Note: I think the character label is a bit conspicuous, heh. But Demon Realm = excuse to include daevas into the plot.
Hopefully everything would make sense in time.
Fail once, it's an unfortunate mistake.
Fail twice, it's carelessness.
Fail thrice, it's foolishness.
Fail four times...
Ever since Gyendal lost his undead immortality, every decision he made seemed to only lead to doom. With every failure he experienced, he looked back and saw dozens of weak links, and wondered how he could have missed them. The only conclusion he could draw from it was that the mortal mind was inherently inferior.
When the darklings tossed him into the dungeon cel, Gyendal barely managed to catch himself before he hit the floor. His hands already charging with mana, he twisted himself back upright just in time to see the darklings hopping out the cel's gate.
Oh, no, you don't.
There was no time to form spells. He flung out his hands, and bursts of violet light hurtled towards the retreating darklings.
Too late! The gate slammed shut mere slivers of seconds before the raw magic made impact. The metal bars glowed violet and shuddered a little, but immediately turned back to normal.
Before he could stop himself, Gyendal let out a frustrated snarl. He flung a fireball at the gate, followed by more fireballs in increasingly larger size. He didn't wait for impact before casting orbs of lightning and icicle shards after them. A dozen more fireballs followed. Then explosive spells and dark curses. More lightning. Ice boulders. Solid rock boulders. Fire again. Sand storm. Water blasts.
By the time the paused to take a gasp of breath, the spells had all fizzled into nothing. The ice and boulders banged and clanged against the metal, but they, too, dissolved away without leaving even a single scratch.
Gyendal drew a hissing breath. He would not let something like a paltry door best him in magic. Reaching deep inside into his core, he called for every last strain of power in him and pulled them to his hands. Underfall, like much of the rest of Underworld, was infused with a touch of Shadows. Darkling magic was no exception. Surely, a powerful Light spell could break the magic.
Gyendal thought through his spell options. He didn't have much. As a vampire, Shadows permeated him to the very core of his magic, and countered the effectiveness of Light spells.
As a mortal, the taint of Shadow has disappeared from his core. He had not considered learning Light spells even after knowing about the darklings ー another point in the long list of his many misjudgements ー so the only ones he knew were the healing spells he got out of that timid little moth when he had control over her. He would need to be a little creative.
After some deliberation, he chose the Blessing spell. Originally meant to counter curses, he thought it would have the best chance to break the barrier. He modified the weave of magic to give it a destructive edge. It would not be a gentle, ebbing glow pushing out the dark touch of a curse. It would be like the sun, scorching and blazing in an explosion of light.
He thought he might go blind when he finally released the spell at the gate. He was certain he could still see the light from behind his closed eyelids. He turned away and ducked his face into his upper right arm. Awkwardly, he shifted his shoulders in an effort to move his cloak to better cover his face, without breaking the spell's contact.
It wasn't easy. He'd poured all of his mana into the spell, but there was no signs if the barrier giving away. It felt very much like pushing his bare hands into a solid wall of steel.
Just then, he felt his right arm twitch slightly. He gritted his teeth, and stubbornly pressed on. His body was giving out, but he was determined to see that accursed gate blasted off its hinges, even though his mind was screaming louder and louder at him about how futile this was.
Both his arms began to tremble, not too long after. His head throbbed, and he convinced himself that he was swaying only because of the barrier was pushing back at him. He firmly planted his feet into the stone floor, and pushed the light beam harder.
Slowly, his knees began to buckle and his arms were drooping. His ears were ringing. His eyes burned hotter and hotter. Even so, he persisted.
He would succed, he would succeed...
There was a tingle in his nose, then, followed by a runny sensation.
Gyendal didn't need vampire senses to know it was blood. Instinctively, he ran his tongue over his lips to wipe off the trickling blood.
Dripping blood.
Life.
Draining life.
Mortality.
It was as though something inside him snuffed out at that very moment. The taste of blood, once a relish, was now nothing but a sickening, metallic tang. A reminder of this one fact: He was not immortal.
It truly dawned on him, then, for the first time in goddess knows how long, that death was a possibility for him. Ever since the Orb of Life restored his soul, he had thought himself to be aware enough of his weakened state to have a ready supply of elixir on him at all times. It had never occurred to him, however, that his body could no longer endure the strain of magic as well as it used to.
Dying was not a risk worth taking for the sake of breaking down a door.
A single, dejected thought flitted through his mind, as he finally cut off the flow of mana: I've failed again.
Then everything turned black.