I shrugged. “Yes. They are.”
Bannen gave me an odd look. “They know that, right?”
“Of course they do. I’ve worked with everyone here at least once.”
“And yet they’re not asking what you’re seeing?” Bannen shook his head, expression filled with disbelief. “Are they idiots?”
I charitably refrained from agreeing. Out loud.
Derek, with much posturing, lit off a flame spell in the shape of a phoenix. It was the best long-ranged attack available for a mage to use over this kind of distance. It went straight for the chaotic power dancing like a flame in the clearing ahead with admirable accuracy.
Where it then splattered and fizzled out to nothing.
I snorted on a laugh as Derek went red in the face from such a spectacular failure. Bannen actually chuckled.
“Not to worry,” Master Bly shot Bannen a dirty look, “I had a hunch one single attack wouldn’t do much. If it had, then we wouldn’t have been called in to begin with. Alright, everyone, let’s attack on three. One, two, three!”
Every mage has their own pet spells, the favorites they use, and so each of them cast something different. I watched them fire it off with a certain sense of inevitability. Part of the reason why my eyes are so good is not only that I see the physical and magical makeup of things, but I can see the strength of them. I could tell, looking at those spells, that they would not have the necessary power to confront the piece of Toh’sellor standing in the clearing.
“We’re too far away,” was Master Bly’s intelligent response. “We need to get closer.”
“We need to move,” Bannen cut in, coming to stand to face three of the masters. “I don’t know what your experience is in battle situations like this, but we’re surrounded on all sides. We stand still, we lose.”
Master Bly didn’t like to be told what to do, especially by someone younger, so he bristled automatically. Master Vonda smoothly stepped in before he could snap something out. “You’re quite correct, Bannen. Bly, the crux of it all is near that thing. Unless we have a truly viable plan, I do not advise getting in too close. Closer, perhaps, but not truly close. We need an avenue of retreat if it comes down to it.”
“I agree,” Master said mildly. “Bly, let us all go in a little closer, say to that rock wall over there, and try from there. If it doesn’t work, we’ll have to retreat.”
Master Bly wasn’t keen on this idea, but he nodded reluctantly. “Fine. But I feel that with a more concentrated effort, we’ll see better results. Let’s go in closer.”
As we moved, he called out to different apprentices, ordering them where to stand, what combination of spells to attack with, and so forth. Of course he didn’t once mention my name. Part of Derek’s attitude toward me was because of his master’s inherent distrust of my magic.
Bannen noticed this too and he asked in a low voice, “Master Bly doesn’t like you, does he?”
“Not at all.” I grimaced, resigned and a little sad. “He doesn’t trust my magic.”
Giving the man’s back a hard stare, Bannen shook his head. “And I don’t trust a commander who can’t utilize the strength of his fighters. We won’t win against Toh’sellor like this, not even as small of a piece as this one.”
“I know.” And I truly did. I hadn’t quite believed Bannen before, as the idea of Toh’sellor seemed so far-fetched to me, but after being here and experiencing it all for myself, the reality wasn’t something I could deny. “Bannen. Are we going to lose this area to Toh’sellor?”
He didn’t answer me, but he didn’t need to. The look on his face said it all.
I didn’t just watch while Bly led the apprentices in an attempt at defeating the shard of Toh’sellor. We didn’t have that kind of luxury. We had no defensive position, and we stood close enough to the epicenter of creation that monsters formed right in front of us out of everything except air. Even the grass itself rose up into strange looking creatures bent on attacking us. I didn’t know if Toh’sellor sensed us somehow and responded by making more minions, or if its power was just running amok. The sounds and noise of the place overwhelmed my senses. It smelled like the worst refuse pile in history mixed with this odd feel in the air of static energy that raised the hairs on my skin.
Everything about the place revolted me.
Rena fought alongside me, zapping anything that her eyes could see. I felt her more than saw her, my familiar senses keeping track of her automatically even as I fought. The danger we faced made the bond very unhappy, so I couldn’t get more than four feet from her without it buzzing and pulling in protest. Steph had my other side, making sure we weren’t outflanked, and I was extremely glad for both of them. In a spirit of comradery, I battled amongst the other familiars, trying to keep all of the mages safe even as they threw one useless spell after another at the shard. I kept waiting for them to realize that they weren’t having any impact on it but Bly was a stubborn one. It took far longer than it should have before Tarkington gave up and yanked them all back several feet.
“Bly, this is useless,” he said, gesturing toward the epicenter, radiating frustration. “Our magic isn’t having any effect.”
I could see the fear in Bly’s eyes. He didn’t want to admit to that. I lost his response and Tarkington’s reply, as we had another batch of grass monsters come at us. I judged we had been fighting for at least four hours in here. I was starting to feel the strain in my shoulders, arms, and thighs. My back was soaked with sweat, shirt sticking uncomfortably to my skin. If it took us four hours to get in, it meant it would take another four hours to get back out, and we’d said before even coming in here that we only had eight hours of daylight. We really did not have the time for an argument between the masters right now.
Unfortunately, it had degenerated into one. Growling, I said to Steph, “Guard my back, I’m going to bash their heads together.”
