Stephen took a deep breath before putting his mask back on. The silver face of a bear with eyes of jade looked back at him as he held it. Lymesia had made it crystal clear that the Archmagus of War wouldn't stop them from their mission, and that if all hells broke loose, Stephen would have to be the one to handle things.
"I can't believe I have to see that man again. Why? Why are we going to risk everything in this moment? Lymesia should know by now that when situations change, the plans should too. God, it's like she wants an all-out brawl in front of half the capital." Stephen chuckled to himself at the thought, shaking his head as he continued looking down at his silver mask. "Knowing her, she probably does, but she doesn't understand how hard this is for me. To fight the man who ruined my life, destroyed my reputation, and forced me to flee and go into hiding. I wish I didn't have this urge, the desire to kill him. I know I shouldn't, and I won't, but still... pushing the urge down, suppressing it, and refusing to act on it... It's hard. I'm just human, and sometimes I think Lymesia forgets that. I'm not immortal and easily mistaken for a god like Him. I'm not a mythological beast with strength and longevity like Lymesia is. I'm just another human... a soldier." Stephen's feelings began creeping up his throat, forcing him to swallow harshly. He then flipped his mask in his hand, pulling the back strap over his head, and donning the silver face of a bear. "But, like they always say: 'Good soldiers follow orders.' If it's for the good of the kingdom, I have no right but to do anything else. Besides, it's not like I could leave it to the others; the only other one of us who could handle him would be Lymesia, and she'll be busy with the speech." Stephen once again shook his head, the green tint of the mask creating a whole new field of vision around him.
Stephen's long blond hair was tied up in a messy bun behind his mask, held up by two ornate metal pins that he only ever used when preparing for combat. He then turned his neck to the side, causing it to crack in several places, and turned it the other way to cause another series of pops due to his tension. Stephen also began to stretch his legs out through side lunges before rising back up and turning towards the rest of the Order of the Blue Flame.
"Ready, Julio?" Stephen asked, facing a man wearing a silver mask with the face of an eagle and eyes of topaz.
Julio then nodded his head, "We're all ready here. What about yourself?" The man's tone was serious, almost angry, but not towards Stephen, towards something else, and Stephen knew what: hatred for the kingdom.
"Not really, but she's jumping in one way or another, so it's not like we have a choice," Stephen responded honestly, "I've got the exit locations laid out in my mind. Once we see her, I'll throw up the barricades."
"Alright, well then... good luck," Julio said, motioning with his hand, causing the ground in front of Stephen to break open, tree roots spiraling upwards out of it, blooming like a flower. "I'll make sure to spit you out right behind them, and if things go bad, I'll get you out as fast as I can, but she's going to try and finish her speech no matter what, and you know same as I do, she won't let us leave that easy."
Stephen nodded, stepping into the blossoming tree roots. "Yeah, I know... I'll do what I can to hold him off." And with that, Stephen took a final deep breath and let the tree roots cover him. He was quickly enveloped, as if he were inside the seed of a giant tree, and felt the roots carry his body down into the Earth.
"I just need to hold him, I don't need to do any more than that, those are my orders. That's only if he refuses to let Lymesia speak. I know he won't, though... he didn't let me speak either. I know I'll have to fight him, whether it be today or in the future, I have to put a stop to him." Stephen's eyes were closed, waiting for the inevitable movement of the cocoon and for it to open to chaos. "The Jade Spear of the Kingdom... what a joke that they used to call me that. Now look at me... if my corps saw me now, I wonder what they'd think. I wonder what my sargeants, my lieutenants, my generals... I wonder if they'd agree with me if they knew what I knew. Maybe they did, if all of it... the corruption, the crimes, the atrocities committed in the kingdom's name could be defended by Gaurav... maybe they knew and believed what we were told, same as I. I wonder what my own soldiers would've thought of me now, too. I wouldn't blame them if they called me treasonous, a deserter, and nothing more. I suppose that's what I would've thought in their position." Stephen clutched his fist hard enough that his knuckles went white at the thought of the soldiers under his command back when he was a member of the kingdom's military. "I wish I could've saved them, warned them, but I didn't know it was about to happen. The worst part still is that I should've. I should've known about all of this, but I was complacent in my blindness, as we all were. We thought that what we were doing helped instill order throughout the realm, make a safer, more secure future for mankind. How foolish we-no, I was. My soldiers didn't just follow the orders of the kingdom... they followed mine, because I was blinded by that man, who preached the principles of war and how it protected the kingdom. 'Good soldiers follow orders,' he said. 'This is all for the betterment of our world, Stephen, I promise, someday you'll come to understand, you must if you are to take my place.' What lies ofgrandeur and purpose." Stephen's anger began to twist his stomach into knots, his guilt from a past life eating him alive. The lightless surroundings did little to help him get out of his mind and remember the faces of the men he led to death alongside him. He remembered all of the lies, the deceit he was fed as a child, all the way until he reached adulthood. He wanted nothing more than to go back, to rewind time itself and change the future, spare those he could from their fate. Stephen let breath out, trying to keep a level head, not let the ideas of anger and vengeance reach him. "Lymesia told me, if I see my chance... But I won't. I refuse that, even if I'm afraid deep down that's what I want, just the same as her. I won't let myself. That makes me no better than that liar."
