How would they fit the criteria without me?”

Garina just shook her head. Her eyes drifted to Noah’s body. Jalen’s gaze followed hers.

It was a little while longer before either of them said anything. Then Garina let out a sigh.

“We should probably go find Moxie,” she said. “We need to tell her that we got her boyfriend killed again.”