Flaring his Od to its safe limit, Kurt rolled to his left, barely avoiding the blast of consuming flame. The thermal bloom washed over Kurt's body, scorching small sections of his clothing like cigarette paper, and making Kurt feel like an ant undder a magnifying glass.

  The defensive properties of his od-flares protected him from, as far as Kurt knew, any form of energy trying to penetrate his flesh, be it force or heat or whatever, but the fact remained that it was flesh his Od was reinforcing. There were stuff his skin and muscles dealt with worse than others, stuff they were not biologically designed to handle, and this kind of heat was one of them.

  So he felt that terrible heat wash over him, and the light that came with it blinded him for an instant, and kept moving despite it. After the roll, he bolted in a sprint until he had the van between him and the sorcerer, hoping that using the vehicle as a cover would make his foe dither for a few seconds.

  This was the second prediction he got wrong in less than a minute.

  The earth beneath the van rumbled and wavered as though liquid, and from it emerged two pillars of black stone thick as tree trunks, each one at the level of the van's two axles, right between its wheels. The aetherically animated rock moved slowly and mightily, rising the van four feet into the air in a matter of perhaps twice as many seconds.

  From within the frame the earth and the van had formed, Kurt saw the sorcerer ready another spell, this one shinning green again. Knowing he had to move quickly, Kurt kicked the dirt in front of him, sending forth a considerable cloud of dust that swallowed the space between the van and the ground. Then he jumped forward like an athlete, previous squatting and arm-swinging included, and threw his body against the vehicle's side, stabbing his fingers into the frame's metal for hand-holds.

  The cutting blast of wind, which was a long, whip-like streak that made a whistling sound as it passed, flailed through the dust cloud and the patch of ground Kurt had been standing on, sundering both with equal ease. Only the black pillars had taken it and resisted.

  Holding his breath, Kurt waited for his foe's next move. A second became five, andd those became ten, and that move didn't come. The cloud had dissipated entirely by now, revealing the very much not blood splattered dirt on the other side, and the next move didn't come. Kurt heard the shamans still scream and whimper as they were attacked by Mila's army, keeping one ear focused on the sorcerer.

  The man wasn't moving, and if he was trying to cast another spell he would have done so by now. No, he was plying it safe, as befitting of his skillset. He knew that if he made a move now that Kurt was not on sight, he would leave himself exposed, or just waste energy, both fatal mistakes for a sorcerer to make.

  So, the man waited for Kurt to make the first move.

  And Kurt would give him a first move.

  Yanking his fingers out as silently as he could, Kurt reached for the van's roof, whose edge was within arm's reach. He repeated the maneuver with his other hand, heaved himself up, and planted both his feet between his hands, with his arched back facing the ground.

  Right now, Kurt's flaring was consuming half his supply of life energy, with the other half spent on cycling. It was the perfect point of balance between the soft and hard application of Pneuma, the point where his physicality was at its natural, sustainable peak.

  He needed more than that right now.

  A thought was all it took for the white flames to grow like a wild-fire, turning more and more of his inner life energy into force. By the time he felt it was good enough, the ratios were now 80:20 in favor of the flares. If half-and-half was the limit of the safe and sustainable, this was the limit of the usable. Anymore than this and his ligaments and muscles would torn apart like piano wire, and his bones would crack like thin ice.

  He released his grip on the metal, immediately feeling himself fall back. Before this could go beyond a feeling however, Kurt pushed with his legs, feeling the blood in his thighs boil and the bones of his shins vibrate.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  He was sent flying back and upwards. The van, through pure newtonian physics, went in the opposite direction.

  Kurt returned his flaring and cycling back to the safe limit while still midair, the spiritual flex performed at the same time as he let himself twist mid-air so that he was facing the ritual grounds. His jump had sent him some 30 feet onto the air which, accompanied by the Od that was now cycling back to his nerves, allowed him to take in the scene before him in full detail.

  The emanation of Red Aura was losing more of its shape by moments, quickly returning to its pire form, and then losing even that as the panicking shamans and dryad geckos wreacked havoc. Here, a small cacti-lizard would run pass the black-sand circle's edge, its flat tail brusing a section of it away. There, a cultist ran away from another needly critter without looking where they were going, quickly crashing against one of the poles which, clearly not being rooted deep enough, was sent toppling until the ropes tying it to its neighbors stopped it, diluting rather than averting the fall. The head, still holding his staff, was rolling on the dirt in his pain, trying to reach for his calf where the gecko-dryad was still stuck, only for a random jolt of pain to forcibly straighten his back, reverting his efforts.

  And then was the second, closer-to-Kurt picture.

