Death's End

Chapter 29 - Archmagus

Letting herself be the living heart of the sealing formation was perhaps the boldest move Mirayoung made in the four centuries of her life. She gathered her will as she thought about the complex enchantment needed. It was said the arcane language, once used by ancient sorcerers, had seen all practical spells translated into the currently used Elarian tongue. But this complex enchantment was incompletely translated, forcing her to revert partly to the arcane language to compensate.

Each word of power was pronounced carefully as it guided the raw magic from within her to connect with the formation. It seemed an eternity as she resisted the auditory hallucinations from the wraith's presence, while still being conscious of the peril Jerius was in and how skirtingly close the wraith was to escaping from the daggers of Anasr.

Midway through, she paused her incantation, an act that would be unthinkable to a lesser mage, to weave another spell into the daggers of Anasr. As the daggers were imbued with the spell, frozen light trailed behind the arcing daggers. Hardened light rays did not work alone but perhaps a combination of two elements would work. She would augment the properties of light with the hardness of ice, hoping to form a more robust trap to seal in the wraith long enough for her to complete the array.

The wraith's struggle toned down, seemingly giving in to its fate.

She thought the wraith was laughing hollowly, but she dismissed the human tendency to impose meaning to ambiguous visual or auditory patterns. A wraith may be intelligent, but it is driven by its instincts and hunger. How can it have the capacity to laugh?

She resumed the casting of the enchantment, intoning in increasing volume incantations that had not been uttered for a long, long time. She had always been proud of her photogenic memory and flawless enunciation that allowed her to shape her spells with incredible efficiency. She was truly putting them to the test speaking the arcane language to compensate.

Every stroke of the sigils that formed the array flared in response to the enchantment Mirayoung brought to light. The sealing array was originally supposed to be fueled by the Cabal Network but the incompleteness meant the array was cut off from any supply of magic. Once Mirayoung made contact with the sigils of the array, intoxicating them with the first taste of arcane, they grew an insatiable thirst for more power. She felt her arcane energy sucked out.

She reconnected with the arcane gems left on the ground when the mage-blacksmiths fled, originally meant to fuel the completeness of the array but now she could use them to stave off the initial arcane demand from the sigils.

She took a moment to breathe. Shaping the array around her on the first attempt without backfiring was incredibly hard and tricky work. In better days, she would be impressed with her own ingenuousness, and horrified with her boldness.

A single misstep would lead her tumbling down to her doom. The array had anti-spirit elements, which meant that she needed to cast an exceedingly draining spell to isolate her soul from touching the array, lest she risk irrefutable damage to herself.

Even intoning every word and morphing the magic to her thoughts with perfection, she knew she would not escape certain backlash later. But she cast that away, focusing on the wraith first. There was no need to worry about any backlash if the wraith emerged victorious in their struggle.

Her mind dizzied for a moment as she gritted her teeth, feeling her power coursing through the incomplete array and taking what felt like a piece of her to fill any gap the enchantment found.

And there were many gaps and crevices.

The array was also meant to cover the entire Dome, but since it barely filled the eastern columns and part of the ceiling, Mirayoung merely commanded them through the enchantment to become a smaller sphere centered around her, not tethered to any solid object.