by Peri Akman
The wind began to blow.
It whipped his hair around, making it hard to see.
Asim of Trell slammed onto the ground, ripples practically visible in the air.
“Get down!” he roared.
Quinn did not need to be told twice. He grabbed Cosime and dropped into the ground.
Asim reached up towards the guards and half of them immediately stopped attacking, clutching at their throats.
The lake was already being whipped up into a miniature typhoon. The extra discs of black energy were being brushed away by the intense winds. Cosime flailed underneath his weight, screaming, clawing at their tattoo, but Quinn held fast.
“SAVE DALE!” Quinn roared at Asim, but it was drowned out by the heavy winds. The sooner she was not drowning, the sooner Cosime stopped bugging out.
The typhoon on the lake whipped around, bringing up Dale and the demons by a few dozen feet. Then the typhoon halted, and the water fell back down into the lake. The demons and Dale went into a free fall.
But Dale could generate her own flying disc. The demons could not. Cosime immediately calmed.
Asim slammed a wall of dirt and wind towards the demons on the land, now that Kay was crouched on the ground.
Quinn blinked and Asim was across the field with a demon pinned down under his knee. Asim forcibly shoved his hand down the demon’s mouth, and just like that, it exploded. Black blood spurted everywhere, spraying Asim.
The next second he was on the next one. And then the next one. The possessed were on the ground, passed out from lack of air, and the demons were exploding one by one.
“Quinn, you all right?”
Quinn jumped to see Kole standing over him, the wind diverting around her. He nodded, smiling faintly.
Kole looked like she had been in better shape. Whatever her and Asim had been fighting had left a lot of dried blood on her bandages.
“Dale needs to be healed!” Kay yelled over the winds.
Kole wilted slightly. “Fine,” she muttered before kicking off to go help Dale.
The wind began to die down, as the last demons were only above the lake. Asim effortlessly took them down, with Dale providing additional support.
He had to admit, it really was a marvelous sight to view. Seeing Asim at work was amazing. He was so fast! He might have been even faster than Ser Hero…
The last demon over the lake exploded in a burst of black blood.
For a while, everything was quiet. Quinn gave a smile of relief. The three warlocks landed back onto the ground.
“Don’t calm down just yet, we still need to deal with the possessed guards,” Kole said dryly.
As if on cue, one of the guards gave a pathetic cough.
“What even happened?” Quinn asked. “I was sleeping and next thing I knew—” He paused and gestured outwards. “—this happened.”
“We can explain it while we deal with the problem,” Asim said, and he went to go do just that.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The trail of events went as follows:
A demon came to camp, looking like Cosime. The other demons dragged Cosime away while they were still asleep. This woke up Dale, who in her grogginess saw the demonic Cosime, but not the real one. She did, however, sense that she couldn’t cast as easily as normal, and started to freak out. The Cosime demon responded by taking a knife from the guards to stab Dale several times.
This led to Dale cursing up a storm and shooting out of the tent just in time to see Cosime nearly being dragged underwater by the demons. In her scuffle, a demon ended up crashing into Kay’s tent, which naturally woke her up. At first, it seemed like it would be an easy enough fight, but then the guards appeared, splitting the group to what Quinn had seen.
Meanwhile, Asim and Kole, both still rather drunk, had missed this scuffle due to the blind spot they had not anticipated. It didn’t matter, however, because they had to deal with their own demons. These ones were slower, lazier, and clearly well-fed. They were also controlling monsters, much like the ones Kole and Quinn had first encountered.
The fight was tedious on their part, and when Asim accidentally sent a tree careening towards the lake (and as a result knocked Dale completely off her game), he broke away from the fight to take care of the demons down below, leaving Kole to fight the rest.
Luckily, Kole had an easier time with the monsters this time around, thanks to Asim and Kay’s collective abilities, as well as the fact that there were just fewer monsters in general.
It had been, more or less, a very well-executed plan. Rather annoyingly well-executed.
This worried Quinn. If they were this well-organized, and their orb was that well-shielded, did they even have a chance?
If anyone else had this worry, they did not immediately express it. Instead, they gathered around the six or so guards that still had demons inside of them, hoping they would not begin attack phase two.
Dale winced slightly, and motioned to Cosime to heal her. Which meant Kole never actually had healed her. Quinn frowned inwardly. That went beyond unprofessional. Heck, it went beyond grudge holding. You didn’t just let a person die. That was… cruel.
Quinn shot a glance at Kole. She shrugged noncommittally. He narrowed his eyes at her, but could not follow up.
Dale, now no longer bleeding, went to the tent supplies and retrieved a long length of rope.
Asim shook his head. “We’re not going to torture them.”
Dale frowned. “You sure? I mean, yay, no torture, but how else do you propose drawing them out?”
Asim smirked. “What I do best, of course.”
The winds began to blow again.
“Someone mind waking up one of these guys?” Asim asked.
Quinn responded by dropping a sheen of cold water on the guard nearest to Asim. The guard sputtered to life, and she immediately roared and tried to attack Asim. Wind surrounded her, but the flow seemed wrong. She wasn’t suffocating, she was being forced to gulp copious amounts of air.
