Beetle Sludge
10. What Makes a Man Scream
Why him, he wonders. Have his exploits on the battlefield attracted the eye of the other side, as well? Were they intelligent enough to differentiate the aces from the masses?
Well, his parents always said his ego would bite him in the ass someday, and it's done exactly that and not in a way any of them would have ever predicted. And the juniors at the academy used to wonder what it would take to make Kanata Age scream, and now he knows.
Ideally, he'll take that knowledge to the grave and he's on a time limit in more ways than one. His days are numbered, and he doesn't know what will do him in first: his newfound lack of magic, this power he refuses to explore too deeply, or the enemy scraping away at his soul...
A distraction is what he needs.
A cure is what he needs, rather, but wizards don't generally go around surviving certain death at the hands of the devil beetles.