“It’s cool, Zeke. He probably couldn’t handle the damage I’d cause anyway.” Yes, I shouted in my mind. Bokaj swaggered forward to take the arrow carefully.
“You think you could even penetrate my scales, tiny Elf?” Winterheart chuckled, and ice shards fell from his chin and shattered on the ground.
“Guess we’ll never know.” He sighed and looked at the Dragon then back to me. “It’s okay for people to be scared, man. Judgment free zone with us.”
There was a dangerous rumble from Winterheart who stood as large as he could. “Strike me, puny mortal, that I might laugh at your attempt.”
Bokaj just smirked at me, then as humbly as he could, nocked the arrow and aimed for the Dragon’s chest. He loosed, and it streamed off, invisible the second he let it go. It struck true, and it slid between the scales and slammed home. At impact, you could see that the spell was released on the target to some effect before the projectile turned to cinders and fell away. Winterheart took the damage stoically and held his head high. Rightfully so, that was no easy spell to take, and he had barely blinked at it. That went a long way to show how much health he had and how far we needed to go in order to stand a chance against an Ancient Dragon.
He eyed me and Bokaj a moment and nodded before settling back down. “Well done.”
We high-fived, and then we heard, “It tickled.”
That motherfu–stop. I controlled my thoughts and refocused on my task.
After about another hour, I managed to create the five arrows I really wanted. One of the Call Lightning arrows, three Fireball arrows, and the hardest one which was my newest spell. It was hard to let go of the mana, but oh well. It may come in handy. Who knew how much firepower we would need to take this bastard and whatever forces he had amassed.
I gave them to an excited Bokaj who slipped them into his inventory rather than this quiver. Just to be safe, he assured me. I smiled and threw a piece of meat up to Kayda as she had grown bored of trying to play with the White Dragon who seemed only interested in talk. She was a bird of action, and I could appreciate that. Balmur approached me about maybe enchanting some of his throwing knives to hold spells. He seemed less crazy about it when I told him that the spell could ruin his weapons upon use.
We waited in amicable silence after that. Maebe sat next to me and ate small bites, chewed methodically, and swallowed.
“You okay?” I asked quietly. She looked up at me, and she smiled sadly.
“I will miss my new friend,” she admitted. “I know you have to go, and I know that you have a mission. I also know that we have only just met, but you have been one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. The few conversations we’ve had have been insightful, and I think I will miss them as well.”
She looked around the throne room as if for the first time. “This… emotion is foreign to me. Is it always like this? Friendship that is?”
I smiled back at her gently. “It can be hard to tell a friend goodbye. Especially if you feel like they are a good one. I’m going to admit there are times that you scare the absolute hell out of me. You are so strong and feral. It’s terrifying, but at the same time, you are inquisitive and capable of feeling things that to others are so strange that they don’t give it a chance. I like our conversations, and if I’m being honest, I’ll miss those, too.”
She nodded slowly and quietly.
“I know you don’t mean to frighten me. I respect that,” I continued. “I’m proud to have someone so strong and amazing as my friend. I just hope I can make you as proud for you to be mine. Thank you for being my friend, Mae.”
She blinked at me, then smiled softly. Maebe stood and clapped her hands in the air, and an Elven servant rushed into the room. The queen spoke to her for a moment before the she sped off out the door once more.
“Zekiel Erebos, stand,” Maebe ordered me, her tone soft but firm.
I stood in front of her, genuinely confused, but I trusted her.
My friends stood and gathered close enough to be within easy reach.
“As you have asked for nothing more than the boon of my friendship where others would have sought power, standing, wealth, or all three, I see fit to give you something better. Kneel, please.”
I knelt in front of her and looked at her face.
“To you, I bestow the stars.” She pulled an ornate dagger from the small of her back. I first noticed it when I was following her this morning and wondered how long she had been carrying it.
I heard Winterheart’s head lift from the floor swiftly, but I didn’t look away from Maebe. I had to admit the dagger made me a little nervous.
