[color=#BDBDBD][center][h2]【[u][b]A Flash Against the Black[/b][/u]】[/h2][h3]【[u] [b][color=#D3844B]Valerian[/color] & The Ogauraq [color=silver]/|\[/color] Lucky Dragon & [color=gold]Golden Monkey[/color][/b][/u]】[/h3][/center][/color][hr]
Night’s embrace, darkness, sleep, then noise and golden light. Valerian shot out of bed like a bullet, his body reacting before his mind could fully process having gone from asleep to awake. Yet, when his bleary eyes focused on the carnage unfolding around him, he felt the surge of adrenaline tear away the comforting grip of sleep. Though Dragon Smirk had healed up fine before they’d returned for the night after their unexpected and violent encounter with the Black Guard, Vel had never quite shaken the deep-seated sense of dread in his stomach.

Now–like bile–it rose up his throat and threatened to cloud his thoughts as a downright feral mage armed himself and lunged. It was at that moment that fear crystallized in his veins, and for a terrible instant, he was too stunned to act. The mage hurtled at him, terrifyingly fast and clearly far beyond his own skill or potency, yet Vel knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had to fight him anyways.

For a moment the figure’s countenance was that of another, of someone familiar. His brother.

Vel clenched his teeth, jaw popping as all his muscles tensed for in the next instant he’d remembered what had driven them to such conflict. Though it often left him uncertain, he had vowed to never be so powerless again. Four simultaneous actions happened in rapid succession. The first was the drawing of energy from every possible source around him.

Snow became ice as it and the air around it became absolutely frigid in the absence of heat; light dimmed dramatically as it pulled inwards towards his person; and the mountain winds died utterly in an instant as he drew upon the kinetic energy that fueled them.

He didn’t bother converting the energy but instead shunted some of the kinetic energy to his left in an attempt to avoid his adversary. At the same time, Valerian wreathed himself in a storm of fire, light, and force. If the man wanted to hit him, he’d just have to make that as painful as possible.

It didn’t seem it would matter as the yasoi grinned gleefully, arresting control of his own movement with kinetic magic, even as he turned the now icy ground into an advantage. In a brutal strike, and with a laugh, the figure swept the tent pole through the ice and sent a wave of force flying through the cloud of sharp shards.

Evaporating into steam as it collided with the storm of magic around Vel it blinded him during a critical moment. Instinctively several barriers of force sprang into being around his body.

Then he was hurtling back through the air, the breath knocked out of him entirely. Gasping, Vel stuck to his training and clawed at the air. Planes of forces manifested beneath his fingers, and he redirected his momentum, curving himself violently to one side even as a lance of force–then a blur that could only be a body–rocketed past him. Regaining some of his composure, Vel managed to reorient himself just as his assailant was striking him square in the stomach.

The air left his lungs once more as the yasoi’s fist slammed him backward. Vel tried to swear, but no sound came out. He tried to retaliate, with daggers of kinetic energy, but the man spun the tent pole and deflected them before aiming a wicked-fast strike at his temple.

This, Vel just barely avoided, the metal pole ruffling his hair as it slipped overhead. Drawing upon some of the energy he was pulling, Vel converted it into a single point between them, but it immediately blasted apart. Flying downwards and striking earth, Vel tumbled a moment before he could bleed off momentum with magic.

Eyes darting about as he realized that he’d been thrown into the nearby grove of trees, Vel tried to sight his opponent. It was fruitless, the man was simply too fast as he darted between pines, apparently waiting for the first sign of weakness–or perhaps just a particularly amusing moment. Vel gritted his teeth and took a deep breath, closing his eyes. They wouldn’t be enough to help him. Focusing, Vel narrowed his attention to his surroundings, honing in on the moving goliath of manas and their gathered energy as it flitted around him.

There!

Vel released kinetic energy, creating a series of forcefields at precise timings as his adversary’s energy approached at speed.

Somehow, his timing was off for most either missed entirely, were batted aside, or simply shattered.

Vel’s eyes flashed open as his second spell completed–the backup plan–creating an energy-dense series of interlocking planes of energy. A thunderous [i]crack[/i] echoed out, though it was likely no one else heard it.

[color=gold]“Hah!”[/color] The man laughed, his improvised staff–the tent pole–having met with an invisible object at that last moment. Vel was already releasing all the heat energy he’d gathered earlier in a tight thermal beam. The yasoi’s eyes widened as the beam blitzed past their weapons and magics and landed a searing blow across his side as the more experienced mage turned sideways to minimize his profile.

He flicked the pole and the force in that attack was enough to throw off Vel’s defense and force him three steps back. The Blackguard capitalized on every mistake, his weapon spinning back into motion in a whirling dervish of strikes at Vel’s person.

Some he could stop or redirect, but a great many turned into glancing blows, his assailant’s manic grin widening for each blow Vel took. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Vel knew he needed to change tacts, but wasn’t sure exactly why.

His timing should’ve been enough, but for some reason, the bastard’s strikes just kept slipping past his defenses. He tried adjusting his timing as blow after blow came in, each from a new angle and with greater force than those prior. Then—during the tiniest of instants between strikes—Vel struck at the Blackguard’s weapon from below with a series of kinetic spikes.

Only one of them did the job, and the yasoi only gave Vel an instant to realize the strange discrepancy that had caused his failures to defend.

Temporal warping.

Vel’s eyes narrowed and he threw himself into the air with a pulse of force to avoid the yasoi’s next strike. In that tiny window of respite, several thoughts crossed his mind in rapid succession.