Stephen's thoughts were interrupted by the feeling of being moved. It was starting. Lymesia was most likely still falling overhead of the arena, getting ready to deliver her speech. Julio was doing his part, creating walls no one person could jump over, not even Lymesia. Stephen kept his eyes closed and felt for the exits and entrances of the coliseum, feeling the earth surrounding him, letting him feel everywhere it touched. At those points, he focused his mana on creating his specialty: Jade walls made from mana, far stronger than the walls of even the arena itself. Stephen then took in a deep breath, steeling his nerves for the fight her knew was about to take place.
"It's time." Stephen thought before muttering to himself. "Armamenta iadea: hasta et scutum iustitiae." Stephen chanted his words from the magic tongue, summoning a bright jade suit of armor, along with a tower shield and spear made of the same material. His weapons and armor had white imperfections throughout; the lines were sharp and ragged, looking as if lightning was trapped underneath the glassy, reflective surface. His helm now covered his face, his mask melding with the armor as it was yet another creation from Stephen's terra affinity. The helm had three slits allowing Stephen to see just barely, yet Stephen didn't need to see in this armor. His senses were heightened to a degree beyond that of human sight, his sense of the mana around him, and the mana of his opponents being strong enough to sense the slightest shift in the wind. The armor also increased his reflexiveness to those changes in the mana around him, amplifying and reinforcing parts of his armor before he even knew why. His spear and shield wear nigh unbreakable, his spear sharpened to a point, with mana pouring through to improve its sharpness even further, and deal more lethal blows. His shield was the other side of that coin, allowing him to shift his mana from his spear to a more defensive nature in his shield. The shield itself would protect him better than his armor, but on the condition that he could react and block on his own. It was a feat in itself to create a spell as complicated and fit for combat, but that was Stephen's nature. The sheer dedication he had in terms of combativeness made him one of the strongest and fittest soldiers in the entire kingdom. In terms of strength compared to members of the Order of the Blue Flame, Stephen was ranked second, even beating Lymesia, even with her greater output of mana and raw strength, Stephen's technique and use of his affinity and spellcraft put him ahead in combat. Ordinarily, a spell this strong would have a price of constant mana drain, but due to the way Stephen had designed it and the manual usage of its abilities, the mana drain was minimal until the armor and weaponry were utilized, keeping its usage practical in or out of combat.
Stephen lay in wait, knowing that at any moment, Julio might bring him up and introduce him to the fray. After what felt like minutes, suddenly the roots Stephen was held in lacunehd upwards, and opened like a flower once again, this time revealing the sight of the inner coliseum. Stephen looked down at the official's platform, standing several rows behind those standing on it. As he looked to the arena where Lymesia should've been delivering her speech, Stephen instead saw her fighting what seemed to be two Grand Infantry examinees, one hurdling massive boulders of ice and the other launching blades made of compressed air.
As Stephen's attention focused back on the official's platform, that's when he saw the man whose mere sight sickened Stephen to his very core. The mere sight of the man clad in adamant armor, lined with the cobalt blue sheen of mithril, and the cloak with the kingdom's insignia imprinted made Stepehn grip his spear tight enough that he felt as if he could break the jade like glass. Stephen stood for a moment, his body shaking with rage. His entire body looked tense, ready to strike, ready to fight with bloodlust, however, Stephen himself hesitated.
"I'm only here to hold him off, I'm only here to hold him off, I'm only here to hold him off," Stephen began repeating a mantra in his head to regain control over himself. After another deep breath, Stephen centered himself, and as Gaurav, the Archmagus of War, took steps to jump from the platform and into the battle, Stephen threw his spear at the ground in front of him.
The spear landed, a sound reverberating through the chaos as the spear vibrated upon impact, and then flew back to return to its owner's hand. This got Gaurav to turn and see the jade suit of armor catching the same spear thrown, and instead of a shocked or angry expression appearing on his face, Gaurav simply grinned meniachally. "Ah, there you are, Stephen! I've been wondering where you would appear after fleeing your execution for betraying your people!"