She slipped the blade across her palm, and dripped the pooling black blood onto my forehead. I was instantly even less comfortable with all of this. I closed my eyes and just barely won against the urge to wipe it away. Then I felt it begin to warm until it was hotter than I could bare, and I brought my hand up to the spot and felt the sticky blood on my middle fingertip. I brought it to my eyes in time to see it be absorbed into my skin. A heartbeat later, my flesh began to tingle. It began at the spot on my forehead, then worked its way from there to the rest of my body.
I looked at my hand and watched transfixed as white dots began to form and streak from the spot like a meteor shower through the night sky. I looked at my other arm, and the tingling swept down it the same way it had from my finger up. Soon, the feeling subsided, and I could stand again. I looked at the notification that popped into my view in stunned silence.
KNOW THIS!
You have been given a Blood Rite, the Rite of the Stars by the Queen of the Unseelie Fae, Maebe! This Rite has altered your existing race from Kitsune to Celestial Kitsune.
CONGRATULATIONS!
You now have the ability to learn Celestial spells and the language of the higher beings!
I dismissed the prompts and looked to my friend.
“What have you done, little Queen?” Samir’s cultured voice queried from behind her. She turned and knelt before the equivalent to her realm’s entire being personified.
“I have given my friend the one thing I know he would never ask of me. Something to show how much his companionship truly means,” Maebe spoke with dignity and respect, but you could tell she was afraid. She looked like she had a metal rod in her spine, she was so stiff.
He eyed her and stepped around her to get to me.
“Well then.” He looked me over in an appraising manner. “I did say you would make a wonderful Fae. How delightful. You truly will make a wonderfully entertaining Queen, Maebe.”
She nodded to Samir and smiled at me.
“You do know that, though he has passed the Rite, he cannot be your successor?”
“I am aware,” she acquiesced. “I value you, Zeke. And you all as well. This will allow me to stay in contact. You will also be treated with the same deference as I will in your realm. Who knows, I may come and visit you myself if the way is prepared enough for me.”
She took a parcel from the servant she had sent off earlier and then turned to give it to me. “Ah, thank you, Genera.”
It was a book. Two books, actually. A thick one that was on top of a thinner one, maybe the size of a diary.
“The larger tome is a spell book, Shadow Speak. It will allow us to communicate using the darkness that now makes up our beings.”
I lifted the heavy book and opened it. Dust fell from it and while it settled I got a prompt asking if I wanted to learn the spell. I chose “yes” and placed my hand on the first page. The pages began to warm to my touch and after that, the book exploded into a shower of pages. They began to burn and my vision flashed white. Suddenly, I know the theory behind whispering to the shadows and having them act as messengers. It was also possible to pass messages from one realm to the another if both recipient and sender were familiar with shadow magics.
“The smaller book is to assist you in the basics of the Celestial language. My apologies, it is the best I could do.”
I reached
out and took her hand before pulling her into a hug. “You’ve done plenty. Thank you.”
“We are family now,” she whispered. “Bonded by Blood. I will speak to you as I can, as often as I can. Stay safe and know that I will miss you.”
Samir nodded, stepped away from us, and raised his hand. A shackled Titania materialized beside him. Her hair was disheveled, and she looked like she had been crying a lot. Moments later, hooded figures joined us, the emissaries that we were supposed to take along.
“It is time,” he said simply.
I hadn’t noticed that there was a large set of glyphs arranged in a circle where he stood with a triangle striking through it. Each tip of the triangle held more runes. To our left knelt Titania in the tip of it there, Maebe on our right in her spot, and Samir at the top.
“Empower the circle, Titania,” Samir ordered. She began to sob, but put her hands on two glyphs. Her hands began to glow and fed blue-white light into all of them.
“Maebe, begin the chant to open the portal.” The Unseelie queen began to sing in a language that was incredibly beautiful. It ebbed and flowed like the tides of the oceans. It was hard not to sway with it. You could feel the power thrumming through the air around us.
