“Hold on and try not to land head first.”
Timmy had spent almost his entire life refining his magic. His necromancy was excellent – swift, powerful, and highly controlled. However, he’d reached a simple, but horrible, conclusion about his earth magic: he was too slow with it. He could blast apart solid rock, liquefy stone, and shatter granite, but his earth magic was so hard to control that it took him at least several minutes to do anything. That was why he’d come up with his shovel. It was covered in countless runes and seals that helped control and guide his magic. All he had to do was activate the correct runes and seals and then shove his magic into it.
His master had called him an idiot after the first shovel had blown up in his face. But Timmy had continued to tinker and test until finally, he’d wiped the smile off his master’s face by using his fourth shovel to dig a moat around the castle in the span of a few minutes. Of course, Timmy had ruined the whole thing by collapsing afterward, but he’d made his point. The shovel didn’t reduce the amount of power Timmy needed to do something, but it gave him the speed and finesse to use his earth magic effectively.
With a growl, Timmy gathered his magic and drove his shovel into the ground. The shovel lit up, dozens of runes and seals alight with power. The ground around him liquefied, but he wasn’t done yet. As Katie and Gerald struggled to pull their feet out of the growing pool of mud, he yanked his shovel up and forward.
“Brace yourselves!”
The mud rocketed uphill, carrying all three of them toward the top of the ridge. Gerald let out a most unmanly scream while Katie spewed a litany of very adult curses. On her shoulders, Rembrandt and Monet clung on for dear life. Timmy grinned and then turned his attention to steering. It would be beyond embarrassing if he ran them into a tree.
They reached the top of the ridge, but the mud’s momentum threw them up into the air. Below them, the elf’s eyes widened in disbelief. Clearly, she’d never seen three people ride a mudslide uphill before. Unfortunately for them, however, she recovered quickly. The elf raised one hand, and Timmy knew they would be in serious trouble if he’d didn’t do something. He thrust his shovel at the mud trailing in their way, and it changed direction, thundering toward the elf. Her gaze flicked from them to the approaching wall of mud. If she blasted them out of the air, she’d be buried under a tidal wave of mud.
The elf hissed and turned her magic on the wave of mud. The explosion blew the mud apart, and Timmy, Gerald, and Katie managed to land safely behind the elf. Or did they? Timmy frowned. Gerald was a few yards away, but he couldn’t see Katie anywhere. A shadow stirred on the ground nearby, and he smirked. The rats! They must have used their magic to turn Katie and themselves invisible while everyone was focused on the mud. That left him and Gerald facing one angry, powerful elf while Katie waited for an opening.
The elf had avoided all of the mud, save for a few drops that had managed to reach her boots. Her lips curled as she stalked forward, and the mud at her feet baked solid. She was tall and slender, as most elves were, but her eyes burned deep amber instead of the usual green or blue. Her long, blonde hair was tied back into a loose ponytail, and she wore a green cloak over a grey tunic and black trousers. She palmed both her daggers, and her eyes shone with something that was just shy of madness. Timmy gulped and tightened his hold on his shovel. It was at times like this that he missed his crazy, but formidable, master.
“Gerald, watch out!”
The elf covered the gap between them in less than a heartbeat. It was pure, dumb luck as much as skill that let Timmy get his shovel up in time to block her first strike. The force of it rattled up his arms and sent him stumbling away. The follow up kick would have broken every one of his ribs if he hadn’t wrenched his shovel around to take the brunt of it. He hurtled through the air but had the presence of mind to turn the ground beneath him into mud to break his fall. A flick of his shovel sent the mud streaking toward the elf. She didn’t even blink. She was done playing around. A lance of white-hot flame carved through the mud, and he threw himself out of the way.
Even though he knew the attack had missed, the heat of its passage had Timmy checking to see if he’d been burnt anyway. A tree toppled to the ground behind him. His gut clenched. That attack had cut right through one of the enormous trees that filled the forest. On the upside, Katie still hadn’t been spotted, and the elf seemed more amused than threatened by Gerald. The bureaucrat lifted both his fists into what might have – if Timmy was feeling exceptionally charitable – passed for a fighting stance. The elf responded by cracking her knuckles, and all the blood drained from Gerald’s face. By the gods, Gerald better not throw up in the middle of a fight, or there was no way they were going to win this.
