Chapter 224 – Retribution

Mirian’s levitation spell was countered as soon as she began to cast it. She was badly outnumbered, facing down at least two full squads of Praetorians, which meant they could dedicate specialists to countering any of her common spells. A second group would maintain shields while a third group pressed the attack.

The first Praetorian spells smashed against her shield, force blades sparking and fire splashing out. The room erupted into chaos as the non-combatants, including Izrif, all tried to flee in every direction at once.

Mirian retaliated with force detonation and chain lightning. The spells smashed apart tables and chairs and sent chunks of the stone floor flying, but the Praetorian shields held. As the Praetorians finished descending from the skylights, they formed two distinct groups. She’d become familiar with their tactics in previous cycles.

Mirian let loose a barrage of attack spells, spitting out fire and force blades, but even if she could break through two layers of shields, there were three more layers behind them. Nor could she focus on a single kind of attack because the Praetorians dedicated to counterspells would start countering repeat spells.

They were coordinating with each other using remote speech, which Mirian couldn’t hear over the noise of explosions and thunder.

She did hear one thing though, in a brief lull of spells: “—using Luspire’s shield—!”

In a moment, she remembered that the Praetorians had contingencies for fighting any archmage in Baracuel. Archmages were legally required to submit their spellbooks to the Praetorians. Of course they recognized the spell. Of course they’d developed a countermeasure.

The Praetorians had the initiative, the firepower, and the tactics. In a moment, she felt the prismatic shield being torn apart at the seams.

She had something they wouldn’t expect though.

She’d been training with her father.

Mirian cast black shield, her father’s own defensive spell. The shield first attempted to absorb and convert incoming energy into the arcane force, which Mirian could then use in her own spells. Energy that couldn’t be converted to the arcane force was converted to light, which was then suppressed. It was more mana intensive and difficult to manage than Luspire’s spell, but even as it burned more mana, it would be reclaiming enough energy to give her the edge on a battle of attrition.

As spells rained down on her, she spun the arcane energy off into force blast spells, not aimed at the Praetorians, but aimed at the ceiling. As chunks of stone and dust erupted, she cast an expanded zone of silence in the area to disrupt the communication spells, then started shooting out weaken and mental fog curses in quick succession against each of the Praetorians. Their orichalcum-based spell resistance would weaken the curses, but in a battle like this, reaction time was critical, and she needed every advantage.

Then, she used her father’s spell siphon, the spell he’d used to great effect on her, targeting Trinea’s spells first simply because she knew the woman’s specialties and wands best. Her eyes widened as the shields around her were stripped and turned into arcane energy, then Mirian unleashed several force detonations that sent her crashing backward. There were already two people lying on the ground where she landed, either dead or unconscious from the crossfire.

Three more Praetorians arrived, levitating through the windows, and Mirian felt her black shield beginning to buckle under the strain. Someone countered her zone of silence, while lightning and fire exploded around her. It was nearly impossible to see.

If she stayed here, she would be overwhelmed as the rest of the squads arrived.

Mirian first needed an opening.

She kept her mind on black shield, but began to gather her mana. It was different here than in practice conditions, but it was the spell she knew best, the one that could reach the highest intensity.

She pointed Eclipse at the ceiling and cast greater lightning.

Thunder shook the room as a monstrous bolt cracked through the room. The pinnacle of the domed ceiling collapsed in a shower of stone as lightning splashed around the room. Mirian immediately cast levitation and took off, rising straight up. With the dust blocking her sight of the room, she cast detect life and began raining mixed energy spells down on anyone who looked like they might be an arcanist.

A series of collection spells swept up the dust and she saw the rubble and corpses below. Most of the dead were just the people who had happened to be in the room, but she saw at least two more dead Praetorians.

They spotted her above and Voran led the charge upward. They were using some sort of spell that seemed especially effective at destroying shields, and her black shield was getting hit hard.

Mirian switched to accelerated levitation to give her the edge in maneuverability. She sped over the towers and battlements of the Citadel. Spread out around Central Hill were also the Great Temples and some of the famous spires of the city. She dodged around as lightning, fire, and force blades burst through the sky.

All of this was costing her valuable mana. She needed to start getting it back.

Mirian targeted another Praetorian, first using soul-coated lightning to rip apart the shields, then landed a soul shred curse. The Praetorian started screaming in pain. They started to drop from the sky, but another Praetorian caught them with lift person. Mirian switched to mana siphon, tearing off pieces of the man’s soul for her mana.

More attack spells erupted from all around, and Mirian dove down, then circled around one of the battlements, sending out fire bursts. The black shield and accelerated levitation were too costly a defense against so many attackers. The Praetorians primarily used wands, with thin spellbooks as backups, which meant they had limited utility spells. They’d be less effective against spells they hadn’t planned for, and Atrah Xidi was not known to use illusions.

Mirian cast total camouflage and greater illusionary army, enhanced so the illusions also radiated infrared light. She sent the illusionary copies of herself scattering out in different directions as she used a normal levitation closer to the ground, casting another broad zone of silence to suppress their ability to coordinate.

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The spells flying through the air above told her the trick was working. It took a great deal of focus for her to have her illusions pretend to cast flashy fire and lightning spells, but focus wasn’t mana. As the Praetorians flew around trying to find the real Mirian, they were draining their own mana with levitation and combat spells. As long as she stuck to casting spells that couldn’t be seen, she would have the advantage. In the plazas and streets next to the Citadel, crowds were running about, either fleeing or pointing and watching.

When a Praetorian flew directly above her, she used a soul-coated force pull to drag him down so that he smashed head-first into the stone wall of one of the temples. Another, she repeated her tactic of using the soul shred curse followed by mana siphon, using that mana to maintain the illusions until the Praetorian’s aura was completely drained and her soul in such a sorry state she might not even live.

Three more Praetorians fell as she slipped between the streets. Then, her zone of silence was countered, and finally a suppress light spell targeting her illusions revealed she’d left the sky. Mirian used the mana she’d been siphoning to fortify her black shield as she dismissed her camouflage spell and rose into the sky again. She used soul-coated greater chain lightning, filling the skies above Central Hill with crackling bolts. Two more Praetorians fell, but their spell resistance combined with layered shields meant the attack was far less effective than it should have been.

She kept low to the streets, weaving between buildings as the Praetorians retaliated, then circled around the back of one of the spires and ascended, once again dismissing her black shield for total camouflage as soon as she was out of sight.

This time, the Praetorians were wise to her trick. She didn’t know what detection spell they were using, but as soon as she circled back around, now a hundred feet up, they spotted her and renewed the assault. Mirian ducked back behind the spire as force and fire spells smashed into it, sending cracks through the building. Debris rained down on the nearby Great Temple of Eintocarst. She renewed her shield and her curse attacks, but the Praetorians were layering their shields more heavily now, and she was running low on the soul energy she needed. Her curses were poorly formed, and they weren’t sticking.

There were still twenty Praetorians. As they closed in on her with a tight aerial formation, Mirian saw Voran in the center of the formation and her fury reignited. She turned and attacked the spire itself with earthshaker, the same spell that had been used in the artillery shells hitting Bainrose Castle.

With a grinding rumble, the top of the spire began to crumble down.

“Scatter!” Voran cried out. The mages levitated in different directions as the building collapsed down towards them. Most of them made it, but several didn’t. Those caught as the top half of the tower crashed down towards Eintocarst’s temple had their shields utterly shattered and were crushed out of the sky. Screams erupted from below as Central Hill shook from the destruction.