The Villain Professor's Second Chance

"Loud or quiet?" he whispered, expression taut.

"They already know we're here. Loud," I replied, forging the final step from caution to action.

He nodded, lips set in a grim line, and flicked his wrist. A swirl of dust coalesced near the shrine, forming a decoy illusion—a fleeting image of himself sprinting past. The cultists jerked toward it, illusions swirling around them as they raised their arms in alarm, a fractured chant rising in the hush.

I lunged in behind the ruse, blade slicing down in a clean arc at the nearest cultist. The robed figure tried to turn, but I caught him before he could fully phase into illusions. A wet hiss escaped his lips as his form collapsed, half-lost to ephemeral shreds that vanished on the wind.

The second cultist, an unearthly gleam in his eyes, raised a trembling staff. He spat a garbled spell that flared illusions outward, conjuring a swirling barrier of shapes that snapped at my arms and legs. Too slow. I drove my sword forward, ripping through layers of illusions until the steel found real flesh. He collapsed with a gasp, illusions shattering in tandem with his final breath.

Asterion, stepping out from behind a partially collapsed column, hurled a dagger into the last cultist's side. The cultist staggered, illusions glimmering around him as though trying to repair the wound, but he collapsed, choking on his own arcane sputters. A hint of pity flickered at the edges of my mind, but I buried it. Mercy here was wasteful. The meltdown demanded finality.

Without pausing, I fixed my attention on the shrine's runic center. Each stone hummed with an echo of the city's illusions, the lines carved in interlocking spirals. For a moment, I felt the raw power swirling beneath them—the city's distortion harnessed, anchored in a sickening synergy. If we destroyed enough shrines like this, the illusions couldn't rebuild themselves on a whim.

I raised my blade, ignoring the dryness in my mouth, ignoring the ache in my muscles. The sword came down with unyielding force, the metal biting into stone. A deafening crack echoed through the gloom, a resonant feedback that shot up my arms. The runes sparked in protest, arcs of violet energy skittering across the ground. My teeth clenched, but I didn't relent. Another blow, another crunch of stone.

Then it gave.

The illusions tethered to that anchor shuddered, like a rippling wave across reality. The swirling shapes overhead dimmed, some vanishing altogether. The ground quivered beneath my boots, then stilled, as though a fraction of the city's madness had been lifted.

One anchor down.

"Not bad," Asterion remarked, running a hand through his sweat-damp hair.

I glanced at him, noticing the faint tremor in his arms. He'd thrown a handful of spells, each wearing him down. I, too, felt the exhaustion creeping in, but we couldn't stop. My gaze shifted outward, to the next cluster of illusions where shrines might be hidden behind broken walls or illusions disguised as rubble. Time was short—my earlier vision of Kael'Thorne aflame still hovered in my mind, an unspoken threat.

In the distance, a low rumble signaled the meltdown's persistence. The city wouldn't surrender easily, but we had a path forward. Each anchor we destroyed would strip illusions from entire zones, forcing the cult's hold to recede. Step by step, we'd dismantle their labyrinth, carve a route to the heart of the city, and claim the leyline before Belisarius could, or before the Harbinger forced his arrival.

I felt my pulse thrum in my neck, harsh and urgent. This was no time to savor small victories.
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Asterion, reading my expression, gave me a curt nod. "Where to next?"

I inhaled, letting the hush settle around us, my eyes scanning the swirling haze for the next cluster of illusions. In the cold, steady voice that had kept me alive through horrors far worse than robed fanatics or ephemeral beasts, I answered.

"Noted. Let's move."

______

The moment we crossed the archway, the air thickened in a way that defied any logic I'd previously known. It wasn't physical weight pressing down on my shoulders so much as a shift in the very nature of my surroundings, as though reality itself couldn't decide if it wished to remain tethered to the here and now or slip off into another plane entirely. My breath caught in my throat for a heartbeat, the dryness and grit tugging at my lungs, and I forced myself to ignore the acidic taste that rose at the back of my mouth.

