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Charcoaled joists rattled against the planked floor. The air was thick with black smoke. Loud clacks of charred planks splintering, spiced with embery gushes and crackles, acted as a coughing end to the explosions roar. Swarms of sparks were devoured by a gush of black smoke which cut the battlefield in half, giving the pyroclastic drape character. It had been a proper explosion.
"You got me all wrong, master Wellfast.", a distortion in the smoke lurched and wheezed in a gust of pained coughing. Smoke swirled and twisted around his robes, formerly grey and boring, now torn and burnt and charred into a black fiery veil that roared in contrast with his bony pale limbs. Skeletal fingers, stiff and crooked, were extended towards the twisting wall of smoke. The very last pair of his thin hair had been burnt into oblivion, promoting his baldness up to skeletal levels. "I'm more more now I was before. Ever was. Way more!"
"So, you are still alive?", a genuinely surprised voice coughed from the other side of the curtain. "How fascinating. I was confident that your lack of ability with that flaccid little wand of yours wouldn't be able to conduct and redirect these magnitudes of pressurised heat. This would've served as a fitting end for you, a final, grand lesson in evocation, so to say. Well done. Perhaps we have miscalculated your abilities in magical arts, my dear boy.", and with those words, a sudden gush of unnatural wind blew away the cindering smoke, revealing the wizard behind it.
Councilor Wellfast was the polar opposite of Aep Cair: he was a bright, ripe apple against a half-charred stick of Cair. He had draped himself in colorful robes, fine silk with fat jeweled buttons and complicated magical ornaments, and all those sprinkles and sparkles and the heavy jewelry made him look like a pompous garden gnome. fitting for maddest of gardening kings. Wellfast even had that same eerily gnomish smile on his round, red face. "Very well. I shall grant you a wizard's death. Your turn."
But instead of lashing out a torrent of turquoise lightning, Councilor Wellfast made a polite gesture that it was now Aep Cair's turn to speak. For what would a wizarding duel be without an extended dramatic talk? A dazzling spectacle of flashing lights ending in a "splut" on would be considered efficient, perhaps, but tactless. A proper talk before all the killing excluded the wizards from barbarity. Councilor Wellfast knew, and taught, that tradition and civility, and the ability to use more time and effort in the simplest of acts were the foundations of wizardhood: barbarians would spend barely a minute eating an apple, where a wizard could calculate, debate, articulate, theorize, strategize an apple until it grew saplings.
Only the poor and desperate were in a hurry. Thus he set his short, plump arms behind his back and politely nodded to his rather crispy adversary to have his own go.
Traditions before all, they say.
Aep Cair bark out a single and sharp "ha!" before twisting his face into a sneer. "I'm no mere wizard!", Cair pursed the venom laced words between his crooked, yellow-blackened teeth: "You fat, insolent, arrogant and unimaginative bauble-vendors think that you are 'The Magic'. You've closed your eyes from the true nature of magic: You cannot chain power!", his shriek slashed through the battlefield, whipping the loose beams across the room like matchsticks. "After this precious tower of yours is eradicated and you with it, your laws will be abrogated, your legacy wiped! I will wipe the world clean from your shit. And I won't leave a stain."
It was a proper speech, master Wellfast nodded, and drew breath. "You speak of magic from the forbidden schools, young Cair. Look what these all-so-powerful necromantic arts have done to you. You have distorted into the very image you seek to control, Racipae: the dead! Honestly, you should have focused into priesthoods and the, so to say, softer mantic arts.."
Aep Cair's eyes flashed in shock as Wellfast announced his name. His old name. The name they had summoned to laugh at, the name they said with self righteous disgust, the name they had themselves expelled as an inept liability for the University. That name was nothing but a dependency to these old men and a mere subordinate to their limited knowledge.
The shock on his old apprentices face made Wellfast's smile soften. "You were my mistake, Racipae. It is my duty as a wizard to fix my mistakes. I will fix this.", his lips twisted in the gentlest of ways when he said: "I will wipe your disgrace out of our University's porch myself, like dog shit from a marble floor."
A fist of black snakes from Cair's gut slithering up to his chest. His blackened, half chopped nose wrinkled where applicable, and the paper thin skin on his knuckles cracked. "Your arrogance will be your undoing. Die, fat fool!", black hate struck out of his throat and he thrust his black wand forth.