Stephen's vision began to shake, blurring in a seething rage he felt from the very depths of his soul. The man who forever ruined Stephen's life, who killed so many innocents and then stood over the bodies proudly, was now before him. The man who personally saw to the staged deaths of Stephen's soldiers who empathized with him, the man who changed an entire election to prevent change in the system. It became too much for Stephen to bear, and before Stephen himself knew it, he had leaped from the coliseum's seats he stood upon, the force of the leap great enough to break the mana-reinforced marble beneath his feet.
"Murderer!" Stephen shouted as he jabbed his spear towards the Archmagus' throat, his killing intent laid bare in front of the officials, the Order of the Blue Flame members above, and Gaurav himself. Stephen remembered what Lymesia had told him in his head, and finally, he realized why he was the one set to face Gaurav in this moment:
"Remember, Stephen, your orders are only to hold him back. That's all you have to do for me, but if you see an opportunity, and you want to take it... Don't hesitate. Kill him where he stands." Lymesia had told him, and now Stephen knew why. Lymesia wanted this man dead, and she knew that deep down, Stephen did too, even if he hadn't realized it himself.
Gaurav stepped out of the way at the last moment, Stephen sensing the Archmagus reinforcing his body with mana to dodge in time, yet due to Stephen's armor, he could see that Gaurav was sidestepping to Stephen's right, and torqued his body in midair to bring the spear just against the warmongerer's neck. Even with just the slightest contact, the mana-infused spear was able to give the Archmagus a slash across the side of his neck, causing blood to begin leaking. The wound wasn't deep enough to end the fight in a single strike, and Stephen knew that, but it was enough that he was able to land his first strike, even with anger blinding him.
Stephen then landed on the platform, trace amounts of sand that had made it's way onto it were spurring up into the air. Stephen didn't take this moment to speak; he instead threw his spear at Gaurav immediately and cried out, "Liar!" Stephen dashed towards Gaurav as Gaurav channeled lightning in his gauntleted fist and struck the spear away in a moment. Stephen then leaped and caught his spear, bringing it down on the Archmagus in one motion, to which Gaurav then crossed his arms overhead and blocked, his gauntlets crackling and glowing with blue electricity surrounding them.
The pair became locked as Stephen's feet landed on the ground, continuing to push the spear down, the Archmagus's arms shaking slightly yet holding the spear back without much difficulty. "You've gotten quite strong, my old apprentice, but don't get cocky just because you get a tiny cut out of me!" Gaurav shouted, throwing his arms up, causing Stephen to take a step back and raise his shield for an incoming strike. Gaurav then pulled a fist back and went to strike Stephen with his electrified fist, yet Stephen blocked, his tower shield holding strong, albeit the force pushing him a foot back.
"You have no right to call me your apprentice!" Stephen retorted, the officials finally beginning to move, yet before they could even react, Stepehn began swinging his spear, knocking three of them out with the blunt end of his weapon in a single swing, and moving so fast the other two officials began taking a step back in shock as they were knocked unconscious all the same.
"You truly have grown quite powerful, even I must admit. Guess I must've been that good of a teacher then." Gaurav chuckled to himself, still wearing a disgusting grin on his face that filled Stephen with memories of what this man took from him, yet he still stood and smiled in his face. "I still believe you should lose the whole spear thing, it just holds you back at the end of the day. It means that your striking ability is centered around your skill with the weapon itself. Just because you're the best spearman in history doesn't mean you hold a candle to someone who uses their magic to conjure and fire upon you. For example!" Gaurav shouted as he raised his hands and launched lightning from his fingertips at Stephen.
Stephen stood, ready for the bolts made from mana, not bothering to block or dodge[1], and instead letting them hit his armor, which Stephen had altered since the last time he had seen Gaurav face to face. In a trade-off for raw defensive strength, Stephen had changed the conductivity of his armor and allowed the lightning to all travel to the tip of his spear, ready to be launched right back at his opponent.
As Gaurav stopped his attack, shock was strewn across his face at the sight of it doing nothing to Stephen. Stephen then asked, "You truly think I wouldn't have prepared for this? You ruined my life, you slaughtered countless innocent people, and told me that it was for the greater good!" Stephen shouted, lobbing his spear at Gaurav, the electricity blasting behind it as it moved even faster than before, piercing Gaurav in his shoulder before he had time to dodge.
