Chapter: 501 – How He Did So

Tala, Rane, and Terry sat next to the physical manifestation of Anatalis, god-beast of the Pack and Lord of the Northern Forest – northern from the gated-human perspective.

As they were traveling out and away from the cycling cities, Tala was trying to reframe her understanding of various things like that.

Rane’s acceptance of the opportunity to test himself against the Pack’s current sireling—whom Tala had faced years earlier—still hung in the air, along with the magical signatures of more than fifty giant wolves who were now looking down on the arena in which their group rested.

Well, he didn’t waste any time.

-Well, of course not. He’s excited to clash with an opponent he saw you fight. That doesn’t get to happen very often.-

That’s… fair. She really couldn’t fault his eagerness.

Anatalis had a lupine—very predatory—grin across his face as his guests looked around at the surrounding creatures.

In that moment, Tala had a realization. If the sirelings take a hundred years to mature, and the Pack only has one at a time, just the wolves here represent more than five thousand years of Anatalis’ life and consistent growth in power—even if just by the expansion of his Pack—and this is likely not all of them. Though it is most likely the majority.

-It also explains why no one has seen him as a specific threat, not yet at least.-

Yeah. I mean, we’ve no reason to believe that he’s more powerful than any other Sovereign level entity, and his descendants are easily matched in number and power by others we know of. The Pack couldn’t bring down the arcane cities by themselves, and even gated-humanity could probably cause him trouble if we came to conflict.

-Not a lot of trouble but definitely some, yeah.-

Still, his base of power would only continue to expand, and he had a near eternity to continue. It was no wonder that he had not been more prominent, but with gated-humanity by his side? Possibly even under his aegis? Tala suddenly understood why the wolves had approached Alefast, Waning, to test gated-humanity.

They were at—or very near—a tipping point of power.

In the momentary silence in which Tala’s mind was racing along concepts of power and alliance, Terry flickered to stand on his own, sized to match an oxen’s height, if not mass. He trilled at the sky, causing a ripple of rumbling chuckles from the watching wolves.

Anatalis regarded Terry for a long moment before dipping his head. “Your own request for an individual trial is noted, avian cousin, but your experience makes a match against the sireling useless as a test, as profitable as it might be for his own development.” He let out his own rumbling laugh, speaking even as it wound down, “Only your lack of advancement allowed your participation in your flockmate’s test, and that has since been… remedied. Congratulations.”

Terry paused a moment, head tilted to one side, before trilling again.

That caused the watching wolves to exchange looks, as they clearly understood him even better than Tala could. “Very well. Once the human is tested, I will allow your test against a mature Packmate. You may fight the sireling at your leisure after that, should you please us with your performance. Reviving one such as your would-be opponent is not without cost however, so the contest will have other conditions for possible victory, aside from death alone.”

The watching wolves threw back their heads and howled almost as one, the slight dissonance lending a haunting quality to the clearly approving gesture.

Both combatants can fight to the death without it being a final death.

-That should be rather interesting, yeah. Even with other win-conditions, the potential to go all-out? It will be fascinating to see.-

“But first, the sireling shall test his fang, claw, and power against young Rane.”

Tala and Terry moved to the base of the cliff before both flickering up to a clear space on the edge, looking down. Terry preceded Tala by a bare fraction of a second, but that was enough for her aura to be firm enough atop the cliff so that she could join him without appreciable delay.

Rane remained seated even as Anatalis faded, seeming to break apart into glowing mist that in turn lost its glow and vanished.

A moment later, the sireling—a russet furred wolf just about the size of a large horse—jumped down into the large, round depression.

His fur was crisscrossed with a few scars that should have given him a haggard appearance, but instead of lacking hair, the scars grew fur of a silver-white, and that gave him a more mottled, textured appearance than was usual, even if it was less extreme than it had been when the sireling fought Tala.

Apparently, his coat had been refreshed upon his death, and he’d not had the chance to re-earn as many scars as he’d previously boasted.

Rane stood slowly before bowing to the wolf. “Greetings, sireling of the Pack.”

A voice that Tala recognized responded, sounding more animalistic than Anatalis’—or even Lupin’s—had, “Greetings, human of the cycling cities. Fight well, so that we may both learn and grow from the clash. Remember that surrender is an option. I’d hate to end your life needlessly.”

A presence descended upon the arena, suppressing and deactivating Rane’s inscriptions, but that was only a mild inconvenience for the young man. His natural magics were as chasms, as he had had nearly the same inscriptions for the entirety of his time with magic.

