We were so close together that Scholar Orath could not move Rex’s body even if he wanted to. The blue light that erupted out of my palm almost blinded me, but that was nothing to the pain I felt as power left my body in a volume that no Acolyte should ever channel.

Mortal Shell gave me a physique durable enough to channel far more power than an Acolyte should, but it hurts.

I screamed as the cast vented through my left arm as if I was channeling lightning and not just shooting out Arcs of it.

The bones in my left forearm shattered, the skin from elbow to fingertip blackened, and the wrist cracked at the base. The hand stayed attached only because Mortal Shell held the connection for a full second, as power tore through all my channels and crippled my left hand.

The beam of lightning found Rex’s right shoulder, and yet, there was a force around his body that wanted to push the lightning aside, but the weight of my cast muscled its way through it.

It did not hit cleanly due to the obstruction, but the cast caught the arm at the upper bicep rather than the shoulder joint.

The beam of lightning passed through the bicep, through the bone, the muscle on the underside, and out the back of the arm, and the arm separated from Rex’s body, flying through the air for dozens of meters before the roasted remnants fell to the ground.

The beam of lightning traveled into the distance, lighting up the air before it disappeared hundreds of meters away.

The hand that Rex had just lost had been holding the obliterating cast that was supposed to destroy me, and the Anima Orath had been gathering for the discharge dissipated into the cold morning air with a hiss like a kettle being pulled off the heat.

Rex’s body, no, Orath’s body, now, since I was very sure that Rex had not consented, staggered, the sudden loss of one arm causing a momentary loss in balance.

Orath made a sound that was like a snarl. I would not lie, that sound scared me a bit, it did not seem natural, more like something I would expect from a beast than a man.

The sound even registered in my skull rather than in my ears, almost as if this sound was not being made by a physical throat but from pure magic itself.

I felt, briefly, the distance Orath was reaching across. The soul of a Mage was very sensitive, and what I felt was something like a tension that pulled away from the draw, toward something far across the curve of the world.

I don’t know what sort of magic this was, but it was endlessly fascinating.

I felt that tension shudder, and I knew that if it broke, then Orath’s hold over Rex’s body would be broken, and I might not be dying in the next instant.

Still, what this meant for me was that I had a few moments before Orath would have to stabilize the connection before he could do anything else.

The cold spot on my chest dropped from torso-sized to coin-sized, and I began to reach into myself for what was left, as that single channeling of lightning had almost fried the entirety of my channels.

This was all the time I had for internal observation before the flickering connection re-stabilized. The cold spot expanded again, although not to full size.

I took several steps back, my body in pain, and I was bleeding from my nose and eyes. Orath was operating Rex with one fewer arm, across a connection that had just been disrupted; however, the diminished version was still enough to obliterate me.

And I must have threatened him enough that he did not even give me the privilege to hear him cast as a burst of darkness, darker than the Veilcraft that Rex could summon, crossed the small gap I had been able to create between us and slammed into my body.

I knew Veilcraft worked on the substance of magic itself, but I had only seen it used against spells, and never really wondered what it would feel like if it were used against a person.

If not for Mortal Shell, I think what would have happened to me would have been my second-worst death.

The cast did not burn me; what it did was find the bond between my soul and my body, the way a key finds a lock, and began to pry this bond apart.

The pain was... strange, it was cold and not the blinding hot pain that I was slowly understanding.

Mortal Shell was straining to hold me together, but my knees gave out, loosening from my body as if it had been cooked until it was impossibly tender. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

I fell to my back and felt my body begin to come apart at the joints.

Should I be grateful that the pain was cold, leaving me a bit numb? Perhaps I should be able to scream, but my jaws loosened from my mouth, falling sideways, only held in place by the skin of my face.

I was on my back, and the pyramid was pulsing red somewhere beyond my line of sight. Rex’s body, minus the right arm, was standing over me.

The eyes were Orath’s eyes, reaching across the world to look at me through Rex’s face. The cold spot on my chest had become my entire body.

Orath bent at the waist, and he slowly spoke,

"You did better than I expected, Acolyte Voss. This body of yours is special. I shall take my time taking you apart."

I wanted to curse, but my mouth no longer worked, and even my vision was fading as my eyes sank into my skull.

"Ah, perhaps I used too much power in my strike. You have to forgive me, for you actually surprised me, Voss. Lightning Resonance, and you are just in your second year, that is remarkable."

Orath straightened, and I stopped looking at him and let my eyes find the sky above. The sky was red from horizon to horizon, the pyramid’s light spilling across the cloud.

In this moment, I suddenly did not find the red of the sky to be terrifying; it was almost comforting. Don’t ask me why I thought of this as comforting; my brain was slowly turning to mush.

But I will carry the beauty of this red sky across when I awake.

I closed my eyes and wondered, how would it feel if the blood of my tormentors were to cover the sky?

The bell at the head of my staff, somewhere on the grass beside me, dropped when my knees had given, rang once in the wind. The sound was thin and bright and far away.

I did not feel the warmth this time. I felt the absence of the warmth, the place where the warmth should have been, and the absence was a kind of ache I could not touch because I was already going.

Mel.

I had forgotten what the bell meant again.

The dark closed over me, and I slipped into death.