by Eric Vall
Sweat dripped from my brow from the heat that rolled off it, and I belatedly realized how crazy it was to try and block this massive fireball.
It was too late, though.
Even with the speed slug attached, the fireball had gotten too close for us to dodge, and it was big enough to engulf the two of us. I unsheathed my recently returned rhin dagger from its sheath and smirked when I saw the pinkish essence that poured from the blade. It was the same color it had been when I was in mortal danger in the final fight with the pyrewyrm during my round in the Magicae Nito. I was still unsure how the connection between my baroquer and I affected my dagger, something to do with the essence and mana, Arwyn had said, but I remembered clearly having felt an enormous amount of power surge through me in that fight.
Maybe I could do something similar now?
I raised the rhin dagger at the same time the baroquer raised his greatsword. With a mighty swing coupled with a battle cry, we brought our weapons down and cut through the fire like hot butter. The heat from the fireball scorched my flesh, and I could feel the raw pain as it burned. I screamed, and in that moment I wished I hadn’t used the last of my healing items against my fight with Phi. I cursed under my breath as the flame shot out to the outlying debris. Surely it caused more damage, but I had to do what I could to stop the belial from reaching the areas it hadn’t yet gotten to.
I hissed in pain as I assessed the damage done to my person. My clothes were more or less shot. They hung off me in shreds, and I considered myself lucky my wounds weren’t worse, at least from what I could tell. There were some bad spots on my arms and torso, and my face, though I couldn’t see it, felt stiffer than usual. I assumed it was from being charred, but I wouldn’t know until we were done here. All in all, I was still standing, so I took that round as a win.
My baroquer slumped, and I kneeled next to its head and leaned. It was sort of a hug. It was meant to comfort. I looked down the front of its body and saw the heat from the flames had weakened the armor in several spots, and the sword had been in better shape.
“You really took a hit, buddy,” I panted and patted its helmet, “but we ain’t done yet.”
The baroquer grunted, clearly in pain, but I knew if we supported each other, we could see this battle through until the end. I just needed to get onto the belial so I could shove a crystal into it.
Not far from us, the belial kicked its feet and readied itself for another charge.
I stood from my crouched position and winced. The burns stung like hell, and I could only imagine what the girls were going to say when they saw the state I was in after only just being healed. I was pretty sure I held a record for needing medical attention, and I’d only just started my military slash academic career.
I needed to think fast, though. How could I get myself in a position on the belial so I could capture it before it could ram us again?
I could jump, but I didn’t have the strength or the height advantage in this case to ensure I would land on any part of its body, and being on the ground right now was suicide. No, I had to find a way up. That was my only shot.
“I have an idea,” I blurted out to my baroquer. “I need you to throw me.”
My monster made a confused disgruntled noise in question, and I could sense it judging me out of the corner of its armor-covered eyes.
“Don’t sass me, just do it,” I commanded.
The baroquer produced an unsure huff through its helmet, but it obeyed me anyway. Its giant hand reached up and picked me up from its shoulder.
I grabbed onto its thumb for leverage just as the belial started its stampede once more.
“Go!” I shouted, and wind rushed through my hair and stung my wounds as the baroquer brought its hand back.
Suddenly, I was hurdled forward, and I sailed through the air toward the purple beast. The city streets were a blur below me, and the velocity against my skin made my burns that much worse by stretching them and drying them out. I screamed in agony and tears stuck to my face before they could trickle down my cheeks.
Before long, my vision was filled with nothing but purple flesh and orange-yellow mane. I reached out and grabbed a fistful of coarse hair. My body came to a grinding halt, and I was positive I had a broken arm from the inertia of my body slamming into the snout of the belial. Even though I had stopped, the monster was still on the move. I needed to act quickly. I wasn’t so sure my baroquer could stand a hit with its armor weakened from the flames, and I didn’t want to take the chance of it being killed. If I lost my baroquer in this fight, it would sap my mana too much, and I wouldn’t be able to capture the belial.
