SWNOVELXO Chapter 18: 17. Ambush
The alley was dimly lit, the kind of place where secrets liked to fester. Dust clung to the air like old memories. Leo Steelheart stepped lightly, his dark coat fluttering around his ankles, while Arnold trailed a few paces behind, lost in thought. The two had spent the past week frequenting the virtual cafe-portal of the great world of honour. Leo had used the sessions well, condensing his sixth bead, a gleaming, high-quality sphere of mana that pulsed with faint golden veins. His fire attribute had subtly shifted—now ten percent was touched by the evolving Flame of Honour.
Their walk was interrupted by a sharp scraping noise.
Arnold's pupils constricted.
From the rooftops and shadows, five figures emerged. Four men and one woman. They wore mismatched leather armor, faces masked with cloth soaked in dried blood. Leo froze. The air was off. Wrong. Tense like a drawn bow.
"Ambush," Arnold muttered. "And not just any street scum."
One of the attackers raised a curved wand. "Leo Steelheart. Your commerce choked too many throats. It's time someone returned the favor."
Leo's eyes flicked to the symbol stitched onto the attacker's collar—a black sun engulfed in flames. Recognition struck. Ignisia Trading Guild. A rival commerce that had once challenged Steelheart's rise and vanished from the market years ago.
"They still breathe?" Leo whispered.
"They're breathing now," Arnold growled. "Let's make that temporary."
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Leo's six beads spun around him in a tight, slow spiral. One pulsed, already aching from the morning's training. He gritted his teeth.
"Fire Grasp!"
The beads clicked into a right-leaning triangle, two at the base and one at the tip. With a sharp hand gesture, Leo launched a snake of molten fire toward the closest attacker, its fangs snapping. The man rolled, but the fire coiled mid-air and bit into his thigh. He screamed as his flesh bubbled.
"Cautious little rat," the woman spat.
Arnold stood firm, eight beads orbiting him in a subtle spiraling hexagon, each gleaming white like polished marble. He raised his hand.
"Mind Piercer."
His beads shifted into a line bent into a crescent, and a thin needle of thought-formed mana shot from his palm. It struck a second attacker between the brows. The man froze, mouth open. Drool slipped down his chin as his eyes turned white.
A third attacker, clearly the leader, roared. "Formation two! Corner and collapse!"
The ambushers spread out, one vaulting a wall while another climbed the stacked crates.
"Back! Move!" Arnold shouted.
They ran.
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Narrow streets. Boxes. Cracked cobblestones. Leo darted through the debris, Arnold just behind. Their attackers followed like wolves. One hurled a frost shard that shattered against a dumpster.
Leo skidded around a corner. "Gonna kill me over stones?" he yelled back.
"They kill over pride."
"Not a great trade."
Arnold grunted. "Shut up and focus!"
Another turn. Another blast. This time, a wide-arc lightning lash tore a hole in a wooden wall, splinters flying.
Leo growled. "Flame Wall!"
His beads spiraled into a loose circle, points at five nodes, the sixth bead resting above like a crown. Fire burst from the ground, a searing sheet of heat and fury. Their pursuers screamed. Two ducked in time. One didn't.
But the chase continued.
Arnold turned, beads forming a flattened rhombus. "Anchor of Clarity."
The spell snapped the mind of the leading rogue into painful lucidity—he froze, all illusions of courage stripped from him.
Leo tackled Arnold behind an overturned cart. "We can't keep running."
"No." Arnold's feathers trembled on his forearms. "We turn."
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Leo stood, drew breath.
"Spiral Ember Lance!"
Beads twisted into a spiraling cone, each layer rotating in opposite directions. A lance of compressed flame surged from his hand, impaling the shoulder of the lead rogue. The smell of burnt blood filled the air.
The woman shouted, "We have to kill them now!"
She cast a wide, unstable curse. Her beads formed a broken grid—an erratic, forbidden pattern.
Arnold answered: "Cognitive Fracture."
His beads formed a six-pointed star—a pattern of deep offense. The spell hit her mind directly. She screamed and clawed at her face, seeing illusions buried deep within her own trauma.
One remained.
He rushed Leo with two short blades.
Leo waited. At the last second—
"Ash Step."
His beads flashed into a perfect square, and his body turned into drifting ash, avoiding the strike. He reappeared behind the rogue and punched him in the spine with a fist wreathed in flame.
"Your people tried to drown my commerce," Leo whispered. "Drown in return."
The final rogue fell.
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Breathing heavy, Leo dropped to one knee. Four of his beads had dimmed—mana depleted. They would recover, but not quickly.
Arnold stood over the woman's body, watching her twitch. "Not professionals. Just desperate."
Leo turned over the body of the leader. The Ignisia insignia burned into the cloth.
"They were commerce. The old enemies. I thought I buried them under deals and law."
Arnold looked grim. "Some debts don't sleep."
Leo looked up at the dark sky.
"Then we'll wake them all."
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