Renegade Wizards aot-3

by Lucien Soulban

  The attacks were scattered, uncoordinated, like a swarming of insects. More blight shades poured through the iris in the heavens, and while individually they proved no match for most sorcerers there, their strength was in their numbers.

  Ladonna continued toward the ritual circle, spells curling off her fingers as she smote the undead. She was a dozen feet away, watching Tythonnia, Berthal, and the others struggle against the rooting effect of the curse. Three more creatures loped toward her, but she was ready with killing spells.

  The first spell to roll off her tongue spent the fold of red cloth in her other hand and evaporated from her mind. The blister of swollen grass rose from the ground before a carpet of biting insects erupted from the earth. They swarmed up the arms and feet of the blight shades, biting and dying as the undead aura of decay overtook them. One of the creatures stumbled into the mass of writhing insects and thrashed about as they instantly covered its body.

  The other two creatures dashed away from the patch of insects, trying to escape the devouring death.

  Ladonna never felt calmer. Her test had involved necromancy unchecked and waves of undead assailing her. She survived that. She was ready for what challenged her now. Ladonna motioned the insects to clear a path for her. They did, overtaking another blight shade that seemed to melt into their mass. She reached the ritual circle.

  Dumas and Shasee were engaged in battle, sword against undamaged staff, feints leading into attacks, blows blocked, and parries opening the opponent up to fast-cast spells. Shasee struck Dumas with an open palm that sent a jolt through her body. Dumas responded by speaking an arcane word and twisting the blade so a flash of light nearly blinded them all. Ladonna was impressed with Shasee’s skill. The Wyldling sorcerer was more competent than she gave him credit for.

  The blight shades, meanwhile, were busy attacking Dumas’s men. The mercenaries fought a retreating battle, so Ladonna didn’t bother with them.

  The ritual circle itself was corrupted, the sanctity of it despoiled. Ladonna crossed the circle, bringing the insects along with her. Blight shades landed all around her, but the swarm always attacked those closest, sending the creatures into thrashing spasms.

  The circle was too large and powerful a spell to disrupt entirely, but like all chains, all she needed to find was a weak link. She grabbed Tythonnia’s arm and for a moment, studied the panicked look in her friend’s face.

  “Sihir evak,” Ladonna said, gesturing as though to paint the air itself. The disruption spell unfurled in her thoughts, and she focused on shattering just one link in the curse’s complex chain. She felt it snap, and suddenly, the blood-red glow from the sigils and the rune lines burned away.

  She’d broken the circle, and Tythonnia collapsed into Ladonna’s arms. The others slumped to the ground, except for Berthal, who steadied himself on his staff.

  The iris, however, remained above them. The creatures that were dropping through seemed confused for a moment. Then they hissed in anger. Everyone inside the circle was suddenly fair game.

  Three blight shades tackled Kinsley as he lay on the ground. They tore into him with a fierce vengeance, rotting him alive as he screamed and fought until his tendons could no longer hold him together. Another two lunged for a man in the circle Ladonna knew vaguely, Hundor she believed; he flicked his head at the undead, sending them both flying.

  Berthal swept his staff around, his eyes white with Wyldling energy. An orb of fire appeared between the two dragon heads and spit out in a gush of flame as he swept the staff in a wide arc. He caught three creatures in the blaze, obliterating them.

  Ladonna looked around in wonderment as she helped Tythonnia to her feet. It was utter pandemonium. The fight was everywhere, the number of creatures increasing steadily despite the many they had killed while the number of humans grew fewer by the minute. The blight shades were simply overwhelming them.

  In the distance, more screams could be heard. Ladonna didn’t need to see the camp to know the creatures were there already.

  More blight shades dropped through the hole, some attacking, some running toward the camp or the men with Dumas, some simply trying to escape their prison. How anyone would survive that day, Ladonna didn’t know.

  Shasee struggled in the battle. Dumas alone was a skilled opponent, worthy of his full attention, but the constant threat of the creatures added to his peril. He saw one of the sorcerers by his side fall to one of the dread beings and couldn’t save him. The other closest sorcerer, a woman by the name of Calyasy, was struggling to protect him while he fought Dumas. Calyasy had no spells left, however, and she fought with her staff.

