Jingfei rolled to her side, growling. Mei Li watched her cautiously. The demoness was basically a miniature volcano, all hot temper, fire, and a rock core—with the temper to match. It made her impossible to truly defeat, hence why they’d sealed her in the first place. It also meant she was tenacious in a fight. Even with her back to the ground like this, Mei Li didn’t read her body language to mean defeat.
Leah’s eyes went wide, horror clashing over her face, and she screamed out a warning. Mei Li realized a second too late that Jingfei was pretending to be down, and she was attacking from her prone position. A bellow of blue-white flame shot up through the air, making an eerie, whistle-like sound. Gen hurled himself forward, wings thrown wide to block it.
Horror pitched through Mei Li, and she felt nauseous under the onslaught as she remembered that two mages had died horribly under that fire. She could do nothing but watch as the fire hit Gen, saw those blue scales rebuff most of it, but the feathers on his wings singe and blacken. The feathers were not as fire retardant as hard scale, and the dragon let out a roar of pain, back legs folding as his wing burned along one edge.
A splatter of the fire made it past his guard and splashed the mage behind him—Leah. She screamed as well, choking off in an airless gasp.
“LEAH?” her twin demanded, panicked.
“HOLD THE LINE!” Mei Li barked at them. Her heart hurt for those injured, but if they didn’t hold the line, they would have no way of subduing Jingfei. It would seal their deaths.
Jingfei wasn’t on her feet yet; she was rolling to her knees to get up. The demoness wasn’t quick, just sturdy, and it gave someone a narrow window to take advantage. Shunlei was the someone. He sprung forward, leaping a little into the air, and landed directly on Jingfei’s back and thighs. She grunted at the impact and tried to fight him off. It was like a turtle trying to unseat something—she had no leverage, and still she was close to bucking him off.
Shunlei gritted his teeth, digging his claws into her, riding her out. Face down like this, she couldn’t fight. He kept his head down and focused even as he called for help. “BAI!”
Bai darted forward and landed on the lower half of her legs, sneaking one leg in between Shunlei’s hold onto her hips. Bai was one of the larger dragons, and between his weight and Shunlei’s, Jingfei didn’t have a prayer of moving. She snarled and bucked, but it felt like nothing more than twitches and the whine of a loser dog.
Mei Li could see the flex and strain of Shunlei’s muscles as he held the contorted position. But he held it firmly and craned his neck around to see how Leah fared.
Mei Li looked as well, that ball in her throat threatening to close off her airway entirely. The nomadic mage was putting all her weight on one leg, and her left hip was a mess of burned clothing and blackened skin. Tears streamed out of her eyes, her magic flow not nearly as strong or sturdy as before, but still. She held her position.
“I’m sorry, Leah, I’m so sorry,” Mei Li said, on the verge of tears herself. “Can you hold? We’re almost there, we’re basically halfway there already.”
“I can hold.” Leah sucked in a breath, her breathing more like pants as she tried to work around her own pain. “I’m not resting until this whore is sealed away.”
“That’s my sis.” Teoh was crying, too, silent tears that wrenched at the heart. She stared steadfastly at her sister and no doubt would lunge for her the moment the seal was complete.
Mei Li’s eyes darted to Gen, who limped off to the side, his left wing stretched out.
“Gen?” Huan called in worry.
“I’ve lost two rows of primaries, I think,” he hissed between clenched teeth.
Huan looked to Shunlei, practically vibrating with the urgency to move.
“We’ve got her,” Shunlei promised, speaking through gritted teeth. “Help them.”
Huan changed forms so fast the air snapped in a repercussive sound. She immediately fetched water and bandages and healing talismans.
“Leah first,” Gen told her, starting to shake now, his body reacting to the damage done.
With a grim nod, the Green went for the mage and carefully removed the damaged clothing out of the way, pulling it to either side to get to the raw muscle and bone exposed underneath. It was an ugly, ugly sight and a testament to Leah’s willpower she was able to work magic at all in that condition.
