The battlefield was alive.
It roared, it bled, it burned. The air itself seemed to shriek beneath the strain of a thousand wills clashing at once. From where Thymur stood—high upon the slope with the rear guard of mages—the chaos unfolded in full, a grotesque mural painted in blood, steel, and fire.
To his left, the lancers crashed against orcish ranks, their long spears striking like the fangs of a coiled serpent. To his right, arrows hissed downward in perfect arcs, each shaft singing the death of a foe. Below, the hill itself writhed with combat—bodies tumbling, blades flashing, blood spilling so thick it turned the earth to mud.
And yet Thymur saw it differently. Not just the chaos. Not just the carnage. To his eyes, the battlefield was structure. It was a weave—each soldier a strand of thread, each clash a knot, each spell a ripple altering the grand tapestry. It was ugly, yes. Brutal, certainly. But to a mage's eyes, there was also beauty.
That beauty, however, was fragile.
Thymur extended his arm. Mana surged at his command, rising like breath from the earth, swirling into his palm. With a flick, the raw energy kindled into fire, growing hotter, brighter, until it burned white at its core. He hurled it downward. The fireball arced like a miniature sun before crashing into a cluster of orcs that had broken through the lancers' line. The explosion was a blossom of flame and smoke. Bodies shrieked as they were consumed.
"Clear the line!" Thymur's voice was sharp, commanding, forged from long habit. "Do not let them overwhelm the vanguard!"
Behind him, his fellow mages obeyed without hesitation. Incantations were whispered and shouted in unison, and the battlefield answered their call. Walls of stone erupted from the ground to redirect orcish charges. Spears of ice impaled snarling brutes. Lightning lanced across the slope, splitting the air with deafening cracks and casting the chaos in a white-blue glow.
For a heartbeat, the orcs faltered. Even the savagery of their charge bent beneath the relentless tide of elemental fury.
And then Thymur felt it.
The shift. The disturbance.
His latest fire spell flickered in his palm, unraveling into sparks before it could be released. His brow furrowed. That had not happened in decades. He tried again—gathering mana, weaving it, binding it into flame—but the thread slipped from his grasp as though some unseen hand had severed it.
A lesser mage might have thought fatigue. A novice, lack of control. Thymur knew better.
Something is disrupting the weave.
He closed his eyes for the briefest moment, drawing in a breath. He let his senses unfurl across the battlefield. Mana flowed through all things—through the earth, through the air, through the very veins of the living. A skilled mage could feel its currents as a musician hears the notes of a symphony.
And within that symphony, Thymur now heard discord.
A rhythm not his own. A beat raw, primal, guttural. Not logic. Not structure. But instinct. Hunger. Rage.
His eyes snapped open, and there he was.
Across the slope, half-veiled by smoke and shadow, an orc stood with staff raised high. The staff was a gnarled length of bone and blackened wood, wrapped with cords of sinew, crowned with a skull that dripped faint light. From its core pulsed a sickly green glow that spilled outward in writhing tendrils. Wherever the tendrils spread, mana bent—not broken, but twisted, unraveled, corrupted.
An orc shaman.
Thymur's lip curled into something between a sneer and a grimace. "So they've brought one of you."
Even at this distance, the presence of the creature pressed against his mind. It was not refined power. Not honed or sharpened. It was raw, wild, ancient. It was the howl of beasts under the moon, the blood smeared on stone altars, the memory of the world before man carved his order into it.
The shaman's gaze rose through the haze, and their eyes met. Yellow, feral eyes gleaming with cunning. And then the creature grinned, jagged tusks catching the light.
It slammed its staff against the earth.
The shockwave that followed was invisible yet undeniable. It spread outward like a foul wind, pressing against every spell, tugging at every thread of mana. Flames guttered and died. Walls of stone crumbled into loose soil. Lightning fizzled into harmless sparks. A dome of corruption spread across the field, a suffocating haze that devoured order wherever it reached.
Around Thymur, his fellow mages staggered. One fell to his knees, clutching his chest as his spell unraveled mid-cast and rebounded against him. Another screamed as her frost incantation shattered, shards of ice cutting into her arm.
