When the Earthen barrage unfurled, Caius fell to the ground with a thud, looking fairly battered with a thin trail of blood dripping out of the side of his lips. Fair recompense for the many bruises Duncan had all over after so many successful strikes to his body.

Gareth stepped forward then, his hand on the handle of his sword. The Imperial Guards who had come with Duncan noticed the movement and inched forward as well.

"No," Alexia told Gareth with an arm stretched out to keep him back, "Stand down."

"My Lady..." Gareth started to insist.

"He’s fine," Alexia said and reiterated her order, "Stand down."

She didn’t just say that either. She could tell. With all her senses trained on Caius, she knew for certain that he was fine. The barrage of a Fifth Circle spell hadn’t downed him.

Caius was on one knee and raised his head to look at Duncan as he wiped the thin trail of blood off the side of his mouth.

"What took you so long?" He asked.

"I will no longer hold back," Duncan said with a frown.

"I never asked you to," Caius said and unleashed his Mana, exuding the magical signature of the Fourth Circle.

While many in this crowd were learning of it for the first time, Caius had never gone out of his way to hide his Circle. Of all the things about him that he was keeping a secret, this wasn’t one of them.

Another ~Windy Path~ and he was going after Duncan again. What followed was a fast-paced alternation of attack and defensive maneuvers. Duncan launched spells of the Fifth Circle and Caius either deflected them or split them apart.

For a while, Duncan succeeded in keeping Caius away, maintaining distance between them through movement spells, barrages of attacking spells, and the occasional defensive spell. He thought his success perfectly represented the difference between their Circles. He even boasted about it.

"Are these really the skills you defeated a Demon with?" He asked and cackled as yet another column of fire overwhelmed Caius’s parry and struck him in a blaze.

But then, Duncan took another step and he heard the sound of a bell being tolled. He looked up and a purple bell was above his head. The sound Duncan had heard was just that of the spell being activated by his step... The next one was that of the bell actually tolling, unleashing a focused wave of Dark energy into his body.

Duncan reacted quickly enough to erect defensive spells but it was already too late. The Dark Energy sought the very root of his existence, acting like it wished to snuff it.

"Ah!" Duncan cried as he grabbed his chest. It was like a cold hand was wrapping around his soul, clenching hard to destroy it.

~The Reaper’s Toll~

A Dark Magic spell of Caius’s creation, and the closest he had been to experiencing the Divine Nature instilled within Dark Magic. Death was an aspect of Darkness and a domain of Nyx, the Goddess of Primordial Darkness and it could be invoked in spell casting.

~The Reaper’s Toll~ essentially bypassed the physical body, attacking the soul to give its target a semblance of what it was like when death was close. Or more accurately, to give its target a semblance of what Caius decided it was like when Death was close.

Rousing his Mana, Duncan fought the feeling and survived before the spell could complete its task. All that had taken a second at most and he was ready to keep running and maintain the distance between himself and Caius when he noticed dark smoke above his head.

A dark hand was above him now, clenching malevolently. It unleashed a dominant pressure, with tyrannical and otherworldly energy that kept Duncan rooted until the hand came down in a *Bang!*

"Ack!" Duncan groaned, successfully remaining on one knee despite the pressure.

Duncan realized what had happened. He realized he had been herded into a trap, stepping onto the spot that activated the Tolling Bell spell. Fighting that spell had then left him in no state to resist the tyrannical and dominating pressure of the Dark hand.

Still, he stood to his feet a second later. His spine ached, his bones cried and he was a bit sluggish but he could still spell cast.

"Impressive foresight," he told Caius with what sounded like genuine respect as he began to form seals,

"But how long will it last? How long can you hold out?"

And so resumed the barrages. But Caius didn’t run from them anymore. He decided he needed a dominating display to end this. Ordinarily, Duncan did have the upper hand here. He was at a higher circle and by default had larger mana reserves. Caius trying to go the distance when he couldn’t even shift and use his physical abilities to their maximum, was silly.

’I need to end this now.’

He opened himself up then, letting his Divine energy slip deep into his inactive muscles at the same time he called those muscles to action. His physical strength went right past the Fourth Circle and with his sword as a conduit for his magic, Caius just faced off against every spell Duncan tossed his way, cutting himself a path.

There was a reason Caius was using his sword. He didn’t actually want to cut Duncan—unless he had to—but in his weeks of training, sparring, and more, he had gotten very attuned with the weapon. Learning to use it as a Mage would use an Arcane Tool.

Channeling one’s magic through their weapon is expected of a capable Mage-Knight. It might have taken a while and a lot of hard work but Caius had joined those ranks.

~Windy Path~

The tunnel appeared and slammed into multiple flame columns Duncan had sent at Caius. But Caius didn’t travel through the tunnel, he just used it to fan the flames of Duncan’s flame columns, creating a massive inferno so thick that it blocked Caius from everyone’s sight.

Their senses were still trained on him though but they sensed nothing amiss. Wind and fire created the inferno and wind and fire were still all they sensed.

Duncan sensed an attack coming and his defensive spell was ready. Except the attack had a controlled instability that allowed it to phase right through the defensive spell.

The spell, of course, was a combination of a Fourth Circle Wind Element spell and a Fourth Circle Fire Element spell, creating an Erratic mixture that could phase through molecules and bypass defenses. This was a spell-casting skill Caius would rather keep secret and when he saw his chance with the flame columns, he took it, creating an inferno that was the perfect cover.

As far as anyone could tell, a Fire and Wind spell was cast. The fact that the two were combined to make something that should have been impossible or at least destroyed its caster, slipped their notice.

Even Duncan, who was hit by the Erratic spell with enough force to send him six feet in the air didn’t quite understand what just happened to him.

Just that, while he was still rising, Caius’s foot appeared above his head, looking like it was carrying the fire of the inferno he had burst out of. Duncan tried for some defense but that strange attack had stunned him and thus robbed him of any actual ability in the moment.

And so...

*BAM!*

*Crack!*

... Caius’s kick struck Duncan’s chest so hard that he cracked the sternum, sending him to the ground with the sound of a crash.

*Bang!*

Right after that, Caius stood over Duncan, holding his sword to his neck so that with even the slightest movement, the tip would pierce the skin and draw blood.

"Do you yield?" Caius asked.

The Imperial guards stepped forward but Duncan signaled that they stop and stay where they were. He stared up at Caius with a wry smile on his face.

"You’re quite something Caius Von Helsing," he said. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

"Thank you," Caius said with a mock bow and then asked again,

"Do you yield?"

"Yeah, yeah," Duncan said with a relaxed laugh,

"I yield."

And the entire Hall of Nobles applauded.