Gaurav yelled out in pain and what sounded like a mix of shock as well. He then began to laugh as Stephen summoned his jade spear back to his hand. "Hah! Go figure, you would've done something like that. We elemental affinity users can really make some complicated stuff, can't we? So much power, the ability to create practically anything we can think of within the bounds of our affinity... and look at you. Wasting it fighting for some cultists of a god that doesn't even exist! You truly are a fool for that, Stephen! Had you just sat and done as you were told, you would be sitting in my seat this very next term. You would've been allowed to do anything you chose, truly be above the law itself! You'd get to do anything, and nobody would've stopped you! Yet you had to choose to get all noble, try and tell everyone the things you had seen, make a run at my position before I was ready to give it up, and 'Chang things,'" Gaurav used air quotes and then placed one of his hands over the stab wound from Stephen. "Let me put it to you this way, Stephen. You would've been a God! Able to do whatever you please to those beneath you, treat them like ants all meant to serve you and your goals, and all you'd have to do is play the game as intended! You really want to fight with these people who believe in Aquivis? Why, because he was such a noble deity? That he wanted what's best for the kingdom! That he didn't try to kill our predecessors just to take control over humanity! He's a fairy tale, and if he weren't, he'd be even worse than we are. Perhaps if you believed in the ideals of the kingdom instead of some cult, your soldiers wouldn't have had to die!"
Suddenly, at the mention of Stephen's soldiers, something snapped with him. It was as if a dam that held his anger simply broke apart, allowing the emotions of hatred, vengeance, and anger to flood Stephen's mind and body in an instant. The next thing Stephen said came from his very core and spread beyond that. Every part of his body, his soul, his existence, down to every single cell that made him up, seemed to cry out in unison with one purpose, "Gaurav Puerbia! Let it be known! You will die by my hand!" After Stephen's words had left his lips, without any more speaking, Stephen ran, moving faster than Gaurav could react and getting behind the towering man. Stephen then stabbed Gaurav's leg, causing him to drop to one knee, but then Gaurav turned and raised a fist to bring it down in a quick motion, causing lightning to come down from the sky, which caused Stephen to raise his shield above his head and block the immense force, that threatened to crush him. The platform beneath Stephen's feet cracked and began to fall under the pressure, but Stephen then dove out of the way, barrel rolling and landing in front of Gaurav once again, a massive piece of the platform now broken and crumbling down to the arena beneath.
Gaurav then stood, surprisingly able to after the piercing wound Stephen had given him, and once again laughed, lightning beginning to crackle from his gauntlets again. "Fine, Stephen, have it your way! Be the Jade Soldier of Justice or whatever you want to call yourself! Just give me a fun fight!" Gaurav shouted as lightning then poured from his grieves, causing the hulking brute to launch forward in the blink of an eye, beginning to launch strike after strike with punches hard enough to shake Stephen inside of his armor.
The pair began meeting in flurries of blows, Stephen blocking with both his shield and either end of his spear, and Gaurav dodging and striking Stephen's spear away, increasing his speed with his mana to put Stephen on the defensive, and yet failing. The two were blurs on the platform, the naked eye unable to see either. Stephen's spear skills were pushed to their limits under the relentless assault of Gaurav's lightning-infused strikes, which Stephen used to his advantage, throwing his spear when it became electrified and summoning it back, the lightning moving it faster than it would've on its own. In mere moments, the two traded hundreds of strikes. Each one causing discharges of lightning on the platform they stood on, thunderclouds above began to boom in response to the evenly matched battle.
"I can't believe he's still this fast. I knew with his affinity, I would be at a disadvantage when it came to speed, but with wounds in both his shoulder and leg, to move this fast is unbelievable. He truly is a monster made of lightning itself." Stephen's thoughts raced in the heat of battle, shocked at his opponent's ability to still fight. "If my armor didn't help me predict what his next movements would be, I'd have already lost. His style is so brutish, but it's not unrefined or slow either. His strikes are heavy, even though I've neutralized the lightning, they still shake me and my armor. I knew the enchantments on his armor and the materials it's made of are some of the best in the kingdom, if not the world, but this is unbelievable." Stephen began to worry if his shield would hold out against the behemoth's assault. His twirling spear, still keeping the Archmagus on the defensive, occasionally landed strikes against the adamant armor, doing little to nothing. "Could Lymesia really still be fighting those two elemental affinity users? I would've figured she'd have either killed them or at least knocked them out at this point. There's no way those two examinees could hold her off for longer than a few minutes." Stephen thought, knowing he couldn't look away for a moment from his opponent. Gaurav had been unable to land a direct hit, and Stephen intended to keep it that way.
