Diamantine (Weapons and Wielders Book 2)

by Andrew Rowe

  I couldn’t understand the words that followed, but I recognized the object.

  A single black feather.

  No, there’s no way.

  The vision ended, leaving me with one thought clearly imprinted in my mind.

  The Phantom Thief Ravenshade had stolen an entire tower.

  ***

  “So, could you see that?” I asked Dawn.

 

  “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you properly. I think the memory crystal is designed to block out my existing senses, and that interfered with our communication, too.>

 

  I didn’t like that, either.

  “Maybe if we practice with a few more crystals, we can figure out a way to make it work. Might be useful training for things that try to block my senses in general.”

 

  The question caught me a little off guard. “I...just like getting stronger, I guess?”

 

  I considered that. “I think it’s because there are people I want to help, and the stronger I get, the more I can accomplish in that regard.”

  That felt true — and it was true. But it wasn’t a complete answer. I knew that even at the time.

  Still, it was the best I could offer.

 

  I nodded, but the question continued to linger in my mind.

 

  “Yeah. Let’s go get some with more action.”

  I headed back to Lia, giving her back the crystal she’d given me, and got a few more.

  Then, I went to watch.

  ***

  In the crystal’s memory, I was running behind a dark-haired woman with a scythe. I recognized her immediately — she’d been in my waiting room prior to the first match. She held up a hand in a “stop” gesture as we crested the hill toward a tower. Without turning around to face me, she spoke. “Wait here. Don’t get in my way.”

  My view moved up and down, and I realized that the observer had nodded.

  This is going to take some getting used to.

 

  Dawn’s speech in my mind was garbled, but a little less so than last time. Maybe she was acclimating a bit. I hoped so — her observations would be useful, and I wanted her to enjoy watching these things as much as I did.

  My viewpoint moved forward just a bit, then downward. The observer was ducking down to observe from a concealed position behind a large rocky outcropping. That suited me just fine.

  As the scythe wielder approached the tower, a blast of lightning arced from the top, straight toward her.

  Her shroud flashed and she walked right through it without stopping.

  Two spear-wielders rushed out of the bottom of the tower, striking in unison. With a spin, she splintered their weapons, then stepped forward and grabbed a broken spear shaft with one hand. As the first of the spearmen retreated, she smashed the shaft across his face with enough force that I heard a crack. The shaft broke to pieces, and the spearman hit the ground.

  As the second spearman surrounded himself with a flickering aura of energy, she swung her scythe. The spearman jumped backward to avoid the slice.

  At first, it wasn’t clear to me if she’d hit him at all. Then, after a moment, I saw a hair-thin trail of blood on his cheek.

  A moment later, his mouth opened and closed soundlessly — and he collapsed, insensate, to the ground.

  From a wound that minor...

 

  Or something similar, like paralysis magic.

  I would have considered sleep as well, but the spearman’s eyes were still wide open, stuck with a horrified expression.

  The scythe wielder walked over, kicked him to flip him over, and ducked down to steal his flag. Then she walked toward the tower entrance.

  Another lightning blast struck from the top of the tower. She once again ignored it entirely.

  She didn’t move inside at first. Instead, she raised a hand and pointed it toward the tower entrance — and I saw a green haze begin to rapidly flow out of her hand.

  As she concentrated, the smoke spread faster, and began to flow out of the rest of her body.

  Then she stepped inside. A wall of stone erupted behind her, sealing the entrance shut.

  Moments later, I saw the green smoke emerge from the only remaining opening — the top of the tower. And I heard an awful, wracking cough coming from that area.

  My vision shifted toward the top of the tower just in time to see someone fall from the top of it. A man surrounded by a flickering aura of lightning crashed to the ground with a crunch. I winced.

  He didn’t move again.

  Seconds passed.

  More smoke emerged from the tower, heavier by the moment. Then, the top of the tower was sealed shut with a second wall of stone.

  The scythe wielder remained inside, sealed in a tower filled with poison gas.

  The vision ended.

  ***

  I set that crystal down. Well, that’s one way to defend a tower.

 

  Probably wouldn’t have tried. She seemed to be able to fill the tower from the bottom, which means the gas probably rises. I’d reshape the top of the tower to let the gas out into the air first.

 

  Well, if that happened, I could just disintegrate portions of stone and wear her down.

 

  I gave a little grumble, but agreed. Fine. I could just obliterate her flag, though.

 

  I mean, that wouldn’t be a bad thing if she kept moving her flags to it. I could keep obliterating them and decreasing her score until she was forced to leave.

 

  Too hard to say without experiencing it. I had a little bit of poison acclimation training when I was young, but I honestly don’t know if it would hold up against magic poisons like those. Your magic resistance might help.