Stirring again, Jingfei spoke into the dirt (she had no choice with Shunlei’s claw clamped over her head). “You’ll get off me soon.”
Mei Li almost asked what she meant by that, then she saw the heat wave building. Jingfei was redirecting her volcanic energy to pour off of her body. It was warm now, nothing a dragon couldn’t handle, but Mei Li suspected this was just the opening act. The record was clear that Jingfei could slowly heat up until stone itself melted from her touch. Even dragon scales weren’t completely immune.
Mei Li swore mentally and barked out the order. “Everyone, speed up!”
“We can’t go any faster than this without compromising the seal,” Dolan negated, although he stared at Jingfei in open worry as well.
“Go at the pace you need to.” Bai settled in even more firmly, if possible, determination in every muscle. “We’ve got her.”
Mei Li prayed that was true. Even if it was, she didn’t think they’d be able to hold her like that for long.
Bai let out a high-pitched yelp, followed by a whine. Mei Li’s eyes snapped back to him and realized that while she was distracted, Jingfei’s attack had doubled in strength. Maybe quadrupled.
“What?!” Scott demanded. The mage wasn’t able to see around Shunlei or Chen, who was guarding him and his brother.
“Heat’s getting a little much,” Shunlei explained, and it sounded like his molars gnashed together.
A dragon’s scales hardened with age, so Shunlei would be more fire-proof than the younger Bai, but Mei Li didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that even Shunlei felt the heat. They weren’t budging, but Jingfei’s attack was effective. The demoness knew it, too. She cackled and upped the temperature to something hot enough Mei Li felt it even at this distance. Her skin felt tight against her skull, like she had a sunburn from too much exposure.
Bai whined in the back of his throat, the sound one of pure pain. Mei Li wanted to speed the process along, to get both dragons clear of Jingfei, but didn’t dare. Dolan was right. Trying to hurry the process would only weaken the seal and put them in an even worse position.
“Hold on,” Preston begged them. “Look, the seal’s over our heads now. Just hold on. A little higher, and she won’t be able to get out.”
The mage wasn’t wrong, but Mei Li knew the timing would be tricky on this. Jingfei was solid—she didn’t have much in the way of vertical jumping power—but she could still manage some height. They had to get the seal tall enough that she wouldn’t be able to scale it, but still wide enough the dragons could dive through the top.
She stared at each line as it circled, mentally begging the seal to go faster. Bai and Shunlei were both keening, their painful cries stabbing her in the heart, but they wouldn’t move. Mei Li desperately wanted them off of Jingfei and clear. Come on, come on, come on…. They were a good two feet over her head now—the barrier was nearly tall enough. It was just beginning to arch, to close in on the top.
“GO!” Dolan commanded.
Bai was moving before the vowel could completely escape Dolan’s mouth. He leapt free with a single, powerful up-thrust of wings. Shunlei was a second behind him, barely giving Bai the room to get out before following. Jingfei rolled when the weight left her back, and she sucked in a large breath.
Mei Li knew she’d attack, knew that breath was to spit fire at the retreating dragons, and yelled to distract her. “Zaffi!”
Jingfei flopped to the side, eyes hard. “What about my husband?”
Was Shunlei free? Thank heavens, he was. “Zaffi’s seal is next.”
Jingfei g
rowled, lumbering up to her feet and watched as the seal started to close. She looked resigned, outraged, but a sneer curled her mouth. “You won’t be able to. Not like this. You barely sealed me again. He’ll get me back out, you’ll see.”
The barrier closed, the seal complete, and Jingfei sank to her knees, head falling to her chest as she returned to her forced slumber. Mei Li watched her with limited satisfaction and whispered, “I’m afraid you’re right.”
Mei Li seriously wanted to cry. Shunlei’s hands and feet were burned so badly they were cramped, the fingers and toes curled inwards, open third-degree burns on his skin. Shunlei had shifted into human form so they could carry him more easily, and doing that alone had nearly made him weep with the pain. She’d never have imagined, in a hundred years, anything could burn a dragon. But apparently a creature born of a volcano had enough of nature’s wrath to manage it.