“I will be guiding the spell to constrict and rewind the time you lost as much as possible. Be prepared, I do not know when you will be arriving. Good luck.”
He held his hands first at his side, then raised his left hand and arm straight up. The air around him began to shimmer as if with heat. The glyphs brightened and began to pulse in the rhythm of Maebe’s song.
I looked to Titania and noticed that she looked older by the second. Her features began to wrinkle and slacken. Her hair greyed from the tips and worked inward—as if the glyphs were siphoning her very life force. Which they probably were. This may have been her punishment from Samir.
I didn’t get the chance to really focus on it because Samir finished his now quickening complex motions and frenzied tones from Maebe took my attention. An audible tear sounded over the spell circle, and I saw a rent in the air before it begin to shape.
“Leave this realm and only return of your will and with my blessing. Go!” Samir ordered.
With one last look at my newest friend, the party surged forward into the unknown before us. The air was sucked from our bodies, and the falling sensation stole my sense of direction from me. It felt like hours that we went through the feeling. My lungs crushed until I thought they would implode from the pressure I felt and lack of air. Then we fell through a white portal, and all discomfort was gone.
After catching our breath, Jaken sighed and voiced what all of us had on our minds, “Fuck that.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Looking around, I saw that we were inside the gates of the city we had visited days ago, Maven Rock. Well, days in the Fae realm. We were in an alleyway between the wall and a few tall buildings. There was a large crowd gathered nearby based on the commotion I heard, and someone was speaking. Balmur motioned for quiet and waved for us to follow him.
Yohsuke looked at our three guests and just held out a hand to make them wait there.
“We’ll be back for you. Just stay out of sight and don’t die.” The lead one nodded, and we left. Learning more about the mysterious cloaked figures would have to wait.
We had an asshole’s day to ruin.
The party moved cautiously around the corner of the building to our left and peeked around. Our target, Rowan, that greasy snake fucker, stood and spoke to the same crowd that had stood helplessly watching that boy die.
“The enemy is gone, my faithful puppets,” he assured them, “and soon, those of you who still have your free will here, will learn that War and his Generals are generous masters. Soon, you will know nothing of poverty, pain, or suffering. You will only know the elation of being a part of the One. My agent left on swift legs to find my brothers and sisters, and soon we will claim this world.”
There was a murmur, but I realized it was only from select portions of the crowd. Those closest to the speaker had slack faces, devoid of any emotion or understanding.
“Let’s go get his bitchass,” I grumbled. He didn’t have a single drop of blood on his fine clothes, and I could still feel the gore on my skin.
“No,” Jaken responded in a whisper. “We wait. Too many bystanders.”
“He thinks we’re gone, man. He’s relaxed. Soon, he will move along and fuck up. Then we strike,” James suggested.
Balmur nodded in agreement, and Yohsuke put his hand on my shoulder.
Trust me, brother, he said using our earrings. I want his ass broken and dead, too. We just gotta do it smart. Minimal blood on our hands.
To all of us he said, You guys think it’s weird how some of the people over there look like no one is home?
Yeah, Bokaj patted Tmont’s head. T says they smell dead, and I can’t help but feel like those are the ones he was talking about when he said “puppets.” Think those are the people who were disappearing?
Makes sense. Balmur shrugged. All we need to do is wait.
Okay. Wait it is. I huffed quietly.
“My loyal subjects, go and collect the meal and bring them to me. Let me share our insights with them that they may begin serving our master. Go.”
The crowd nearest him began to shuffle off. Some of the more lively ones, the ones that may be unaffected by him, still just dispersed. A few of the larger, better armed, stupid ones stayed, though. Including Rowan, there were ten total. They looked like they would’ve been part of the city guard. They wore plate of lesser quality than our Paladin’s and carried long and short swords.
Balmur, see if you can’t sneak ahead or above and find a good place for an ambush. Bokaj, you go with him. You hear some booms, you know what’s up. Jaken began trying to help us plan as we went.