  Suddenly, Calyasy screamed, and Shasee barely caught a glimpse of her as the undead dragged her to the ground.

  It was the distraction Dumas needed; Shasee realized his mistake as soon she deflected his staff and reached in to grab him.

  “Halilintar sentu!” she said with a smile.

  Lightning shot through the claw of her hand straight into Shasee’s chest. His teeth clamped down, and he fell to the ground, unable to move as his muscles clenched into spasms.

  Dumas smiled down at him and walked away. Her blade shot out on its own, cutting three quick slices into an undead creature about to attack her. She ignored the ones advancing on him, however.

  Shasee struggled to move, to defend himself, but two creatures were upon him already. They grabbed his arm and his leg and pulled. He felt the decay overtake his limbs, like a torch being passed over a field of his nerves. He struggled to fight back, but it was too late. A terrible cold overtook him, not enough to numb him from the pain, but enough to sap his strength. That was when he felt his joints pop and the fabric of his skin rip.

  Hort stood his ground between the trees and the ritual circle. He wanted to advance, to help Dumas, but the mad gleam in her eye was foreign to the woman he knew. A feral countenance had slipped over her, and it recognized nothing else beyond what lay in her pin-point focus. He wasn’t sure she wouldn’t strike at him if he approached too suddenly. And she’d just left her foe to a terrible death at the hands of the creatures. It was an act wholly without mercy or humanity. This new Dumas, whoever she was, frightened him more deeply than anyone ever had. Loyalty kept him from retreating, but fear stopped him from advancing.

  Instead, he fought the closest creatures with his axe, its viscera-clotted edge deftly slicing through them. Those that thought distance was safer, however, met with his spells. He cast nothing terribly fancy, just the type of arcane magic that bent the advantage in his direction. There was no time to use the crossbow strapped to his back, not at that range.

  Hort unleashed filaments of web from his fingertips, catching four creatures in the strands suspended between two rocks.

  “Archers, shoot!” he cried, backing away from the monsters.

  When no arrows whistled in response, he turned and saw Migress and the surviving mercenaries fighting a retreat back to the tree line.

  “You’re on your own, madman,” Migress shouted.

  An undead creature deftly avoided the sword stroke of one of the men next to him and latched its puckered mouth onto his throat. The mercenary fell but Migress came to his man’s rescue.

  A sharp pain cut into Hort’s shoulder then, and he cursed himself for being distracted. One of the creatures was on his back and clawing at him. Pain blistered his skin, the first whisper of death. Hort swung backward, overhead, with his axe. His blade sliced cleanly into the undead. It screeched in his ear and tried to drop away. Hort pivoted and slammed his axe and the undead into the ground, driving the blade deeper into it.

  The creature stopped writhing, and Hort’s back tingled as life slowly returned to it. At least the putrefaction wasn’t permanent, Hort thought, but he faced an ugly proposition. He couldn’t stand alone here. He was making himself a target, and there was safety in numbers. He wanted to retreat, but he didn’t want to abandon Dumas. She meant too much to him. Despite everything, she remained his friend. He owed
it to her to save her.

  Hort advanced toward the ritual circle, slaughtering any of the creatures foolish enough to approach him. But then, they were all fools that day, he thought.

  Berthal yelled in rage, a frustrated cry of anger so foreign to his nature that Tythonnia glanced at him fearfully. Shasee had died, in the most inhuman way possible, and the huntress Dumas was heading straight for her and Ladonna.

  Mariyah rose to her feet with Hundor’s help; he continued knocking creatures about with a glance or a head toss. He appeared weakened, however, each effort costing him. Tythonnia felt exhausted, her spells gone, her energy drained through the vortex of the gate. Ladonna helped her up, to her own peril. She didn’t see the creature at her back.

  “Api kartus,” Tythonnia said, barely thinking. The thumbs of her outstretched hands touched, and a jet of flame engulfed the creature advancing on them. She didn’t even realize she had any magic left. Ladonna spun around in surprise then nodded in appreciation.

  “We have to leave now!” Ladonna said. She began pulling Tythonnia out of the circle.

