Metal Mage 14

by Eric Vall

  “Don’t worry, Mason,” Deya panted. “Shoshanne and your illustrious baby will avenge you! See?”

  I managed a harried nod while my blurred vision only registered a rolling mass of bodies around me, but when Aurora dug into my pocket, she forced my head back and dumped the whole damn vial of Tiorlin berries into my mouth.

  “Aurora!” I gagged as a shot of energy coursed through my body right down to my toes.

  “You’re missing it!” the half-elf insisted. “Look at her go!”

  To Aurora’s credit, I felt so wired now I was probably seconds away from attaining x-ray vision, and I couldn’t help grinning while I gulped the last fifteen berries down.

  Aloshi was thirty feet away while she did all she could to overpower Shoshanne, but it didn’t matter what maneuver she tried. The caramel beauty countered every strike as she stormed ahead with a hurricane gathering around her, and Aloshi’s glacial eyes were bulging out from her head while she stumbled back and threw other minions in front of her.

  The bodies just went flying as they were caught in Shoshanne’s furious wind, though, and soldiers and beasts barely made it out of range as the healer’s personal cyclone built up around her. Still, Aloshi tried to take over Shoshanne’s storm, and the laugh my lover let out as she sent the Aer Mage soaring into the air instead sent a shiver down my spine.

  Nothing about Shoshanne was angelic while her copper curls whipped around her fiendish sneer at the center of the cyclone, and when I saw the rate Aloshi was falling at, I could tell the healer was forcing her back to the ground.

  Her cyclone siphoned into the air to send Aloshi slamming onto the slate at full force, and Aurora and I cringed as the sound of her snapping bones reached us. Deya burst into applause when Aloshi’s brains splattered out, but all of us abruptly froze when Shoshanne threw her arms up and stomped her foot with a grating scream.

  “Godsdamnit!” the healer shrieked. “Are you seriously dead already? You little bitch!”

  Aurora inched closer as several soldiers gawked at the enraged woman. “Shoshanne, honey… wasn’t that the point?”

  “I wasn’t done yet!” Shoshanne roared, but then Cayla ducked in from under a swinging club.

  “Here! Fully loaded,” Cayla panted as she thrust one of her rifles into the healer’s hand, and the princess didn’t skip a beat while she continued gunning down a flock of incoming sphynxes.

  Then Shoshanne snatched the AR-15, reloaded, and cocked the charging handle, and as I looked on in silence along with my troops, our docile healer emptied the entire magazine into Aloshi’s bloody remains.

  The corpse bucked and twitched while chunks of flesh and sinew scattered with every hit, and Aurora bludgeoned any beasts coming their way until Shoshanne was pulling on the trigger of an empty gun. Then the caramel beauty finally lowered the rifle and took a deep, shaky breath.

  “I do feel a little better,” Shoshanne sighed.

  “You did great,” Aurora praised. “I’d definitely call that mutilated.”

  Shoshanne just shrugged while she gave Cayla her rifle back, and when she came directly over to me, her warm brown eyes were soft as she stroked my cheeks. Even covered in droplets of blood, the planes of her face were all innocent again, and her pink lips puckered with concern while she looked me over.

  “Are you alright?” the healer asked in a gentle tone. “Do you need anything?”

  “I-I’m good,” I muttered blankly. “Thanks for the… murder.”

  Shoshanne blushed and smiled before she brushed her plump lips against mine, and as she turned to drive a serrated sword into a possessed elf, she raised her other hand to blast a current toward the sky and hold off the god’s wrath for sixty feet around her.

  My other women and I exchanged brief glances before we got back to work, and Cayla was already firing two rifles at once as she blasted her way through the incoming troops. I followed directly behind the lethal woman while I fired on the batch beyond hers, and as my Boms continued taking out the ravenous flocks overhead, another wave of boiling water sent a swarm of minions to the slaughter.

  Rekekis’ lightning was connecting with our own webbed bullets now, though, and the soldiers were ducking and diving out of the way as the blue bolts collided with the purple. The battlefield was a constant flash of electrical surges while the larger minions were caught in the webs, and smoke permeated the foothills from how many corpses were up in flames.

