In the Island of Oth
Oth island is a high valley plateau, where trees were countable, wind lifted gravels and dash across the terrain, and torrent waves crashing against the cliffs.
Krrr-choom!!
A side of the cliff exploded, disintegrating into fractured boulders and scree as a missed strike from Archduke Ethan's blade carved through the plateau.
The raw discharge of zaen from his swing had not even touched the rock directly, but only the force trailing behind it.
The sky above the Island of Oth had turned the color of burnt silver. There was no sun or moon, but just an endless churn of cloud and vapor pulled taut by the warring wills of two men:
Archduke, Adrian Ethan Cade Hart.
Archmage, Maxvlque de Havin.
Ethan followed up his attack.
His figure blurred past falling rubble and his clothes shredded at the edges from wind shrapnel. Each of his movements such as every pivot, tilt, and draw were a calculated violence made of art.
His black sword shimmered, along with its lion-designed hilt gripped in reverse.
Thirty meters ahead, Archmage Maxvlque hovered, barefoot above the fractured stone.
His lavender eyes narrowed, and the vapor around him pulsed once before his hand twitched and the mist solidified into jagged needles.
Ethan spun once mid-sprint and his blade scythed the air that scattered the mist needles before they fully formed.
The island was already battered beyond recognition: gouged cliffs, scalded soil, and rivers that ran upward.
Cracks stretched like veins across the highland, remnants of an hour— or was it a day?— of carnage. Even the wind moved strangely, pulled in and repelled by the zaen radiating from each man.
A water-laced geyser erupted beneath Ethan.
But he vanished and reappeared mid-air above Maxvlque with his sword descending like a guillotine.
Clang-shirrra!!
The impact drilled a hole into the stone ground, but Maxvlque turned into water and reappeared another thirty meters away.
"Don't expect an easy death… for laying a hand on my daughter, Maxvlque."
Ethan said. With each step forward, blue-colored zaen surged around his frame.
"Daughter?"
Maxvlque grinned and slowly spread his arms as if mocking the very notion.
"Do you mean my masterpiece? She's not your daughter anymore, Ethan. Ahaha!"
Lavender-colored zaen coiled around him in serpentine arcs that pulsed with each word— refined, unstable, regal, and profane all at once.
Maxvlque raised both of his hands.
Cra— Crackle!
The plateau shuddered beneath them.
Ethan inhaled once before he bent slightly at the knees, pivoted his right foot half a degree, and…
Swoosh!
0.1 second.
Ethan vanished so fast that there was no afterimage.
Maxvlque dropped both his hands.
Krrr-BOOM!!
A geyser rupted where Ethan just stood 0.1 second ago, tearing shale apart in a blast of pressure. Stone spears launched skyward, punching through the clouds like they were paper.
Ethan reappeared mid-air, right behind Maxvlque.
In a quick response, Maxvlque jerked his shoulders and a sphere of water shortly surged around him like a cocoon of a caterpillar.
Vrrrk–!!
Ethan's attack connected, but the water did not splash. Instead, the sword bounced back as if it just hit a wet iron.
Right after the impact, Maxvlque raised his pointing finger and the sphere spun violently, centrifugal force flicked super-pressurized jets in random arcs.
A jet brushed Ethan's shoulder, and his clothes burst open at the seam as a thin gash traced his skin. He fell back, landed on one foot, and skid five meters across the stone.
Maxvlque raised both hands once more, and the plateau cracked in concentric rings beneath them as the edge of the cliffs crumbled.
A block of water surged upward from the earth itself— not the ocean's tide, but summoned from every hidden crevice, every exhaled breath, and even the sweat dripping from Ethan's skin.
Hundred tons, sixty meters wide.
Fzzzzzr!!
The massive column of water shuddered and crashed downwards.
But Ethan only sheathed back his sword, only to draw it again.
Vrrrkshhh!
It was a single, smooth-draw cut. His body blinked past the collapsing wave, and skimmed within a thread's width of contact. His sword cut nothing, but the air warped behind it.
Fiz— Fizzle!
Water hissed and vaporized.
