Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 247: Manaborne

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Arthur Leywin

The dragon of ice approached with raging fury, a hurricane of winter wind trailing in its wake. Off-balanced as I was from the previous attack, it was poised to swallow me whole. In its sheer blue eyes, I almost imagined a level of intelligence. The bitter apathy of the unending cold.

I didn't let it intimidate me. As I called on the acclorite in my blood, I demanded my form to change.

It happened quickly–far faster than when I'd first discovered this ability. My normal flesh and bones shifted as I became the air itself, a tempest leashed into human form. My perspective of the mana in the atmosphere shifted as the green motes of wind mana became far, far more prominent. My sense for the yellow earth mana bled away entirely, as if I'd never borne the affinity in the first place.

But as I became windborne, paths first thought impossible and indecipherable opened themselves up to me. The wind mana itself showed me currents along which I could flow and travel, like a calm spring breeze. And as the pale skin of my flesh became a translucent green, I could almost imagine myself drifting away, free and untethered. Purple particles of aether lashed each of the green particles of wind mana together like a king's subjects.

The ambient wind mana moved me away from Lance Varay's attack as I dodged with aerial grace. I slid under and over her massive conjuration of ice magic, lashing out with blades of wind to cut away at her construct.

The winds told me in their strange whispers of the next attack that came my way. A whirling thunderstorm of snapping electric tendrils surged unerringly toward my airborne person. And not just this one: there was another attack heading my way as well. A gale of black fire churned silently as it tried to intercept me from another end.

Immediately, I recognized the danger of both attacks. In my windborne form, I was more susceptible to lighting and fire. Which was likely the plan of my sparring partners, and why they'd tried to push me into this position in the first place.

I didn't really have blood that could thunder in my ears, but I imagined it anyways as I let the windborne form drift away. My senses returned, my awareness of all four types of ambient mana evening out again as I disengaged. But just before the storm of electricity and curtain of hellfire struck me like a pincer attack, I called on the earth mana all around.

And in an instant, I was stone. Tough, durable, and unrelenting. My body felt stiff and coarse as I slowly braced in the air, certain in my defense. After all, that was the essence of earth mana itself. To be unmoving and inviolable.

I lethargically raised a hand to the side that faced the black fire, commanding the mana in the atmosphere. A gauntlet of fire and stone arose to face the unerring curtain of darkness.

And then the silent black fire and the angry thunderstorm crashed in on me from opposing sides. Electricity skittered harmlessly across my earthen form, chipping bits of rock from my skin and making little flakes of dust tumble away into the arena below. The black fire, however, proved far more difficult to resist. It weathered and ate away at my stalwart protections, consuming them for fuel and growing ever stronger. Even as I called on the fire and earth mana to create a protective ward, I could feel those dark tendrils quickly growing in threatening potency.

I ground my granite teeth as I held strong against the twin spells, each trying to break me down. I could distantly perceive the mana of Lance Varay's ice dragon as it wheeled, preparing to dive headfirst toward me and finally shatter my defense.

I wouldn't let it.

I called on the aether around me, feeling the tremble in the atmosphere as the weapon of my blood encroached on Sylv's bond. The black fire weakened slightly in its bombardment as my dragon recognized what I was about to do.