by Curtis, Greg
From out of nowhere, in the midst of the firestorm raging all around him, a gigantic hammer blow of pure force came and tried to impale him into the very ground. His force blast held, just, but the resultant explosion of released force simply picked him up and threw him two hundred paces into the cliffs far wall, faster than an arrow in flight. The impact as he hit was terrible, only the remnants of his shield of vitality, force magic and his armour keeping him from certain death, and even so he felt bones break and muscles tear, there was blood in his mouth and blood in his eyes, and he knew he didn’t have time for any of it. It was only then that he finally understood his life was on the line and he let the sudden rush of fear run through him, powering him as few things could, and blocking much of the pain.
Even as he was trying to get to his feet, knowing he didn’t want to be caught sitting down, and failing, something wasn’t working quite right in his flesh, he saw the tidal wave of acid coming at him, and had to try and raise his force blast again, shaping it into a giant umbrella, and somehow he did. The wave tore asunder everything around him, burnt the very stone on which he was lying, and still somehow missed him, but the lightning bolts, fireballs and sound bombs that came with it, didn’t, and just enough of their violence made it through his shield to cause him more anguish.
He screamed then, a sound that he could feel as it ripped its way painfully loose from his vocal cords, but couldn’t actually hear over the cacophony all around him. Worst of all, through what remained of his blood soaked vision he could see Master Argus standing there, lobbing more magic bombs at him, unconcerned, and not even straining. He could do this all day and he would. That made him angry.
For the first time in far too many years Marjan knew the fury that had once possessed him with such tragic results, and he released it. Before he could even think about it, a shockwave of air and rock shards was flying at the sylph, ripping the very floor of the quarry apart in its fury. It failed against the sylph’s own shields, splitting into two waves of screaming insanity, much as Marjan had expected it to, but that wasn’t its point. Even while the sylph was defending himself against it, no doubt surprised by its ferocity, a small volcano was erupting beneath his feet.
He watched with a certain satisfaction as the sylph had to leap for his own life, even as he managed to take in a few comforting breaths of his own, wipe the blood out of his eyes, and let some semblance of health return to his battered flesh, but only for a few heartbeats.
Almost from the instant he landed on a rock pile thirty feet away from where he had been, looking slightly angry, the sylph was launching a blast of suffocating darkness at him and Marjan knew it would kill him if he let it. He had no wish to die. The blast of pure light that escaped from his clenched fist, did more than just tear the darkness apart, it was so powerful and well aimed, that it went on to strike the sylph full in the face, and he watched with a measure of satisfaction as he howled in surprise and put his hands to his eyes, temporarily blinded. That was all the chance Marjan needed and a heartbeat later a plague of wasps was inside his shields, stinging him, the sylph having been too distracted to block the summoning.
Of course it was a mistake to upset a master. Marjan discovered that a heartbeat later as with the same blast of fury and fire that he used to turn the wasps to smoke he tore huge pieces off the quarry walls, and the resultant landslides nearly buried him alive. Fortunately a small twister of fuming air and water, a shape he’d never been able to master before, but suddenly quite easy in his fear and rage, sent the rocks flying away from him and thanks to a carefully designed funnel of force, straight at Master Argus, who had to deflect them with his own shields. He looked somewhat irritated Marjan noticed, and that made him feel good.
He should have known better.
The sunbeam came out of nowhere to strike at him, and again it was so powerful that the rocks all around him started melting even as his shield of vitality held, but unexpectedly that worked to his advantage as the tornado started flinging bits and pieces of molten rock at Master Argus, even harder than before. They bounced of his own shaped force of course, but not without releasing great clouds of noxious black smoke that made him cough.
That gave Marjan just enough time to launch a bolt of lightning through the ground to strike at him through his feet, and the sudden surge of whiteness that lit up his shield of vitality must have caused the sylph no end of bother. Of course two could play at that game, and he discovered that even as another hammer of force smashed down onto his own shaped force blast and sent him flying through the air once more, shocked.
He hit hard again, and this time felt something sharp rip through his shoulder as he rolled. He knew he was in trouble then, even as he smelled the blood and felt the sticky wetness flowing down his leathers, and he knew he didn’t have long to go before he fainted, and when that happened he would die. It was then that he summoned the inferno, an unholy twister of air, force and fire that he’d never before been able to hold for more than a few seconds, but with the fear and pain powering him, that wasn’t a problem any longer.
From the moment it hit he knew its success as he watched the sylph get simply picked up off the ground, still safe inside his own shields and wards so he believed, and then be spun around like a child’s top, faster and faster, and that was the actual purpose. Spin someone long and hard enough and their limbs would be ripped off, and even if they somehow held together, the dizziness would destroy their concentration and ability to aim.