Maxvlque clenched his fist.
The entire area dropped in temperature: minus twenty in a blink. Frost sheathed stone. Ethan's skin cracked in response. Behind him, the moisture left by the broken wave froze into razors and ice shrapnel in the thousands.
But Ethan just rotated his sword in reverse grip.
He slashed the sword in a full-body spin, and the impact sliced the air itself as a horizontal cyclone formed in an instant, sucking in the ice shards and launching them in random directions.
When the spin stopped, he was already mid-dash.
Maxvlque extended two fingers and a thread-thin whip of water snaked out that was faster than a lightning strike.
It wrapped around Ethan's ankle.
Ethan dropped instantly, mid-stride, onto one hand. But he used the momentum to flip over and swung his sword to cut the whip—
Slash!
—it split, though it instantly reformed and became a second whip that wrapped around his forearm, then a third across his ribs.
Haah…
Maxvlque exhaled and the whips pulled in opposite directions, making Ethan's bones cracked, released his sword, and dropped to the ground limp like a dead man.
But.
Cra— Crackle!
Zaen surged from the Archduke's body, and the droplets near his skin froze solid, severing evry fluid of the whip's connections before he reclaimed his blade and spun up from the ground like a wraith.
Blood painted his chin, and his breathing slowed to once every ten seconds.
Hsssshk!!
Ethan vanished.
Maxvlque's eyes flicked skyward and a drop of water floated in the air above him, still. It was as if there was no gravity in that position.
Raising both arms, that single water bubble that floated above him and scattered. It began to rain.
Vertical rain.
Upward rain.
Condensed water droplets dense enough to shred bone to anyone it touched.
But then again, Ethan blurred into motion in the air, half a kilometer above Maxvlque.
Every single one of his strikes was redirected to the rain droplet near him, and his sword edge sliced the rising drops without touching them.
His body danced mid-air between thousands of cuts per second.
Maxvlque frowned and his hands blurred as he cast ten, fifteen, and twenty spells cast per breath.
Glaciers.
Bubbles.
Water-shaped swords.
And so on.
Maxvlque rained countless spells upwards as if he had an infinite amount of zaen reserves, only for Ethan to cut them (no, Archduke Ethan never dodged one of them).
He looked up.
Their gazes met.
In that brief moment, in less than a second, Ethan vanished as he dashed downwards.
Maxvlque raised his hand. This time, the spell was not water.
Vacuum.
It was a sphere around himself where there was no air, sound, or moisture. It was the embodiment of total negation of all movement.
Ethan's zaen sputtered as oxygen vanished, and he collapsed mid-dash and began to fall down, but he made sure to kick his sword towards Maxvlque.
It launched forward, spinning.
Maxvlque raised his forearm to intercept, but the sword curved mid-air and struck the only place left open: his hip.
C— Crackk!!
In that single cut, the vacuum broke and Maxvlque staggered as blood poured down from his waist.
Thud!
At the same time, Ethan landed on the ground fine with no major injuries as he stood just ten steps away. His chest rose.
Hff…
Once.
Haah…
Twice.
He then recalled the sword back to his hand by extending out zaen.
Maxvlque closed his eyes and mumbled,
"Deluge."
The entire sky fell.
Ethan did not move for the first half-second. His zaen wrapped him tightly, thinned, and hardened. Every step forward took a chunk of life from his lungs.
Each blade of water cut the wind around him.
He stepped.
Cut.
Stepped again.
Cut again.
He advanced through a literal skyfall, as if he was carving his own tunnel toward the Archmage.
"Fool."
Maxvlque said as he lifted one last hand and a final sphere of water orbited his body.
A micro-ocean.
He compressed it.
It spun faster than anything he had cast before and morphed it into a single lance.
Swooosh!!
He launched it.
But Ethan, just as usual, did not dodge. Instead, he struck it with his sword that was fully covered with zaen where it looked like a flame.
Slash!
The lance broke.
Right after, the rain stopped, and neither of them spoke as they just stood before each other with perfectly synchronized breaths.
But not until Maxvlque muttered,
"Abyss of Ten Thousand Depths."