Thankfully, the inspector managed to beat back his fear long enough to summon a large book. He threw it at the elf. She didn’t bother to dodge. She simply pointed one finger and cut it in half with a beam of fire, her smile growing more and more toothy with each step she took toward Gerald. But both Timmy and the elf had underestimated Gerald.
The book burst apart in a blinding flash of light as a cloud of black powder spilled outward. Timmy sneezed. Was that… pepper? He had no idea why the book had blown up or why it had pepper in it, but he wasn’t about to sit back and watch as the elf reeled away, clutching at her eyes and sneezing over and over again. He lunged forward, and Gerald ducked as the elf almost took his head off with another lance of heat. But before he could close the gap completely, the elf turned and pointed one finger at him. She was still scrubbing furiously at her eyes, so he was certain she hadn’t seen him. Was she tracking him by the sounds he made?
He flung himself to the side and avoided the elf’s attack by the skin of his teeth. But if the elf had started tracking them by sound – Katie! The rats could turn things invisible with their magic, but they couldn’t completely hide the sounds things made. And Katie had never been the quietest person around. Katie’s clogs cracked the baked mud, and that was enough for the elf to locate her.
“Katie!” Timmy screamed. “Watch out!”
The girl yelped, and her shadows raced out to form a wall between her and the oncoming jet of flame. The resulting explosion threw her backward as the rats abandoned their attempts to keep her invisible in favour of leaping at the elf. Most elves fought with an air of calm and control, but this elf was seething as her vision returned and she finally stopped sneezing. She gathered her magic for another attack, but the rats were there to intercept her.
For the majority of his life, Timmy had thought of rats as fairly innocuous creatures. Sure, the occasional rat had rabies or the plague, but to a necromancer, rats were hardly the scariest things in the world. Ninja rats, however, were different, very different. Rembrandt drew his sword in a single, fluid motion and slashed at the elf’s eyes. She leaned out of the way and tried to cut him out of the air, but the rat somehow managed to twist around the strike in mid-air before vaulting off her blade to swipe at her throat. She batted him aside with a swing of her dagger and raised one hand to incinerate him, but the rat hurled a handful of tiny needles at her. Timmy guessed they were poisoned, and the elf must have had similar thoughts because she used her magic to destroy them instead of the rat.
“Rembrandt!” Katie lifted her arms, and her shadows shot forward, only to be torn apart by the elf’s magic. Before the elf could strike again, Monet flung a bola at her ankles. The elf hopped over it, and Rembrandt seized the opportunity to attack again. Timmy bit back a smile. The rats might not like him a lot, but they were doing an excellent job of paying him back for all of the food they’d eaten since they’d moved into the castle.
The elf blocked another series of attacks from Rembrandt, but she was quickly growing tired of dealing with the two rats. Timmy sensed a brief spike in her magic, and then a sphere of power rippled out in all directions. It wasn’t nearly as hot as her previous attacks, but there was enough force behind it to toss both rats away like leaves in a storm.
�
��Rembrandt! Monet!” Katie flicked her wrist, and shadowy hands reached out to catch the rats. “Are you okay?” The rats nodded. It would take more than that to get rid of them.
“Stay back.” Timmy swung his shovel at the elf’s side, but she parried the blow and replied with a thrust that came within inches of skewering him. He stumbled, and she pressed her advantage. Her attacks were too strong for him to block, so he was forced to parry or dodge. But she was so fast that it took every ounce of his skill and experience to keep his head on his shoulders and his vital organs intact. The shadows of the battered trees around them lengthened into claws and reached for the elf’s limbs. That gave Timmy the chance to back off and turn the ground beneath her feet into mud. She floundered, nearly slipping, as she rounded on Katie.