In short, this would all have been for nothing.
“Come on, Gryff,” I groaned to myself. With my arm broken, I would have a serious problem holding on while trying to plant a crystal somewhere on its body, but I had to try.
A quick survey of my surroundings indicated that the snout of the beast was wide enough for me to lie across it. Even at the speed it was charging at, it should have been enough for me to lie relatively flat with minimal bouncing.
I took a deep breath and released the bit of mane I’d clutched onto. So far so good. Then I reached into the pouch on my belt and pulled out a capture crystal as fast as I could, but the pain in my body was excruciating. Everything hurt, and I was running out of time.
As I gripped the crystal and raised it, I felt the impact of the collision with my baroquer. It let out a monstrous roar, and I felt the air leave my lungs as I was tossed from the belial’s snout and my mana drained.
No, no this couldn’t end like this. I scrambled for purchase on something, anything, and my fingers finally caught onto one of the whiskers on the beast’s muzzle.
Then I screamed as I put every ounce of my being, every bit of mana I could spare, into the crystal before I smashed it into the belial’s jaw.
There was a brief moment where I felt no pain at all before the world went white.
Chapter 4
“Gryff!”
I bolted upright, and then I immediately fell back down as pain surged through my body. My breath lodged in my throat with the shock, and my chest heaved in desperation. I screamed, possibly, but that was all I could hear in the first place. Most of the screams were cries for help and terrified pleas, but they all blended together as one thing rang true.
Hartmire, the military Enclave, had fallen.
Everything was loud, so loud I could barely make out any one particular sound. I opened my eyes, but all I could see were thick layers of dark smoke. I could smell fire, too, amidst what was likely to be cooked corpses.
“Gryff!”
Someone called me. Was it Arwyn? She’d been with me, I thought, but I’d lost track of her as soon as I’d taken off to fight the belial. Was she okay? I hoped she was.
My head pounded. I strained my eyes and tried to focus, but my body wouldn’t let me. How far had I gone to catch this stupid Double A grade monster anyway? I had a broken arm, if I recalled. Could I move it, though? I tried to lift my right arm, and to my surprise, it moved pretty easily. There was a bit of stiffness to it, but aside from that, it felt okay.
I thought I’d remembered things wrong and tried my left arm, but that was even easier to move and far less painful. There was, however, something at my fingertips. I fumbled for whatever it was, and then I felt the presence of the belial entrapped within it.
I grinned weakly. I’d done it. I’d captured a big ass purple beast. I’d saved what remained of the Enclave.
As long as the rift was closed, anyways.
“Gryff!”
Something other than smoke came into view, or rather, someone. I blinked a few times and finally recognized the long, ashen blonde hair of Nia Kenefick. What was she doing here, and why was she yelling?
“Nia, please,” I begged as I scrunched my eyes, “I’m trying to sleep.”
“He’s pretty out of it,” a male voice replied, but I couldn’t see them without craning my neck, a
nd doing that only made my head throb more.
“You would be too if you’d fallen from nearly a hundred feet in the air,” Nia reasoned. “Come on, help me get him out of here.”
“I’ve got him,” the male voice assured, “make sure the other woman is alright.”
“Okay,” Nia breathed, then cupped my cheeks. “Gryff, you have to stay with us. Nia would have my head if I let you die on my watch, and she’s a complete terror when she’s angry.”
I tried to make a face that I hoped conveyed my confusion. Why was Nia talking about herself in the third person? I wasn’t given much time to ponder, however, because suddenly she was gone, and the face of a man I was certain I didn’t recognize came into view. He had short, light blond hair shaved on the sides and slicked back in the middle, and an angular, handsome face. His smile was kind, but his military garb insinuated he could kick some serious ass if he needed to.
“Okay Gryff, this might hurt a little, but I’m going to be as gentle as I can,” he told me. Then he slid one arm under my neck, and the other under my knees, before he lifted me slowly.