  Still, as I swapped my rifle for an axe, I could tell our side was holding strong, and there were more bodies sloshing under our feet than there were tearing through the mob. My mages were running out of steam, but they channeled their efforts toward defensive maneuvers for our allies, and they carried on swapping out their magazines without pause. The Defenders repelled stray bullets as rings of fire kept our dwarves hacking into leathery beasts, and I grinned when the cowering minions hissed at their strikes with no means of retaliating. The dwarves herded them straight into the clutches of the ogres, and when they couldn’t reach Grot’s troops, they settled for beating the beasts to a pulp instead.

  The knights of Cedis and Rainard didn’t let up no matter how dented their helms became, either, and they teamed up with our elves to cut down possessed mages by the dozens. Cayla had a quarter of her army shielding the wounded, too, and as mages and dwarves limped toward the forest, they were covered by troops of knights until they could make it beyond the wall of Boms.

  Whenever the Master’s own elves took aim with their revolvers, packs of cannibals pounced from behind to tear their arms open with their teeth, and once they slit their throats with bone-daggers, the Zaliks threw the twitching corpses to trip up their next victims. At first, I made a point of averting my gaze whenever I heard the tearing of flesh nearby, but watching the bloody tribe maim and massacre their prey became less nauseating with the heat of battle raging around me.

  Plus, I had to admit, these cannibals were effective.

  None of Chonna’s warriors gave a shit about how many types of flesh were dangling from their teeth, and it looked like the bloodier they got, the more energy they had for their next victim. All around me, prong-horned bears rolled and clawed their way through the flood while ten cannibals tore into their coats, and ogres stomped through their wailing skulls whenever they had the chance.

  There were even rogue minions attempting to flee in bulk, but when they reached the base of the mountains, my Boms were right on their tails as they pursued them along the ravines. The clouds above me were less ominously black, too, and I could tell Rekekis was finally wearing himself out as the jets of purple lightning came less frequently. His wind was the strongest force he had left, but my mages were keeping most of the gusts from blowing blood and debris all over our troops, and from where I stood, my army was winning out no matter what the Master kept throwing at us.

  I started scanning the walls of his fortress every five minutes as I decapitated drakes and embraced the flail life for the sake of my women, and even though the Master’s defenses were still up, I focused all my energy on cracking skulls and sending smoking reptilians to the ground so my elves could sever their limbs.

  I was beating my way through a drake’s midsection when Shoshanne staggered into me, though, and Cayla sent four bullets into the beast’s head for me while I caught the healer.

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded.

  “I can’t blast the walls open!” Shoshanne hollered above the din.

  “I know, the defenses are still up!”

  “No, I can’t!” the healer insisted with a hint of a slur. “I’m done!”

  “Shit,” I muttered. and I swiftly decapitated a beast with five squiggling tongues. “Did you use up your magic?”

  “Yes, and I’m so sorry,” she groaned. “I spent half of it murdering Aloshi, and then I had such a power buzz, I didn’t think how much I was using on the storm and now--”

  “Hey, do not be sorry,” I chuckled as Cayla shot down an incoming griffin. “You kick
ed absolute ass today, but you need to get out of here. You can hardly stand. I’ll find a crew to get you back to the forest, and--”

  “But I want to storm the fortress with you! You promised I could!” Shoshanne pleaded, and she stumbled into me again as her brows crinkled. “We’re supposed to do this together, Mason, and this is our baby’s first family battle!”

  “Godsdamnit,” I muttered as I dug into my pocket, and I found a fresh vial of berries. “Here, take these, and do not use your magic for anything else. I want you by Cayla’s side at all times, and only use your pistols, understood?”

  “Yes, Mason,” Shoshanne sighed as she dumped a pile of berries into her hand. “Thank you, I was so sad when I realized I could hardly walk anymore. I was just completely swept up in the moment, but Grot found me and carried me over to you. He said it was an honor to assist a woman as brutal as myself.”

