Stars. How little he knew of them, how few he'd ever seen, yet how many of them there were. Like a tapestry of endless light in an infinite void. Xathar didn't seem to care, and with a wave his guards stood down. Turned back to the fighting, which now that the Archmage had idly killed several hundred of their soldiers looked significantly more even-sided.
A short burst of humor threatened to rise up with him dismissing his guards again, but it didn't go anywhere.
There was just cold anger and the patiently waiting form of an old man.
Vistus didn't seem overly worried, which Marcus supposed was fair. The Archmage did move when Marcus shot another arc at the man, though, and retaliated with a spear of solid earth. Earth that turned into steel the moment it left his hand, flying through the air faster than should be possible.
Xathar twisted out of the way, and Marcus barely flinched as the weapon exploded next to him. His shield absorbed the force, Xathar was more than tough enough to weather the shrapnel, and Marcus dimly realized this was a bad idea.
The fire in his blood guttered out, and Xathar turned away after some mild prodding. The Archmage chased after them, but there was a reason demon mounts were as prized as they were.
He wasn't the one emptying his reserves with increasingly powerful wind techniques.
Marcus shook his head as he fled, because it very much was fleeing. Cowardly, abrupt, smart fleeing. Last time he had Elly by his side, and even then the Archmage had been holding back. Playing with them, though not in the usual sense.
The man just didn't want either of them dead, for some reason.
He blinked away the last of the stars, feeling his emotions settle. His blood cooled, which was a terribly misleading statement if taken literally, but it did. It no longer screamed at him to fight, to kill anyone who dared touch what was his.
Alright, it was still kind of screaming at him to fight. But now he didn't care, and more importantly recognized that it wasn't like him to just charge towards an enemy like that. To abandon the soldiers, leave behind his guards—which were suffocating but necessary—an-
Demon.
The Brute leaped out of the portal a split second after it had opened, its large frame barreling towards him. An enormous war club was in its hands, coming down in a brutal overhead attack before Xathar could evade.
Space twisted and the club weaved to the side, and the demon—one Marcus belatedly recognized as one of Vistus' personal summons—adapted quickly. But not instantaneously, which let Marcus weave, power up and execute a simple matrix.
The demon roared as a stone stake embedded itself deeply into its torso, throwing it back and removing it from the fight, mostly unhurt but out of the way. Brutes were good fighters, tough and strong and deadly, and this one seemed intelligent as well, but they weren't as fast as Xathar. Very few things were as fast as Xathar, and he wasn't going to be slowed down by a play that simple.
The Archmage broke off his pursuit once Marcus got back to his army, which was just as well. The man could probably wipe it out himself, but there were a lot of soldiers there. A lot of crossbowmen, mages and Life Enhancement warriors. Not worth the risk, in all likelihood.
Two companies rushed past to reinforce the now weakened left flank, only consisting of half the men lost, and Marcus took a moment to breathe. To get an overview of the battle, which his elevated position let him do with relative ease.
The center was holding, nearly a thousand soldiers on each side locked into a shield wall, and the Legion's right flank was being pushed inwards. He could vaguely hear a senior captain bellow for his men to hold, which Marcus approved of. No sense overextending their lines just yet.
Worse off was the left flank. Four hundred men dead by the Archmage's hand, the Empire overwhelming what remained, the reinforcements rushing over not able to get there in time. A brief urge to shorten the distance came, to bend space to his will and make the reinforcement arrive instantaneously, but he suppressed it.
He hadn't trained that, and he had no idea how badly it would tire him. The issue was solved moments later regardless, commander Kinna—the commander in charge of the battle—ordering a wave of elemental shock-troopers to stem the bleeding.
"What in the Hells was that," someone barked, Marcus turning to look. One of his Life Enhancement guards, an older man. His face was twisted with anger, hands nearly shaking at his side. Bognic, that was it. "Running off, dismissing your guards, charging the Archmage? What half-wit reasoning could you have for that?!"
Marcus didn't reply immediately, tilting his head lightly to the side. Bognic opened his mouth again, but Marcus held up a hand. "I'm going to do you the favor of telling you to shut up, soldier. It was idiotic, which was why I returned, and I believe it to be linked to a magical feedback issue stemming from my relatively rapid growth in power. Artificial arrogance born from strength, in short. Now you will apologize, or I will be forced to have you removed."
Bognic reddened, nearly growing purple, and it was almost fascinating to watch. Marcus had no idea why the man felt so strongly about the issue, it wasn't like they were friends, and frankly he didn't have time to find out. Bognic managed to rein himself in, however, though only turned away.
A blank-faced mage stepped in front of his path, one hand on the knife at his hip, and Marcus sighed. "Hold. There won't be bloodshed, not over this. In case any of you have forgotten, we are currently fighting a war. Bognic, let me be blunt. Turn to face me, apologize, then get the fuck back to work. If you do anything but that, I will slice the head from your torso and move on with my day."
Bognic turned, a half sneer on his face, and visibly realized halfway through opening his mouth that Marcus, in fact, sparred with Elly quite frequently. And compared to the man's Queen, someone who he had likely fought alongside, the man might as well be a stumbling drunk.
