Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 28: Librarians

Toren Daen

Karsien settled into a stance, beckoning me forward. His confidence made me wary, but I pressed on anyway.

With mana-enhanced speed, I lashed a fist out toward him in a jab. Karsien slipped the punch with supernatural agility, but I had expected that. He crouched slightly, a hand raised to ward off my attack. Capitalizing on this opening, a flare of white began to shiver into existence near the striker's abdomen, poised to deliver a similar gut blow as I had given to Naereni. He wouldn't be able to block it with his arm, as that was busy turning my punch away.

I was ready to follow up after the eventual blow. After my telekinesis impacted him, I'd follow up with a kick to the abdomen again. Karsien didn't have a mana shroud that I could see, meaning my attack would hit flesh. A dozen other possibilities flashed in my mind as a second passed by.

Instead of that happening, however, Karsien's knee began to churn with water. He raised it high, smacking through my still-forming telekinetic push before it could fully coalesce. The mana shattered into a thousand shards, shocking me and causing me to pull back. The only other time my telekinesis had been shattered was by...

The Rat tilted his head, a mocking smirk on his face. "Well, Toren? I'm waiting for you to actually attack me," he said.

Unnerved, I instead conjured a few small fireballs around me. They arced toward the waiting Karsien, who burst into a puff of mist as my attack hit.

Water vapor spread around the small arena, twisting and curling over the smooth stone. I shifted in place, wary of what was next. My senses were dampened in the midst of the mist, similar to what happened when the Unseen World eclipsed my senses.

I'll have to get rid of the mists, then, I thought.

Deciding to take matters into my own hand, I focused for several precious seconds, then pushed outward with an unfocused wave of flame. It sizzled where it contacted the mist, dispersing it wherever the two intertwined.

I suddenly became aware of an attack hurtling toward me, whatever the mist had done to disturb my senses abruptly lifted. I spun, a coating of flame over my forearm as I swung my hand through whatever neared me.

My hand seared straight through Karsien, neatly cutting through his torso. I felt a momentary panic before I registered the lack of sensation. Where my hand cut through, a curtain of mist billowed out.

A clone?! There was no resistance as my attack whiffed through, only light dampness on my skin and a cool, tingling sensation where the mist touched my skin. The illusory clone of Karsien exploded in water vapor after it was bisected, the same sense-dampening effect multiplied tenfold when it coated me so close.

I pushed out with telekinesis, trying to move across the ground. I knew instinctively that another attack was coming, but my telekinetic push never connected with the ground. Instead, a boot coalesced out of the gloom and slammed into the white mana, breaking it once more.

But that alerted me to the true body's position. Karsien could create clones of mist, but they had no physical presence. I threw a grenade of sound toward the location I had seen the boot but was surprised when the figure blurred.

I detonated my sound grenade early, realizing I didn't have much time. Mist obscured much of my vision, and I didn't have the focus to release another wave of flame around me. That wasn't one of my template spells, after all.

My grenade blew a neat gap into the mist, but it slowly sifted back in. But my attack had failed anyway. A bare outline of a man neatly pirouetted around the explosion, closing the distance with unnatural speed and grace. I backpedaled as best I could, trying to escape. I hurled a few fireballs his way, but my aim was off. The mist obscured my senses too much, and my opponent was a bare outline in the room.