We began following and tailing our target from the shadows. While he moved Rowan, began speaking to people, and usually when he did, he would touch them and their expression would slacken. He’d move on, and they would just stand there a moment before shuffling off. The further he walked, the closer we got to the large rock that the city was named for.
So he builds his army this way. We have to stop him. Soon, or we may be overrun, I warned.
Up ahead and on your right there’s a larger roadway. We can set the honey pot there. There are a couple people there he could speak to. May be our best option if we need to start sooner rather than later, Bokaj reported.
Good shit, man. Let’s go get into position. Crowd control to start with, then move in. Jaken, you stay off to the side, man, Yoh advised. Let’s assume that the zombies are just done for and put them down swiftly.
The big Fae-Orc nodded and moved off as quietly as he could.
At this point, it was going to be a matter of time before an innocent was caught in the crossfire again. I couldn’t think about it, and I didn’t think my friends wanted to either. I couldn’t blame them. We left the bastard there and moved on to prepare for the attack.
It took about ten minutes for him to get to our position. Yohsuke, Bokaj, and I were on top of some of the lower buildings with oddly shaped roofs we could use to our advantage. Tmont, Balmur, and Jaken were hidden at street level where they could enter the fray safely. James followed our target to feed us information.
As he walked up and hailed the two civilians beneath us, Yoh and I dropped the world on top of his head. I unleashed my stored Star Fall, and then Yoh cast his Black Snow area of effect attack. There was a flash beneath us, and an opaque shell appeared around Rowan and his posse.
None of us had left our positions in hiding, just peeked out and cast before ducking back.
“Who dares attack a General of War?!” the mage shouted in outrage. “Show yourself, coward!”
I snickered and snuck to the rear of the roof and around to the other side. I shifted from my Kitsune form to my actual Fox shape and slunk forward as low as I could get. When I looked over, he was stand
ing almost directly in front of me facing toward where Yoh’s hiding spot was. Since our return to the Prime realm, our notifications were working perfectly, and although his level was still high at fifty six, all of us may stand a chance if we got lucky.
His attention was on Yoh’s roof with his shield still up, so I backed up out of view and switched to my fox-man form once more.
Shield is still in place, I informed the others. Balmur can you get in there?
I already am, came the cool reply. I edged closer and saw motion for a split second, and one of the armored cronies went down in a heap. Not dead but with what looked like a serious injury to his legs. I hadn’t seen the Dwarf behind the largest of the puppets.
The General and his crew turned to look, and another one from the right dropped. Rowan raised his hand with a mutter, and a pulse of energy rippled from him. Balmur’s stealthed form cleared, and he was visible to all.
“Well, well. Looks like I missed one!” Rowan clapped his hands before him.
Shit. Get ready to run, man. I’m gonna try and fear him. You guys drop the roof on his ass.
I activated my newest ability—Predator’s Call—and felt the mana drain from me. I opened my mouth and a roar so forceful leapt from my throat that it startled even me. The opaque shell around the enemy stuttered, then dropped completely and all hell broke loose.
I heard the thrum of a bowstring and two nova-like bursts of fire rocked the group on opposite sides below us. That was two of the Fireball arrows I’d made at work right there. Holy shit that was sexy. There were three of the guards down in a pile of cinders, and the others looked to be in rough shape. Another fireball hit the mage dead on and detonated around him. Another guard fell, but Rowan came out unscathed.
“Your spells are useless against me!” He laughed.
Ah. I see, I thought to myself. He very well could have resistance to magic or some kind of buff against it?
I couldn’t see one under his HP bar so I decided against it, even though it was still possible.
Another Fireball arrow took two more guards, and the Star Fall arrow took care of the remainder. So far, I didn’t think he had even seen us. That left only Rowan, but who knows how long before the other puppets came. Time to preserve mana. I brought Storm Caller into my hand with a flex of will and began to step from my hiding place when I heard a clash of metal on metal.
Into the Light (Axe Druid Book 1) Page 44