“Please,” she requested, already zinging off a spell.
I caught Shunith’s eye as I moved and she gave me a reassuring look before turning and snapping at a minion that got too close. I do love that wolf. I left the girls to watch my back as I marched right into the center of the four masters and put my hand on Vonda’s and Bly’s chests, pushing them back so they were no longer arguing nose to nose. “We,” I stated firmly, looking between all four of them, “are losing daylight. We do not have time for you to argue this out. You’ve got two choices. We either try one more attack, and it better work within five minutes, or we leave. Now.”
Bly bristled like an upset porcupine. “Who are you to give us orders?”
“An experienced fighter who speaks sense,” Whit said in that soft voice of his. “That’s who he is, Bly. Do not glare at me so. This young man is the only one among us that even recognized that thing as Toh’sellor. I think that we should respect his words.”
The man’s quiet, but apparently when he speaks, it’s for a good reason. I gave Whit a thankful nod. “Master Whit. I’m no magician but it’s obvious to me that what you’ve tried isn’t working. Is there another magical attack that you want to try?” I didn’t ask if there was another attack they thought would work because I already knew the answer to that.
Whit gave Bly a challenging look. “I believe we have exhausted all of our possibilities.”
Bly glared at the ground and didn’t respond.
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Clearing his throat, Tarkington stated, “Rena’s magic can defeat it.”
Oh, that got a response. Bly whirled on him. “You seriously want to suggest that after nine people attacked that thing, four of them ranked mages, and failed, that your little pet apprentice can do it! Tarkington, really, you go too far—”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Vonda cut in, voice mild but eyes hot enough to cut through steel.
“As am I,” Whit agreed. “After that impressive display at the barrier, I believe that her magic might well be exactly what we need. Bly. You’ve had your turn.
I believe we should give her at least a chance. If she fails, we will have lost nothing but time.”
Bly threw his hands wide. “We’re slowly getting surrounded, we’re going to be hard pressed to get out of here even if we leave now!”
Oh, now he realized?
Tarkington took in a breath and said the words that everyone had been avoiding. “If we leave now, without defeating that thing, then we will admit that this area is lost. Likely forever.”
The words blanketed us all in silence for several seconds.
“I want Rena to at least try,” Tarkington maintained. “She’s likely our only hope.”
Rena turned and joined the conversation, staring down Bly like a hunter would a wolf. “I want to try as well. We just have to get closer.”
“Closer?” Bly scoffed. “This isn’t close enough for you?”
While I didn’t like the man’s tone, I had to admit I had the same question. “Uh, Rena, how close do you need to be?”
“I can’t see the base elements or design from here,” she explained earnestly. Mostly to me, as Bly was too hostile to speak comfortably with. “You see where that second stone retaining wall is? I think at least that close.”
That was much, much closer than what I was comfortable with. In fact, that was way too close in my opinion. I stared in that direction uneasily, fighting the urge to say screw it, grab her, and run. She’d already been running and fighting for four hours, which was really remarkable, considering her condition. I knew she’d been feeling better these days, but still. Wasn’t trying to forge ahead in this situation dangerous? What if her strength faltered? “Rena….”
“Purple.”
My eyes cut to hers. What did she just say?
“Purple,” Rena repeated with a lopsided smile. “Please?”
That was extremely unfair of her. Really, she used the secret code word now?
“Purple?” Tarkington repeated, completely confused.
We both ignored him, staring at each other. A volatile mix of instincts swirled in my chest. People always say to listen to your instincts, but what they never warn you about is that one instinct will outweigh another, selfishly ignoring the consequences. You couldn’t just listen to one. I wanted to ignore the problem and get her out of here. My familiar bond clamored for me to do that. I wanted to give her the chance to show Bly and his pet apprentice up. I wanted to honor our agreement and give her the help she needed. I wanted to ignore ‘purple’ entirely. I’d promised her in the kitchen all those nights ago that if she said that word, I’d do whatever it was she asked of me, give her the help she needed. I’d said that.
There are times I could just kick myself.
“I want to say this now, I do this under protest.” My heart beat loudly in my ears, a thunder of sound, and I could feel adrenaline kicking in like a tingle through my spine. “This is a perfectly terrible idea. It will go so badly.”
“We’ve literally tried every other magical attack we can think of and we’re not even making a dent in that thing.” Tarkington’s voice shook a little. It scared him, I knew, that he couldn’t even protect himself in this situation. “Rena’s magic is our only hope.”
“I know.” And I did. “It’s putting a stationary target near it that I don’t like. Once she gets started, she’s not going to be able to move until the spell is done.”
Rena looked up at me with complete confidence. “You’ll protect me.”
Where did this utter faith come from? Seriously. We’ve known each other two weeks, and all of a sudden, she thought I could move mountains. I wanted to tell her not to look at me like that, that such confidence was a little misplaced against dogs the size of horses, and trees that snacked on people, but I found I couldn’t. I couldn’t get the words out. Instead I slumped my shoulders and sighed a year’s worth of sighs.
