One mental thread caught on that. Almost lost his focus. Surely wizards didn’t need medieval dental practices?
The other stayed in the moment.
He could feel the subtle control he held over every piece of metal. Something he’d never been able to achieve before. Raw power was what Metallokinesis represented.
Except here, at the edge of his Domain. Here, metal answered his call.
Alexander pushed. The wizard’s control over the corpses broke as metal pieces shot free, tearing from pockets, through dead flesh, and firing toward the wizard in a hail of metal shrapnel.
The staff flashed with light. The shrapnel slowed as it reached the wizard, caught by the same redirection that had taken his lightning. Metal fragments orbited his body in a tight spiral, accelerating, glowing faintly as whatever enchantment powered the effect compressed and amplified them.
The staff tilted forward. The shrapnel fired back across the courtyard.
It stopped five meters from Alexander’s chest.
Coins, buttons, filings, the shattered remains of wand fixtures. Every fragment hung in the air at the boundary of his presence, trembling between two competing forces.
Keda raised a hand, trying to push them forward with whatever telekinesis he possessed.
Alexander cocked his head.
The metal chose.
And the fragments dropped to the floor at his feet.
Across the courtyard, the black-robed wizard stared at him.
His staff had drifted backward. The spellbook’s pages had stopped turning. His good hand hung at his side, the telekinetic gesture abandoned.
His eyes were wide.
“Archmage?” The word came out hoarse and disbelieving. “That’s impossible. You’re not—”
Alexander raised both hands and reached for the walls.
Metallokinesis flooded outward in every direction. Into the courtyard walls. Into the ceiling supports. Into the structural beams.
He pulled.
The courtyard answered. Walls buckled inward. Ceiling supports bent, groaned, and folded toward the center. Structural beams tore free from their mounts and joined the collapse, everything converging on the spot where Keda stood.
Keda shouted a word. The translation matrix didn’t touch it. Raw syllables, guttural and sharp, that resonated against Alexander’s teeth.
A sphere of energy erupted around the wizard. Pale gold, translucent, expanding outward in every direction until it filled a space ten meters across. Every piece of metal that touched its surface locked into place. Walls mid-collapse froze. Beams hung at impossible angles, suspended by whatever force the sphere projected. The collapse stalled, tons of alloy held motionless against Alexander’s pull.
Alexander slowly clenched his fists.
The metal inched forward. The sphere compressed, its surface dimming as the boundary shrank. Eight meters. Seven. The beams groaned, vibrating under the strain. Keda’s good hand was raised, fingers splayed, his staff blazing with light. The spellbook’s pages tore past in a blur.
Six meters. Five.
Keda turned. Met Alexander’s eyes through the courtyard’s worth of suspended metal between them. He glanced up at the hole in the ceiling.
Keda grinned. Then vanished.
The sphere collapsed the instant Keda disappeared. Every beam, every wall panel, every structural support Alexander had been pressing inward tore free of resistance and slammed together. The far end of the courtyard crumpled like a crushed can, metal folding over metal, dust and debris erupting upward through the gap in the roof.
Alexander looked up.
Keda hung in the sky above the fortress, framed by the torn edges of the ceiling. A word left his lips, and light gathered beneath his feet, holding him aloft.
Alexander watched him for a long moment.
He was flying really slowly.
Alexander glanced to his right. His senses swept through the walls and found the Restorium. The jade pod. And the woman still inside, bioelectric signature pulsing stronger than it had been.
The walls further in were still stable. Whatever else the wizards were capable of, they knew their construction.
She’d be fine.
Alexander pushed back against the enchantment with his presence. The power it had originally contained had drained considerably, and its resistance faltered immediately.
He launched upward through the missing half of the ceiling.
Droney beeped as Alexander cleared the rooftop. A sharp, eager pulse through the bond that carried the drone’s excitement at getting to join the fight.
“Yeah, buddy. I know.” Alexander accelerated, Metallokinesis pulsing in waves as the fortress shrank beneath him. Keda was steadily shrinking against the pale sky ahead, staff glowing. “I have no idea why wizards fly so slow. I almost feel bad. It’s like I’m about to bully the guy.”
Droney beeped again. The bond carried something that Alexander had learned to interpret over months of partnership. Amusement. The little drone didn’t feel bad at all.
Keda glanced behind him.
His eyes widened. His staff flared brighter, and the light beneath his feet intensified. He picked up speed, pulling away toward the treeline, robes snapping in the wind of his own acceleration.
Alexander watched him go.
Two times really slow was still pretty slow.
He reached into his spatial ring.
Drones poured out. Combat drones, blades extended. Mace drones, their tungsten heads gleaming. Shield drones slipped into flanking positions. They filled the sky around him, falling into formation under Droney’s direction.
Fifty-three machines hung in the air around the Machine God.
Alexander leaned forward, and the swarm moved with him. He closed the distance steadily. Each wave of Metallokinesis built on the last as he cut through the air faster with every second.
Keda was trying. His staff blazed. The light beneath his feet burned brighter, robes whipping behind him as he squeezed every bit of speed his flight magic could produce.
The gap shrank anyway.
Keda looked back. The gap shrank further. He looked back again.
Then he stopped.
Keda turned in the air, robes settling around him, and faced Alexander. His staff floated to his side and the spellbook drifted higher. His good hand came up, and light began gathering around his fingers, forming runic symbols.
Alexander raised his own hand. Animachina flooded from his Core into as many drones as he could empower. More than half, but still not all of them.
Something rose into the sky behind Keda. Far in the distance, beyond the treeline, past the rolling grassland, from the direction of the village Alexander had seen burning from high altitude.
A fireball. Climbing in a long arc, bright enough to reflect light off the clouds above. It reached the top of its arc. Hung there for a fraction of a second.
Then it turned toward them.
Alexander clicked his tongue.
That’s what he got for trying to do the right thing.