The soft earth crunches beneath my boot as I climb the hill. I always find him here after supper, staring out at the orchard, smiling to himself like he knows something no one else does. He probably does, come to think of it. Corinth turns as I make it up the hill, fixing me with his burning eye. There is something inhuman about it, his regalia, so small when compared to the others I have seen, yet more at the same time.

"I brought you some pie," I say, taking one of the two saucers balanced on my arm and handing it to him.

"Thanks." Corinth sets the saucer on his thigh, cutting a bite away with a fork. "Pear pie," he comments around a mouthful.

"Sweetpear," I say, plopping down on the ground next to him, taking another bite from my already half-eaten slice. The bite explodes in my mouth, the overwhelming sweet-sour taste of the pear blending perfectly with the cinnamon mom picked up from a local trader last week. "New recipe, I think."

My brother sets his fork on the plate with a clink, taking the saucer and putting it on the dirt next to him. "Tastes the same to me."

"Aren't you able to taste everything now, big, powerful magician? You can probably tell which tree the pears came from just by their taste."

He snorts a laugh. "Tastes like the orchard, I mean, like my life ten years ago." Corinth sighs, leaning back on his one arm, turning face up to meet the sun. "There is a little farm I came across on Jabis; that's a land far to the west of here, a few oceans over. They grew fruits on that farm, small purple balls that look like berries, only larger. The hottest damned things I've ever tasted, apt to burn your tongue off, but the people there drink the juice they make with them like water. I traded a few of the pears I still had from a box mom sent me once for some of those. You should have seen their faces as they bit into them, like they had never tasted anything sweet before. They gave me a bushel for only three pears; never seen people that wanted pears so much before."

"You make it sound like you don't like pears that much," I say.

"Not all that much," he says.

We stare out over the orchard for a while, watch as one of dad's new stablehands exercises the ponies. Our father is down there, made small by the distance, gesturing with his hands in big motions. Water from one of the barrels he lugged out with him rises like a snake's head, drifting slowly through the air to wet the ground where the most recently planted saplings wave in the breeze.

"What's it like?" I ask.

"Hm?" Corinth peeks at me with his burning eye. "They're called pfleida, and it's like biting into a soft pepper. There is a sweet aftertaste to it, which made me confused why they thought the pears were so sweet. I might have some somewhere…"

"No, no. What does it feel like to head out into the world, leave home behind, and accomplish your big dream?"

Corinth grows quiet for a moment, looking at me before turning and taking another bite from the pie I brought him. "Did I accomplish it?"

"You're the big rank five magician, aren't you? The man so powerful that even Lord Timmian finally stepped in to get the constable to stop harassing us. If reaching the top of magic isn't accomplishing a dream, I don't know what is."

"Neither do I really." He takes some time, staring out across the green and browns that roll away from us. "When I left here more than a decade ago, my dream was just to get out of this village in the middle of nowhere. I figure I accomplished that in the first week. After that, after having my ass handed to me more than once in the capital, I dreamt of becoming a respected magician. Did that too. Then I wanted to reach the third rank. Then I wanted to escape Ylithnia. Then I wanted to kill the dragon Mislanthrix for what he did to Haspa. Along the way, I had an idea, something that I never really said out loud because it was too arrogant to think. But I always knew I would do it, that I would be the one in a billion magician to reach the fifth rank.

"Every time that I reached that new desire, whether it was standing over Mislanthrix's body or feeling my soul unite with the world itself to make it past the fourth, it felt good, really good, but I don't know if I ever accomplished my dream." He looks at me. "It isn't as if I stopped wanting. Even now, I have things that I wish to accomplish, that I need to accomplish. Maybe that is what a dream really is, the road that you walk down toward some impossible end, not the end itself."

I smile, looking down at my pie as I cut the last bit of crust in half with my fork, snatching one of the pieces and taking a bite. "Well, I've been trying to figure out a dream for myself, and what you just said sounds a lot harder."

Corinth shrugs, lying back on the grass. "Never said that it would be easy. I would be careful about trying to follow a dream, not all of them are sunny."

Danfalla spreads out beneath me as the fight moves once more to the sky. With so much sand, I feel it all, like it was a part of me, the blood pumping through the body that is my soul presence. I am connected to it, supported by it.