Simeon had already come through and applied healing talismans on each of his limbs, and the magic was working, but Mei Li wanted to alleviate the pain as much as she could while Shunlei healed. She’d harvested ice from the nearby lake and carefully wrapped them against each of his feet. The hands, at least, he could mostly manage himself, balancing the chunks of ice in his palms.
One of them slipped and she caught it before setting it carefully back against his palm. He hissed and Mei Li anxiously searched his face. “Sorry.”
“No, it feels good, it’s just the pressure hurts at random moments,” he assured her, a grimace of pain etched into lines around his mouth and eyes. He hunched over his hands, the pain pulling him into a semi-fetal position. “Bai, how are you? Gen?”
Bai was in the same state opposite of Shunlei, with a hovering Ling Ling attending to him. He tried for a smile but it morphed into a frown, the edges of his mouth dragging downwards. “I’ve been better. Simeon’s talismans are helping, though, I can feel my fingers again. Although I kind of wish I couldn’t at the moment.”
That had initially terrified Mei Li, when both of them couldn’t feel their toes or fingers. Jingfei’s fire had seared their nerves and tendons so badly their limbs were warped, desiccated clumps of burned flesh. What equally terrified her was that she’d had no idea it was that bad until they’d crash landed immediately outside the barrier, rolling to their sides in pain, unable to put any pressure on their feet. It had taken Chen and Huan to carry them into the nearest town.
The townspeople at the foot of the mountain were so glad Jingfei was re-sealed, they’d done everything in their power to be helpful. The inn immediately opened its door to them, the two doctors the town boasted came in to help, and between their salves and Simeon’s magic, people were slowly on the mend.
Leah, from what Mei Li was told, would need more than a few weeks on a bed with constant attention in order to heal from this fully. If not attended to properly, her hip and thigh would forever be so scarred she would walk with a limp for the rest of her life. Teoh hovered nearby, anxious for her sister’s sake.
They’d kept the wounded to these two rooms so people could easily check on them and attend to any need they had. Mei Li looked over the wounded, her eyes seeing through the open door to Gen, who was still in dragon form with wing out, suffering through a painful preening session at Tengfei’s hands as they removed the damaged feathers. He kept making low thrumming sounds of pain. Every dragon in the vicinity thrummed back, sounds of affection and reassurance. Mei Li herself tried to do it, too, even though she didn’t have the right vocal chords for it. Gen appreciated it, though, as he lifted his eyes once to hers and gave an answering thrum.
It broke her heart that so many were injured. They’d recover—she knew they would—but the price of sealing just one demon was high. They’d not had enough help to begin with and now she had three dragons out of commission for at least several days, Leah and Teoh would need several weeks (she didn’t for one second believe Teoh would leave her sister’s side), and, and….
And Zaffi was stronger than his wife.
The demon they didn’t have instructions for sealing was stronger than Jingfei.
Mei Li had always felt overwhelmed. From the beginning, she’d understood she was well in over her head. It was only because of the excellent gathering of allies she’d felt they had a chance to succeed.
They’d succeeded—she couldn’t claim otherwise—but this wasn’t like some children’s hero story. It wasn’t enough that they could defeat the big bad today and ride off into the sunset. They had to be able to get up the next morning and defeat the next evil threatening the world. Right now? They were in no shape to do that.
“Mei Li,” Shunlei called to her gently. “Breathe.”
She sucked in a deep, shuddery breath and let it out again. It sounded suspiciously like a sob, and she throttled back the urge to cry. Mei Li didn’t have time for tears. She looked up at him, met those clear blue eyes with hers, and drew strength from the resolve she saw in them. “Did you sit on Jingfei last time to subdue her?”
“No. I was the only dragon in the party. I wasn’t able to get the drop on her like that. I harried her, instead, dodging in and out. The warrior of the party, Hawes, he helped me heckle her. We suffered injuries then, too. More extensive than this.”
“Because you had to figure out how to seal her at the same time?”
“No, a mage in the party more or less knew what to do with Jingfei. The team-up of mages was what suffered. The group had never worked together before, and the seal magic was slow to build.”