After a few moments, the guard began to giggle. She didn’t make any more violent actions, instead lying on the ground, grinning. A flickering being began to drip out of her eyes. The demon was coming out.
The demon had barely fully formed before a black lance of energy cleaved through it.
“Die, you demon!” Dale hissed. “Die, die, die, die!”
“Shush!” Kole ordered.
The guard fell silent, albeit with a vestigial grin.
Asim motioned to the next guard.
One by one, they goaded the demons out, killing them quickly and efficiently. Soon all that was left were the passed-out actual guards.
Asim stood up and cracked his neck. “Well, I am exhausted.”
“You could have let me do some,” Kole said.
“You are way too drunk for that,” Asim chided gently.
Quinn wasn’t too sure about that. Kole seemed to be acting the same as ever.
“What do we do with them now?” Kay asked. She kneeled by one of the guards in worry.
“Wake ’em up, carry ’em back. My job is done,” Asim said, yawning. “I need to pass out now.”
He walked past them, rolled over on a collapsed tent without even bothering to set it up again, and promptly fell asleep.
“Quinn took the trip to get food, so he deserves a rest,” Kole interjected as soon as Asim passed out.
“Chill,” Dale said. “I can carry them back to the temple with my disc. They like me, so I’ll tell them to establish a curfew or a buddy system or whatever they’re lacking. Meanwhile it’s your job to not get drunk and actually keep the watch. You know, like you’re supposed to?”
Kole took a step towards her, as if to argue back, but did not. She sighed.
“…Sorry. You’re… right,” Kole said through gritted teeth.
Dale gave a humorless chuckle. “Wow, I totally believe that. Why not actually tell me I’m right when I get back? Cosime nearly died because of you idiots.”
“C’mon, Cosime,” Dale said loudly, creating a disc underneath the passed out guards. “We have a job to do, ’cause it seems like we’re the only responsible ones here.”
Kole continued to say nothing.
The two left, and Kay quietly returned to her tent.
Kole sighed, and sat down.
“Go get some sleep, Quinn,” Kole muttered under her breath.
Quinn reached out and gently grabbed Kole’s shoulder. “You all right?”
“I mean she’s right, and I hate that, so not really.”
Quinn smiled painfully. “Look, if it weren’t for you and Asim, we would have gotten our rears kicked.”
“And if we hadn’t been distracted we wouldn’t have needed to be the big heroes in the first place,” Kole stated dully. “Now, shoo. Go sleep.”
“You sure?” Quinn asked.
“Positive. Don’t make me yell at you,” Kole snapped.
Quinn sighed, and returned to his tent. At first he couldn’t comprehend being tired enough to fall back asleep, but once he lay down, he realized that he was still in fact very tired.
If they were lucky, Quinn thought in his last moments of consciousness, the orb would be destroyed tomorrow, and they could be done with it.
Unfortunately for Quinn, such things were not that easy.
The next day was quiet. Dale returned with Cosime, reporting that the temple was indeed instating harsher security measures. From there, they set back to working on the orb. However, the results were just as disappointing as the day before.
That night, no one slept, all terrified of the demons attacking again. No such occurrence happened. They checked back with the temple, and found no infiltration of any sort.
The day after that had similar results.
And the day after that.
And the day after that.
The orb remained solid. Occasionally a demon came out, but it was quickly obliterated by the collective abilities of the warlocks and apprentices. There was never a full-on attack like there was the first night. There wasn’t even an attempt at strategy. It didn’t help Kole’s paranoia in the slightest, although the general conclusion was that the demons seen were merely scouts, waiting for some sort of weakness to make itself known.
Asim, Dale and Kole were usually exhausted by the end of every day, which meant that they were often irritable and easily annoyed. Dale and Kole usually would interact just enough to be at the brink of an argument, and then Asim would step in and stop the fighting. Each evening, however, the tensions between the two grew closer to boiling over. Occasionally Kole would give up, stiffen yet again, and let Dale have the final word, but usually it was Asim stopping it.
Kay and Asim continued their awkward dance of ignoring each other, but she had accepted the goggles without complaint. She had taken great joy in pointing out the details in things too far away for everyone else to see, so it clearly worked.
After that, Kay was given more time as lookout, which seemed to perk her up slightly. Quinn suspected that feeling useful probably gave her some peace of mind. He certainly had taken on a sense of pride at his own accomplishments. A few times, Kay even reported having taken down a demon with the knife she had never bothered returning to the guard.
Quinn suspected it was Kay that was keeping the demons at bay. If she really could pick out details better than anyone, then she was clearly unintentionally curbing demons at every turn.
If Cosime had any complaints or thought, they never gave any indication of them. It was unsettling, but expected by this point. Occasionally Cosime exhibited some small token of niceness or generosity towards Kay or Quinn. Quinn wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He appreciated it, sure, but… that didn’t feel right. To be honest, he didn’t know how he was supposed to handle the situation, and he knew Kole would be no help. He was just stuck in an awkward limbo of not being sure of what to do with someone who only very rarely exhibited any sort of free will.