I hissed through my teeth in agony as my broken arm was tucked carefully on top of my torso and I was pulled close to the man’s toned body. When I could move again, I was going to punch him in his face.
“My name’s Geheim,” he introduced, and I couldn’t help but think that it sounded like Gawain. “If you need anything, just let me know.”
I opened my mouth, but instead of taking him up on the offer, I coughed. A deep ache settled in my bones, and I was pretty sure I whined, but I guessed with a fall like Nia said I had, anyone would be in pain.
This Geheim person took off at a slow jog and quickly picked up the pace to a full on sprint. I tried to focus on something to keep my mind off the pain, but all I could see was the sky. I was relieved the sun was shining and that there was a copious amount of blue up there now. That meant they had successfully closed the rift. What didn’t bode well, however, was that there was also smoke.
A lot of it.
I struggled, but I managed to turn my neck to the right to get a glimpse of what was around us. It was blurry, likely because I had an eye injury, or maybe I was in that much pain, but one thing was clear.
There was nothing left.
The Hartmire Enclave was in pieces. Some places remained intact, but everywhere I looked there was a dismembered body, blood on the streets, and debris. What were once homes and places of business were now nothing but dust and chunks of concrete, mere fragments of what used to be considered a military stronghold.
Even in the physical state I was in, I felt tears prick my eyes. Nowhere was safe. This only confirmed the xanyarstone was no longer effective. Of course, I had known that since the first rift opened up in Varle in the middle of my physical training, but now it wasn’t only Varle. Now it was another Enclave.
No one was safe. There was nowhere left to run from the monsters.
I shut my eyes and turned my head back to the sky. I couldn’t stomach to look anymore. Tears spilled quietly from my eyes. I wouldn’t have been able to stop them if I had tried, but I didn’t bother to. This was a great loss, despite my own personal victory. I’d captured the belial, and I’d managed to keep it from destroying any more than it already had, but there was still so much lost.
At the very least, I could mourn those who died here. I could cry for them, because they deserved someone to remember them. I might not have known any of them, but I’d remember them and what they lost, and I didn’t care if this Geheim guy judged me for it.
I felt the rise and fall of his chest as he panted. His feet carried us as fast as they could, and I wanted to ask him what the hurry was, if there was anything we could do for others in need, but the words just wouldn’t come to me. Defeated and unbearably tired, I put my trust in a man I didn’t know, and I let him take me wherever our final destination was.
I wasn’t sure how long we’d traveled. Time ran together, and seconds felt like years, but I remembered the relief of being set on the cool surface of sheets and sinking into the pillow as people gathered around me. I could pick out a few voices. Nia, for one, and I swore I could hear Layla as well.
I cracked my eyes open and was thankful that the light above my bed was a soft yellow glow as opposed to the stark white of the Medic Ward. It was calming, and I felt mellow in spite of the rage and pain inside of me.
“Gryff,” Nia whispered on my left and brushed her fingers over my hair, “can you hear me?”
I nodded, but when I tried to speak, all that came out was a croak. I sighed and slowly blinked at her as I tried to regain my focus again. She looked different than before when I’d talked to her on the battlefield, but I couldn’t place my finger on it. Maybe I was going crazy.
“Gryffie … ” Layla pouted next to Nia and took my hand in hers gently. Feeling her skin against mine was like an instant balm to my pain. She was safe and had managed to avoid the council, which was a worry lifted from my mind. If anything had happened to her, I didn’t know what I would do.
I saw other people in the room as well. Gawain, Almasy, and General Kenefick stood at the foot of the bed and watched over me. Their faces were a mixture of emotions I couldn’t pinpoint as they fixed their eyes on me.
“Gryff, I need you to drink this,” a familiar voice said softly to my right.
I rolled my head to face the other side of the bed, where I was met with Nehra Kenefick and the man I now knew to be Geheim. They both wore concern on their faces, but I recognized the determination in Nehra’s eyes. Nia got the same look when she was focused on a task.
