“You must be a terrible guildmaster,” I said. “Because there’s no way I would have lasted this long against Xilarion.”
“You’d have been my greatest student, Ethan Murphy lo Pashat,” Horix said. “Disciplined, focused, and talented. It’s a waste of your talent to hold to such a wandering path.”
“I just don’t go in for recreational genocide. Don’t take it personally, though.”
He summoned a huge Ice Spear with a jagged tip and threw it at me. I rolled aside, and the spear hit the corner of the balustrade. The two chunks of ice exploded in a shower of frozen fragments that fell away through the fading Toxic Blizzard and into the courtyard below.
I got to my feet and charged Horix. I let my momentum take hold instead of stopping as I reached him. I slid past him across the ice and swung the Sundered Heart as I went. He parried the blow with the trident but wasn’t able to stop my off-hand attack. A wavering spray of thorns took a chunk out of his leg armor.
I cast a small Acidic Cloud around Horix’s head just before I hit the wall beside the door and hauled myself to my feet. Horix dismissed my attempt at a distraction with a simple snap of his armored fingers and focused concentration of Smothering Mist. The elf turned to glare at me as he raised the trident. I ran for him, and he lowered the weapon to chest-height, ready to counter my attack or deliver one of his own.
I smacked his trident aside, dropped to my knees and slid beneath his weapon. Horix dropped his arm to defend himself, but he was too late. I slashed my flaming sword across his gut and slid out of range over the floor.
Pieces of broken ice armor tumbled to the ground in front of Horix. Blood dripped over his gauntlet. The elf’s body went tight as he held out his hand, and fire flared along it. He pressed it to his stomach, and there was a hiss and a stink of burning flesh as he cauterized the wound.
“I’ve led armies,” he said. “Stormed castles. Fought an usurper emperor on a mountainside while his followers boiled in acid rain. It will take more than that to stop me.”
I got to my feet and raised my hand to summon forth another cloud of acid. But my head spun, and my feet threatened to drop me to the ground again.
“Be careful, sweet man,” Nydarth said in my head. “You’re almost out of Vigor. If you keep pushing like this, the magic will devour you instead.”
The green cloud between my fingers dwindled and died. I raised my sword. Fire no longer flickered along its blade.
Horix shook his head almost sadly. “Again you show your inexperience. The enthusiasm of youth flares too powerfully within you, disciple. It leaves you before me defenseless.”
He raised his left hand. His palm glowed with fire again, and he launched a torrent of flames from it. His technique hit me like a flamethrower, a fierce and unrelenting spray of heat that brought a cry of pain from my throat. My armor melted and ran off. The balustrade behind me disappeared in a cloud of steam. All that was left of my outer defenses was a black layer of ash.
The flames subsided, and Horix stared at me, his eyes wide.
“How did you—”
“Ambidexterity is useful,” I managed. “Didn’t you just say that?”
“You’ll need more than a few cheap tricks to defeat me, acolyte. The ash element is weak. It will wither before acid.”
Horix whipped his hand forward, and ice formed around it. But before he could draw a bead on my throat, I let the power of water flow. My head spun, and my stomach churned, but I managed to envelop myself in a small Smothering Mist.
Horix hurled his acidic spears into my thin cloak of mist en masse, but I’d created just enough to make my corner of the balcony invisible for a few seconds. I kicked off against the wall and slid back into the center of the balcony as Ice Spears peppered the ground around me.
I forced myself to my feet, raised the Sundered Heart Sword, and gripped it with both hands. My magic tank was empty, but I still had the sword, and I still knew how to fight.
The last of my mist swirled around me, and Horix appeared through it. The remains of his Frozen Armor still clung to him. His face was pale, drawn, and terrifyingly focused on mine.
“You’re a disappointment,” he said as he thrust the Depthless Dream.
I deflected the first blow, ducked beneath a second, and slid away to avoid a third. My back pressed up against the wall at the corner of the balcony, and I realized that I was out of space. There would be no sliding clear any more. No skids past Horix to safety.
“You know nothing about reality,” Horix snarled as he battered at me. I wanted to strike back, but his blows came in so hard and so fast that it was all I could do to parry them. “You think you’re on the path to enlightenment, but you’re just one more wastrel bringing the empire to ruin.”
I swung my sword at his chest, but he knocked it aside and thrust the trident at my throat. I flung myself to one side and almost fell over the edge of the balcony. The trident hit the wall where my head had been.
“The path you follow is an illusion,” Horix said. “The Immortal Swordslinger is a myth, a lie, an idle dream for fools and those who seek to undermine our strength. You’re nothing but a vulgarian who will never find the true path.”
I slammed my body into the elf as Horix pulled the trident back. But I was too slow. He spun