Master Argus knew that too, and he quickly destroyed the inferno, blasting it apart with some sort explosion of pure air that shook the entire valley and lit up the sky for as far as they eye could see, but even so he was caught off guard and Marjan watched as it was his turn to fall twenty feet to the ground below him, still spinning all the way down, and then roll down the endless piles of rubble that were the quarry’s new floor, a perfect target as his shields finally failed.
Marjan hit him then, using a blast of pure sound straight into his belly. It wouldn’t kill him he knew, but it was strong enough that it would knock the air out of his lungs, double him over for a good half hour, cause him to lose all control of his bowels and leave him feeling sick for days. In that sort of condition, no wizard could fight, and he watched unsurprised as the sylph collapsed in a heap and rolled the rest of the way to the quarry floor like a rag doll in front of him.
He had won.
It shocked him, more than a little, but as he saw the sylph lying there not a hundred paces from him, looking much the worse for wear, he knew a sense of victory that he had never known before, except once, for a heartbeat, and then the cost had been terrible. But this time his opponent wasn’t dead.
Slowly, mainly because he couldn’t seem to move very fast, he staggered to his feet, and then started shuffling his way over to Master Argus, not completely sure why, but maybe just to make sure he was actually down.
Eventually he made it there, a painful journey as there was something wrong with his legs as well as his shoulder, and he could see the sylph in front of him, curled up like a kitten, writhing in pain, anger and hatred etched into every line of his white face as he stared back at him.
Standing over him, seeing his weakness, it should have been a moment of triumph, but it wasn’t. Instead it was a time to know failure as he stood there staring at him. To know that a fight that should never have happened, had, and to know that someone he had trusted, even relied upon, had betrayed him, and to know that he had once more hurt a fellow mage, he could taste the bitterness of it all in his mouth.
“You lose Master. You should not have attacked me. I’m always strongest then. I’ll call the healers, and then you can move on to your next student. But don’t come back here. I’ll just be stronger. Agreed?”
“No you lose Marjan.” The sylph’s voice came from just behind Marjan, strong and confident, and even as he gasped, he watched the sylph lying helplessly on the ground suddenly vanish, an illusion and a trap all rolled into
one. Marjan spun as fast as he was able, strengthening his shields as best he could, but of course he was too late, and a blast of force knocked him onto the ground where the illusion had been just a heartbeat before, and then a claw of pure force was at his throat, choking him while the sylph was suddenly standing over him.
“It was a good try, but still you let your guilt and your guild laws rule you. Believing that I would hold back, believing that the laws would hold, believing that battle was somehow fair. It isn’t.” Marjan was struggling desperately with the claw at his throat, but for some reason he simply couldn’t loosen it, and his breath was coming in desperate gasps, and all the while he knew he was going to die.
“To win you had to kill me, and you didn’t. So you lose.”
“And here’s your prize for losing.” Against his will Marjan felt his head turn until he was staring at the sky to his side, and there he could see his worst nightmare given form. Essaline was there, hanging in the air, choking, her hands at her throat as she like him tried desperately to release the claw of force at her throat.
He screamed then, a sound of primal rage that somehow almost made it past his throat, and summoned all of his magic into one more blast, a withering blast of scattered force that smashed into the force claw at her throat, and shattered it into a million pieces. It worked, and he watched with a sense of overwhelming relief as she fell to the ground not far from him, landing on her hands and knees, still choking but alive.
“That was a mistake.” Why did the sylph’s voice sound so calm and self assured he wondered, and he had just enough time to realise it was because he was right, before he watched a fireball smash into Essaline, and send her flying away from him, a burning, screaming shooting star, only to hit the edge of the cliff so far away, and fall back to the rubble floor, a bundle of burning rags, no longer moving.
“You should have struck at me.”
Marjan screamed then, the shock replaced by fury so strong that it simply tore loose from him. But that was merely the beginning. The anger, the rage, the shock and the grief that moved through him then, they were so powerful, so overwhelming, so primitive and savage that for a moment he almost forgot that he was slowly choking to death. The hatred wouldn’t let him care about such trivial matters, and this time the magic within him was unstoppable.
A blast of something, everything he had, fire, wind, force, sound, lightning, air, all the magic he could shape and even that which he couldn’t, leapt out from him, striking the sylph directly in the face, ripping his shields apart as if they were paper, turning him into a beacon of screaming raw magic, and then going on to turn the entire valley into a storm of magical rage, thundering through the ground, turning the entire sky into an inferno of orange and yellow wrath.