I complied and opened my mouth as she poured a vial of silver liquid down my throat. I knew what it was. Meriden had given it to me before, but I couldn’t recall the name of it, or if she’d told me in the first place. It wasn’t delicious, but I took it with a grain of salt and swallowed all of it without making a fuss.
“That’s good,” Nehra complimented as the elixir was absorbed into my system. “It’ll clot any internal bleeding and heal any damage to your organs. It’s a larger dose than I would usually give someone, but you sustained quite a lot of damage from that fall.”
“You’re lucky I stumbled into Arwyn on my way here,” Geheim sighed. “I would have assumed you were dead with everyone else.”
I laid there for a couple of beats and stared up at the ceiling. I could feel the magic of whatever potion Nehra had given me start to work, and some of the pain began to ebb away. After another moment, I chanced trying to speak again.
“What happened?” I asked, though I didn’t recognize my own voice at first. Not that it was the first time that had happened, but I wasn’t really fond of my voice sounding like I’d spent the last thirty years smoking some hallucinogenic grass from way up north.
“You caught the belial, just like you said you would,” Nia started with a broad grin. “That’s amazing!”
“Thanks,” I smiled weakly, “but I meant how did I end up like this?”
“Once you captured it, you lost any stable footing you might have had on the beast and started to plummet to the ground,” Geheim explained. “At least, that was what Arwyn told me before she passed out.”
“Passed out?” I questioned.
Nehra and Geheim exchanged worried glances before they stepped apart. Behind them in an adjacent bed was Arwyn, more pale than I’d ever seen her, blood dried on her face. Her breaths were shallow, and I could tell that even in her sleep, she was still in pain.
I shot up but immediately regretted my decision as I collapsed back into the bed again. Damn this broken arm, and damn whatever else I managed to bang up in my heroic descent.
“Easy there,” Nehra laughed and put her hand on my chest. It was a familiar weight, and it clicked with me suddenly that she had been the one to check on me earlier, not Nia. That made so much more sense why she didn’t look quite like Nia when I woke up in the debris. So, I wasn’t going crazy after all. That was a good star
t.
“She exerted herself trying to ease your fall,” Geheim explained as he turned to look at Arwyn. “She didn’t go into details, but whatever she used must have been powerful. She used up nearly all of her mana.”
My stomach sank. Why? Why had she pushed herself so far? Surely she’d known the consequences of using up her mana. I knew she did, so then why?
A frown tugged on the corners of my lips, but Nia took my face in her hands and held my gaze. She smiled at me sweetly, and I got lost in her beautiful eyes.
“Any one of us would have done the same. Don’t beat yourself up,” she told me. “We’re a team, a family. That’s what we do, remember?”
I nodded, and my heart hammered in my chest.
Family.
Up until this last year, Maelor had been the only family I’d ever known. Of course, I’d considered my friends to be part of my family, but I had no idea any of them felt the same as I did. I just sort of assumed I was the sentimental one, but I was glad to know I wasn’t the only person in our weird little family. Even Gawain, as annoying as he was, had somehow wiggled his way in, even if it was like the long lost, dumbass step-cousin who no one really got along with but we all had to be nice to.
I gathered myself and took a deep breath before I looked to the other side of the bed again. My eyes landed on Geheim, and I sized him up before I scrunched my face.
“I know this is going to sound a lot more rude than I mean it to, but who the hell are you?” I asked, and I heard a few people snort with laughter.
“Geheim Madox,” he introduced with an easy going smile. “I’m Nehra’s husband, and that idiot’s cousin.” He jerked his head at Gawain.
“Shove off, Geheim,” Gawain retorted as he rolled his eyes.
Ah, Gawain was the idiot cousin in two families.
“Oh, my apologies then,” I joked.
“I’m standing right here, you banged up buffoon,” I heard Gawain snap, but I pretended I hadn’t.
“I’ve heard all about you, Gryff,” Geheim chuckled. “You’ve already made a hell of a name for yourself amongst the mage community.”