“This is going to go so badly.” I turned my attention to everyone. “Alright, listen to me; until you absolutely have to stop, I need you to run. No matter what, just run. Stay in the square formation, keep an eye on each other, make sure that your defensive shields overlap so that they can’t get a single finger in between. Speed is our friend right now, we don’t have the time to stop and fight every single monster in this place.”
“Are we seriously letting these two make the calls?” Bly demanded.
“We are not in charge of this expedition,” Whit reminded him in that soft, mild tone of his. “We are here to give support to them as they gain experience for their Tests.”
Bly snarled out something under his breath that was likely a string of swear words. He was not the only one that looked unhappy about this but the other apprentices, at least, seemed more or less on board with this plan. I looked in all directions and only two seemed against the idea. But then, Derek would naturally be against anything Rena wanted to do, so of course his opinion didn’t count.
“We’ve got your back,” Emily assured Rena and I both.
And that was reassuring, really, because I had seen what Emily could do to these things. She was definitely a person I wanted at my back. Did that mean I suddenly felt better about bulling my way forward and straight into the center of the enemy? Nope. “Alright, let’s move.”
We ran.
Nineteen people ran forward, all intent on protecting Rena as we dodged, weaved, and sprinted past the worst of the monsters. I had to breathe through my mouth as the smell threatened to make me throw up. My eyes watered and I blinked them, over and over, trying to keep my sight clear. Several people kept lobbing fire spells and that made it better and worse, as it kept the minions off of us, but the scent of smoke mixing in with the toxic aroma didn’t help matters on the nose front. It also made things hotter and I had already sweated enough to make my body odor a live thing. The ride back to the hotel would not be pleasant.
People tried to keep a square formation but they weren’t trained soldiers and it collapsed eventually back into the V that they seemed to default to. I didn’t correct them, it wouldn’t do any good, and for our purposes, it worked. I kept an eye on people, making sure that no one got left behind, as we had some slow runners in this group. The apprentices’ energy flagged, as to be expected after four hours of combat, and more than one person tripped. I called out their names as they did, urging them up, which sometimes worked, but most of the time alerted the person in front of them that they needed a hand. I’d say this—this was mostly a tight knit group. They were good at helping each other.
With our collective exhaustion, bad formation, and less-than-effective spells, we should not have even tried getting closer. Our only saving grace was that the monsters occasionally turned on each other. Someone would lob an attack, crippling a monster, distracting the others in its immediate vicinity into turning that direction instead. Did that mean we were practically free and clear while we ran? Hardly.
Rena was not the fastest runner in the world. Not turtle slow, either, just not able to keep up with me at full speed. She ran as hard as she could and even then I had the time to go a little ahead of her, cutting down monsters and kicking them aside, clearing a path for her. For some reason there were less of the animal beasts and more of the fauna ones the closer we got to the center. There must be some rational explanation for it, but I wasn’t about to stop in the middle of a battlefield and analyze it to figure it out.
“Here,” Rena panted out. She skidded to a stop at the second stone wall, hands on her knees as she fought to catch her breath.
I’d been afraid of that. I kept an ear tracking her breath, anxious that she would suddenly need her medicine. I couldn’t focus on helping her, though, as we had monsters converging on us quickly. I slashed at two, cutting them back, keeping the area immediately around her clear. The others fought just as much; I could hear their grunts, curses, and the sound of spells being fired off rapidly. “Back in square formation!” I bellowed and repeated it twice until they obeyed me. There, now that defensive line should hold.
Turning my head
, I saw that Rena stood upright again. It didn’t seem like she’d needed her medicine after all. She cast me a grin, triumphant that her stamina was still holding, and I grinned back. Well, maybe she’d make it through this after all without me having to carry her out.
The apprentices and masters threw up an impromptu shield barrier, each of their personal shields overlapping so that we had a magical stronghold, even if only temporarily. Taking two seconds, I stopped to get an impression of the area. Rena had chosen to stop perhaps fifty feet away from the core of this madness. My stomach roiled in rebellion at this proximity. From here, the shifting and overlapping appeared much more intense. It was as if light, darkness, every spectrum of color, every particle of air, every fiber of being, all writhed together into some elaborate Gordian knot, and then parts of it flickered out as if it never existed. Every cell in my body revolted and my survival instincts threatened mutiny, desperate to get away from this thing.
My nose had just shut down completely, refusing to be part of this party anymore.
This was definitely a shard of Toh’sellor. A very small fragment, granted, but it was unquestionably a part of that crazy chaos demon.
This was so bad. On so many levels.
Something else approached, monsters made up of various grasses all twined in and around each other in a complicated weave. They didn’t have heads, just long bodies with even longer arms, hunching over to reach us. They made rustling, squelching noises with each step, like a swamp bog moving, which, ewww. Because they likely smelled like a swamp too, I felt grateful all over again my nose had already gone on vacation.
Switching out my shield for a secondary sword, I went for it, blades whistling around my head, chopping it into confetti. One barely went down before another one just like it popped up, and I went for that one. Always, before I got more than ten feet away, bond be hanged, I retreated back half that distance, making sure that I always stayed within range of Rena.
The Human Familiar (Familiar and the Mage Book 1) Page 18