System Change

Edward looked around to see nothing out of the ordinary, just the person there to receive them. At this time, the teleporters were only available for a select few, and were shut down for everyone else as security measures.

Without a word, the crown prince took a step down from the teleportation circle. But, just as his foot hit the floor, he felt an odd magic permeate through the air. With a feeling of dread, he rushed out of the building. At a first glance, he didn’t see anything. But, with a little more focus, he saw them.

“Holy shit!” a voice sounded from the air, but soon, a young man with dark, almost black hair, and even darker eyes, and a pointed nose appeared from nowhere. “Damn, Orion! Your uncle was right. He came, just like that.”

Just then, another man appeared. It was an elven man with silver hair and emerald eyes. Instantly, the face of Sabrina Elras came to Edward’s mind. Orion? With those two clues, Edward immediately put together who was in front of him. It was Orion Elras, one of the princes of Indria, which meant that the other young man with black, no… extremely dark blue hair was Titus Sinclair, the crown prince of Astrus.

He still wasn’t sure what was going on, but Edward quickly drew his sword, and the four members of his party were all prepared for battle. With some hesitation, he glanced over his shoulder at the entrance to the teleportation building.

“Nobody else is coming,” the elven prince said, seeing Edward’s gaze. “All teleportation and communication to this area…” he gestured around him, and Edward could see a flutter of an almost invisible barrier set up around the building. “I’m afraid, has been locked off.”

With a sigh, Edward clinched his fist around the hilt of his sword, and a spark of electricity shot off from it. “Prepare to fight!”

‘Poole’ Edward sent mentally, and was relieved when he received a reply back. That proved that they could still communicate telepathically while inside the barrier. ‘When the fighting starts, do everything you can to escape the barrier and notify the king.’

‘Will do!’ the man replied.

But just as Edward was about to attack, Orion Elras snapped his fingers and a veil lifted, causing at least twenty more people to appear out of nowhere, the crown prince not seeing them before because his focus was on the two princes in front of him. I’m sorry. He said internally to himself. He’d led four of his people into an ambush. An ambush that used the combined forces of two countries to make. They were going to need a miracle to get out of this mess.

As quickly as possible, Edward sent what little of a plan he could come up with telepathically to the squad that had accompanied him through the teleporter. Surrounded by so many people, there wasn’t much of a chance. Even if Poole was able to break out of the disruption barrier set up by Orion Elras and get a message out, Edward doubted it would do much good.

Fort Belrus was already one of the closest locations with a teleportation circle to Clayton already, and it would take an hour, if not more, for someone who specialized in speed to make it to Clayton on foot. It was unrealistic to think that anyone would be able to save them. But, at least they could get word out as to what was going on.

At the moment, Edward was both happy and sad that the streets of Clayton were still mostly unoccupied because of how early it was. Hopefully, no civilians would be hurt because of what was going on, which made him happy. But, at the same time, it also meant there was nobody there to witness and report what was happening on their behalf. That was even if people would be able to see through the barrier set up by Orion. Which he highly doubted.

Edward glared at the human prince, Titus, with disgust. He’d heard rumors about the young man, and none of them had been very good. On top of that, the young crown prince seemed more than happy to string them all along and toy with them. On one hand, Edward hated it, but on the other, the longer the man gloated, the higher the chance of something going awry with their plan. So Edward set his eyes and glared at the man.

“I really can’t believe you fell for it. All it took was a portal and moving some soldiers through it, and you came running. When Ryven told us that we were going to be capturing a prince, I almost couldn’t hold in my laughter at how confident he was… now…” The man shook his head. “Now I just can’t believe how well it worked.”

“Titus. Hurry up, please,” Prince Orion said. Both maintaining such barriers like the invisibility one and the one currently cutting the teleporter off couldn’t be very cost efficient. “I can’t do this all day,” he said, but after that, a blue potion appeared in his hand and he gulped it down. “And these things aren’t cheap. If you keep babbling on, you’re going to pay me back for all the potions I have to take.”

Damn! Edward inwardly cursed. The one thing he was counting on had just been thrown completely out the window.

“Fine…” Titus answered Orion. “In that case…” The prince looked Edward dead in his eyes and showed him a toothy grin. “Everyone attack! Leave only the prince alive!” With that, everyone around them took action.

“Flood!” Edward shouted. At the same time, Pool broke off and nearly disappeared from sight as he tried to leave the barrier while Jones and Dent retreated back onto the higher steps of the teleportation building and Valerus released a torrent of water all around her.

Edward was fast, he it wasn’t just once or twice that he thought about escaping. His current squad definitely wouldn’t blame him, but at the same time, there was no doubt in his mind that Orion would have something else up his sleeve to stop him. So, instead, he attacked.

His armor appeared over his clothes, and a pair of vibrant wings made purely out of lightning sprouted from his back. He was at least more prepared this time than he was back when he fought Gerald. In an instant, he took to the air.