Asterion moved beside me, his footsteps cautious on the uneven ground. Neither of us spoke. I think we both felt it—a silent observer, an intangible force watching our every step. The city's illusions stretched out beyond us like a great, coiled serpent, waiting to strike the moment we let our guard slip. Beneath my boots, the remains of some half-dissolved pavement flickered, turning solid only when I placed my weight upon it. The rest of the time, it looked like a watery ripple of color that might vanish in an instant, leaving me to plummet into nothing.

What little was left of the walls around us seemed ephemeral, half-lost to the Tapestry's meltdown. I caught glimpses of crumbling stone that occasionally glowed with runic etchings, and if I let my eyes linger, I saw them dissolve into pale mist. Above, the spires that formed Kael'Thorne's twisted skyline pulsed with shifting patterns. At times, they looked impossibly tall, towering spires that vanished into stormy clouds. Other times, their silhouettes blurred, as if existing in multiple layers of reality. Some soared straight upward; others leaned at angles that made little sense.

A stirring at the edge of my vision drew my attention. Shadows flickered—at first just faint smudges moving along the battered rooftops, but then they coalesced into figures. It was disorienting the way they flickered between robed men and something else entirely. They didn't storm us with blades. They simply hovered near the periphery, letting the swirl of illusions transform them from vaguely human shapes into abstract distortions, then back again. Testing us.

Asterion reacted first, flicking his wrist in a quick, decisive motion that released a ripple of arcane force. The nearest illusion, which had been pressing in like a hungry maw, wavered. Its outline fizzed in a dull crackle, destabilizing just enough for me to drive my sword through it. The contact sent a tremor up my arm—thin, crackling shrieks almost like feedback, and then it disintegrated, leaving only shards of light that scattered into the gloom.

I barely had time to reset my stance before more illusions shifted, not so much lunging as rearranging. They jumped positions, some flickering to my left, others appearing behind me, creating a corridor that wasn't there moments ago. The street itself narrowed, buildings stretching upward as if to corral us in. I felt my jaw tighten. This was a trick, an attempt to confine us to a single route.

"They're not solid," I said, voice low and cold. "They're trying to push us where they want."

Asterion's eyes gleamed with a tense confidence. "Then let's push back."

He brought up his dagger, etching a brief pattern of power in the air. A gust, or something akin to it, arced out, slicing through the illusions that tried to reshape the walls. I took advantage, slipping past an ephemeral barrier that hissed and sputtered in protest, hacking another illusion that had started to reform. The swirling shapes collapsed around my blade. Each time, the illusions flickered, then shattered into mist.

The street flickered with them, as if the illusions had fused with the architecture. Walls collapsed in an instant, replaced by new illusions further down. But with each kill, the illusions weakened, their grip on reality loosening. It reminded me of swatting at a swarm of insects—annoying, persistent, but ultimately vulnerable.

I spotted a rooftop just ahead: a half-collapsed structure that, while not entirely stable, might give us a vantage over the block. "Up," I said, jerking my chin toward it. "We need to see how deep their anchors go."

Asterion nodded. We navigated the rubble, climbing rotted beams and twisted stone that didn't always seem solid. At one point, I placed my foot on a piece of debris only for it to flicker in and out of existence, nearly sending me tumbling backward. My heart pounded at the sudden jolt, but I forced my composure to remain intact. Indulging fear here was lethal.

Once on top, the shattered rooftop revealed a sight that would have unnerved even the most seasoned warrior. The city spread out below in a warped tapestry of illusions. Some streets coiled like snakes, others looped back on themselves. A few walked a wavering line between existing and fading into shadow. Overhead, spires flared with pulses of violet and green, arcs of distortion linking them like crooked bridges across the sky.

That was when I saw them: shrines. Dark lumps of stone placed at regular intervals along major crossroads or near fallen towers. Each shrine glowed faintly with spiraling glyphs carved deep into its surface. An anchor. A stabilizer. Like knots of some cosmic net keeping illusions bound to the city.

Asterion followed my gaze, his breath catching momentarily. "Destroy enough of those, and the whole thing unravels?"

"That's the theory," I replied, voice kept quiet, though the hush in the air made it echo with surprising clarity.

He let out a short, humorless laugh. "Not much of a plan, but I like it."