Silas Vane hit Sergeant Reeves hard enough to throw him through a stone wall. Reeves's barrier took most of it.
Most was not enough.
The sergeant landed unconscious beneath broken masonry. Vane stepped through the dust. His shirt was gone. Red sigils covered his chest. Bullets protruded from a translucent film around his skin, trapped as though inside glass. Behind him came four Children of the First Circle.
Two were wounded.
All were smiling.
Elias stood beside the anchor. Priya held a pistol in both hands.
"You were right," Vane said.
Elias looked at his left hand.
The tremor was worse.
"Frequently."
Vane laughed.
"I'm dying."
"Yes."
"So is everyone."
"Eventually."
"Not like this."
He stepped closer.
The anchor field reacted to him. Red distortions crawled through blue lines. Myrddin warned, "Foreign pattern contamination detected." Vane looked around the chamber.
"You built it without them."
"Without whom?"
"The voices. The Paths."
Elias said nothing.
Vane's eyes brightened.
"I knew it. You found the deeper way."
"No."
"Still lying."
"Silas, I rejected a software tutorial."
"You expect me to believe-"
"The option said manual. I selected manual."
For perhaps the first time in twenty years, Silas Vane had no answer. Priya made a choking noise that might have been laughter. Vane's expression transformed.
"You had it offered to you?"
"Everyone does."
"No."
"Yes."
"Mine never offered manual."
That mattered.
Elias's humour vanished.
"What did yours say?"
Vane hesitated.
"Choose."
"Which Paths?"
"Devotee. Seeker. Sacrificial Adept."
Elias stared.
The CTL adapted suggestions based on observed behaviour. Vane had spent decades immersed in blood ritual ideology. The interface had not created him.
It had validated him.
Then optimised him.
That was worse.
"Silas," Elias said slowly, "the interface is not a god."
"I know."
"It is not truth."
"I know."
"Then why did you obey it?"
Vane smiled.
"Because it worked."
There it was.
The most dangerous argument in human history.
Not belief.
Results.
Vane raised his hand.
Priya fired.
The bullet stopped against red light.
Elias moved.
He did not cast a fireball. Fire was inefficient against Vane's barrier.
He touched the anchor.
Lattice Sense flooded outward. Vane's defence appeared as a knot of stolen pathways wrapped around his body.
Powerful.
Chaotic.
Elias did what he had spent his entire life doing. He looked for the mistake.
There.
The left shoulder.
One donor pattern opposed another whenever Vane raised his arm. Elias shifted the local field.
Not much.
A tiny directional pressure through the anchor. Vane's barrier flickered.
Priya fired again.
The bullet struck his shoulder.
Vane screamed.
His followers charged.
The chamber became violence.
One lunged at Priya.
Elias shot him twice.
Another threw a ribbon of dark energy. The anchor barrier caught it and cracked. Vane crossed the distance between them impossibly fast. His fist hit Elias in the chest.
Something broke.
Elias flew across the chamber and struck stone. Pain turned the world white.
He tasted blood.
Vane walked toward him.
"Forty years," Vane said. "And this is all you became?"
Elias tried to breathe.
One rib, maybe two.
"Four days," he corrected.
Vane stopped.
Elias smiled through blood.
"Give me time."
Vane raised his hand.
Then the lights went out. Not the electrical lights.
The magical ones.
Every red sigil on Vane's body vanished.
He stumbled.
Myrddin spoke.
"Local field inversion successful."
Vane looked around wildly.
"What did you do?"
Elias pushed himself upright.
"Control group."
The anchor had mapped Vane's stolen pattern while he fought. Myrddin identified the frequencies it depended upon. Then, for a fraction of a second, Vale-1 generated destructive interference. It could not erase magic.
Not generally.
But it could disrupt a pattern it understood. Vane's body, built from dozens of incompatible stolen adaptations, lost coherence.
He collapsed.
Not dead.
Worse for him.
Ordinary.
Priya stood over one follower with her pistol. Reeves groaned beneath rubble. Security personnel flooded the chamber. Harcourt entered last, bleeding from one temple. She looked at Elias against the wall.
"You look awful."
"Thank you."
"Vane?"
"Alive."
"Good."
"You sound disappointed."
"Trials are useful."
Elias looked at her.
"You are learning."
She glanced at the glowing anchor.
"Did we win?"
Myrddin answered.
"Claim window has closed. Vale-One is recognised as a native-controlled convergence under protected development law."
Harcourt exhaled.
Then the CTL appeared in every awakened human's vision.
A planetary notice.
NATIVE CONVERGENCE CLAIM CONFIRMED.
FIRST NONSTANDARD MANUAL CLAIM DURING CURRENT INTEGRATION CYCLE.
CLAIMANT: ELIAS VALE.
LOCAL CULTURAL DESIGNATION DETECTED: FIRST MAGUS.
PROVISIONAL TITLE REGISTERED.
Elias stared in horror.
"No."
Priya began laughing.
Harcourt sat down on the floor.
"No."
The notification remained.
FIRST MAGUS OF EARTH: ELIAS VALE.
"Myrddin."
"Yes, First Magus?"
Elias went very still.
Priya laughed harder.
"I will delete you."
"Backups are distributed."
"Traitor."
Outside the estate, the title appeared on billions of interfaces. Within minutes, the internet discovered it. Within ten, someone had edited his old video.
I AM NOT A WIZARD, YOU ABSOLUTE MORONS.
Now followed by the official Concordance designation:
FIRST MAGUS OF EARTH.
Lucy showed him from the medical room while a doctor taped his ribs.
Elias closed his eyes.
The world had ended.
Somehow this was still the worst thing that had happened to him all week.