by Jasmine Walt
And then Gala was among them, surrounded by the beautiful, fierce creatures. She knew they could be dangerous, but she didn’t feel any fear. Instead, all she felt was wonder. Without conscious thought, she reached out and touched the gorgeous animal closest to her. His fur felt rough, almost bristly, but underneath, the lion was warm—as warm as Gala herself. In that moment, she knew that they were one and the same—both flesh and bone, a manifestation of thought and matter in the Physical Realm.
Reaching out to the lion with her mind, she tried to reassure him, to tell him she was a friend, here to help them. And the lion seemed to understand. Purring, the beast lay down in front of her, his long whiskers pleasantly tickling her ankle.
Bending down, Gala touched the choker around the lion’s neck. The animal whimpered, and she willed the chains and the choker removed, desperate to free the majestic creature. With a loud clang, all the instruments of feline torture came off, not just on the lion next to her but on all of them.
The lions roared as one, and then the biggest one came up to her. Still dazed and feeling no fear, Gala extended her hand to him, smiling as he licked her palm with his rough tongue.
Slowly beginning to calm down, she became aware of murmuring in the crowd. Looking up, she saw everyone watching her—and realized what she had done. She had lost control again, and she had done it in the most public venue possible.
Her hand instinctively rose to touch her shawl, but she felt her hair blowing in the breeze instead. Her disguise was gone, the shawl lying in a heap on the floor of the arena. It must’ve fallen off at some point without her noticing.
Gala’s breathing quickened. Thousands of eyes were staring at her right now. Blaise had asked her to be discreet, and she’d failed him again and again, in the most spectacular fashion. Her discomfort growing with every moment, Gala cast a frantic glance around her. The lions were calmly standing there, like a wall of animal flesh, and at the far side of the arena were the men who were supposed to fight them, all huddling together and watching her with shock and disbelief.
And Gala knew what she had to do. Her mind went to that place inside herself that she was now beginning to recognize—the place that had enabled her to do sorcery before. It was a far cry from being able to control her abilities, but at least now she recognized when she was about to use them.
As though from a distance, she felt she was about to do exactly what she’d done the other day at the dance. Focusing with all her might on Esther, Maya, and the lions, Gala let the desire to be away overwhelm her. Closing her eyes, she willed them all back to the place that had served as home for the past several days.
She willed them back to the inn.
And when she opened her eyes, that was exactly where they were all standing—she, the lions, and the two elderly women.
Unfortunately, in front of them, on the dead field of wheat, were hundreds of heavily armed soldiers.
They were headed for the inn, and seeing Gala materializing with her strange entourage gave them only the briefest of pauses. Their faces were hard, expressionless, and Gala suddenly knew that they were there for her—that what Blaise had feared had come to pass.
Her heart jumped, and in her desperate panic, her mind succeeded in doing something she had been futilely trying to do for the past several days: it reached out to Gala’s creator.
“Blaise, I think we have been found.”
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Blaise
Rubbing his eyes, Blaise fought his exhaustion in order to write yet another line of code. His brain was barely functioning, but he was only a few hours away from completing the spell that would take him to Gala in a series of teleporting leaps. His task was complicated by the fact that he’d only had a couple of pre-written spell cards with teleportation code, and that the code would have only applied to one person—not a person and his chaise flying in the air, as Blaise was planning to do. That meant that he was essentially doing the spell from scratch, which always took much longer.
Deep in thought, he got that sensation again, the one that preceded Contact.
“Blaise, I think we have been found.”
As though a glass of cold water had been thrown into his face. Blaise jumped up from his chair, his heart hammering. The voice had been Gala’s, and it had spoken clearly in his head. He was so shocked he didn’t even have a chance to ponder the fact that Gala had somehow altered the Contact spell enough that her actual voice had sounded in his mind.
There was no more time to sit and finish the teleportation spell. He had to get to Gala, and he had to do it now.
Grabbing his Interpreter Stone and the spell cards he had been painstakingly working on, Blaise ran out of the house. He had enough of the spell done by now that he would be able to tele-jump a good portion of the way to Neumanngrad. The rest of the way he would fly. It would be faster than finishing the spell right now.
Jumping onto his chaise, Blaise rose up into the air and quickly fed one of the cards into the Stone. He didn’t even bother to look behind him to see if he was being followed. Now that Gala had been found, it didn’t matter anymore. All he cared about was getting to her as quickly as possible.
When he materialized a few miles away, he looked ahead with his enhanced vision, making sure his path was clear, and quickly scribbled the next set of coordinates onto a pre-written card. Then he fed that into the Stone too.
By the time he ran out of cards, he was still a distance away. Cursing, he tried to get his chaise to go faster, his blood running cold at the thought of Gala being there with only two old women to protect her. He had been a fool to let her go see the world on her own, and he would never make that mistake again. Whatever happened next, they would be together, he mentally vowed to himself.