  The van, sustained by just two pillars and pushed back at its higgest point, was falling over- The metal of its fream groaned like a dying beast, threatening to just rip apart under the forces its own weight generated. Over this metallic groan, a human scream rang. A stream of verdant energy shone from behind the van, washing over it and delying its fall for a second or two. As Kurt began to fall, the sorcerer's silhoute appeared from behind the vehicle, running away from the crushing zone, his staff shinning green still, and promtly launching himself homerun style.

  The van fell on its side, the massive knell of its frame hitting the dirt blasting alongside the cracking of its shattering windows and windowshield. Its alarm soon joined the cacophony, quickly becoming the only instrument left in the symphony. Of the lights that had been placed atop the van, none survived the trip to the ground.

  Kurt hit the floor at that moment, landing on a roll. He had jumped so far back that he had landed on a hill's side, at the first third or so of it, which allowwed him to keep the bird view to an extent. His eyes landed on the still-fallen sorcerer, whose staff's light had died down already, and he saw an opportunity.

  Conjuring his wand, Kurt cast five golfball-sized Jet Bullet's, and sent them forth.

  The verdant, jet-propelled projectiles traveled through the air like bolts off a ballista. Each one had power equivalent to a full-weight stomp from a grown man, and they were all directed for the sorcerer; for his limbs and torso, and one for hs head too.

  Under such an assault, the man would be left unconscious for sure.

  Maybe dead.

  A pang of guilt came to Kurt, quick and fleeting before his determination to stop these villains, but still it came. He would carry the disgusting feeling of killing someone again if it came to that. Right now, he had a job to complete, and an actively murderous criminal (those spells had not been meant to trip Kurt's feet, after all) keeping him from doing so.

  The murderous criminal rolled onto his back, screaming savagely, and waved his staff at the incoming spells. The implement didn't shine in any color, and Kurt felt rather than saw the power that emanated from it. Pure aether, the colorless energy all sorcery was based upon, shot from the staff's tip in a long, thin strip of willpower.

  It was the most basic spell possible, one so simple that Kurt's screens hadn't even bothered to name or rank when he had used it. And it cut clean through Kurt's barrage. In the fleeting moment the sorcerer's counterspells cleft through Kurt's attack, unraveling and unmaking the flows of powr that formed them, the boy felt the raw sharpness and efficiency behind that 'basic' spell.

  It was far beyond Kurt's level. It was the difference between a week of training and a lifetime of dedication.

  The man roared again, directing his crazed stare at Kurt, and the top of his staff ignited, once again, in golden flames. Unlike his first blast of fire, which was broad and destructive like a shotgun's blast, this one was more like a sniper rifle: focused and piercing. It was a pencil-thin bar of flame that traveled the distance between them without showing signs of dispersing, a laser-like attack that, when Kurt side-stepped it, punched a hole into the rock behind him.

  Kurt began running parallel to the sorcerer again, just as more piercing flames came. He made a point of having his flaring ratio constantly oscilate between a 50:50, a 60:40, and everything in-between. He did this to keep his speed inconsistent, so that the man could never predict where he would be to time his shots.

  This kept Kurt alive, but running like a headless chicken. Turning around, or worse, trying to close the distance, could very well spell his doom here. His only option seemed to be to keep evading attacks until the man ran out of energy.

  This prediction, too, he got wrong.

  So centered was the sorcerer on killing Kurt, and so centered was Kurt on not dying, that neither noticed how a small dryad, guided directly by its mother, strudded out the mess of screaming shamans its brothers were plying with and towards the crazed spell-slinger. The little gecko-like creature jumedon the man's back, holding on like a baby koala. A needle-covered, impossibly strong baby koala.

  The sorcerer screamed a third time, in pain this time, and his concentration broke. With it went the flames on his staff, which snuffed out as supernaturally quickly as they had come. Kurt caught on immediately, and moved accordingly. Suddenly, he was running down the hill and towards the sorcerer, closing the distance in less than 6 seconds.

  This drew the man's attention, and he readied his staff at Kurt, its top shinning with green energy for the fourth time.

  Too late. Kurt was already within kicking distance.

  Crack

  Was the sound the staff made when Kurt's foot snapped it in half. It's rune's shone erratically, sputtering out in instants. Before a word could be uttered or a name screen read from either side, Kurt dropped on the sorcerer and, letting his flaring recede completely beforehand, he clocked the man right on the chin with a right hook.

  The man fell back like a sack of potatoes. His head snapped to one side, and a spray of blood and a couple teeth poured from his mouth and onto the dirt. After making sure the man was out, Kurt rolled him on his face and yanked the little dryad from his back, dropping it to the side.

  The little one scuttered back to the shamanistic fray, and Kurt's eyes followed it on its journey, until the fell on the giant red flame that had started this whole mess. The plan had been to screw the ritual as much as possible, then retreat, and Kurt was going to follow it to the letter.

  After all, Kurt thought as he unsheathed Silver Demon, his eyes intent on the coffin-sized box ,what could screw up the ritual more than losing the Red Aura?