Enar would, unfortunately, be suppressed for this time, but Alat said the alternate interface was fine with that. She was confused by his feelings, but she wasn’t about to try to argue Enar into a fear of such things.

Aside from Enar, the changes that Rane had received were almost all enhancements of previously existing spellforms, meant to build upon those which were already in place, deepening them and extending their utility.

All told, he would be fighting at a very high level for a human Mage, bereft of inscriptions.

Tala couldn’t keep the grin from her face as she watched her husband face off against the sireling. As she watched, bone seemed to sprout from his skin, looking like a combination of fast-growing wood and plates coming from hidden compartments—even though she knew it was neither—and in less than a second, Rane’s bone-armor had literally clicked into place, entirely encasing him.

The magics inherent in the armor—derived from the bone-golem he’d harvested—allowed him to see using the bone itself. Being soulbound, it was allowed, and all of its power was ready to hand.

He’s taking this quite seriously.

-Indeed.-

Her magesight easily picked out the magics as the sireling carved spellforms into existence itself around himself, sending out the opening attack of the fight, a simple fireball.

Rane didn’t even bother blocking, simply extinguishing the attack as soon as it entered his aura.

Tala felt her eyes widen, however, as she—being intimately familiar with Rane’s magics—noticed how he did so. Aside from her familiarity, she felt something through her soulbond with him, but she didn’t have time to trace that down at the moment.

What the sireling had done could have easily been seen as a test of Rane’s aura strength, which Rane would have classically responded to by simply obliterating the magic once it was within his control.

Instead, Rane had done exactly as he had told her he would. He manipulated the kinetic energy, taking in the monumental amount of power that the open spell had contained, and holding it in readiness for… something.

A smile pulled at Tala’s lips. He’s going to surprise us all, isn’t he?

-If I said yes, wouldn’t that mitigate the surprise?-

Tala huffed a laugh, causing the wolf to her right to glance her way, mild confusion in his eyes.

They both knew that nothing unexpected had seemingly happened. So the wolf was likely curious as to why she seemed to feel Rane had done something noteworthy or amusing.

Still, the clash below was already moving ahead, drawing and keeping all the observers’ focus.

The sireling had gotten faster at changing out his natural magics, even seeming able to be working on more than one such spellform at a time. As such, he flickered around the arena while sending a storm of ice, fire, and rocks, all striking with precision and speed.

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Rane, in contrast, simply stood, eyes closed, natural magics dancing around him as each attack was robbed of power before it could touch him.

The only time Rane moved since the beginning of the clash was when the debris around him piled high enough that it threatened to become inconvenient, and so he shifted positions to keep clear footing around himself.

The only type of attack that seemed to evoke a different sort of response in those opening moments were those of obviously different energy.

The first time a bolt of lighting struck at Rane, Tala tensed, uncertain how he would respond and defend against such.

Rane evidently didn’t share her concern as he almost lazily touched Force to the ground, the lightning of the incoming attack redirecting to hit the pommel before channeling down the blade into the ground without seeming to harm Rane or Force in the least.

That seemed to get an emotional response from the sireling for the first time.

He yipped in seeming glee at this new reaction from his opponent, sending a storm’s worth of lightning at Rane.

Rane didn’t react one way or another emotionally, simply allowing every strike to channel down through his pommel and into the ground.

Through their bond, Tala felt only calm assurance from the man.

She wasn’t sure how the sireling was making the lightning continue to move toward Rane, even after it had entered her husband’s aura—human lightning Mages generally had to deal with their attacks scattering—following more natural paths—after they entered a hostile aura. She also wasn’t sure how Rane was drawing every strike to Force, but after more than a minute of ineffective strikes, everyone had come to accept that it wasn’t a fluke or something that would tax Rane or the sword to continue doing.

He was effectively immune to that type of attack.

So, the sireling changed to light attacks, causing Rane to actually bark out a short laugh.

His entire being lit brightly to her magesight as his natural magics strained and strove to act on the light in the miniscule fraction of a second in which the light was within his aura.

The bright, almost purple-white beam of raw light that the sireling was maintaining turned almost immediately red as it entered Rane’s aura, graduating into infrared, and then down into true invisibility, even to Tala’s threefold sight.

It still caused Rane’s armor to heat up where it shone, but he stole the kinetic energy of that heat just as easily as from the fire-attacks before.

Where is he… oh!

-Good, good, you found it.-

Rane was dumping the captured power into the bedrock of the sanctum, clearly communicating with Kit at least enough that she was keeping the heat contained instead of letting it disperse into the environment at large.