Was it even free will? Was it all Dale’s orders, or was Cosime far more overt in their controlled emotions and actions than he and Kole realized? There was no way to tell! Gah! It was so… frustrating.
After a few days of restless lack of progress, Quinn devised his own scheme.
First, he volunteered himself to keep watch that night. There were some objection, but Kole vouched for him, and would hear no protests otherwise.
Afterwards, in private, he asked Kole to stay up with him, and supply an air bubble to go underneath the lake.
“What’s your plan?” Kole asked curiously once it had turned to night and everyone else had turned in.
“I’m gonna have Ser Hero take a few whacks at it. And if that doesn’t work…” Quinn found himself trailing off.
“Stop halting your sentences midway. You know I’m just going to ask you to elaborate,” Kole prodded.
“I’m gonna summon a monster. Monsters are in direct opposition to demons, right? So by that logic, it should work really well?” Quinn said, feeling stupid the second the words left his mouth.
Kole said nothing for a few seconds, and instead generated a mixture of Dale’s dark energy and a flurry of air.
She held her hand out to Quinn, and he took it without hesitation.
He hoisted himself onto the surface, and she began to descend underneath the lake.
“It is definitely worth a try,” Kole finally stated.
Quinn smiled sheepishly. “So you’re okay with the secrecy?”
“If it goes wrong, we’ll suffer the consequences later. So no matter which way you look at it, it will balance out. At least in this case it will be pretty direct,” Kole said, matter of factly.
In the dark, it was a bit hard to see. Quinn summoned a candle, and then banished it just as quickly, this time specifying his summoning to be a lit candle.
It did not help as much as Quinn was expecting.
Kole, however, seemed to know where she was going, and soon the bubble of air and energy expanded over the flickering orb.
A few demons that were sleeping around the orb jumped up, but Quinn was faster. Ser Hero popped into existence, looking vaguely like Serethen from back at the Academy, and, without even waiting for orders, they sliced the demons in two.
“Looks like they’ll be… sleeping with the fishes!” Ser Hero proclaimed proudly.
“Please make this go quickly,” Kole moaned.
Limbs started to jut out of the orb, and Kole brought up a black shield, separating Quinn and Kole from Ser Hero.
“Just destroy the orb!” Quinn ordered, hoping sound travelled through… whatever this was.
A muffled understanding of order and unendearing epithet made it through the dark wall. Noises of slicing and other sword sounds made it through the barrier.
“Does that sound like it’s working?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t think so…” Kole said. “It kind of sounds like your meat puppet is being snapped in half.”
There was a snap in Quinn’s mind.
Ser Hero was gone.
“Lift the barrier for a second?” Quinn requested.
Kole nodded, and a small hole appeared in the wall. The orb was utterly unchanged.
A limb came hurtling towards them, and Kole cursed, erecting the barrier once again. The limbs began to pummel it, and Kole winced every time.
Quinn pushed forward in his mind, and summoned the monster.
In front of the barrier, a solid fur-filled object stopped the pummeling.
A loud roar filled the rather small air bubble.
“Welp, this is gonna turn out terribly,” Kole whispered to Quinn.
“It might turn out fine!” he protested feebly.
While Ser Hero’s cries were mostly impossible to hear, this was not the case with the monster that had been dubbed Ser Crystal Flake.
Every time it hit the orb, there was an audible crack
ing noise, like thunder.
Quinn winced at each clash; it was incredibly loud. But that meant it was working, right?
It had to be working.
And then suddenly everything broke.
In a split second, Quinn saw white fur colliding with him. The next, he was being propelled across the lake, water gushing around him
He hit rocks. Hard, mossy rocks. And then the monster fell on top of him.
Quinn probably would have been able to see colors if it weren’t for the fact that he was simultaneously drowning and being suffocated by the white behemoth.
Quinn banished the monster and summoned a large fish. He grabbed the fin, and it guided Quinn upwards.
He broke the surface and heaved for air. He was practically on the other side of the lake!
“Take me to the shore!” he ordered, and the fish swam him to the shore. Shark. The shark swum him to the shore. Could sharks even survive in lakes? He wasn’t sure. Once he did reach the beach, he wasted no time in banishing the shark, and summoning a larger version of the fish that he had seen previously.
“Go find Kole!” he ordered.
The fish stared at Quinn with the glassy eyes of a sea dweller, and dove downwards. Immediately Quinn set to work taking off his shoes, his socks, his coat, his shirt and his pants. Everything was utterly soaked. This was worse than the last time he had nearly drowned.
Now all that clung to him was his underwear. It was aggravating, but did he honestly want to risk taking it off? No, too awkward, and he wasn’t too interested in running into any low-hanging hazards.
A few moments passed in silence and Quinn could not help but notice the lack of air bubbles coming from the lake.
Kole had Asim’s magic at her disposal. She would be fine, right?
The fish surfaced; in its mouth was Kole’s staff.
The fish dropped it off and stared at Quinn.
Quinn gripped the staff. “This doesn’t help me at all!” he protested.
The fish did nothing, for it was a fish.
“Does that mean you only found the staff? That Kole is pinned down somewhere? That she was fine and you stole the staff from her? What does it mean!” Quinn hissed at the fish angrily.