England.
London. Cotswolds.
Pale golden hills flanked me on either side, the last rays of sunlight dusting over foliage and leaves, painting them in a uniform greenish-gold. Pollen the color of amber drifted through air, one grain settling on my coat.
Behind me, fields of wheat swayed under a calm wind. But I kept my focus ahead.
Some distance away stood a castle, its stonework the same pale gold as those hills around me, as if the land itself had simply decided to fold upward into walls and towers.
That castle was old and sprawling, with additions layered upon additions. Intricate geometric patterns fused to bricks worn smooth by weather, all of it bound together by mortar that glowed faintly in the shadows.
What set this stronghold apart was the absence of a boundary field enclosing its grounds, nor any sign of traps or sentries.
Yet I could already feel countless eyes tracking me, some from insects in nearby trees, others from birds passing overhead, and most elusive of all, the wind.
It swept past me like any other breeze, but lingered a second too long, probing my internal structure and reading my movements.
Almighty Wind.
The Barthomeloi Family.
Green sparks erupted in my grip as steel extended outward, flattening and solidifying into a slender blade.
Its tip was vanishing, color fading as compressed wind sheathed the sword, cloaking it within the surroundings.
I glanced straight ahead at the path leading to that castle and swung.
Those wheat fields behind me flattened, soil and crops launching backward in an enormous curtain. Pollen erupted outward in all directions as airflow across the entire area inverted, turning like waves in a chaotic sea.
A screech of metal on metal rang from meters ahead. Air split where there had been nothing moments prior, and a single foot stepped out from a cloak of wind, the impact of metallic armour on soil vibrating through ground.
More followed, each footfall half a second behind the last in an orchestrated symphony, those vibrations escalating with every breath.
I kept moving forward.
They marched toward me.
By the fiftieth footfall, they had closed the distance, aligning into formation. Their collective steps rattled the soil beneath our feet, clashing against my own vibrations trying to map their ranks.
Fifty elite mages.
Chelon Battalion of Barthomeloi.
All wore identical crimson breastplates, though their weapons varied from swords to spears and whips, even enchanted guns, each one a high-quality Mystic Code.
A beat of silence.
Then they parted down the middle, and a single woman stepped forward. Wind swirled around her heels, her feet hovering an inch above earth. She halted at the head of their formation and fixed her eyes on me.
Her gauntlet came first, silver and segmented. Then a whip in her other hand, held loose, more like a leash than a weapon. Everything else, her coat, her long brown hair and the bow at her throat, registered as useless data.
She flicked her whip once in my direction. Her gaze was fixed inches above my head, as if bringing us to eye level wasn't worth the effort.
"Interesting... Most who reach my castle no longer have legs to stand on."
I took another step and spoke.
"Barthomeloi Lorelei."
Her eyebrows rose.
"You haven't given me anything worth looking at either." I said.
Those words made her drop her gaze to my face, and her pupils constricted, because to me, the world was already a cluster of speeding lines, my invisible sword inches from piercing her eye.
Nine different swords intersected to form a shield in that space, displaced wind from my blade read and answered instantly.
A shower of sparks erupted outward. Further behind, Lorelei was gone with a gale, her presence erased between one heartbeat and the next.
The nine swords pulled back. Fifty crimson breastplates burst into motion.
I swung at the nearest mage.
He'd leaned two inches back on instinct, and my blade cut air where his throat had been. Steel from a second mage clashed into my sword and pushed, a redirect with angle so precise my own momentum became a weapon against me, sword-tip carried rightward into another mage, her pair of gauntlets held like an open jaw.
And locked.
The third mage's arms didn't buckle. Didn't need to. Her stance was rooted, steel palms waiting for exactly this angle, this force.
Shrr. Something pushed air toward my left side, a pressure wave arriving ahead of another blade that made it, targeting an opening in my stance. Fourth.