"I apologize, your Grace," the soldier grunted, literally speaking through gritted teeth. "It won't happen again."
"Good. I'll leave your punishment up to the Queen, since you are one of hers. I'm sure Elly will be lenient."
Bognic paled, because no she wouldn't be. Setting aside the fact that Marcus was ninety percent sure Elly actually liked him as a person, she was a soldier to the bone. A general at heart. And she wasn't going to tolerate insubordination, especially not during battle, and a case could be made for treason.
Marcus turned away from the man, mind already moving on. The exchange hadn't taken long, but every second counted once the fighting started. The Archmage had left, Marcus had never quite taken his perception off the man, and had probably done so to deal with Elly.
He could already imagine her just absolutely tearing her way through any opposition, hunting for mages and officers. She'd have refined her approach, too, after Elly had reluctantly admitted her very first battle against the Empire not having gone very smoothly at all.
"We're going to the left flank," Marcus ordered, Xathar moving as he spoke. "Plug the gaps, kill mages, you know the drill."
There were no shouts of agreement, no bellows as they charged. Just silent Royal Guards riding alongside equally silent mages, Life Enhancement warriors keeping quiet because it was what everyone else was doing.
What followed was, compared to the last half hour, almost distressingly easy. Perhaps it should make him sick, isolating mages to kill them, but his emotions had been used up. Now there was just a faint sense of impatience, and as his mace broke the skull of the third 'well protected' Imperial spellcaster, the Empire shifted.
Mages were withdrawn, soldiers crowding around them tightly. It limited their effectiveness in the battle rather massively, though, so Marcus just shrugged. Moved on to the regular soldiers, finding no reason to stop conjuring spatial arcs when the first proved so effective.
With his guards to protect him, mages to shield him and Life Enhancement warriors to intercept the summons sent to kill him, Marcus focused on wiping out as many regular soldiers as he could. The Empire's closely-knit formation worked against them, and he weaved together the arc with mild curiosity.
He fired it, killed some four dozen Imperial soldiers, then fired another. The entire front stabilized in minutes, the Legion hesitating to commit more troops when Marcus could kill them so efficiently, and what mages they sent were struggling to shield against spatial attacks.
It was power concentrated in a very small area, after all, and even Imperial mages didn't have shields much more advanced than his own.
Marcus left the moment things fully settled, moving towards the center flank, and he could almost feel the Empire start to panic. He could imagine their time-tested strategies failing against someone beating them with their own specialty, someone who could kill their mages with near impunity, and he was waiting for their response.
When it came, it came with fire.
An elemental having taken female form, her body more refined than any Marcus had seen. With her was a young woman who reeked of power, a mage who avoided his spatial arcs with relative ease and supported the elemental, and Marcus felt his own reserves start to run dry.
Oh well. "Inform commander Kinna we're pulling back to our defensive lines."
The message was passed along, and the Empire didn't like it. The young mage liked it even less, whispering fiercely to the elemental. Which, after a moment, nodded mildly.
Heat. Sheer, undiluted heat spread towards him in a wave, Marcus' own elemental protection struggling to counter the damage. His guards, fewer in number and nearly all wounded, didn't even have that. Skin started drying out and cracking in mere moments, gasps of air coming through pained gasps.
Marcus' mages started freezing the area after he'd barked at them to lower the temperature, but the orderly retreat started getting much less orderly. Worse, the elemental seemed to have enough control to only affect Mirranian lines, leaving the Empire to pull together and regroup.
The Legion did such in a distressingly short amount of time. Wounded, terrified and staggering, and still they organized. Still they pulled together, chasing after them as the elemental calmly walked forwards.
Any attempt to actually kill the thing was intercepted by the young mage, who either shielded the attack or moved the elemental out of the way, and spatially shrinking the distance to ensure a hit sounded like the worst possible idea.
"Scan for shapeshifters," he ordered, Xathar still taking his body backwards. "Then code protocol. Alpha-one-forest-stone."
The answers rattled back as his six remaining mages turned to one another, each one checking two others. Then they moved to the Royal Guards, then the Life Enhancement warriors. Marcus took over the defence, deflecting what the Empire threw at them.
He also got a look at his retreating army now that he wasn't hyper-focused on the elemental. It didn't look good. Four thousand he'd taken with him, and some rough guesstimation told him a little over three thousand were left. Half of the casualties inflicted by the Archmage, then, and in less than four seconds.
No wonder some worshiped them as living gods.
A brief scuffle distracted him, a shapeshifter killed before it could get close enough to strike. Well, at least the new security protocols were working. Elly had pointed out one of the best moments to infiltrate his guard was during battle, and it seemed she had been right.
Marcus watched companies of men move faster and faster, only barely held together by discipline, and felt a blip in his perception. A nagging feeling something was being done, and he looked the way his perception demanded to find that same young mage.
But now she was surrounded by twenty other mages, and the moment he looked, magic began pouring into the matrix. Into a ritual, the spell feeling crude to his senses but certainly not lacking power.
