This, Pablo thought, is what I've come for!
He dodged the blow from the woman—her punch powerful enough to decapitate a normal man. But Pablo was far from normal. He was one of a thousand who could have taken that punch on the battlefield that day.
Kursk. He knew this place would be immortalized the moment they told him of the planned offensive. Pablo had been far too young to be at the Somme or Dunkirk, but his brothers had been, and died for it.
They were weak, he reminded himself. This was the very first thing his father had told him upon his return to Brazil, several months after the war had ended.
He blocked her follow-through, a spinning elbow that was meant to separate his mandible from his skull, had he not ducked underneath it. Her momentum spun her into his arms as he shrouded his body in his magical aura, using the power to jump fifteen feet into the air. She tried to fight her way out of his grip; elbowing his head over and over again but each attempt only made him laugh. They plummeted back toward the ground, where he suplexed her, headfirst, through the turret and hull of a Russian tank. The explosion was glorious. The screams of men caught in the blast made him laugh as his body bounced off the ground several times. He had reinforced his body, of course, shrouding it in the magic needed to roll onto his feet and duck. She chanted a spell and fired off a blast of pure magical energy.
"That was fast!" he said with a grin, but he had long come to the conclusion that there would be no conversation between the two. She knew no Portuguese, and he knew very little Hindi—unless he needed to threaten to fuck someone's mother. And so they took turns cursing and barking at each other.
Fuck conversation, he grinned as he inhaled. "Wind Burst!" and blew a gust of wind that sent platoons of men tumbling and rolling on the ground. Some were thrown back with enough force to slam into tanks, houses, and trees. It amused Pablo to think how confused the humans were by the entire magical phenomenon occurring around them. But then again, the Fog could just as well make them see a shell landing to blow them back, or a tornado come to life in the middle of the battlefield. The Fog was being enhanced to levels he had never felt before. He could pull his cock out and smack a German with it, and they would think it was bratwurst. The funny Irishman with the red hair had done this, and Pablo owed the man a compliment for this fine work. The ability to reinforce the Fog and have it shroud areas, as he had long mastered in doing with his body, escaped him in this particular instance. He had not believed Ernan when he said that he was a wonderful manipulator of the Fog, but the man proved true to his word. In truth, Ernan gave off every indication of being strong, but Pablo could not help being skeptical. He had been alive long enough to know that there were three commonalities between all sorcerers, irrespective of which side they took in this war. They were all connected to the Source; they were all a little mad; and they all were liars.
The woman withstood the gust of wind, and the sight of her took Pablo's breath away. She was of an age with him, perhaps fifty years old as well. But like him, she looked half that age. His attack had opened up a laceration in her scalp, and the blood flowed like the Amazon to mix with her long black hair. The mix of crimson and black reminded him of the black widow, and the imagery made him love her even more. Her face was covered in a pink birthmark that looked very familiar to him, but in the state he was in now—battle-lusted and horny—such memories seemed trivial to him. She leaped in towards him with a punch, a spinning kick, and a jab that he parried with ease, watching her go in for the spinning follow-through. She was predictable, he thought, preparing to duck underneath another spinning—
The blast came out of nowhere and scorched his face—too weak to tear through his shroud without her incantation—but it stung like a bitch all the same. The Indian woman took the opportunity won by her surprise attack: she had spun into a back step before she blasted him as he moved to grab her. That was good, he thought as she punched him—concentrating all her magic into the blow that busted open his lip.
Pablo could not recover in time for the kick to the gut that made him hunch over and launch spittle onto the ground. He had expected another blow, for her to unleash all her pent-up frustration. She surprised him once more when he felt a strong grip on the back of his soldier uniform and the sudden gust of wind as they flew through the air. She launched him at the apex of the jump, a few feet short of his own—he noted with a smile—and he felt his back slam into the cold metal of a tank. He reinforced his shroud just in time for her landing, her boots slamming into his gut with enough force to cave in the metal beneath them. They tore through the turret and found themselves in a hull filled with screaming Germans
He spat out a gust of wind, the lack of an incantation did not diminish its power to fly like a bullet and tear a gash through her cheek. She tried to attack him but he had her wrists in his hands and gritted his teeth as Pablo reinforced his hands with the strength needed to break the one. But both snapped—and then, to his surprise, she shouted, "Wind Burst" and blasted him in the face with her magical beam from her mouth. The explosion, this time around, was a little less glorious. He skipped on the ground—once, thrice, seven times—before he found himself inside a shithole of a Russian house.
Pablo's momentum finally came to an end as his head smashed into the sink. He was drenched. He cursed as he stood up, wiping the wa—
"No," he muttered as he looked at his fingertips—blood. The bitch's blast had torn through his defenses and left him drenched in his own blood. Pablo realized then that he could only see through one eye, and any attempt to locate the other was met with more blood on his fingers.
Pablo had crushed her wrists, thinking that it would have ended her onslaught and neutered her offensive abilities. He had only seen her use her hands to blast magic at him, and so breaking them would have forced her to heal and eat through a lot of her magic reserves. From what he could tell, her reserves were decent, good even, but not to his level. A fight of attrition should have favoured him, and yet it was he who was left with the choice to make. He either healed his eye or continued fighting visually impaired with his reserves intact.
