by Andrew Rowe
Fortunately, he was hovering just in front of the gate; he hadn’t taken to high in the skies like many of the gargoyles and karvensi had.
Less fortunately? There were dozens of land-bound monsters between us and him.
I counted about twenty barghensi, a handful of humanoid-sized spiders, and a single orange-auraed minotaur.
Is that a Sunstone aura? I’m not sure we can handle that.
“Got a spire guardian over there,” Patrick pointed out just as my mind processed it.
“I’ll...” Teft coughed and stumbled, falling to a single knee. Jin hurriedly hauled him back to his feet.
“Nonsense,” Jin replied. “You have done enough, Professor. Rest and recover. You will do us a greater service later in this way.”
Teft gave a weak nod.
We continued approaching the horde of monsters without a plan.
When they were about a hundred yards out, I turned to Sera. “Do you think they could tell the difference between Vanniv and one of the karvensi in the sky?”
“No, but if you’re thinking he could talk us through, it probably won’t work. They’re probably not smart enough to understand.”
I nodded. “Got enough strength for whatever your mystery summon is yet?”
She clenched her hands in the air. “I don’t think so. Maybe. But I don’t know if that would be the wisest idea here, even if I could manage it.”
The barghensi started moving forward to intercept us, the spiders right behind them. The minotaur remained near the tower, only a dozen yards in front of Katashi.
We had a bigger problem, though.
Those hundreds of flying creatures above us had stopped circling and they were forming up on our side of the tower.
“Oh, that’s bad,” Patrick mumbled, pointing up.
“No more time for debate.” Sera folded her hands in front of her. “Vanniv, I summon you!”
Vanniv flickered into existence at her side, his eyes widening as he took in the horde in front of us. “Oh, what is this nonsense now?”
Sera pointed up. “They look like they’re about to dive. Does that sound right to you?”
Vanniv nodded. “Yep. You’re pretty much doomed, sad to say. I would mourn you, but you know, I won’t exist—”
Sera poked a finger into his chest. “No time for banter. Go tell them we’re friends?”
He rolled his eyes. “There’s always time for banter, little Cadence, but don’t fret. I will, of course, come to your rescue.”
Vanniv took off at once, flying toward the disconcertingly massive swarm of flying monsters.
Which just left us with the ones on the ground, now nearly close enough to strike.
Patrick stepped up next to Sera. “You got enough mana left for our new trick?”
She nodded, grabbing his left hand. “Oh, yes.”
Patrick grinned, turning back to me and Marissa. “Buy us a few seconds?”
Marissa nodded.
Then she charged.
She was a blur of gold and white, her Guardian shroud blasting her forward with preternatural speed.
I...couldn’t possibly keep up with that.
I drew my sword and cautiously followed her at a jogging pace.
Marissa slammed into the first barghensi with a punch like a runaway train. It must have weighed eight hundred pounds, but it still flew backward like she’d smashed a toy doll.
Then she was moving again, jumping atop one of the spiders and slamming a boot into its skull. The creature crumpled as she leapt off it, and kicked another barghensi in the face.
I... think I was a little enthralled there, for just a moment.
And then I was in there amongst the monsters, swishing my sword out to slice through a barghensi’s leg. The enchanted sword cut cleanly through, crippling the creature, and I felt a pang of guilt as it howled in agony.
I almost shut down.
These weren’t illusions like the things I’d been fighting during the school tests. That barghensi’s pain was real.
Maybe most people told themselves that a monster’s pain was just part of a convincing illusion, but I’d been reading stories about monsters taking intelligent actions since my childhood. I couldn’t believe monsters to be less sentient than ordinary animals, and some of them seemed even more so. Meeting Vanniv and hearing him try to barter for an extended existence had further solidified my view.
Marissa slammed into me, pushing me out of the way of a monstrous spider claw. Fortunately, she danced out of the way in time to avoid taking the hit herself.
“No dyin’, Cadence.” She slammed a fist backward, not even looking at the creature she’d smashed. “You’ve got a job to do.”
I glanced back at the Hero’s End, the tower serpent still looming in the distance, violently lashing destruction in the next section of buildings.
Marissa was right. While hurting these creatures felt viscerally wrong, the wrong of failing to stop the assault was a far greater one. I’d have to stomach the guilt to save as many people as I could.
Of course, it was possible we would slaughter these creatures and still fail to talk Katashi into stopping the attack...but I couldn’t think about that. It was the kind of doubt that could rob my friends of their lives.
I nodded to Marissa. “Let’s do this.”
She grinned at me. “Back to back, yeah?”
I nodded, turning around and feeling her press against me. “Back to back.”
I lowered my blade, drawing in breath as I looked at the approaching creatures with renewed resolve.
“Uh, yeah, don’t do that!” Patrick shouted. “Be ready to run!”
I glanced at Patrick and Sera. They were still holding hands... and they were glowing, a pulsing aura of bright blue and white enveloping the pair.
I had no idea what that meant.
