Ghostflame

The Undeath Resplendent was an ancient ship. Its planks had been wrought from Leylinden trees an age and a half ago, and they remembered countless battles no living thing did. It had born a multitude of names, sailed various planes of existence and served many masters. 

Three hundred and fifty-seven years ago, the Lich Cazaron had taken possession of it after wiping out the previous owner's bloodline. Since then, it had anchored in the eastern sea south of Dambrath, deserted. Its hideaway the open sea far from any trade route, it had awaited its next voyage in silent anticipation.

With the return of the Mosaic Sea to the Material Plane, Cazaron had decided to claim another prize. He had repopulated the decks with legions of undead and set sail. 

All this information flowed into Fuegan's mind. The scroll in his gloved hands softly disintegrated, dissolving into nothing more than residue strands of weave returning to their original form. The Undeath Resplendent glided through the waves a hundred feet below him, quietly parting the waves on her westbound course. If it were to continue at this speed, it would reach the major population centers in under a week, give or take a day. 

Fuegan reached out, and the mist tentatively started skulking up to the Resplendent's hull. Its wards were crafted carefully and thoroughly. Taking it out from a distance would take quite an effort. He sighed, and along with the air leaving his lungs, he surrendered his substance to the wind. It carried him down, through the rain clouds and damp air to the aft deck railing. He leaned against it, feeling the reinforced wood through his heavy leather coat. 

Undead were shambling about the decks. They weren't the perceptive kind, barely more than ants carrying out their assigned duties. Without sparing it much thought, Fuegan flexed two fingers and muttered a quick incantation, pulling at the weave, and wrapped it around himself. Concealed this way, it would take the higher specimens of undead or Cazaron himself to discover him. He didn't have much time to lose, but Zombies weren't exactly known for speed.

The ship's lanterns slowly shifted, creaking in the wind. Up close, it was a beautiful ship. Someone else would have been able to put it to good use, perhaps as a freighter or for port security. It sure was imposing enough to project a sense of safety just by looming in any given harbor. The planks were engraved with beautiful motifs of the seasons passing, both where they'd retained their original material and where they'd been fixed after battles over the centuries. Craftspeople had poured great care into it, again and again. 

Way back when, Khidell had often brought up that the discipline of Evocation wasn't good for much but destruction. It had been meant as a tease and Fuegan hadn't taken it personally then, especially seeing as it wasn't entirely true. The bounds of the schools of magic were blurry, but the consensus was that most Evocation spells excelled at channeling a great amount of weave very quickly, turning it into different kinds of energy. This could be used for spontaneous acts of creation, but that meant having an intricately detailed image of the object one wanted to create in mind, and molding the weave to it in an instant. 

That was why creating objects via magic was mostly being done with more time to weave signs and incantations to carefully create whatever the caster wanted, and that fell more into the disciplines of Transmutation, Enchantment or Illusion. That's why Khidell had always picked on him. Of course, they never dared to do so in front of master Grandstar. Not for his discipline, anyway. The master had a different stance; she would often compare evokers to improvisational theater and occasionally take him to a play, to make him practice. It was true, in a sense. Born evokers were talented at directing tremendous amounts of energy in a heartbeat, directing them exactly where they needed to be. In this, they were unrivalled, similar to improvisation actors were fantastic at manipulating the emotions of a crowd. 

With years of practice under the greatest evoker of possibly all of the third age, Fuegan had become adept at creation by Evocation. These days, he rarely got to use that skill. The Ghostflame interacted with existence in a fundamentally different way; preservation through annihilation. By removing the parasites coming in hordes to exploit the Mosaic Sea, he preserved its fragile equilibrium. Not simply entropy, but balance. 

The planks creaked as a Zombie Lord trudged up the steps to the aft deck. Fuegan squinted behind his mask. He was fairly certain it couldn't see him, but he wasn't about to take any bets that it couldn't feel the disturbance in the weave he caused. Not aboard its master's ship, anyway. He reached out, both into the mists and the weave. Time to test the waters. 

By rubbing the individual strands of the weave against each other, he built up heat. Then he conjured it from the ether into reality. The Zombie Lord vanished in an eruption of white flames that bloomed out, consuming the lower undead around the ship's wheel as well. He formed his left hand into a claw and grabbed the energy flowing towards him before it could scorch him too, concentrating it into an orb in his hand. The flames dissolved, their energy spent. The Lord remained standing, clad in the smoking remains of his armor. The planks, on the other hand, proved exceptionally sturdy. They bore no traces except for a slight blackening around the center of the explosion. 

But while Fuegan himself had stayed unscathed, the explosion had torn away the magic he'd used to keep himself cloaked. As one, the ice-blue eyes of every single undead on the upper decks locked onto him. Better to finish this quickly; While Fuegan knew for certain he could evade every roundabout attack Cazaron might have in store for him, Liches of his caliber were capable of working curses powerful enough to touch even the likes of a Runite. Or what passed as a Runite these days.

The orb of concentrated magic rushed forth from his grasp. With his other hand, he made a cutting gesture. The orb changed shape, flattening, sharpening. It sheared the Zombie Lord's head clean off. 

The other Undead fell into a charge, stampeding towards him in a single, stumbling group. For the sake of efficiency, Fuegan didn't wait for the weave to flow back into the space he'd just drawn it from. Instead, he called upon the mist. He spread his arms and lifted his hands, and a tidal wave of fog rose behind the Resplendent's stern. The mist that formed the Mosaic Sea's cocoon was incredibly energetically active, a result of Master Grandstar's last spell. The weave inside it perpetually scrambled for release, and he gave it one. 