It lasted no longer than a few heartbeats, but in that time it did all that it needed to, and left nothing behind. Gone was the sylph, torn apart and scattered to the air as less than a puff of smoke, leaving not even a trace behind for him to hate. Gone too was much of the valley, its walls shredded clean. But so too he knew was Essaline, and the wild magic left him as quickly as it had come. With no one left to strike at, it had no purpose. He had no purpose.
Soon the quarry was peaceful again, he was able to breath freely, and he could even hear the sounds of the animals in the distance as they returned to their normal activities. But Essaline would not return he knew, and the grief of that loss was overwhelming, a darkness of the very soul, threatening to send him into screaming insanity. He had never known such pain before, not the pain of her loss nor the pain of his guilt for failing to protect her, and he knew that her death was his failure.
In time he managed to get to his feet, not an easy task as his battered body kept failing him, sending him falling back down on to the shattered rocks again and again, and then slowly staggered over to where her still burning corpse lay, tears streaming out of his eyes all the way.
A single thought brought the rain down on her body, drenching the flames, scattering the foul burning smell that rose from her, and then he collapsed beside her, crying like a baby, knowing it would be a long time before he would be able to move again, and still longer before he would want to.
“I’m so sorry Essaline. I failed you.” They were all the words he could think of, the simple truth, and they cut him more keenly than any blade could. He had never failed before, not at such a terrible price.
Then knowing that he had to know, had to see the truth with his own eyes, even if he didn’t want to, he placed a hand on her body and started rolling her over, but the moment his hand touched her shoulder, the burnt robe she was wearing simply collapsed underneath as if it had been held up by only air.
For the longest time he knelt there, staring, shocked, wondering if he was even seeing what he thought he was, or if he was simply going mad, and then he reached out again to touch her where her hips should be only to watch that too collapse in on itself like a balloon that had burst. Her hood did the same and then her boots, falling free to roll away down the scree leaving no burnt feet behind.
There was no body inside her clothes, how could that be? He didn’t understand it, any of it, and even as he kept trying to make sense of it, prodding away at the pile of burnt robes with a finger, he kept wondering what it meant. Was he going mad? Had she been burnt to ashes? Would there not even be a body to bury?
“Come now lad, did you really think that even a sylph battle blade would dare to harm an elf maiden in her own home town? Let alone a priestess and the daughter of no less than two elders? He’d be torn limb from limb.”
Marjan knew that voice, even though he didn’t know how he could be hearing it in the middle of Evensong.
“Master Silas?” He would have turned around to make sure if he could have, but his body was refusing to obey him by then. Too many shocks in one day seemed to have left him all but paralysed.
“Of course lad, of course. Now Dimeter, Ferris, get him to his feet, we need to get him over to the healers. Captain, if you could bring the horses closer. Blasted sylphs, their training methods have always been a little too brutal.”
Perfectly on cue Marjan felt hands grabbing at his arms, lifting him upwards, and causing the piece of rock still impaled in his shoulder to tear loose a little more, causing him to scream, or really just gasp loudly as that was all the strength he seemed to have left. But the pain was good, as it returned his sanity to him, for a moment, allowing him to ask the one question he needed answered.
“She’s not dead?” He should have asked all manner of things but in the end it was the only question that mattered to him.
“No, no, of course not. We would never allow that. Lady Essaline is in her grove with the other priests and priestesses, doing whatever they do there, chanting or some other such nonsense I would guess. And Master Argus is with the elders, telling them of your progress before he moves on to his next charge. He seemed somewhat satisfied by the way, though fairly grumpy, possibly the bee stings annoyed him, but he said you’ll become stronger now that you’ve found your inner rage.”
For some reason Marjan started laughing about then, a thin weak sound perhaps but one that wouldn’t stop. An overwhelming sense of relief and joy was robbing him of his ability to think, and even the pain as the two wizards supported him at first and then more people started carrying him when the last of his legs’ strength deserted him and his toes dragged along the ground, couldn’t break through it.
He was still laughing when the light left his eyes.
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Chapter Ten.
“Marjan, mage Marjan.” Petras’ voice came echoing from across the glade, causing Marjan to look up from Willow who was enjoying her morning’s grooming as she always did, but then she had a lot to enjoy of late. Good food, plenty of company as she spent her days stabled with the other horses of the Wild Sage Rangers, some exercise to keep her trim, some training to keep her mind active and get her used to the elven style saddle and commands, the hors
e was nine years old and some days she reminded him of a young filly again. Life was good for her.
Holly was enjoying life as well, she’d been included in one of the several large goat herds belonging to the village and so now had plenty of company all day, good grazing and a warm shelter at night. She still came to him when he visited, still beat her tail furiously when he petted her, but in time he knew she would forget him as she moved on with her new life and he couldn’t exactly blame her for that.