  “Not without the others,” Tythonnia said, tugging herself free from Ladonna’s grip.

  “I don’t care about the others,” Ladonna replied. She was about to say something else, but a terrific explosion almost knocked them off their feet.

  Berthal and Dumas were fighting.

  Staff rang against sword, neither of them giving an inch. Spell slammed into counterspell, obliterating one another in showers of sparks and fire. As Berthal and Dumas struggled, each one a master of their craft, Hundor and Mariyah kept the creatures at bay and away from their leader. Tythonnia broke from Ladonna’s grip and joined her friends. They couldn’t help Berthal fight; they had their hands full with the blight shades.

  Berthal twirled his staff around, striking out with the hardened bottom, but Dumas parried the blow. She couldn’t match force with force, but she was skilled enough to deflect his best efforts.

  Each collision of wood and steel produced a flicker of sparks as each arcane weapon tried to defeat the other. Dumas deflected another staff thrust and spun away, her hand on her metal tome, her mouth moving. Her sword arm shot out, unleashing a clash of bright hues that threatened to overtake Berthal. Instead he slammed his staff into the ground, sending out a wild distortion wave that broke the back of the incoming spell.

  Before Dumas could unleash another spell, however, Berthal rushed forward to close the gap. He barely deflected two rapid strokes, but a third one nicked him on the arm. He backed away, but as Dumas tried to press the advantage, Berthal leveled the staff at her. A fire sphere appeared between the two dragon heads and shot out like an arrow. Dumas raised her arm to shield her face. The ball of fire struck her and exploded. Streams of flame curved around her body. She caught some of its heat, her clothing combusted along her arm, but otherwise was unhurt.

  And so they continued sparring, trading cut for cut, injury for injury.

  Tythonnia struggled to remember and cast her remaining spells, but Mariyah seemed harder hit. She fumbled her incantations and dropped reagents through leaden fingers. Hundor fared best as he motioned across the gap between them and the gate that disgorged more undead; a wall of flames broke free of the ground, sending sheets of fire upward. Tythonnia suspected their relative skills in magic dictated who had gotten hit the hardest and who survived the curse the best. As it was, she was scraping bottom, her spells nearly depleted or useless. Hundor still had learned magic and Wyldling ways to spare.

  Thankfully, Ladonna was with them, adding her spells to the mix. If she’d hoped for a quick escape with Tythonnia, that was no longer an option. The creatures were attacking steadily-uncoordinated but steady. Ladonna, however, was ready for the worst. Her spells punished the creatures for their advance, destroying any that skirted around the wall of flames. From her fingers flew a ray of sickly green light that overtook two creatures. They collapsed to the ground and struggled to rise.

  “Sihir anak!” Tythonnia said, unleashing what she suspected was the last of her useful spells. Her illusions had proven ineffective against the undead. She dispatched four missiles of light that darted around one another as they peppered one of the monsters. It fell back, wounded but still eager for the fight. With a flick of his head, Hundor sent the wounded creature into the cascading wall of flames. It shrieked as the heat ignited it; Hundor sent it flying into two more undead, igniting their parchment-like skin as well.

  Tythonnia glanced at Berthal. The fight with Dumas obviously had taxed him, but he didn’t show any sign of surrendering. Both Berthal and his opponent moved fluidly from parry to stroke to spell as though it was all one beautifully choreographed move.

  Hundor had other ideas, however. With the fire wall extended around them, he turned his attention on the preoccupied Dumas. His hands flew into deft motion, his movements graceful and precise as he grabbed the spell’s reagent from the battle pouch on his wrist. The spell was just materializing on his lips when he staggered back.

  The crossbow bolt had appeared out of nowhere; it pierced Hundor’s chest. He cried out in pain and gripped the wound around the shaft with one hand, as though to stop the red spot that raced outward. With the other hand, however, he motioned toward a large man.

  It was the other hunter, Tythonnia realized. He was taking aim again with his crossbow.

  “Kendala,” Hundor groaned. Nothing seemed to happen until the hunter unleashed another bolt. It struck something in midair and broke. The hunter appeared unhappy and quickly reached for one of his pouches. Tythonnia did the same, both of them racing to unleash their spells.