  “I’m sure he did,” I chuckled. “Look, I have to go kill some shit, but as long as you stay here with Cayla, I’ll--”

  I locked my jaw as blood curdling screams rent the air, and when I flipped around, all I could see was a vibrant flash of amber flames building along the base of the mountains. The fire couldn’t have been from a mage, though, because it spread faster than any I’d ever seen, and even the flooded stone ignited quicker than kindling. The rate of the burn sent our troops sprinting anywhere they could find a clear shot, and I was still trying to catch up with how the tides had suddenly shifted when my half-elf slammed into me.

  “Mason!” Aurora belted while Deya stood wide-eyed and bloody beside her. “We can’t control their flames! They have their own magic!”

  “Who?”

  Aurora pointed to a streak of black with flames igniting from its paws. “The Osula! The Master sent out six of them, and they’re blocking us in. Mason, we’re losing our openings by the second, and if they reach the jungle’s edge, we’ll--”

  “Can you overpower the blaze like you did when the titans came after Serin?” I cut in.

  “It’s burning too quickly,” the half-elf panted. “Our own fire can’t compare, and the Osula are too fast to catch.”

  “Where’s Nulena?” I demanded.

  “She’s in the forest shielding us all,” Deya whimpered.

  I stared as the pack of black hellcats jetted along the base of the mountains in a fiery blur, and their horns struck against the branches of the trees in the forest as they rounded the Master’s grounds. The amber blaze built by the second and pressed in our troops as it burned out of control, and while more minions stampeded from the portals, our soldiers did all they could to reach the jungle without getting trampled.

  What would happen once they reached the Nalnoran border, I had no idea, but it was our last chance of escape, and I lunged to grab Cayla before I thrust my women toward the jungle.

  “Get out of here!” I commanded as I sent orders to my Boms in the forest to retreat. “Get into the jungle and have the mages pull the flood with you. Build trenches, waterways, walls, and anything else you can to protect everyone!”

  “The flames are burning over all of that!” Aurora shrieked, and she stubbornly tried to stay beside me.

  “Then keep building more of them! Do whatever it takes and get the hell as far away from here as possible! Now!”

  My women blanched as I bolted into the stampede of minions, and I sent my powers surging through the forest floor as I split it in two directions.

  My veins began to waver under the effort, but I connected with Rammstein’s gem at the same moment I found Nulena sprinting toward the train with the Boms catching up. The ebony woman must have seen the hellcats early on, because she was almost to the tracks already, but the blaze was building fast, and in a matter of minutes, the whole train of wounded soldiers would be consumed.

  So, I forced my magic to tear a twenty-foot trench open in front of the massive hellcats while I tried to catch them, but they leaped over the divide in one bound before their talons swiftly caught the wall I threw up next. Then I blasted the wall open, and as their talons struck against the rubble, the Osula clamored their way ahead while they ignited every shard of stone. So, I summoned ten rockets from the jungle and hurled them in their path, but when they pounced clear over the blast, only one Osula was struck down.

  Then the flames overran even the frigid disaster zone the Halcyan left behind, and I sent more rockets soaring into their path while half my troops made it out of the field. The other half were desperately battling their way through the incoming minions, and I ordered every remaining Bom to thin out the herd as I buried four bullets into a drake to ignite him. I narrowly avoided getting trampled by a prong-horned bear as I dragged ogres off the ground and sent them limping to the border, and when I frantically scanned the walls of the Master’s fortress with the last of my powers, his enchantments repelled my efforts once more.

  Ten more rockets only caught one Osula while their progress barely slowed, and the other hellcats wove to take a deeper path into the jungle.

  “Shit,” I growled as I tried to force them back toward the field by sending the rockets beyond their pack, but there must have been hundreds possessed creatures still spewing out of the portals, too.

  The Master sent his army after us regardless of the inferno his hellcats set off, and as the ravenous beasts barreled wildly into the blazing foothills, half of them branched off to pursue my fleeing army through the jungle.

  Then I redirected my Boms’ orders and sent five of them into Nalnora to protect the troops, and the others continued gunning down the minions blocking our escape route.