As my hand cuts forward, a lash of silver sand thicker than a carriage descends, the air rippling around it as it lashes toward the monster disguised as a man. He tries to take the attack, fails, and is nearly smote from the sky by the steel-affixed sand. The sand swelling behind me, the mass of dark grains, huge lengths of writhing mass stretching off of it, their color changing into a pastel glow as my different affixes suffuse them, they are like my own arms, and I swing them like an angry toddler.

Slicing to the side, the emerald tendril cuts through the air. Again, Ferro tries to defend, but what else can he do? So long as he exists inside the range of my soul presence, I force him down, his body growing heavy, harder to carry with his aura, and I won't let him escape it. The emerald sand, infused with corrosive dragonfire, washes over him in a tide, losing its cohesion as it enters his presence, but none of its lethality.

Snatching away the sand that I lose control of, the tendril reforms a moment later, leaving a charred creature that looks more like a corpse than a man.

It is so difficult to remember that I am just a person as I open my arms wide, directing sand of burning and freezing dragonfire forth, to clap onto the man like a bug. The power feels godly, such an unrepentant mass of destruction playing at my fingertips.

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Since surviving the coffin, I've begun to understand the changes to my body that took place inside. The pathways I built, the channels running through my flesh that carry the power given off by the soul housed within my chest, flowing like a rushing river, magic moving and pooling at my slightest command. The inefficiency with which I used my power before is staggering, so infantile. Every mote of mana that I move now counts for three or four from before, my ability to summon it nearly instantaneous. I don't know if I was just weak before, or if I have merely become powerful now.

More, the magic given off by my soul connected directly to the channels is incredible. The magic pouring into me tries to outpace the rate I expend it. It isn't just the mana that comes to me, but also the revitalizing energy my soul gives off to stitch my body together, the invigorating energy it uses to power even the slightest movement. All of it races through me, and I can't be certain if it was connecting my soul to the pathways or crossing over the third threshold of recovery that is responsible. The one thing I do know is that it feels incredible, so good that my anger, the reason why I must kill this monster at any cost, tries to fade from my mind. I won't let it. I won't forget. This fucking creature killed Jess. They will all die for that.

The power of the throne racing through me seeps into my soul. I can see it, a slight influence trying to settle onto the rotating shapes that make up my internal being. It wants me to think that I am invincible, that I can keep this up forever, though I know that I can't. Controlling this much sand at once, pushing this much dragonfire into it, the mana cost is too great. Even with the gushing quantity pouring out from my soul, my reserves thin, the amount spinning through my channels growing less by the moment. I'll have to end this soon.

The lashes of orange and blue meet with Ferro in the middle. The concussive blast from their joining ripples through the air in a ring before cooling to a cloud of mist that ripples away. The magics meet, intermingling in the destructive dance of cold and fire. With my presence, I see him caught between the two grinding powers. Only, he isn't burned away, ground to bits. His already charred skin continues to darken into a steely gray as the sand around him sharpens and glints off his skin. His scorched face ripples, both sinking into itself and growing thicker as a plate of iron grows over what had once been eyes and a nose, his lips vanishing to leave behind a row of grinning and flat teeth. The gleaming points of blades extend from his spine, as his body swells with coiled muscle beneath the hardened skin, fingers extending to points sharper than any dagger.

Ferro flings his armored arms wide, the sand around him scattering into a myriad of dagger-length blades burning still with dragonfire. He stands on the air, no longer needing a sword beneath his feet to balance upon, the greatsword he has wielded this entire fight lying lax in his hand. Finally, he reveals himself for the monster I have known him to be, and he turns his eyeless face upon me.

Somehow, I'm not surprised as I look upon him, seeing the brother of the monster that attacked the tower all those months ago. It is powerful, but not as powerful as that one had been. Maybe one day it will be, but I won't allow that day to ever come. This monster dies tonight.

I call back my sand to me, pulling the burning tendrils of power in tight as we stare at one another. My magic suffusing the conjured blades around him continues to combat his own as he wages a war for their form. I relinquish my hold, dragonfire fading as they take on the gray of his manifested blades. No need to hold onto that. Let him pour his magic in. I've already seen how this will end.

"You've given me my dream!" he calls, his voice like the scraping sound of iron. "Thank you!"

He doesn't wait for my response, likely knowing that I won't give him any. Ferro bends forward, his legs bunching like the air he stands upon were solid. When he springs forward, the power of my presence tries to nag at him, to slow him, only managing the barest hindrance. I fling my arm forward, the emerald column of sand pouring forth like a battering ram.