Soil pulsed under my heel. Behind me. Circling footsteps, disciplined and accelerating, rounding toward the gap between my neck and shoulder where sight ended, followed by air being split. Fifth.
And past the lock, beyond the opening strike, further than footsteps I couldn't see, a spear tip. Pointed at the single path of exit out of this cage. Already filled. Sixth.
Six responses. Four directions. One dead end.
All of it inside one second.
I paused.
Then my weight went down.
Knees folding, spine dropping back, similar to a ballerina, and my sword slid out of that gauntlet lock like a blade being unsheathed.
The fourth sword arrived and hit empty air. My torso was already rotating on that bent spine, weight rolling off one foot onto the other, eerily close to a boxer leaning just enough to dodge. That sword kept going. Straight into the fifth mage.
Steel met steel that wasn't mine, two weapons colliding in the gap I'd left.
Then I rose, back straight, feet sliding.
Flat, smooth and backward, moonwalking across soil like a dancer on polished floor. One foot gliding while the other held on, then switching, then switching again, each slide pulling me through a gap the mages weren't watching, because everything above my waist said I was walking toward them.
My legs alone threaded between the recovering mages and those redirected blades still ringing nearby, body following an instant later.
I went airborne on the fifth slide.
One hand touched down, and my legs swept over it, tracing a crescent in air, the way a gymnast cartwheels. Two hurled swords skimmed my back, another grazing my chest. And then ground and sky flipped, rotating, upside down, until my feet found earth again sprinting, three steps ahead.
I dug my heels into soil, breath even, feet finally grinding to a halt.
But a spear was already at my throat.
The sixth mage hadn't watched my hands, spine, or shoulders at all.
He'd been watching my feet.
My wrist turned.
One jerk of the blade, invisible steel catching spear shaft at an angle he couldn't have seen coming, because there was nothing to see. The spear-tip shifted three inches. My cheek brushed past that, and I was through.
Past that lock, those blades, that spear.
Forty-nine mages around me. One spear mage still holding his weapon where a throat had been.
Nobody moved.
A thin line opened across my cheek, the kind that parts skin without depth, pale and bloodless, more suggestion than cut.
I wordlessly brought my hand over it, feeling its depth.
One second. Two
Then—
Lines of heat rose around my face, branching down my chest, shoulders and abdomen.
"Barthomeloi..."
A single finger traced from horizon to horizon.
"You have my attention now."
The world split.
***
From that day onwards, there was no Cotswolds. Only countless trenches running for hundreds of meters, hills cleaved in lines so straight they looked like someone had drawn them on a map.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[10 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Barthomeloi Lorelei]: Head of the Barthomeloi family and acting Vice Director of the Clock Tower, is known as one of the greatest modern Magi called The Queen or better yet, The Supreme Mage of Present Era.
She is regarded as the highest peak of modern magus, and is an orthodox Mage who does not possess any special magic but her Almighty Wind attribute. Her Magic Circuits, are special and a lot more powerful than normal ones called Blue Blood: Noble Magic Circuits, even surpasses the number possessed by the Headmaster of the Clock Tower, who has lived for two thousand years.
Her power has let her fight one-on-one with members of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors, and she has destroyed two of them herself, confident enough to hunt vampires even at the height of their power under a red moon.
She commands the Chelon Canticle Brigade, fifty elite magi handpicked to annihilate her enemies, capable, alongside her, of eradicating a Dead Apostle Ancestor and their underlings in under an hour.
Note: You can consider each Dead Apostle on the same level as Servants for those wondering.
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Hahahahahaha! We did it! Yaay! We did it! We finally found a way to incorporate Martial Arts, Dance and Gymnastics without turning everything into incomprehensible words. Most people can easily imagine this sequence I think. You guys remember way back I tried something like this? During the Gilgamesh fight? I just couldn't get it done then. But with more experience and deeper analysis, its done. Though still short, it works, I have found a path to write in this style and we're only going to get better from here.
Have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious day, everyone!