 

  Yeah. Worth thinking about some poison countermeasures at some point. So, you were able to see that one more clearly?

 

  You up for another one?

 

  Thanks, Dawn. What would I do without your eternal confidence in my abilities?

 

  Yes, clearly, that describes my usual emotional response to things.

  I picked up another crystal. That last one had been pretty impressive. I didn’t think I’d find any others that showed anyone similarly dangerous.

  It was a reasonable estimation, but also terribly wrong.

  ***

  In the next vision, I stood behind a line of sword and spear wielders. As my viewpoint shifted, I realized I was holding a bow and standing in a line of other archers and o
ther ranged attackers. There were a total of twelve of people in our group — six on the front line, six of us in back.

  We were standing on the bottom floor of a tower, looking outward into the opening. As my gaze tilted upward, I could see a couple more people waiting on the stairway, giving them additional angles of attack.

  It was a pretty good setup. Most of the front line had shields. I was a little envious that I hadn’t ended up in a team with a solid formation like this, though admittedly, I was pretty terrible at line fighting.

  “Enemy approaching.” Someone in front reported. “Just one, but let’s scare him off. Archers, nock. Casters, prep.”

  I raised my bow and nocked an arrow. A candlelight flame appeared on the arrowhead, indicating some kind of magic on it. I noted other elemental energies glowing on the arrows of the people nearby — one was firing ice arrows, and another lightning. Another sign of excellent coordination.

  With the front line obscuring us, I didn’t see the single figure approaching for another few moments, but when I did, he made an impression.

  He was tall, wearing loose-fitting brown robes covering most of his tanned skin. His dark eyes seemed to gleam softly with inner light, but not a cheap romance novel way. More like a “glowing with obvious magical energy” kind of way.

  More striking than his admittedly impressive eyes, however, were his tattoos. Inky black markings covered much of his face, and similar lines traced downward across three fingers on his right hand to form a swirling pattern in the center.

  Even watching the crystal, I felt my jaw tighten at the sight.

  Those weren’t attunements. No, I’d seen markings resembling those before, but elsewhere. They looked very much like the seals worn by Wrynn Jaden, the Witch of a Thousand Shadows, designed to contain the power of an ancient being of catastrophic might.

  And, perhaps even more alarmingly, they also looked like the symbols I’d seen on the forehead of a fragment of a Vendria, a goddess who had been shattered into seasonal fragments.

  Back in my homeland, I’d fought against Venlyra, the Deep of Winter. Those symbols had been a sign of corruption — a harbinger of the Sun Eater had stolen her body and mind. Fortunately, I hadn’t been alone for the battle. My friend Lydia had managed to grab onto the crystal that housed Venlyra’s consciousness and utilized Vendria’s spring aspect to help free Venlyra from the Sun Eater’s control. None of us had any idea what had happened to Venshara, the Fire of Summer, the last of Vendria’s seasonal aspects.

  I couldn’t know for certain that the symbols on this man’s face were the same as either of the similar signs I’d seen before, but the possibilities presented terrible danger. I watched closely, hoping that a better view might help me narrow down which of the two — if either — I was seeing.

  “Archers, loose!”

  A sense of dread filled me as they attacked. They couldn’t have known what I knew, or at least suspected.

  Arrows arced outward, flying true at their target.

  At about ten feet from him, the magic within them ended.

  At five feet, they began to visibly splinter in mid-air.

  By about a foot from him, the arrowheads had fallen away, and the shafts twisted and withered. When they struck, they fell harmlessly to the ground, nothing but shattered sticks.

  “Mages, bombard!”

  The three other ranged attackers were using spells, rather than arrows. A blast of flame leapt out from one caster’s hands, only to erupt into smoke and vanish as it came close. A jet of ice melted in mid-air, leaving only a puddle on the ground in front of the advancing figure.

  The lightning from the last mage diminished as it approached, but still struck, leaving a sizzling hole in the approaching man’s robes. His skin beneath it was blackened, but he showed no sign of pain.

  He simply walked forward, slowly raising a single hand — and then clenching it into a fist.

  The tower trembled. Dust began to fall from the ceiling.

  My gaze shifted upward. For a moment, I believed he’d caused an earthquake.

  The commanding officer’s voice billowed out from the front. “Front line, adva—”

  And then it happened, all at once.

  The stone around us creaked, as if exhaling a dying breath.

  And then the tower’s stone came apart, as if ten thousand years of erosion had worn it away in a single heartbeat.

  In a moment, the tower came down upon us.

  Not as stone, but as sand.

  Some of those around reacted with admirable speed. As the tower collapsed, I saw someone raise a bubble-like barrier around a few people in the front line, but my viewpoint wasn’t close enough to be within it.

