Chapter 170: You leave us no choice

"Is that..."

"You have told me what I have done, and what my name has cost, and what I deserve. I listened to every word of it, and I did not interrupt." He spread his hands.

"So now you have said everything you wanted to say. What exactly do you want to do about it?"

Nobody answered.

"He is laughing at us," Maelis said in a hollow voice. "Ilsa, he is actually laughing at us."

"I can see that."

"He is doing it on purpose."

"Of course he is doing it on purpose," Ilsa said through her teeth. "He wants us to lose our temper, and the worst part is that it is working."

"It is not working on me," said Seraphine, whose sleeve was on fire.

"I came into your building alone," Leon went on. "I walked through your halls and through your doors, and I have been standing in the middle of your floor for five minutes with my hands out of my pockets."

He turned his head slowly and looked at them one by one, the way he had looked at them when he first came through the door.

"Ten of you. I am still waiting."

The air in the room changed.

There was no other word for it. It was as though every breath in the room had been drawn in at once and held.

The frost on the floor cracked. A tongue of flame ran up Seraphine’s sleeve and left a scorched mark on her coat, and she did not notice.

In the corner, the shadow at Vesper’s feet climbed the wall and spread across the ceiling like ink in water, and the vines along the walls rattled in their pots.

They were angry, all ten of them, and they had stopped pretending otherwise.

"Bram," Garrick said.

"Yes."

"Take Batnac to the far wall, and keep him there."

Green vines shot out of the pots along the wall and swept across the floor.

They wound around the drones that cradled Batnac in a thick, rustling cage, and they lifted him off the stone and carried him across the chamber, where Orrin Stoneback was already moving to stand in front of him.

"Garrick," Batnac said from inside the vines. His voice was thin and frantic. "Garrick, listen to me. I told you what he is. I am the only person in this room who has seen it. If you..."

"You have done enough, Batnac."

"I mean it! Do not..."

A hand of leaves closed gently over his mouth.

Above it, Batnac’s pale eyes found Leon across the room. They were wide and bloodshot, and they said, quite clearly, I told you so.

Leon gave him a small nod.

"Sorin," Garrick said.

"Already doing it." The thin man had lifted his arms from the pillar.

The air in front of his hands tore open in long, silent seams, and from the seams a faint shimmer spread across the room and sank into the walls, the ceiling and the floor.

For a moment, the whole room rang like a struck glass, and the panes of the dome went dark one after another as the seal took hold.

"It is sealed. Nothing enters and nothing leaves. Not by door, not by wall, and not by anything else."

"Good."

The old man lifted his head, and the weight in the air pressed down on Leon’s shoulders like a hand. The dust on the floor lay flat, and the cracks in the stone ran wider.

"Boy," Garrick Dole said. "I will give you one last chance to leave this building on your own feet."

"No," said Leon.

"Then you leave us no choice."

"You had a choice. You made it before I walked in." Leon rolled his shoulders once, easily, the way a man does before he lifts something heavy. "Go on. I do not mind. All ten of you, if you like."

"All ten?" Seraphine repeated softly. The flames on her arms climbed to her shoulders. "You really are as arrogant as they say."

"I have heard worse things about myself."

"Not from us."

"Then I look forward to it."

’He said all ten,’ Medusa whispered happily.

’I did.’

’They are going to be so upset.’

Haldor eyes lifted from Leon’s hands to his face, and for the first time since he had entered the room, the swordsman looked almost sad.

"Now," said Garrick.

He brought down his cane, and the world fell on Leon.

The air itself became a weight. The white stone under his boots cracked in a perfect circle, and the whole floor sank as if a mountain had been dropped on a single spot.

At the same instant, a spear of red fire tore from Seraphine’s hands, and a wave of white frost rolled from Ilsa’s palms, and a bolt of lightning cut across the chamber with a crack that shook the dome.

Sorin Kade tore the air open in front of Leon’s face. A black blade of shadow dropped from the ceiling, and the vines on the floor whipped up around his ankles.

Behind her veil, Lysandra Thorne lifted one hand. From the far wall, Orrin Stoneback ripped a stone pillar out of its base and hurled it across the room like a spear, and Haldor Wynn drew his sword so quickly that the sound of it reached Leon a moment after the steel did.

Ten of the strongest players in the Association struck at once.

Leon raised his left arm.

"Aegis," he said.

For one heartbeat, it was like time stopped.

Gravity, fire, ice, lightning, shadow, steel and stone arrived in the same instant, and they all met in the spot where Leon stood.

The noise was so large that it stopped being a sound and became a pressure, like two hands clamped over both ears.

The Ring of Aegis flared on his finger, and green light poured out of it.

It hardened into the broad green shield with the snake-haired woman at its center, and then it kept growing.

It spread past his arm and over his head and down to the floor on every side, until it covered him in a green dome.