As Stephen and the Archmagus continued clashing spear and gauntlets, Stephen managed to bash his spear's pole against Gaurav's midsection, launching him back a few meters, even causing Gaurav to caugh blood on his shining armor, which was now covered in dust and blood, and scuffed from the strikes Stephen managed to land. Gaurav's wounds were finally getting to him from what Stephen could see; the wound in his shoulder was causing him to favor striking from his left, and the wound in his left leg was finally beginning to slow him down, all of which gave Stephen the perfect opening to strike as he did.
Garauv fell to one knee, heaving, his gauntlets and grieves having their lightning fade away. Gaurav chuckled darkly and looked up at Stephen, the former being just slightly above Gaurav's height now. "Y-you really have gotten stronger... not that it matters," Gaurav says as Stephen's armor made him sense a powerful spell heading towards the pair, to which Stephen turned his shield to defend himself, but the spell never hit him, nor did he even see it.
"What was that? I know I felt a spell heading towards us." Stephen's confusion was dispelled as he heard the clanging of plate armor as Gaurav stood, the wound in his shoulder faded, and the one in his leg was gone as well. The spell wasn't meant to hit Stephen, it was to heal Gaurav. Stephen's eyes widened as he realized the spell he felt was from the Archmagus of Medicine, whose mana Stephen could remember from years ago.
"Well then... I suppose it's time for round two? Or are you going to run away like you did from your crimes against the kingdom? Like you did for your soldiers who needed you?" Gaurav goaded, lightning beginning to pour back into his greaves and gauntlets, and the disgusting smile creeping back on his face.
Stephen began to stance once again for combat, without saying a word. His anger refused to let him go, consuming him. As Stephen prepared to rush back into the fray of combat, roots sprouted from the coliseum beside the pair on the platform and grabbed hold of Stephen, launching him into the air, well over the height needed to get above the coliseum walls. The root walls that had once surrounded the coliseum were gone, meaning Stephen began soaring beyond the bounds of it.
Gaurav shouted from beneath him, "Oh no, you're not leaving this fight so soon!" As Gaurav gathered mana in his hand and lobbed a bolt of lightning towards Stephen, which he could see, travelling towards him at frightening speed, Lymesia jumped in between Stephen and the bolt, striking it out of the air with her fist and grabbing Stephen by hem of his armor, a girl slung over her other shoulder.
"Heya Stephen!" Lymesia laughed as she held Stephen and the girl, keeping them both from experiencing the force of the landing as they left a crater in the middle of a busy road, luckily missing people due to a probable evacuation from what Stephen deduced. "You did pretty great back there, bud. I mean, you hesitated at first and had the chance to kill him at the end there, but you hesitated again."
Lymesia put Stephen down on the ground as the pair began running out of the capital city, using their mana to run fast enough that carts of produce and goods shook from their backdraft. Stephen's armor began to fade as he dispelled it to conserve mana, returning to just his silver mask. "Yeah, sorry... I wanted to kill him... I just... couldn't. You know He is right? I get you don't share His same thoughts, but killing the Archmagi just makes them the martyr, and even if it didn't... It's crossing a line."
"Not really the time for a moral quandary,y Stephen, we can take more about this later but for now, let's get back to the others and get the fuck out of here," Lymesia said as the pair ran with an unconscious girl with jet black hair and pale skin.
"Lymesia, isn't this kidnapping?" Stephen asked, genuine concern in his voice.
Lymesia laughed as they continued running towards the walls of the capital. "Not really, she's an adult, it's called abduction at this point."
"Really? That's your defense?" Stephen asked, completely baffled by what he was seeing. "This woman is crazy... I get that our recruitment process isn't exactly normal, but still. I wonder, is this the ice affinity user she was fighting? Another elemental affinity could help, I suppose. Perhaps she'll help us win this war against the kingdom."
[1] In this example, Stephen could've done both. The lightning made by Garuav isn't actual lightning, just a creation of his mana, meaning he's not even close to the speed of lightning. However, this is still travelling at about Mach 3, as it's still much faster than Elizabeth's ice spear, which created a sonic boom from the speed at which it launched. This also scales to Lymesia as she was able to counter it, meaning she saw the spear in the mere moments she had after the tornado was gone, and launch a strike more powerful than the ice spear in a brief moment. And Lymesia is faster than Stephen in terms of raw speed and reaction speed, until Stpehn is in his set of armor, as it allows him a certain level of foresight in the form of his opponent's mana, giving him a slight edge in reaction speed even over Lymesia.