Corwin Everleigh, the very dear husband of Seraphis, was a man of patience, wisdom, and, most importantly, a healthy respect for his own limitations.
He had fought many battles in his youth, earned many scars, and learned to pick his fights carefully. Today, however, there was no choice in the matter. Today, he was a father first, a warrior second, and a tired, aging man somewhere distant in third place.
"Where is my daughter, Percival?" Corwin asked, his voice calm, his tone anything but calm.
The last time he had uttered that name, it had ended with Percival getting a severed limb and two ruined legs.
Ah, nostalgia. He had let the man go out of pure pity for such a young mind who aimed to climb the ladder of strength as much as he could, offending people he shouldn't have along the way.
Percival, standing before him, looked as unbothered as a man could be after having his arm lopped off in the past. In fact, the prosthetic he now had was, by all accounts, an upgrade. Corwin had to wonder if he'd done the man a favor by relieving him of his organic one.
"You know," Percival mused, flexing his artificial fingers as if savoring the feel, "I was a little mad when you cut this off. But then I got this beauty. State-of-the-art. Custom fit. Never cramps, never tires. You might have done me a kindness."
Corwin's lips twitched, but not in amusement. "Glad to be of service. Now, where's my daughter?"
Percival's eyes gleamed with something dark and unreadable. Not his usual shade, Corwin noted. That meant one thing—this wasn't entirely his fight. There was another hand on the strings.
A commoner by birth, a researcher by trade, and an absolute lunatic by reputation. If there was an unnatural way to manipulate ether, Lara had either theorized it, attempted it, or, gods forbid, succeeded.
The woman's latest obsession? Artificial ether. A research that, if successful, could upend the world as they knew it. Corwin had no interest in the politics of such a thing. He had a daughter to get back.
And to do that, he had to go through Percival, then he had to face Lara, whom he knew he might not be able to defeat. She had too much loose ends to be a public figure, but her reputation made sure nobody dug in—and if someone did, they better say goodbyes.
Percival was no longer a half-broken remnant of a past battle, nor was he the youth who had lost all hope but still lived due to the fear dying preventing his suicide, he had become something new. Something improved.
The forest around them was silent. Not the natural hush of wind and distant wildlife, but the kind of quiet that came before calamity. Then, with an invisible shift in the air that nobody but the two participants knew, it began.
Percival moved first. No flourish, no theatrics—just raw, unfiltered ethercraft. He snapped his fingers (the organic ones), and the air behind Corwin twisted in on itself, forming an inward suction of stone and roots that swallowed space like a living thing.
There was a small black mass in the air that sucked everything up, but Corwin was quick, quicker than most if any need be said.
he had already gone before it could reach him, his ether rewriting gravity itself, sending him to the side like a stray leaf caught in a storm. The black mass did not affect him with its suction.
Then came the explosion.
A blast of force erupted from where Corwin had stood, splitting trees, and turning soil into molten rocks, it was like an inactive volcano suddenly decided to see the sun.
Percival wasn't playing around. Good. Neither was Corwin.
With a flick of his wrist, Corwin inverted the very concept of solidity around Percival, making the air itself heavier than stone. A normal man would have been crushed instantly, reduced to an unrecognizable smear. Then Corwin's worry would only have been about how to clean up the mess, only if he worried.
Percival, of course, was not a normal man. His ethercraft twisted the rules right back, making himself an exception to the world's weight, a ghost in his own battlefield.
They clashed again, and this time, it was war.
A fire that burned cold. Water that cut sharper than swords. Space folded in on itself, distances meaning nothing one moment and stretching into eternity the next. The ground no longer behaved as ground should, shifting between solid, liquid, and something entirely new.
Percival swung his prosthetic arm, and with it came an ether surge that erased time in a straight line—a single moment repeated in there for eternity, but it had a bit of time before it could be activated.
Corwin barely slipped free of the loop before it could take hold, countering with a rewrite of his own—an erasure of cause and effect, leaving Percival to suffer the impact of his own attack with no action preceding it.
Percival clutched his chest and spat blood, his body was starting to collapse because there was no effect proceeding the cause that was drawing out his ether, the principle was quickly dispelled as his drawn ether started to flow back, making him suffer the blow. But he quickly regained his stature as he healed himself.
For every rule one rewrote, the other countered. For every law bent, the other shattered it entirely.
Both continued without a thought on their psyche, it was just that high enough that both had no care for it. Corwin had trained his psyche for nearly forty years, and Percival had other ways to increase psyche.
Ethercraft at this level wasn't just magic. It was a war on reality itself. And reality was losing.
The explosions grew in scale, shockwaves splitting through the forest like divine retribution. Trees collapsed, then uncollapsed. The sky darkened, then brightened, then split open in a jagged wound of every possible color.
And still, neither relented.
Percival grinned through bloodied lips, eyes gleaming with that unnatural violet. "You should've let me keep the arm, Corwin. Would've saved you a lot of trouble."
Corwin exhaled, steady. "You should've learned when to stay down."
He summoned his sword that he had bought and started to learn after his marriage, he threw the sword at Percival, as if he was not expecting anything out of a sword.
Percival extended his hand, and the sword vanished, a few cracked pieces fell on the floor, but they too vanished quickly.
Corwin instantly teleported behind Percival, summoning another sword and slashing his back.
The wound opened up and blood started to spill. Corwin took a few steps back, his face serious and his eyes bloody.
But then, suddenly, a sword pierced his chest from behind.
"Don't... Hurt... Percival," It was a young girl's voice.