“Aww, c’mon!” Marissa shouted. She broke from our short-lived formation, stepping forward and slamming another barghensi in the jaw with a fist. This one took the hit without flying back. It merely staggered.
It didn’t look any stronger. That meant Marissa was getting weaker.
She’d burned through most of her mana fast.
I spotted a spider rushing at her from the right. She turned to move, stepping backward — and promptly tripped over her own feet.
I moved without thinking, stepping in the way and bringing my blade upward in a diagonal slice. I felt the transference mana running along the edge as if it was a part of me, pushing it outward with the force of instinct.
A vast wave of cutting energy ripped free from my strike, flashing into the distance.
When it ended, the looming spider fell into two pieces, cleanly split in half.
“Th—thanks!”
I slashed to the left and right, warding off two encroaching barghensi as Marissa regained her footing.
Patrick’s voice hit me next. “Back off, fast!”
The monsters were keeping a healthy blade-length away from me now, which gave us a moment to process Patrick’s shout and move.
As we started to run, two voices rose as one.
“Child of the goddess, we call upon your aid.
Rain frost from the skies in a Permafrost Cascade!”
The world darkened as the sky was filled with ice. Even with my blood burning with exertion, the newborn chill nearly froze me in place.
Wedges of frost the size of wagons flashed downward from the sky in the dozens, smashing and cleaving the horde of monsters arrayed behind us.
When Marissa and I made it back to Patrick and Sera, we found them kneeling, still holding hands with their eyes frozen shut. Hoarfrost clung to their bodies, the withering aura of ice around them too potent for me to come within arm’s reach.
I turned to see if any of the monsters had made it through the spell to close on us, but I had no need to worry. Javelins of frost continued to pommel those few creatures that had managed to survive the initial barrage, pinning limbs and piercing thr
oats until not a single barghensi or spider remained standing.
When the pair finally pulled their hands apart, shivering and panting, no further threats moved toward us.
But the minotaur still loomed in the distance, far beyond their spell’s bombardment range.
Teft staggered close to the pair as the aura around them began to fade. “You did...well. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen first year students manage a cooperative spell on that scale.”
“I will take care of things from here.” Jin stepped in front of the group, calmly walking past us toward the distant minotaur.
I started to follow him, but he turned his head as I moved. “I will not be able to protect you if you are close.”
I wanted to protest that I could protect myself, but Marissa had already almost taken a hit for me, so that clearly wasn’t true.
“I’ll keep a safe distance. Marissa, protect the others.” Jin’s tone brooked no argument. Even Teft simply gave Jin a scrutinizing glance and then nodded.
I sincerely hoped that Teft knew something that I did not.
As Jin marched forward, I stayed a good twenty yards back, deliberately avoiding the frigid grounds where the monsters had fallen moments before.
A glance upward told me little. The ice from the spell had faded when Patrick and Sera had broken contact, and the flyers above were holding steady. I couldn’t see Vanniv in their midst. There were simply too many of them, and they were too high up to be clearly distinct. Of whether he’d succeeded or failed, I could see no clear sign.
When Jin was a stone’s throw away from the tower, the minotaur finally moved.
And in spite of being the height of an ogre, it was fast. With a single motion, it hurled a tremendous two-handed axe through the air, the projectile whirling toward Jin’s location with a visible aura of force.
And Jin wasn’t moving fast enough to dodge.
I lashed out in alarm, slashing in the air and pushing a wave of mana toward the axe, but I wasn’t fast enough either.
The blade slammed right into Jin’s chest—
—and he vanished.
Reminding me of one of the very first things I’d made him.
Item that allows for the projection of an illusory self.
A part of me expected to see the real Jin appear a moment later, but fortunately for Jin, his invisibility was from a completely separate item. Moments passed and I still couldn’t see any sign of him.
I did hear him, though, when his guns began to fire.
The minotaur grunted as bullets slammed into its chest and neck.
I’d enchanted Jin’s revolvers, too — but even with transference enchantments to increase the velocity of the projectiles, the bullets didn’t seem to be doing the minotaur much harm.
The minotaur grunted, lowering its horns toward the sound of the noise, and charged.
The sound of gunfire stopped. Jin must have realized that it was tracking him through sound as soon as it moved.
I continued to move forward, slowly working to close the distance where I might be able to reliably hit the minotaur with one of the transference waves from my sword.
I really needed to come up with a good name for that technique at some point.
The minotaur halted its charge with no sign of impact, which was good.
Then it turned toward me, which was bad.
I raised my sword with both hands, preparing to push a transference slash at the creature as soon as it got close enough.
“Corin, move!”
I jumped back just as the creature’s axe swept through the air where I’d been moments before, close enough that it brushed the trailing fabric of my tunic.
That was when I remembered that I hadn’t properly recharged my barrier after the test.
The axe continued to fly past me, circling around until it landed in the minotaur’s upraised hand.
It threw the axe again immediately — right toward the location of the warning shout.
A flashing sphere of blue told me that the axe had struck home.
Jin appeared, falling to his knees as the axe flew back to the minotaur. He had no visible injuries — the barrier had successfully prevented the axe from cutting him — but barriers were terrible at stopping raw kinetic force.