Time slowed to a crawl as the elf pointed one hand at the girl. Timmy saw the flames gather, glowing first white-hot before dimming to a dull orange. Was the elf holding back? And then time sped up again as Timmy jabbed his shovel in Katie’s direction, his magic working frantically to try and create a wall of rock between the elf and his apprentice. But he wasn’t going to make it, not with the elf’s attack already halfway toward Katie. The girl was an instant too slow to react as well, relinquishing her control over the shadows near the elf as she tried to put up a barrier to ward off the attack. But there was someone who reacted in time – Gerald.
The older man moved next to Katie. The air in front of him shimmered like hot air over the desert, and a wall of ornate shields appeared. The elf’s magic smashed into the makeshift wall with a roar. Flame billowed outward, but the shields held firm. With a snarl, the elf threw another, much hotter, blast of fire. The ground in front of the shields began to melt, and cracking sounds filled the air. But the wall refused to break, and the elf’s flames dwindled and died out. Impressive.
The elf gathered her magic again, but Katie seized the shields with her shadows and flung them at her. As the elf dodged, the girl poured her magic into the shadows cast by the shields themselves. Spectral hands wrapped around the elf’s arms and legs. For a split-second, the elf was trapped, and Timmy ducked behind a tree as the two rats went on the attack again.
The elf growled and used her fire to burn away Katie’s shadows. Then she turned to deal with the rats. A swipe of her dagger sent Rembrandt flying, the rodent barely managing to hold onto his sword before he thumped into a tree. He stumbled to his feet, throwing another handful of poisoned needles before he faded from view, rendered invisible by his magic. Monet launched his grappling hook at the elf’s feet. The elf stepped back to avoid the attack, and Katie thrust both of her hands forward. Shadowy claws surged from every tree around them, and Katie’s eyes blazed with fury. Nobody hurt her rats. Nobody.
The elf gave a short, contemptuous laugh, and the air grew thick and heavy with her power. Rembrandt reappeared, his magic completely overwhelmed by the elf’s as she obliterated Katie’s shadows. The backlash from the attack shook the whole ridge, and Timmy darted forward to try and land a hit while the elf’s back was turned. She tossed a bolt of fire at Katie and Gerald and then turned to meet him. Gerald summoned a wall of polished stone, but the elf’s magic blew right through it, and he had no choice but to grab Katie and leap off the side of the ridge as searing flames consumed the area.
The sight of his apprentice and Gerald tumbling off the ridge was not pleasant, but they should be okay. Katie could use her shadows to grab something on their way down. But with Katie and Gerald out of the picture, it was up to him and the two rats to deal with the elf. And Rembrandt could barely stand.
Timmy took a deep breath to steady his nerves and raised his shovel. On the other side of the elf, Rembrandt readied his sword. Monet tried to move into the elf’s blind spot, his grappling hook at the ready. They’d have one chance – maybe – to land a decisive blow. If they missed, they were as good as dead. Rembrandt palmed more poisoned needles. Timmy needed to ask him where he hid those. A flick of the rat’s wrist sent the needles hurtling toward the elf’s back. She ducked into a crouch and then twisted away from Monet’s grappling hook. A pair of bolas followed, but she dodged those as well. Timmy surged forward and brought his shovel down with all his might. The weapon thudded into the ground as she rolled away, but he wasn’t finished. He turned the ground into mud and then hardened it again, trying to pin her down. She ripped free of the impromptu trap and swept his feet out from under him.
He hit the ground hard and yanked his shovel up to block one of her daggers. Heat licked at the edges of the shovel, and sweat broke out across his brow. He lashed out blindly with one foot. The blow didn’t hit cleanly, but it was enough to knock her off balance. He scrambled away, avoiding two blasts of flame and creating a wall of rock to block a third. In the meantime, Rembrandt and Monet continued to attack. In a straight up fight, she would have beaten him inside of five minutes, but this wasn’t a fair fight. A single touch of the rats’ poisoned weapons could paralyse, which meant the elf could not afford to ignore them. To make things even more complicated, Monet had added his own poisoned needles to the mix. Timmy shook his head in disbelief. The rats didn’t even have pockets, so how on earth could they hide all those needles?