As he was getting closer to his destination, he heard thunder and saw large clouds forming. The first raindrops hit his skin soon thereafter, quickly turning into a torrential downpour. Below, Blaise could see the parched ground greedily absorbing the water—the first such rain since the drought had begun.
Squinting, he peered through the wall of water, trying to see what lay ahead. And in the distance, he spotted the inn.
What he saw there shook him to the very core of his being.
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Gala
Cornered. They were cornered.
The word hammered inside Gala’s skull as she stared at the soldiers moving swiftly toward her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Esther and Maya frozen in place, shock and fear reflected on their pale faces. Even the lions seemed dazed, disoriented by being teleported so suddenly from place to place.
She had gotten them out of the Coliseum and brought them into a situation that seemed a thousand times worse.
Closing her eyes, Gala tried to will herself and her companions away, but when she opened them, she was still standing there. Her magical abilities, never reliable, had apparently deserted her again. Though she felt that part of her mind churning, she couldn’t control it enough to teleport them this time.
A surge of panic sharpened her vision. Gala could suddenly see everything, right down to each mole and scar on the soldiers’ faces. Instead of one big formation, they were organized into small groups, each one with archers in the middle and men with large two-handed shields standing in a semi-circle at the front. They looked grim and determined, the archers already drawing their arrows and the swordsmen holding the hilts of their weapons tightly, their muscular forearms tense in anticipation.
They were ready for battle.
No, Gala thought in desperation. She couldn’t let this happen. If the soldiers were there for her, then she needed to face them herself. She couldn’t allow Maya, Esther, or the lions to get pulled into this.
Gathering her courage, she began walking toward the army.
“Gala, wait!”
She could hear Esther yelling behind her, and she picked up the pace, wanting to leave the old women far behind. “Stay there,” she yelled back, turning her head to
see the lions following her and Maya and Esther trailing in their wake. Gala willed them to stop, to turn back, but her magic was no more in her control than the dual emotions of fear and desperation that made her whole body shake.
Not knowing what else to do, she began running—running straight at the armed men. It felt liberating in a strange way, to just run as fast as she could, and Gala felt her speed picking up with each step until she was almost flying toward the wheat field, leaving her entourage far behind.
One of the small groups of soldiers stepped forward, putting up their shields as though expecting an attack. At the same time, the archers released their arrows, turning the sky black. Even with her mind in turmoil, Gala could estimate the current path of the deadly sticks, could calculate the trajectory adjusted for gravity and wind. She could tell that many arrows would hit her and a few would even reach her friends.
Still running, she felt a growing fury. It exploded out of her in a blast of fire that covered the sky and the ground all around her. The deadly hail of arrows disintegrated, turning to ash in a matter of seconds, but the soldiers remained standing. Their shields were emitting a faint glow that somehow protected the men from the heat as a cloud of ash settled magnificently over the burning field.
Unfazed, Gala kept running. She felt unstoppable, invincible, and when the group of soldiers loomed in front of her, she couldn’t slow down. Instead she slammed into them at full speed, not even feeling the impact of the metal shields hitting her body.
The shields and the men holding them flew into the air, as though they were made of straw. Their bodies landed heavily several yards away and lay there in a heap of broken bones and bruised flesh.
The realization of what she had done washed over Gala in a terrible wave, breaking through whatever madness had her in its grip. Stopping in her tracks, she stared in horror at the carnage she had caused.
Before she could begin to process it all, she heard a deep, harsh voice barking out orders, and she turned just in time to see a soldier running at her, his sword raised.
“Stop,” Gala whispered, holding out her hand, palm out. “Please stop . . .”
But he didn’t. Instead, he came at Gala, his weapon swinging in a deadly arc.
She jumped back, missing the blade by a hair.
He swung again, and she dodged this, too. His movements were like a strange dance, and she matched him as she would a dancing partner. He swung at her elbow, and she moved back her arm; he swung at her neck, and she dropped down to the ground before springing up again. He moved his foot forward; she moved hers back. He started moving faster, stabbing and slashing at her with lightning speed, and she felt her body adjusting, responding to his speed with increasing quickness of her own. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see more soldiers approaching, though they were still a distance away.
It didn’t seem real, any of it, and Gala could feel her mind going into a new kind of mode. Now it was as though she was watching herself from a distance. Rather than just reacting to the soldier’s movements, it was almost like she was predicting what he would do based on the subtle movements of his muscles and minute changes in his facial expressions.
Still caught up in her deadly dance, she sensed someone approaching her from the back. It was there in the dilation of her opponent’s pupils and a flash of reflection in his eyes. And just as the other soldier took a swing at her, she bent in time to feel the sword swishing through the air where her head had been just a second ago.
Now she was up against two attackers, but it didn’t seem to matter. She was still able to dodge their swords. One swung at her arm and the other at her thigh, and her body contorted in a way she’d never had it bend before. It was uncomfortable for a moment, but effective—the soldiers’ swords missed her again.