Ferro doesn't move from the path of my attack, taking it head-on. His presence flairs around him, magic pouring into the emerald dragonfire as it washes over him. My control over the sand is once more contested, hundreds of spinning swords falling out of the stream, raining down on the city beneath us.

His new skin is not immune to my fire, not nearly so robust against the power of corrosion, it would seem. The metal covering his body begins to tarnish as he blazes through the center of the column, bits cracking as the emerald light leaks in. Yet, he doesn't turn away.

In less than a second, the monster passes through the length of the column, nearly making it to me before another tendril of steel-affixed sand cracks at him from the side. He turns on the air, swinging his blade into the hardened sand.

My eyes widen as the sword bites into the sand, the wall of mass cut in half by the sheer strength behind the swing of his sword. The presence around him flairs once more, the influence of the magic he pours into the steel-affixed sand far more potent than against the corrosion. It moves through the sand like an infection, changing the grains into hardened iron, each conjured weapon turning in the air and flinging itself in my direction.

Now I have to dodge, flying down toward the city as I drag my burning sand behind me, relinquishing control over most of the steel-affixed sand, keeping only some of it for myself. In just a blink, I have lost nearly a third of the mass I accumulated from the warehouse, the black sand that I sacrificed every ounce of gold in my possession to attain.

Ferro follows me, diving down toward the city as I lash at him with the three remaining tendrils of sand in my possession. He cuts at them with wild swings of his sword, burning as hard and fast as possible to keep up with my movement, unable to quite catch me. The particular block of Danfalla turns into a cacophony of crashing metal as countless blades fall to the ground, most sticking into the street, the transformative magic inside potent enough to slightly change the places where they land. The monster cuts away at my reserves of sand by the moment as he pursues, exchanging each strike for one in return, my flavors of dragonfire eating into him by the moment.

I keep him chasing, dancing on a knife's edge, never letting him get too far or near. My mind splits, my body, and most of my concentration upon keeping ahead of him as he whittles my defenses away with what seems like an infinite source of strange magic. Another part of my mind turns inward, counting, predicting.

It isn't until I am nearly out of sand, almost everything stripped from me once more, that I feel the instant come. I halt above a building that once might have been a schoolhouse, turning to face him suddenly. He doesn't pass up the opportunity, can't let it sail by. The tip of his greatsword cuts through my hardened flesh like butter as he nearly collides with me, his stab only stopping when the hilt presses against my abdomen. I can't help but choke, my body wanting to scratch at the monster leering down at me with a manic smile, visible vapor bleeding through his lipless mouth. His chest feels like a rusty plate as my fingers touch it, like an old slab of iron pocked by time, burned by endless washes of acid. Yet, I can feel it flex as he breathes, can sense the dull pulse of a heart somewhere within.

The flat teeth of the monster part to expose a dark chasm within that looks infinite. His chest swells beneath my hands, pulling in air, no doubt more idiotic words waiting to spill forward. The chance never comes. I feel it happen, the pieces falling into their perfect alignment within my soul, two runes connecting in some strange way as lightning arcs through my soul to touch them. More mana than I have ever conjured for any single thing pools into my hands all at once, and the dragonfire summoned a strange tan that I still don't understand.

The explosion as I unleash all of my magic, all of my rage, upon the monster in front of me blows the roof off of the building we hover above, the shockwave that follows setting the structure to collapse. I don't move as the dragonfire washes over the monster in front of me, the detonation of magic hitting him like a physical force. Ferro is flung away, his body smoking and leaving a trail of acrid air through the air as he falls toward the road below, crashing through a wooden shack and tearing up the road.

Watching from the air above, I see the strange dragonfire eat into his body, the iron skin of the monster turning to ash beneath its hungry spread. The dragonfire dies away as quickly as it was born, leaving the front of the monster chewed to naked muscle tissue, the iron plate covering its face torn away to reveal the eyes beneath.

With a shaking hand, I grab the greatsword impaled through the center of me, ripping it out of my body in a gush of blood. The pain is a far away thing, inconsequential in the face of the literal dismemberment this monster subjected me to before. I fix him with my glare, my collapsed soul presence spreading out around me once again, reaching and clawing out into the city around us.

Holding the greatsword aloft, a massive door of gold appears in the air next to me, swinging open to reveal the inner sanctum of my vault. I hurl the sword through, the vault door snapping and sealing behind before vanishing. My presence reaches its apex, spreading out into the city around me. I have almost all of it, far more than enough. Our small part of Danfalla begins to shake as I call it all back to me. I stare down at the monster, preparing for the end.

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