Interesting. None of that had been in the record. But then, Jingfei was one of the few records written well after the fact. The first Tomes didn’t join the party until after she and Zaffi were sealed. But this was the first she’d heard of someone in the original party who knew how to seal Jingfei.
“How did this mage know how to do it?”
“She was brilliant. Scholar more than mage, but she knew a great deal about the dangers of the world and how to combat them. She never told us how she knew, just that her master had taught her how.” Shunlei looked at her penetratingly, and it wasn’t so much the words he said, but the intent way he delivered them. He was telling her something—something vitally important.
Mei Li stared back at him, not sure what he was driving at. Surely he wasn’t suggesting—
“Mei Li.” Dolan strode into the room then and paused, green eyes glancing uncertainly between them. “Sorry if I’m interrupting something, but this is important.”
Shunlei sighed deeply, looking resigned at the interruption.
Mei Li tore her attention from Shunlei and blinked, switching mental tracks. “What is it?”
Taking the only spare chair in the room, Dolan dropped heavily into it. He passed a weary hand over his face before reporting, “I passed along the instructions for sealing Jingfei to the group of mages studying Zaffi. They report the seal won’t work. It doesn’t have enough power, to start with, and Zaffi’s more volcanic fire than stone. The Wu Xing principles are different with him.”
They’d used the overcoming principle of water extinguishing fire, with an earth base and an air suppressant to keep both elements contained to one space. Mei Li thought through the logistics of having to change that seal and couldn’t come up with anything viable. Frowning, she asked, “Did they have a suggestion?”
“Something without earth, they said.”
“But without earth to ground and connect it to the area, the seal will be free-floating,” Mei Li objected.
“Trust me, I know. And they said the same, that it wasn’t really a good idea, but they couldn’t find a way around it. The water element must be strong enough to suppress Zaffi’s fire and” –here Dolan slumped further into his chair— “we’re basically trying to subdue a walking, breathing volcano. You realize that, right?”
“Trust me, I think that’s made itself clear.” Mei Li wanted to weep. Or maybe just take a twenty-year-long nap and sleep through this whole thing. A coma actua
lly sounded quite delightful just then.
A commotion at the front of the inn caught her attention. Because of the injured, the innkeeper had cleared out his back rooms of guests and resituated everyone. It meant they had close proximity to the front door, and Mei Li could hear a booming voice greet people.
Dolan’s head snapped up, eyes widening. “That’s Prince Cavanaugh.”
“No, his brother,” Shunlei corrected. “They sound eerily similar, I grant you.”
A powerful figure strode up to stand between the two rooms, the innkeeper hovering at the man’s shoulder. Prince Pari of Horvath looked like a barbarian king—of which he basically was one. The furs around his shoulders was more a mantle of authority than any crown. He wore a simple circlet around his forehead to hold his hair in place, and it was luscious and thick, the brown locks a waterfall that fell down to his waist. He looked between the rooms, frowning at the sight of injured people propped up on beds.
“Dragons, Mages, I’ve come to check on your welfare. I expected to host a dinner to celebrate your victory, but now I find you injured,” he boomed out. “This pains my heart. Tell me, is Jingfei sealed?”
Mei Li stood and faced him, as she was technically the leader of this group. “She is, Your Highness. At great cost, as you can see. I am Mei Li of Tomes.”
He turned, extending a hand, which she took in a warrior’s clasp of the forearms. “Tomes, I am glad to see you. While I’m glad to hear the demoness is sealed, this is a sorry sight indeed. I wanted to celebrate with you. But instead, I think you need my aid. Tell me, how can I help you?”
Mei Li blessed the man. He was certainly one to cut to the chase, and they needed that forthright, volunteer spirit right now desperately. “Our immediate party needs time to recover. The townspeople here have been gracious and generous with us. But we need time. Prince Pari, the mages at the other site—the ones with Zaffi. We need more help there, to temporarily put another seal on him to buy me time. We don’t know how to seal him yet.”
Tomes Apprentice Page 23