Should he surpass his limit, risk everything today and be useless in the coming fights? No, the Twins had to fall.

What could he do then, how to survive, not to mention save his allies if at all possible. He wasn’t fast enough to slip away, he had no talent for the schools that might allow him to teleport elsewhere, let alone account for the exact nature of his adversary’s attacks.

So what did he have?

His eyes widened slightly, then his face transformed into a resolute mask.

He had his blood.

For once in his life, Valerian silently thanked the gods for his father’s obsession. After all, he was a Dualblood and while he couldn’t risk overclocking his manas, that was hardly the only benefit his unique situation afforded him.

As if to punctuate his realization, a sudden surge of energy beneath him tipped him off to the Black Guard’s next move. His senses screamed, but he didn’t panic.

Instead, he reached out with his will and [i]pulled[/i]. Immediately he felt his adversary’s resistance, but for once it didn’t matter, while the Blackguard was certainly more powerful and more experienced, Vel had something that he didn’t.

Two mana colonies and the tremendous focus it took to micromanage and control them.

His will honed to a narrow point, Vel at once altered his orientation so he was parallel to the ground [i]and[/i] pulled energy. Shaping his draw into a precise cone, Vel parted a veritable inferno around his person as it erupted upwards from the ground like some fell god.

Still, the air was almost hot enough to burn, but he persisted nonetheless, reaching out his senses past the flames and latching onto the moving target that was the Golden Monkey.

The Blackguard did not let up, the flames turning from red, to orange, then blue. Valerian gritted his teeth as he felt the beginnings of burns touch his flesh, yet he did not relent, traveling down and through the column with abandon as he drew as much energy as he possibly could. That power became like searing, crackling lightning in his veins, but he persisted anyways, even allowing some of the energy to saturate the air around him as light. Then, locating his adversary, Vel abruptly sundered the Black Guard’s magic, not by coopting the energy, but instead by using a typically defensive binding technique, and his understanding of Chemical magic to convert the very air the flames used as fuel into energy.

The inferno guttered out, the sky darkened, and Vel unleashed his attack as he felt hesitation in the Golden Monkey’s casting. The Blackguard tried to breathe, and drew only the tiniest amount of air from his surroundings, revealing that Vel hadn’t just drawn from the air in the column, but in a vast web, creating an entire network of spiderweb-thin threads of air. Momentarily stunned, the yasoi nonetheless shot into motion, but Vel tasted the beginnings of doubt.

Unable to help himself, a tiny smirk formed on his lips, and then all that energy he’d stockpiled was suddenly–and violently–converted into two separate charges as he called on what little knowledge of the Magnetic school he had.

The air exploded in a single, tremendous, rolling thunderclap as lightning arced wildly outwards from Valerian, channeled through a vast web of conductive air surrounded by utter vacuum. The Yasoi threw up barriers of force, drew heat from the bolts, and evaded a great many bolts of lightning, but no one could escape the wrath of the heavens forever. Little by little arcs of coruscating light closed in on him and while they did, Valerian fled at speed, propelled by Kinetic energy alone as he flew through the air and rejoined his allies.

He knew he’d not won, not even close, in fact, he’d likely only tied up the Black Guard for a brief time, and in exchange he’d burned, bruised, and battered himself both body and manas alike. Still, he hadn’t boosted himself, hadn’t let the careful balance of his colonies shift enough to collapse. Still, as he looked back at his work he noticed a terrible truth…the other Blackguard had intervened. 

[color=#D3844B][b]“Fuck,”[/b][/color] Vel swore, but in the next moment, he felt the familiar touch of chemical magic and the particular sort he’d only experienced from the Ogauraq.

An image of something swiftly falling towards the camp, then an impression of space twisting, and an image of somewhere else far away.

Vel didn’t hesitate, didn’t think, he just redoubled his speed and hurtled towards the earth, before bracing himself and slowing to a halt just in time. Couldn’t stop all at once after all, ‘falling’ to one’s death was something of a misnomer after all…as it wasn’t the fall that killed you, but the sudden stop.

As he slid into camp, erecting barriers and slinging pairs of force lances and fireballs, he caught sight of his allies engaged in fierce combat. For a moment he understood the terror the patrolmen had likely been experiencing as he saw the Ogauraq–few in number though they were–tear both physically and magically through the Retanese shock troops. Still, they were outnumbered and Vel did his part to free up enough of them so that a pair could rig them a tunnel out of dodge.

Senses finetuned, Vel erected barriers, superheated metal armor, and generally unleashed a storm of mayhem amongst the enemy soldiers until a hole twisted in space behind him. Gritting his teeth, Vel’s gaze flickered back to the cage of lightning that was beginning to dissipate some distance away from them. Then he watched in horror–eyes widening, as that very lightning began to gather together and arc towards them.

[color=#D3844B][b]“Portal, now!”[/b][/color] he yelled, managing a few frantic disorderly illusions as he grabbed several Ogauraq with telekinesis and pulled them into the portal with him. Eyes widening further as the others leapt in after him, Valerian screamed out as an Ogauraq who was a moment too late light up in a conflagration of azure lightning a mere instant before the portal slammed shut behind them, spitting them out in some other stretch of wilderness nearby the capital.

Heartbeat drumming in his ears, blood pumping as if a dam had been broken, Valerian collapsed onto his ass, breathing hard and filled with a cold terror.

He hoped the others were having better luck than him.

Vel looked forward to finding out.