"Hold yourselves!" Thymur's voice cracked like thunder. He did not need to shout—the authority in it alone stilled their panic. "Do not waste mana. Until I break his field, conserve your strength."
"But master—" one of the younger mages stammered, his voice shaking, "our spells—they're—"
"Obey."
The single word was sharp as a blade. The boy fell silent. Fear lingered in his eyes, but obedience was stronger.
Thymur's gaze returned to the shaman. He drew in a slow, steadying breath. So. It comes to this.
Below, the battlefield raged without pause. Lancers clashed in brutal melee, their disciplined ranks straining under the orc tide. Arrows still fell, though quivers grew lighter with each passing heartbeat. Somewhere in the thick of it, Alison fought—Thymur caught glimpses of his blade flashing as he battled not one, but two towering warlords. And Renher… Renher had yet to move, locked in a stillness so absolute it was as if the air itself bowed to his presence, his gaze fixed upon the massive orc leader.
Yes. Each of them had their role to play.
And this—this duel of wills, of magic, of chaos against order—was his.
"Very well," Thymur muttered under his breath, his voice like flint striking steel. "If you wish for a duel, shaman… you'll have it."
He raised his hands. Mana gathered at once, drawn from the earth, the sky, the very breath around him. He bound it with words, his chant low and resonant. Flame surged into being, not a fireball this time, but a storm—heat coiling and spiraling into a roiling mass that blazed above him like a second sun.
The shaman snarled in response, stabbing his staff into the dirt. Black-green mist bled outward in thick waves. Grass shriveled and died. The soil itself blackened, writhing as though poisoned. The very air groaned with the strain of his corruption.
Then—almost as if choreographed—they unleashed their power.
Thymur's firestorm surged downward in a tidal wave of incandescent fury. The shaman's miasma rose to meet it, a wall of crawling shadow. When the two forces collided, the world screamed.
The ground shook. The sky split. The air itself cracked with raw energy. Flame devoured shadow, shadow smothered flame. The shockwave rippled across the battlefield, hurling men and orcs alike to the ground.
For long moments, there was nothing but light and smoke and sound.
And still neither yielded.
Thymur stood firm, his body trembling, his veins burning with the strain of channeling such magnitude. Sweat poured down his face. His lips moved in steady chant, binding flame to flame, feeding the inferno. His mind was a steel cage around the chaos, refusing it even the smallest crack to escape through.
The shaman bled freely from his nose and mouth, but his grin remained. He clawed at the weave, tearing chunks of mana into his miasma. His staff glowed brighter, pulsing like a heart. The ground beneath him split, green light spilling from the cracks like venom.
"Master Thymur!" one of the mages cried. "We cannot—our mana won't hold—"
"You need not cast!" Thymur thundered, his voice like the roar of the firestorm itself. "Your task is to endure. Stand. Witness. Nothing more!"
The young mage bit his lip, eyes wide with fear and awe, and obeyed.
Thymur pressed harder. His vision blurred at the edges. His ears rang with the scream of the clash. He felt his body reaching its limits, yet his will did not bend. This is not only strength, he thought. This is belief. Discipline. Order.
His eyes locked on the shaman, whose wild howls echoed across the valley. You are chaos, Thymur thought, words echoing in his chest as if spoken aloud. But I am order. And order shall consume you.
The firestorm blazed brighter. The miasma wailed as it was pushed back, inch by inch, devoured by incandescent light.
The shaman howled, tusks bared, as he poured everything—life, blood, soul—into one final desperate surge. The staff cracked in his grip, fissures glowing with sickly green light.
The collision of their last strikes tore the battlefield apart.
For a moment, all was fire and shadow, light and dark, clashing in a maelstrom that blinded the eye and deafened the ear. The explosion rolled like thunder across the valley, shaking the very bones of the land.
When at last the haze cleared, both still stood.
Thymur, his robes scorched and his chest heaving, sweat dripping from every pore. The shaman, bloodied, one eye blinded, his staff cracked nearly in two—but still alive, still defiant.
Their duel was far from over.
And every soul on the battlefield knew—whichever of them triumphed would tip the war.