  A third of the grounds were engulfed in the hellcats’ blaze now while a group of my soldiers attempted to make a break for it, but the Osula were already midway along the Nalnoran border while the jungle ignited behind them. The canopy crashed down as sparks and smoke billowed up into the sky, and I knew my women and soldiers would never be able to outrun the enchanted burn.

  I’d just ordered the last of my Boms to retreat when I heard a metallic screech tear through the clouds, and as Rammstein dove toward the forest, a jet of green flames spewed forth from his serrated jaws.

  The inferno overpowered the hellcats’ fire in a flash of green, and despite how quickly it swallowed up the blazing trees, the eerie flames undulated slowly as they built into a wall along the western edge of the grounds. Then the metal dragon soared toward the Nalnoran border while he let his inferno seep into the battlefield, and when he had to douse it to avoid scalding our troops, only black ash remained for a thousand feet beyond the flooded slate of the foothills.

  The hellcats had already finished their rounds and made for the deeper parts of the jungle, though, and nearly four hundred of my soldiers were blocked in with me while the blaze pressed in from the north and south. There were only two directions to run, but even if I could tear the Master’s walls open, we’d still be stuck, because he’d already sent another herd of minions streaming from the portals ahead of us.

  Now, hundreds of voracious creatures came pounding over boulders to overtake my troops, and the Defenders tried to fire their pistols and stall the herd while they ran for the ashen forest. Even with the creatures dropping, there were still too many of them scaling the bodies and forging ahead, and the gap that led to our escape was closing rapidly.

  There were at least six hundred yards between the front of our platoon and safety, and the chances of us all making it were slim to none with the beasts overtaking us. They’d devour half our soldiers before then, and plenty of them would make it into the forest, too.

  Then I saw a Terra Defender ahead of me slow down and reload his pistol instead, and when Pindor turned on the minions, I did the same.

  Soldiers slammed past us on both sides while I ordered the troops to stop firing and save themselves, and as a bout of green flames consumed the Nalnoran border, Rammstein pursued the Osula to save the rest of our army.

  Pindor and I stood our ground, though, as we emptied our magazines
into the mass, and the possessed beasts shrieked and convulsed in webs of lightning while we kept on pulling the triggers. Some of the minions dove into the blaze to escape the assault, but we managed to fend off the herd as their advances only pushed us back ten feet at a time, and I kept my metal magic locked onto Rammstein’s location while my heart pounded in my ears.

  As soon as I sensed the metal dragon doubling back, I knew he’d managed to spare our army from a blistering death, and half the platoon behind me were already crossing into the forest.

  I ordered Rammstein to pick up speed while I reloaded a third time against the incoming swarm, but when I heard a screech I didn’t recognize, I whipped my head around toward the mountains.

  Ten dragons were diving from the clouds like they’d been led straight to us, and for a split second, I thought the Master had managed to brand them until Rammstein let out a metallic roar.

  Then all ten dragons diligently parted their jaws, and I grabbed Pindor by the shoulder to drag him away from the minions.

  “Run!” I bellowed, and the two of us sprinted after our troops as the metal dragon swooped in.

  Chapter 21

  Talons caught my armor just as the hellcats’ flames closed off ahead of us, and while the jets of ten fire breathing dragons exploded at our backs, Rammstein coasted over the inferno with Pindor and I dangling only feet above the blaze.

  The kid’s eyes were bulging out as he flailed to keep his boots from catching fire, and both of us choked on smoke while the metal dragon spewed a torrent of green jets into the field. Rammstein managed to catch the hellcats’ flames before they could spread back into the ashen forest, though, and in under a minute the metal dragon gained control of the last of inferno.

  The troops who’d made it out were panting and gawking as they stared from where the forest used to be, and the moment Rammstein extinguished his own blaze, he brought us back around toward the fortress.

  I squinted through the haze of smoke and the dying storm as I scanned the disaster zone of the battle, but then I furrowed my brow at what I saw below. Hundreds of possessed beasts were still spilling out into the ashen foothills, and with every dragon Rammstein led here burning them up in bulk, it looked like the Master didn’t care which way the tides had turned now.