From the way Jin was coughing and gripping his chest, one of his pistols fallen from his hand, I was pretty sure he’d just lost a couple of ribs.
The minotaur let out an echoing laugh, snorting into the air, and caught the axe as it flew back to the creature’s hand.
It advanced slowly now, hefting the axe over its shoulder, giving Jin more than enough time to flee.
The problem, of course, was that Jin wasn’t getting back up.
I was close enough that I could hear him breathing now, but it was a ragged wheeze.
I glanced back at my group. Marissa was bolting toward us.
But she was running at an ordinary mortal’s speed now. No aura of gold flickered around her, no Guardian power remained to give her strength.
I ran to stand in the minotaur’s path.
The creature tilted its head downward, eyeing me with disdain.
I ripped the ring that Professor Orden had given me off my finger, tossing it at Jin. Fortunately, we were close enough that it hit him straight in the chest. “Put that on and use it, now!”
I didn’t wait to see if he complied. I had a mere instant to step aside before the axe slammed into the space where I’d been standing.
I countered with a thrust into the minotaur’s thigh.
The creature howled, stepping back in surprise.
I gave my bloodstained blade a flourish in the air. “You just hurt my friend. That was a mistake.”
I turned my gaze up to meet the minotaur’s. “Let’s dance.”
The minotaur was a good ten feet tall. Almost twice my height, and probably at least five or six times my mass and strength.
But that wasn’t much different from a child of ten learning to fight against a champion duelist father.
As he pulled his axe out of the ground, I rolled between his legs, turning and slashing his hamstrings. The enchanted blade bit into flesh, but it didn’t cut straight through bone like it had with the barghensi. The creature’s Sunstone aura was a natural shield, dampening the force of my blows.
I cut twice more before it managed to spin, each cut leaving only a slight mark.
But it didn’t matter.
As the axe swept around, I ducked beneath it, thrusting upward to pierce straight into the minotaur’s chest. The blade only sank in a few inches — but that was enough.
I pushed on the aura in the blade, blasting mana straight into the wound.
The minotaur fell backward, dropping the axe to clutch its chest.
I smirked, moving in to strike a final blow—
— and its hand shot out, grabbing me by the neck.
I struck out in shock as it began to squeeze, but it turned its head aside, and my thrust aimed for the neck scraped harmlessly across a cheek.
My vision reddened as the minotaur began to squeeze.
And then the sound of a single shot rang out and the pressure faded to nothing.
I fell to my knees, panting as the minotaur collapsed at my side, lifeless. Smoke rose from the hole where a bullet had pierced the back of the creature’s skull.
I dropped my sword, shivering. I couldn’t quite process what had just happened. It wasn’t until I saw Marissa kneeling over Jin’s fallen form that I managed to push myself to my feet.
I staggered past the fallen minotaur toward where Marissa was shaking Jin.
“Wake up, Jin! Wake up!”
Oh, goddess.
I got closer to Jin, I saw something shining on the ground just in front of him. The ring.
He hadn’t put it on.
He’d picked up a pistol and saved me instead.
Resh. Jin...
Marissa glanced at me with a panicked expression. “Corin, we need to
do something. He’s not conscious, and I don’t think he’s breathing right.”
I swept up the ring and knelt by the pair. “Give me his hand.”
Marissa looked at me in confusion, taking in the ring a second later. She gripped one of his hands and moved it to me. The ring didn’t quite fit on his pointer finger, so I slipped it on his index finger instead.
I didn’t have a good idea of how it worked. Orden had me activate it with my own mana. I didn’t know if I could make it work for someone else. But I had to try.
I closed my eyes, focused my mind, and pushed gray mana into the ring.
And I had no idea if anything happened.
Since I wasn’t the one wearing the ring, I wouldn’t be the one experiencing the regeneration. Thus, I felt no change.
I panicked for a minute like an idiot before thinking to activate my attunement.
There was a faint aura stretching from the ring across his arm, but it didn’t seem to be spreading further.
It wasn’t enough. I gripped the ring and pushed my mana harder, flooding it with gray, but the ring resisted the flow. It wasn’t meant to be used in this way, and I could only push it to a limited degree.
“Wake him up if you can. The ring isn’t working properly without his mind to regulate it.”
I stood up, and Marissa’s eyes followed me. “What are you doing?”
“Going for help.”
I turned toward the visage of the goddess, his body burning with sacred fire, and I walked with determination.
I came within about twenty feet before the visage deigned to acknowledge my presence. His head turned ever-so-slightly, his lips twisting downward.
Not an auspicious start.
“I know you, mortal.” Katashi raised a hand to his chin. “You may kneel before me.”
Normally, I’d want to say something snappy to anyone being that sanctimonious.
But this was Katashi. He could annihilate me with a gesture.
So, grinding my jaw, I knelt. “Great Katashi—”
“I did not give you leave to speak, scion of House Cadence. I was merciful before because I sensed you were not aware of the actions of the ones you freed, and because you are unimportant.”