  Her illusions had little chance of entrancing the undead, but they still worked against the living.

  Berthal and Dumas paid no attention to the others. Berthal spun the staff above his head, shifting it from one hand to the other. As he did, sparks rained from the staff’s tip down around them both, striking and sparking off Dumas’s face and arms. She yelped in pain and, for the first time, stumbled back. Berthal pressed his advantage. He attacked like a man possessed, battering his staff against her blade as she held it up to protect herself. He forced her to her knee and seemed poised to win.

  That was when the large hunter brought something out from his pouch, a piece of metal. Tythonnia couldn’t hear what he said, but to her horror he hurled it at Berthal who froze suddenly, unable to move as the spell held him. Tythonnia could see his wide-eyed panic, his arms over his head, exposing his chest and stomach to Dumas.

  Tythonnia tried to redirect her illusion spell to save Berthal somehow, but in her panic, it slipped from its mooring and dissolved in her own mind. In that moment, Dumas lunged forward with her thin blade and pierced Berthal through his stomach. She smiled with bloody teeth, a hellfire grin married with the mad delight in her eyes.

  The large hunter screamed, and out of the corner of her eye, Tythonnia saw fire engulf him. The hunter had Ladonna’s full attention. And Dumas had Tythonnia’s.

  Berthal had collapsed to his knees, with Dumas standing over him. He cradled his stomach as though the world itself might spill out. He looked up helplessly at the hunter. She stabbed him again and again through the stomach. Tythonnia screamed her hate and, rushing forward, caught Dumas in the back with her dagger; she plunged it in deep, twisting the knife with all her strength.

  The huntress threw her head back, slamming it into Tythonnia’s forehead. She staggered from the blow, her head blossoming with pain-filled light. She could barely focus. She had a vague sense of Berthal lying on the ground, of Dumas driven to one knee, of the other hunter screaming and twisting in agony as fire engulfed his entire body, of Mariyah cradling a dying Hundor, of Ladonna standing alone and unleashing spells in a frenzy trying to keep the undead at bay. There seemed to be a lot of them, circling around.

  “We have to leave!” Ladonna shouted; Tythonnia had the distant impression her words was directed at her. “Dark Nuitari, it’s too late!”

  Tython
nia felt the tug on her clothing and hair, that sense of an impending shift in gravity … toward the iris. The undead wailed again; they turned and screamed at the gate that pulled at them and encouraged them to come home then turned back again to stare hungrily at Tythonnia and the others.

  This is it, Tythonnia thought. This is how we die.

  The undead readied themselves for the final onslaught.

  “You will not have me!” Ladonna screamed at them. “It is I who will have you! Rogan xur grig!”

  For a moment, Tythonnia thought she was hallucinating. Ladonna stood with straightened back, her arms out by her sides as though ready to become airborne. In the sunlight and in the orange glow of the world beyond the aperture, her jewelry seemed to sparkle. Then all at once, the precious stones lifted from their settings and hovered around Ladonna. A dozen or more egg-shaped stones of the most vibrant purple surrounded her. They orbited around her on a dozen separate trajectories that brought them into intersecting paths, but never once did they collide.

  The undead hesitated at the spectacle but for only a moment. Then the stones circling Ladonna flared and flashed, and from each, she unleashed hidden spells.

  Tythonnia shielded her head as daggers of light-too many to count-burst outward from the stones. They filled the air with their numbers, each one zigging and zagging around the others and leaving trails of light as the arcane darts found their marks and peppered the undead. Still more daggers of light exploded from the stones until they filled the air with their singing whine. It was almost beautiful.

  There were too many of them; it was impossible to halt the tide. Par-Salian and another sorcerer, a Vagros barely old enough to call himself a man, were at the edge of the camp. They were trying to save people-Par-Salian with learned spells and the young man with the erratic magic of the Wyldling.

  The blight shades were everywhere, and the cries of anguish and agony wouldn’t stop. The most terrible of the screams came from the children, their high-pitched terror as the undead slaughtered indiscriminately. Par-Salian wished he could gouge out his own eyes and tear off his ears. A senseless dark would have been better than this horror.