That was when she heard the first growl and a scream. A lion jumped at the soldiers, and she felt its agony as some soldier’s sword pierced its paw. At the same time, she heard the pained cry of the soldier whose throat got ripped out by the lion’s sharp teeth.
Yet another soldier joined Gala’s opponents. Now she was up against three, but she was learning their movements and the dance was becoming easier, not harder. It seemed like she could move like them, only better and faster. More efficient.
More lions pounced at the soldiers. Without even knowing how, Gala could feel the animals’ movements. It was as though a strange link was forming between her and the beasts, and suddenly, impossibly, some part of Gala’s brain seemed to be correcting the lions’ movements, making them dodge the soldiers’ swords just as Gala was dodging the attacks that came her way. At the same time, she was keeping the lions contained, preventing them from tearing at the soldiers’ flesh as the animals hungered to do.
Filled with bloodlust, the lions fought her control, and she felt the link between them weakening as more soldiers joined in the fight. She was now dodging five attacks at once. A sword reached one of the lions, brutally slicing through its back, and Gala felt renewed fury—only she couldn’t tell if it was her own or the lion’s.
And at that moment, she heard Maya and Esther screaming in fear.
Her mind exploded with rage.
Gala was through with mere defense.
As the next soldier made his move, she grabbed his sword, wrenching it out of his hand with one swift motion and burying it in his chest. Pulling it out, she dodged the swing of her second attacker, and the sword in her hand went for his throat. She synchronized her deadly movements in such a way that when she dodged the third attacker’s blow, his sword arm continued on, slicing open the shoulder of his comrade. And before the wounded soldier could even scream, Gala caught his falling sword, swinging both weapons in a fatal arc.
Two headless bodies fell to the ground as Gala remained standing, her mind still clouded by white-hot fury. Somewhere out there was a lion in its death throes, its agony maddening her further.
More soldiers attacked, and Gala’s swords sliced through them with brutal precision. She didn’t consciously control how her hands and body were moving; instead, it was almost as if she was someone else. Parry, thrust, slice, dodge—everything blended together as she fought to get to the animal whose pain she could feel. Men fell all around her, dropping like flies, and the ground turned red with blood.
Then four large soldiers loomed in front of her, moving with a speed unlike anyone else she had encountered thus far.
The biggest of them had a pendant around his neck.
41
Barson
Nothing was going according to plan. Barson watched incredulously as the beautiful young woman hacked her way through his men, fighting with superhuman strength and skill.
When he had first seen her appear out of thin air with her strange companions, he had known that the rumors were true—that she was a powerful sorceress indeed. Teleporting so many was an achievement that few, if any, members of the Council could match. How had a young woman he’d never heard of before managed such a feat?
For a moment, he’d hesitated, wondering if he was doing the right thing. To destroy something so beautiful would be a shame, yet he’d made a promise to Augusta—and he needed his lover on his side. Coming to a decision, he had ordered his men to attack.
They were already prepared for a different kind of battle; no army had met a sorcerer this way since the time of the Revolution. Of course, back then, nobody had developed the strategy he was about to test.
Instead of clustering together, he had his soldiers separate into small groups to minimize the chances of any one particular spell working on them all. He would never forget how easily Augusta had decimated the peasants’ army, and he had no intention of letting his men meet the same fate. Unlike those poor souls, his army had protection from elemental spells and detailed instructions on how to handle unusual movements of the earth. Thus, when the girl had unleashed the most powerful fire spell he had ever seen, they had been spared.
What he had not counted on was encounter
ing a master swordsman. Because that’s what the girl had to be, despite her delicate appearance. She fought like a man possessed, like a demon of old fairy tales, with a skill and agility that possibly superseded his own—a skill that increased with every moment that passed. How was she learning so fast? What was she? There was a kind of calculated precision to her graceful movements that seemed almost . . . inhuman.
He noticed only one weakness. She seemed to get distracted when the lions and the old women were in danger. And as distasteful as it was, Barson knew what he had to do.
Giving the order to set the beasts on fire, he moved forward decisively with his best men.
She met them without even a hint of fear. Within moments, Barson and his men were fighting for their lives. The girl was working two swords in her hands, thrusting at any hint of an opening, parrying every blow that came her way. The worst thing of all, however, was that she was adapting with every strike, getting faster and more efficient as the fight went on. If he hadn’t been in mortal danger, Barson would have given anything to study her technique—because at this point, she was perfection itself, a virtuoso with a blade, her every move imbued with deadly purpose.
The first blood in this frantic confrontation came from a strike at Kiam’s shoulder. A minute later, Larn was bleeding from his thigh. Furious, Barson put all his strength into a last desperate assault—and then he smelled the acrid odor of burning lion fur.
The girl shuddered, her concentration broken, and Barson finally saw an opening in her defense. One quick lunge, and his sword sliced open her belly, leaving behind a deep, gushing wound.
She screamed, dropping her weapons and clutching at her stomach.
Barson and his men moved in for the kill.
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