And then came the dazzling, the bright lights, and the tremoring words of magic...
"You got me all wrong, master Wellfast.", a distortion in the smoke lurched and wheezed in a gust of pained coughing. Smoke swirled and twisted around his robes, formerly grey and boring, now torn and burnt and charred into a black fiery veil that roared in contrast with his bony pale limbs. Skeletal fingers, stiff and crooked, were extended towards the twisting wall of smoke. The very last pair of his thin hair had been burnt into oblivion, promoting his baldness up to skeletal levels. "I'm more more now I was before. Ever was. Way more!"
"So, you are still alive?", a genuinely surprised voice coughed from the other side of the curtain. "How fascinating. I was confident that your lack of ability with that flaccid little wand of yours wouldn't be able to conduct and redirect these magnitudes of pressurised heat. This would've served as a fitting end for you, a final, grand lesson in evocation, so to say. Well done. Perhaps we have miscalculated your abilities in magical arts, my dear boy.", and with those words, a sudden gush of unnatural wind blew away the cindering smoke, revealing the wizard behind it.
Councilor Wellfast was the polar opposite of Aep Cair: he was a bright, ripe apple against a half-charred stick of Cair. He had draped himself in colorful robes, fine silk with fat jeweled buttons and complicated magical ornaments, and all those sprinkles and sparkles and the heavy jewelry made him look like a pompous garden gnome. fitting for maddest of gardening kings. Wellfast even had that same eerily gnomish smile on his round, red face. "Very well. I shall grant you a wizard's death. Your turn."
But instead of lashing out a torrent of turquoise lightning, Councilor Wellfast made a polite gesture that it was now Aep Cair's turn to speak. For what would a wizarding duel be without an extended dramatic talk? A dazzling spectacle of flashing lights ending in a "splut" on would be considered efficient, perhaps, but tactless. A proper talk before all the killing excluded the wizards from barbarity. Councilor Wellfast knew, and taught, that tradition and civility, and the ability to use more time and effort in the simplest of acts were the foundations of wizardhood: barbarians would spend barely a minute eating an apple, where a wizard could calculate, debate, articulate, theorize, strategize an apple until it grew saplings.
Only the poor and desperate were in a hurry. Thus he set his short, plump arms behind his back and politely nodded to his rather crispy adversary to have his own go.
Traditions before all, they say.
Aep Cair bark out a single and sharp "ha!" before twisting his face into a sneer. "I'm no mere wizard!", Cair pursed the venom laced words between his crooked, yellow-blackened teeth: "You fat, insolent, arrogant and unimaginative bauble-vendors think that you are 'The Magic'. You've closed your eyes from the true nature of magic: You cannot chain power!", his shriek slashed through the battlefield, whipping the loose beams across the room like matchsticks. "After this precious tower of yours is eradicated and you with it, your laws will be abrogated, your legacy wiped! I will wipe the world clean from your shit. And I won't leave a stain."
It was a proper speech, master Wellfast nodded, and drew breath. "You speak of magic from the forbidden schools, young Cair. Look what these all-so-powerful necromantic arts have done to you. You have distorted into the very image you seek to control, Racipae: the dead! Honestly, you should have focused into priesthoods and the, so to say, softer mantic arts.."
Aep Cair's eyes flashed in shock as Wellfast announced his name. His old name. The name they had summoned to laugh at, the name they said with self righteous disgust, the name they had themselves expelled as an inept liability for the University. That name was nothing but a dependency to these old men and a mere subordinate to their limited knowledge.
The shock on his old apprentices face made Wellfast's smile soften. "You were my mistake, Racipae. It is my duty as a wizard to fix my mistakes. I will fix this.", his lips twisted in the gentlest of ways when he said: "I will wipe your disgrace out of our University's porch myself, like dog shit from a marble floor."
A fist of black snakes from Cair's gut slithering up to his chest. His blackened, half chopped nose wrinkled where applicable, and the paper thin skin on his knuckles cracked. "Your arrogance will be your undoing. Die, fat fool!", black hate struck out of his throat and he thrust his black wand forth.
And then came the dazzling, the bright lights, and the tremoring words of magic...