The wave descended as an avalanche, swallowing the ship from stern to bow in a heartbeat. While it dashed forward, Fuegan opened his mind to his connection to it. The numbness was accompanied by the familiar sense of falling, but it was just an illusion. Fuegan centered himself in reality. 

Bright, orange disks of runes sprang to life around his hands, channeling and focusing the mist's chaos into something more precise.

Fuegan grew out of his body. He grew, both aware of his material body and one with the other. He had two hands and a thousand, descending into the ship and standing firmly anchored on deck. He embraced the foul bodies of the undead, some just puppeteered bones, others dozens of pounds of rotting flesh. He embraced them all the same. The weave inside of him flowed into them and coiled around the oil-like substance of Cazaron's spell. 

Deck by deck he filled, racing into the bowels of the ship. When he was sure he had spread into every last room, he clapped his physical hands. When he ripped them apart again, the mist came undone, and with it every last Zombie aboard the Resplendent. 

Fuegan drew a long, ragged breath. Less than a step's with in front of him, the undead toppled over and dropped to the floor, devoid of their vile unlife. The phantom pain of disintegrating his own body crept into his bones like ink into water, overloading his nervous system with the message that it was exploding. It would fade. Tomorrow, if he was lucky. He tilted his head, drawing more of the mist around him. Paradoxically, the numbness felt further away, but it soothed the pain either way. 

A lance of black matter bolted toward him. It was a sloppy attempt, but forceful. It carved a hole the size of Fuegan's torso into the railing. Countering a spell directly was an impressive feat. It was easier to just evade it. From the worn leather boots up, the Runite's body rematerialized a stone's toss to the left. 

Cazaron levitated above the figurehead, a monstrosity clad in sweeping grey robes. His piercing blue eyes, much brighter than his slaves', were only overshadowed by his overly pompous crown. No doubt spoils of some grave robbery. His voice was a slithering hiss in the night. Theatrics.

"Are you the lord of these waterssss?"

Fuegan cocked his head. "I live here. And I don't like maggots in my home." 

"This is my ship. Have you come to claim it as tribute?"

"No", Fuegan said. "I've come to kill you."

"Don't you know I cannot be killed, fool? I'm the mighty-"

Fuegan grabbed ahold of the weave and cracked it like a whip. The ripples spread across the ether in a blink, and the mighty Lich Cazaron ignited like a lighthouse as jagged lightning tore into him from all directions. His hands spasmed, trying to form a gesture of warding, but failed. 

The Rune Mage's tattoos glowed up softly. There was no need for further parlay. He breathed in, ignoring the searing pain in his chest. It was not real. With his breath, he drew upon the weave once more. His left hand straight, the palm to the sky, he strained the weave through his body. This theoretically bore a greater risk, but it also gave him greater control. And he wouldn't fumble like a novice. That was a risk for a lesser mage. 

When he'd extracted a sufficient amount of energy, he used the disks to mold it into the correct shape. Then he unleashed it. A radiant scythe-like stream surged forward, ready to cleave Cazaron's soul from his body. But in the instant before impact, the Lich finally shook the binding lightning off his form. He was good. 

His claws shot out, trying to seize Fuegan's rending hex. 

In addition to evading, there were three ways of outright countering a spell. Firstly, one could match it in force. Extract an equal amount of energy from the weave and throw it at the opposing spell. Cazaron was good, but this wouldn't be an option. Not with the amount of energy Fuegan had distilled into this particular spell.

Second, one could identify the nature of the spell and neutralize the kind of energy used. A Fireball could be extinguished by a far smaller amount of water magic. This was the technique war mages used; It was both efficient and practical enough to be used repeatedly in battle.

Third, the defending mage could force the weave to reassimilate the free energy of the attack. This meant pulling both weave and spell open, effectively unmaking the spell by making it flow back where it came from, metaphysically. This method was very complicated and impractical to use in battle. 

Cazaron knew this too. So instead he attempted not to counter the spell at all. He merely tried to change its direction. His ring-adorned fingers finally caught the scythe's essence. His eerie eyes half-squinted. He began curving the attack's path around himself, to throw it back at Fuegan. He was, in fact, so focused on the spell in front of him, that he missed the gleam above.

Another blinding bolt battered into the Lich. It shook his body with bone-shattering force. The scythe released. With a noise like metal striking glass, Cazaron went in three parts. They began an aimless, fluttering descent before hitting the sea with a splash.

From the duel's beginning to its end, no more than ten seconds had passed. 

Fuegan closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his witch-sight showed him Cazaron's fleeting soul as clear as his body had been. And it showed him its tether, too. Calmly, Fuegan wandered below deck. Cazaron's phylactery was an eerily pretty bauble, a gem the color of dried blood, suspended in a metal frame. 

Tugging at his gloves, Fuegan stepped closer. He laid a bare hand on the gem, plunging it through the protections placed upon the frame. They simply went up in flames. He took a moment to appreciate the gem's beauty. Perhaps given more time, it could have been different. Then he withdrew his hand and made it into a fist. The gem crumpled into itself. A moment later, it had ceased to exist. 

Then Fuegan exhaled. Once again, he gave himself fully to the fog. The pain subsided, and the Undeath Resplendent was deserted.