  Instead, I raised my hands to cover my head and neck. It wasn’t a bad instinct. In spite of the change in form, the upper floors of the collapsing tower had to weigh tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even being crushed by a small fraction of that weight was a potential danger.

  The impact hit so hard I almost felt it, in spite of the memory being incapable of conveying actual force. My viewpoint jarred sharply downward as the incredible pressure of the sand smashed me into the ground.

  Well, that answers one question. I don’t feel pain from things that happen in these memories. That’s fortunate, because that looked like it really hurt.

  For several seconds, there was only darkness. No sound, no vision. And, without feeling, I couldn’t even tell if my viewpoint had lost consciousness.

  Tense heartbeats passed, my vision shifted, showing a one-eyed view of the area. I’d burst part-way through the newly-formed sand dune, and one of the front-line fighters was nearby, his hands moving air currents to push the sand out of the way and unbury me.

  I heard my viewpoint cough, then give a mumbled “thanks” in Edrian — but there was little time to celebrate.

  As my view tilted to the left, I saw the strange man still walking closer to the tower, showing no signs of hurry.

  Two of the remaining front-line fighters — ones that had been shielded by the bubble spell — charged him.

  I admired their valor, but I knew they’d made a terrible mistake.

  When one of them came in with a slice with a glimmering sword, the dark-marked man grabbed the weapon by the blade. It wasn’t a motion of perfect skill or incredible speed, and the sword cut deeply into his skin — but he appeared completely unbothered by the wound.

  In only a moment, I saw the glimmering aura around the sword flicker and die. Then the blade turned red with rust — and, a moment later, snapped in twain as the dark-marked man twisted his wrist.

  As the sword wielder stumbled backward, the dark-marked man took a blow to the shoulder with a mace. I heard the crack of breaking bone.

  Still, this prompted not the slightest hint of discomfort.

  He turned toward the mace wielder, who was savvy enough to pull his mace back before it could be grabbed. Then he flicked a finger and spoke a single word in a hollow voice: “Repayment.”

  The agonized scream that came from the mace wielder was so loud that I couldn’t hear what was happening, but I saw it. His weapon arm snapped, not just in one place, but a dozen at once.

  It was disturbing on multiple levels. Not just because of the awfulness of the damage, but because the human body was naturally resistant to magic. Bypassing both that natural resistance and a shroud without even making physical contact...that required a colossal amount of magical power, on a scale I wasn’t sure I’d ever witnessed before. Doing it with such casual ease...well, I won’t say I was frightened, but I was certainly concerned.

  When the sword wielder saw what had happened, he did the sensible thing and began an immediate retreat, never taking his eyes off his foe.

  The mace wielder fell, writhing and screaming, to the dirt. The dark-marked man ignored the mace wielder entirely, advancing on the swordsman. Not quickly, just one step at a time.

  The swordsman pulled a knife from his belt, raising it
into a guarding gesture. His shroud flickered, then appeared to solidify around him, presumably indicating the activation of some kind of defensive spell.

  The dark-marked man made a ‘tsk’ sound, then a sweeping gesture with his finger.

  A hair-line cut appeared across the barrier, as if it had sliced with an invisible blade. Then the dark-haired man pointed downward, and the ground beneath the swordsman crumbled.

  The swordsman dropped as a crater appeared in the ground beneath him. He hit the ground hard, but swiftly got back to his feet.

  The dark-marked man advanced.

  The swordsman hurled his knife. It embedded in the dark-marked man’s chest.

  The dark-marked man looked downward, frowning. I watched as the metal of the dagger’s hilt tarnished and the leather on the grip rotted. Then, he brought a hand downward, snapping the hilt off of the blade, and wrenched the blade — now covered in rust and blood — out with two fingers.

  The swordsman turned and ran. The ground beneath him, however, began to crumble with every step, and the crater they stood in continued to widen.

  The dark-marked man walked closer, unaffected by the crumbling ground. And as the swordsman continued to try to flee, the ground continued to abandon him.

  One of the archers, apparently recovered, fired a shot — but the arrow simply warped and decomposed in mid-air, just as before.

  I had a growing ache in my chest as I understood the type of sorcery I was seeing, and my mind raced through the horrifying implications.

  Another of the front-line fighters reached the edge of the growing pit, reaching down with a hand to offer it to the fleeing swordsman. For a moment, I thought that with help, the swordsman might escape. The dark-marked man had demonstrated no urgency.

  But as hope grew in my heart, it was just as quickly extinguished.

  “Impertinent.”

  The swordsman’s reaching arm snapped. He screamed, falling back into the pit.

  Then the dark-marked man walked to him, grabbing the still-screaming swordsman and flipping him over.

  “Two wounds inflicted.” He grabbed the swordsman’s other arm. “Two wounds returned.”