But the elf had finally gotten sick of the whole affair. She gave Timmy a mocking grin. Her magic flared, and the air around her burned. Then she drove one fist into the ground. Timmy caught a glimpse of Rembrandt and Monet running before the whole world caught fire. The flames rushed toward him, higher than a house and hotter than anything she’d used so far. There wasn’t enough time to make a wall strong enough to weather the attack, and there was nowhere to go – except underground. He jammed his shovel into the ground and let the earth swallow him whole.
He held his breath until he thought his lungs would burst and then used his magic to send a spout of dirt up into the air a few feet away. If he was lucky – and he really, really hoped that he was – the elf would think he was coming up for air. Praying to every god he could think of, and he knew quite a few, he waited a split-second and then let the earth carry him back to the surface.
He had a moment to take in the scene. The elf had burned everything on top of the ridge. But more importantly, her back was to him. She’d taken the bait. He grit his teeth and swung his shovel. If anyone asked later, he could always lie and say that he’d defeated her in some kind of epic duel, shovel against dagger, as opposed to bashing her over the head while her back was turned. His shovel hit the elf’s head with a satisfying clang, and she slumped to the ground.
Timmy dragged in several deep breaths and then knelt down to make sure she was simply unconscious. They couldn’t negotiate with her if she was dead although hitting her with his shovel probably wouldn’t help any future negotiations either. Oh well. Still, the elf was alive, he was alive, and the others would hopefully be alive too.
He wandered over to the side of the ridge. “Katie, Gerald, you two better not be dead.”
Katie popped up over the side of the ridge. She must have managed to grab something with her shadows. Gerald clung to her back like some kind of oversized, extremely lanky monkey. Rembrandt and Monet were also there, both of them latched onto Katie’s robes.
“Yes, we’re alive.” Katie dropped to her knees, and Gerald slowly released the death grip he had around her neck. It was a miracle he hadn’t choked her. “Please tell me that she’s dead.” She scowled and poked Gerald with one of her shadows. “Next time, try putting your arms somewhere else. I can’t control my shadows if I’m unconscious.”
“Uh, sorry about that.” Gerald chuckled weakly and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “I thought we were going to die.”
“Just don’t do it again.”
Timmy waved one hand at the elf. “She’s not dead, but she is unconscious.”
Katie made a disgusted sound. “Isn’t that a pity?”
“Be nice, Katie. She did try and kill us all, but we can’t negotiate with her if she’s dead. That was our mission, reme
mber?”
“And you handled it as well as could be expected.” Gerald walked over to the elf and produced several pairs of handcuffs along with a number of bracelets and anklets. “These are magic- and strength-suppressing restraints. We should put these on her before she wakes up.”
“Sounds good.” Timmy grabbed a pair of handcuffs and got to work. “I don’t think we’d win a second time.”
“By the way, master, how did you beat her?” Katie asked. She was eyeing his shovel a little too intently. She probably wanted to give the elf a whack or two over the head with it.
“Well, if you must know.” Timmy puffed out his chest and struck his most heroic pose, one that he didn’t have much occasion to use due to his chosen profession. “After Rembrandt and Monet jumped off the ridge, I was forced to face her in single combat. We engaged in a swift, gruelling, exchange of blows, and I finally managed to force an opening in her defences and knock her unconscious.” He rubbed his chin, grateful that he had enough stubble to keep the gesture from looking completely ridiculous. “Yes, she was one of the most skilled warriors that I’ve ever faced, but I’ve improved since the last time.”
Katie stared at him for a long moment, and then she reached down, took off one of her clogs, and threw it at his head. Timmy barely managed to dodge. “That is such a load of crap.”
“Language, Katie –”
“Don’t tell me to mind my language!” Katie used a shadow to drag her clog back and got ready to throw it again. “I’m not blind. That elf beat the crap out of all of us together, so there’s no way that you beat her on your own in a straight up fight. I bet you waited until her back was turned and then whacked her over the head or something lame like that.”
There was silence, absolute silence. Timmy swore he even saw some tumbleweed roll past.
Katie gaped and jabbed one finger at him. “That’s what you did, isn’t it? I knew it! I knew it!” She punctuated her exclamations by running over to him and trying to beat him over the head with her clog.
Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf Page 6