It also had the same smell as Vistus' magic, which either made her his apprentice or, at the least, another mage capable of transmutation. A mage that was currently wielding enough power to make a five-tier attack seem pitiful.
"Go," Marcus ordered, Xathar slowing to a halt. His guards hesitated, Marcus grunting. "No time. Go. I need to disrupt the ritual, or we're all getting turned into mushrooms."
That got them moving, at least. Marcus exhaled, double checking his elemental protections to give them time to make distance. He looked down at Xathar, the horse seeming perfectly content to wait there. "I know you're immortal when summoned and all, but there's a good possibility I'm about to burn both of us to death."
"My hide will not catch flame. Drink your potion, bush mage."
Good enough. Marcus grunted and drank his heat-tolerance potion, letting go of his inertia dampening spell. He wasn't going to need that, and with it gone two matrices were open to him.
He shrunk the distance between him and the ritual with the first, the one-tier spell only effecting a hands-width of space. The second sent a wave of infinitely thin folded reality through the portal, weak and pitiful compared to his usual three-tier version.
But a weak and pitiful blade made from one of the fundamental forces of the universe was still obscenely dangerous, and he barely had time to properly fire the attack before the elemental's heat poured through the portal.
Even with his shield reducing the temperature substantially, his hair still almost caught fire. Literally. He didn't even notice at first, too busy feeling his eyes being forcefully boiled away, and his conscious mind decided it had enough as his clothes caught fire.
Xathar galloped away as Marcus screamed, clutching his scorched—his empty—eye sockets and only barely having enough mental fortitude to weave a simple one-tier healing matrix. It did little but ease the pain, which did allow him to link another matrix to it, but he hadn't regrown eyes before. He didn't even know if it was possible.
He didn't see what had become of his attack, though by the fact his flesh didn't turn to stone he assumed it had been successful. Without eyes he didn't see the elemental try to shield the young mage, losing its arm in the process, nor did he see twenty Imperial mages be incinerated in the resulting explosion of heat.
Nor did he see the young mage desperately cloak herself in elemental protection, hair catching fire as the elemental tried its best to suck as much heat into itself as possible to save her. He didn't see the Archmage arrive to heal her, nor did he hear her being dragged back to camp by the incessant man.
He did feel the Archmage, though, and assumed the man had returned to finish the job. But he didn't die, and Xathar was more than able to ride without being micro-managed. Marcus focused on linking a third healing matrix to the first two despite his growing panic, not enjoying being blind in the slightest.
It took a few desperate seconds for him to confirm regrowing eyes was out of the question, hesitantly shifting the healing towards the rest of his body. His badly burned, barely hanging together body. His hair, for some reason, was miraculously intact.
"Why didn't spatial magic deflect the heat?" he asked, tone slipping into a hiss and not really expecting an answer. "Why are my fucking clothes on fire but my hair is fine? Why didn't Vess' potion protect my eyes? Why the fuck. Fuck."
Xathar rumbled out an answer anyway. "That was a very old elemental. At some point they fight not with heat, but the idea of heat. The consequence and reaction of it. Reality often becomes strange when that happens. The succubus' potion likely saved your life."
"That doesn't make any fucking sense, but I guess so."
He could feel Xathar shrug. "I am not an expert. How are your eyes?"
"Gone."
"A worthy scar," the demon praised. "I am sure you will find a way to fix this deformity."
Marcus grunted, realizing the ritual had never actually fired and wondering if he'd noticed that before. Nor had it back-fired, unfortunately, though with how much power he'd felt that was probably for the best. The young mage had drained it even while her hair was on fire, then. That showed skill and mental fortitude not many possessed, which lent credence to her being the Archmage's apprentice.
Xathar kept riding until they should have been well into their own lines, and Marcus mostly just hung on the best he could. Riding a demon mount didn't actually require eyesight, not if he didn't need to steer him, but once the ride was over, there wasn't much he could do.
His perception did tell him they were in the right area, mostly because Elly's very familiar signature rapidly approached his position. She was probably hunting the Archmage, which made sense, though he was touched she cared enough to check up on him.
He was still just mostly in pain, though, and trying to suppress a rising level of horror at being permanently blinded.
She paused next to him, not saying a word, and he offered a smile that ended up being a grimace. "You look as beautiful as ever. I'm just going to assume you're covered in blood, so take this as a snide comment about your state of dress, or something. Please speak."
Elly exhaled loudly, tone sharp and probably not aimed at him. "Get a medic."
Marcus shrugged, dismounting with a surprising amount of grace. He did stumble when there was a rock somewhere he didn't expect, but Elly's hand shot out to steady him. A hiss of pain escaped him, her hand pushing against not-quite healed burns, and the adrenaline of it all seemed to be leaving him.
He tried to blink, couldn't, and then failed to suppress a wave of weakness sweeping over his body. Marcus smiled with teeth covered in blood, a distinctly unpleasant feeling. "I'm going to pass out soon."
"Wha-"
Marcus felt himself be caught as he lost control over his legs, wondering if his eyes had spontaneously grown back.
How else could he see the sea of stars? How could anyone not see them?
How could anyone not notice infinity?