How the fuck was she able to do that? Pablo gritted his teeth. Once a spell was engraved into a Grimoire, the method could be used in only one way. He could control the air and wind but only through his mouth. And she was supposed to only be able to blast him with her palms. Fifty years of tutelage by his father and mother had taught him that. Of course, there was one way to change the conditions, and that was with a Gambit.
No, there was no way the bitch took a chance on a Gambit and it paid off…
The Source, their fuel of magic and power, was a fickle bitch. Gambits—the art of give-and-take—seldom worked, and almost always bit one in the ass. Only those who were Source-blessed… And like that, the memory returned to him: his mother telling him of how the Source loved those a little more than others, like a mother does her favourite child. And she marks them as a sign of this love…
He glared at her with his right eye as she stood across the field from him, and her birthmark did not look as appealing now.
Pablo decided to heal. She either changed the conditions of her spell permanently, or that was a one-time use… either way, it limits the amount of blasts I need to worry about…
He healed just enough to fix his eyes and spat out a tooth as he moved towards her. That consumed a lot more out of his magic reserves than he had been hoping. And if he had to use his final trump card, that would more than deplete the rest and he was all but doomed to die. There were over a thousand magicians fighting each other all around them, taking advantage of the battle to minimise how much they had to fuel the Fog to obscure their destruction. And the moment he was done with her, it was guaranteed that he would be left far too exposed to stop any sorcerer—ally or foe—from coming to take advantage of his state and killing him.
Why…
He was fucked; he knew it there and then…
So then why…
Pablo could even sense a magician watching them, waiting to cut one of them down…
Why?!
His grin matched hers, and slowly, the two began to laugh.
"I'm going to die here," Pablo told her, and the magician—no, the magicians—waiting to pick off the victor of their battle, "And yet, I would not have it any other way!"
If she changed the conditions of her spell, he thought, summoning his Grimoire into his hand, then she could not change the conditions of her animus, if she even has one. If she does, it would need her hands too…
He was betting his life on an assumption, a bad one. But the feel of his Grimoire, thick and designed with the Armillary Sphere upon it, in the blue and white of his homeland, gave him confidence.
Pablo's confidence did not shatter as he saw her surprised expression turn to one of pure joy. And, in fact, it only transformed into pure admiration.
"I think that I love you," he said to her. And her grin slowly turned into a genuine smile that tore at his heart. "I know," she said in fluent Portuguese. The blood, the hair, the birthmark… she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Pablo only regretted that he had not tried to kill her sooner.
"You speak Portuguese?" he asked, and her smile turned into a laugh.
"If it was anything but, would you have understood me?"
"But how?"
She grinned and her Grimoire appeared, falling onto the ground with no hands to catch it.
She cannot heal…
"Can you not speak Hindi?"
He snorted, "Not unless you wish for me to swear at your mother. Now, tell me— how?"
"Beat me, and I will tell you."
Pablo's father had been in an animus duel twice in his life, and told him that they went one of two ways. Either they canceled each other out, or they overlapped and fought for control in the small shroud their souls made. In the small second between them, Pablo thought of wedding bells and how beautiful she would have looked in all white, standing across from him with a priest between the two. A holy rosary he forged dangled above her chest and her big brown eyes met his own as the old man spoke in front of them and their families. And in that moment, he hoped with all of his heart that their animus overlapped, to meld and dance around each other.
"The Sails alone fail, the wind is needed too! Never still, into my so—"
He heard her speak in tandem to him, reciting what he had thought was her incantation for the animus. For even those who had mastered their magic enough to operate at full capacity without an incantation needed one for Ingressum in anima…
And so Pablo was very caught off guard when he heard her shout something similar at the end of her incantation. He saw her palm—her healed palms—blast him with the full might of her magical beam. The blast was fully powered, thanks to the weight of a full incantation behind it.
The attack was not only cleverly timed, but also very well placed. The blast from her left hand was a tick faster than the blast from her right, and the one from her left was aimed at his Grimoire. Death was a temporary thing for a magician, especially a pretty good one like himself. For the afterlife still remained for those who had their soul still intact and not sold off. That afterlife would not exist if his Grimoire were destroyed. And so he spent the little time he had removing his Grimoire from this plane of existence, and allowed the second blast to tear through his chest and eviscerate whatever was in its way. It blew out of his back and tore a hole through several walls of the house behind him.
He tried to return fire, but he could not even breathe now, never mind unleash a gust of wind. So Pablo instead collapsed to his knees. His vision began to blur, and he could not see her when she touched his cheek. "That was a good fight."
He smirked. There was no point in even keeping his eyes open now. "Tell… me…"
"No," she said, very kindly. "You did not beat me."
That was fair, he thought. His strength failing him so much that Pablo could not speak.
"But you may have my name. I am Lakshmi, Lakshmi of Goa."
I… I love you… Pablo thought. The woman was as cunning in battle as she was in kindness, although as cunning as she was, she would die four minutes later. Lakshmi of Goa fell due to being preyed upon by the two magicians who lay in wait. And Pablo Pereira fell because he forgot the golden rule. All magicians are liars…