Weaver's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The training done, Weaver stepped onto the cottage steps. The enslaved came in ragged lines across the field. Hundreds of them, eyes blank, weapons raised. Behind Weaver, Kaelthas Shadow gripped his own blade. "There are too many," Kaelthas said. "We fight here?" Weaver nodded. "We stand. But not the way you think." Weaver felt Raphael stir again. The ability had given a hundred thousand hours of skill in minutes. Now it opened wider. Time bent. The world slowed to nothing. Weaver dropped into a second training, longer this time, deeper. Fifteen thousand hours passed inside a single breath. In that space Weaver practiced one thing over and over: control. Not just the sword. The power itself, the god-fire that still burned wild in every vein. Inside the simulation, Weaver learned to hold that power like a held breath. To aim it. To release it clean. A shadow moved through those long hours, a young dragon with dark velvet scales and violet eyes, teaching Weaver to bend shadow the way it did. When the fifteen thousand hours ended, Weaver opened both eyes in the real field, and no time had passed at all. The enslaved were fifty paces out now. Kaelthas raised his weapon. "Whatever you're doing, do it." Weaver reached for the young dragon's gift. Shadow poured out from Weaver's feet, spread across the whole field, and touched every enslaved mind at once. Weaver pushed a single command through the dark. It struck all of them together. The mass mind-break hit like a wave. Every blank face jerked. Chains that had held them cracked all at once. The backlash lifted Weaver off the ground. Power climbed past divine into something with no name. Weaver's blade shifted to its spiritual edge on its own, hungry now. Weaver swung once through the air. The single stroke cut every chain still standing in the field. The enslaved dropped their weapons. One by one their eyes cleared. They looked at their own hands, then at each other, then at Weaver, who hovered above them wrapped in shadow and light. Kaelthas lowered his sword slowly. "You freed all of them. In one cut." His voice shook the way it had the night Weaver freed him. "Every mind for miles." Weaver set both feet back on the ground. The freed people knelt in the grass, weeping, breathing, alive. The archmage's army was gone. His slaves were now Weaver's living proof. But Weaver felt it happen from far off. The archmage felt every chain snap at once. A cold pressure pressed against Weaver's mind, testing, measuring. It found no weakness and pulled back. "He knows now," Weaver said. "Not just where we are. What I can do." Weaver looked toward the tower on the horizon. "He won't send slaves again. Next time he comes himself." Kaelthas stepped beside Weaver. "Then we go to him." Weaver nodded. The war had changed. The archmage had lost his army in one stroke, and Weaver had become the thing he most feared. Weaver sends a shadow clone to the arch mage and is able to usurp his ability and devour his level until he’s level 5.