With both hands, he summoned a surge of electricity and directed it at the ground. He didn’t need to hit anyone with it, he only needed it to go through the flood of water created by Valerus and stun as many attackers as possible. And, to a certain extent, it did.

But as quickly as he flew to the air, Titus and three more of the attackers followed in suit. Flight was a rare skill, after all. One man had flames coming from below his feet, something had he’d seen before in many fire users who were lucky enough to get a flying skill. One seemed like he was floating on nothing, so Edward couldn’t really ascertain what type of skill it was. An elven woman actually had vines coming from her back.

She wasn’t actually flying, though, as her vine were connected to the ground, lifting her into the air instead. Titus, though, he was flying, and he seemed to be very adept at it. Edward, even being more than a dozen feet away from the man, could feel the chill in the air from the dark ice and frost permeating from around the man.

Edward always said that the wings he, and the majority of the rest of the royal family, used to fly were beautify, but the raven-like wings created by the dark ice, glistening in the morning sun, could easily compete with their own.

With a quick glance, Edward looked down and saw that the sneak attack from him and Valerus had actually worked on the majority of the attackers. The attack hadn’t dealt much damage, but it was enough to stun more than ten of the enemies for a few seconds. And Dent and Jones didn’t let those few seconds go to waste.

Two of the attackers looked to have suddenly sprouted arrows from their eyes from Jones’s attack, and Dent, in heavy plated armor, had summoned his greataxe and cleaved through one of the defenseless enemies and dealt massive damage to another two. Just like that, the ambushers had been ambushed themselves and lost five capable fighters.

Honestly, it wasn’t a lot, but it was something. Something that gave Edward a spark of hope that he didn’t have before. But that spark was immediately extinguished when he heard a yelp and looked towards it. It was Poole.

The speedy man had made it to the barrier. Half of his body was laying inside and the other half was outside. The problem was, neither side was still connected to the other. It was a gruesome sight. Edward could even see the red communication crystal resting in his limp hand on the other side of the barrier. It was fatal. There was no way to survive something like that, at least not for Poole.

As to what happened, it was easy to put together. Orion had made a move on Poole after avoiding the lighting and water attack by rising just off the ground on another barrier he created. Poole hadn’t… no, nobody noticed when Orion moved a razor-thin barrier his way at an even faster pace than Poole was moving. It didn’t even look like Orion had actually attacked with it. By the looks of it, he had simply moved it in place in front of Poole, who had run straight into it, severing him in half.

But while Edward was distracted by his man’s death, another yell came from below him. With a look of horror, he realized his mistake. Their combination attack had worked well in their favor, but it had also worked against them.

The pool of water, which the current of electricity had now flowed out of, had been frozen solid. Which, yes, was bad for many of his enemies, but more than that, it was terrible for his own team. Both Valerus and Dent had been caught in the ice in the time he looked away toward Poole’s body.

He could only watch on in horror as frost slowly made its way up both of his squad members’ legs, to their waists. With fury, Edward released a bellowing cry and shot himself at the culprit, Titus Sinclair.

The three others moved to intercept him, but he was seeing red. With small adjustment to his flight path, his lightning covered sword ripped into the leg of fire user, and in the instant it was in contact, he pushed as much lighting into the man as he could, causing him to fall to limply to the ground, his only movement being small twitches all over his body where the lighting had invaded.

Next in his path was the elven woman with the vines. At this point, Edward had already reinforced his body and attacks with Lightning Shroud, causing a rapid drain on his man, but it was all or nothing. The woman moved in front of him, expecting him to change his path once again, just how he had with the fire user, but he didn’t.

Instead, he flew straight at her and collided with her head on. She was able to block his blade for a few moments, but when his hand grasped her throat and he squeezed while pushed through as much lighting as he could into her, she went limp for a moment, stunned. Instead of dropping her, he took his now free sword hand and separated her head from the rest of her body just in time to be hit head on by the other enemy.

Even after being hit, he had no clue what it was the man was using. What he did know, though, was that he was unstable in the air. So, when he directed a surge of lightning at the man, he wasn’t able to dodge. That was when he figured it out. The man was a metal user; he had to be. With the way his lightning hit and flowed through him, that was almost the only explanation.

It also explained why the man fell like a rock when his skill was interrupted. Edward didn’t take time to revel in his small victories, though, and he was sure only the vine user was dead. What he needed now was to take out one of their leaders. His eyes fell on Titus, who, despite the loss of some of his own men, still had the same grin plastered on his mouth.

With the airspace now much more open, Edward rushed toward the ice user. He had to be careful, as, while water may not be good against his lighting, ice was a different story. Still, while Lightning Shroud was still active, and Edward was still in relatively good condition, he had to try.

But the blue-haired man continued floating there without a care in the world, his eyes locked on Edward. Then he cast a look at the ground and his smile widened. At the same time, Edward heard another scream, and try as he might, he couldn’t not slow down and look. Where Dent had previously stood, now there was nothing but a pile of broken, bloody ice and his plate armor. Dent was dead, that was for sure, and Edward was almost certain that there was no way they were going to get out of this.

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