by Rosie Scott
I chuckled at his teasing. “Ah. Well, how do you suggest we separate them? If they're like you and me, as you said, it'll have to be through force.”
Azazel motioned toward Maggie. “Send Sedge through the railing. Block Thorn from the lower stairways.”
“We need Vipin's location,” I reminded him.
“Yes, and that location will be the same whether you hear it from Sedge or Thorn,” Azazel reasoned. “It'll be easier to get it from Thorn. He relies on others for shields. Once we wear down his ward, you can charm him.”
“Good plan,” I agreed. “Inform the others. Tell Cerin and Maggie to fight Sedge and send Holter with them as alteration support. Me, you, and Nyx will follow Thorn.”
Azazel heeded my request as I focused on gaining as much energy as possible through leeching to regenerate protections for everyone before we had to split up. The end of the overpass was finally just before us, leading to a fork of walkways. The path straight ahead trailed flat around the trunk of the tree until it led to a stairway leading down to the forest floor, and that was where allied reinforcements were coming from. The other route veered sharply to the right and up to the next levels of the same tree. At the center of the fork was a widened pathway meant to accommodate higher traffic for the intersection, and it was here where Sedge and Thorn fought when we finally neared them.
“Gods, you're a persistent bastard,” Thorn lamented as his sharp eyes caught mine.
“So are you,” I retorted. “All of this fighting could have been avoided.”
After a hefty swipe of his sword in mid-air, Sedge spun to face us, his huge blade covered in blood. Just behind him, an assassin's body appeared after death dispelled her invisibility. The body was on its knees, and it was unclear what had killed her until her torso slid off of her hips from a perfectly precise angled cut between her rib cage and pelvic bone. The two halves fell in a puddle of bile and escaping intestines.
“Ya sure have a flair for the dramatic, don't ya?” Maggie taunted Sedge as she stayed close to the left side of the walkway, her mind set on sending him over it.
“I respond to acts of violence in kind,” Sedge replied, oddly calm.
“Then we are a lot alike,” I commented. “I had every intention on leaving here peacefully until you executed Silas.”
“Don't even pretend like you desired peace,” Sedge retorted in disbelief. “You rampage through every country on Arrayis as if the world belongs to you. Your offers of independence are uncharacteristic; I see right through them.”
“You know nothing about what is uncharacteristic of me,” I replied. “Perhaps I should have planned on overthrowing Celendar much like all the others. I suppose it was wrong of me to assume the Celds were open to non-violent diplomacy.”
“If you are actually interested in diplomacy with Celendar, call off your men,” Sedge retorted.
I laughed dryly. “I'm afraid we're past that point, Sedge. You unnecessarily killed an innocent man. Celendar and I will come to an agreement, yes, but neither you nor your son will be alive to see it.”
My threat spurred both of the royal Elwoods into action. Thorn shot ice shards from both palms as if they were a burden to him, but the ice simply melted as my shield absorbed the energy. Cerin and Holter raised the dead in the intersection until corpses surrounded both members of royalty. As they fought off the masses, the two were slowly forced apart.
Maggie threw her giant war hammer in an uppercut toward Sedge, and the weapon crashed through two of Cerin's corpses before it hit the knight. Her swing knocked him back and weakened his life shield, but Sedge was powerful, and his armor was heavy. The knight merely skidded over the planks, closer to the railing but not through it. Sedge thrust his two-handed sword into the wood at his feet, blocking Maggie's next hit on the weapon using the strength of the structure beneath it while he used his empty hands to regenerate his guard.
Ssshhh!
Thorn sent an arc of ice through the masses to defend his father. Icicles clattered over life and alteration shields alike, wearing down all of our protections while collapsing a handful of our undead soldiers. We hurried to regenerate protections and re-raise the dead.
Sedge grabbed his longsword, jerking it out of its hold of the wood. Cerin swung his scythe toward the knight from the side, and the hit was quickly blocked before it whittled down Sedge's new shield. But Cerin had only meant to serve as a distraction. While Sedge was busy defending himself from the necromancer and his multiple minions, Maggie's war hammer swung toward the knight from the front.
Sedge's life shield dulled but did not yet flicker. That didn't matter, however, since the force of the hit sent him straight back into the wooden railing. A sharp crack reverberated through the air, but the knight remained standing for the time being. As Sedge struggled to regain his balance, Maggie thrust the flat top of the hammer straight into the center of his abdomen. A flash of panic alighted in Sedge's hazel eyes as the railing cracked through, and then he fell backward and out of sight.
“Father!” Thorn's scream echoed off of the nearby tree bark, full of desperation and horror. He refocused on me and sent stones and ice alike into the masses of dead between us. “You fucking bastard!”
Thorn's life shield flickered with extreme weakness from the surrounding corpses, and his method of regenerating was now gone. Deep blue eyes flicked through the area nervously before he turned, rushing through the undead and to the steps that would take him into the higher city levels.
“Kai.” Cerin's voice hissed out from behind me before I could follow Thorn. I turned to my lover, seeing him and Maggie standing next to the broken railing Sedge fell through. “Go. Kill Thorn. We'll stay here. Sedge survived the fall.”
“What?” I hurried over to the railing and glanced down. Just two floors below us was an extended balcony belonging to what appeared to be a cafe with outdoor tables. Sedge was lying on a broken table, his life shield completely gone. Even so, the knight slowly recovered from the fall, disoriented but still alive.
“We'll keep him off ya, Kai,” Maggie promised, starting off toward the staircase leading down with her war hammer. “O'course it ain't that easy,” she continued in a frustrated ramble. “It ain't ever that easy.”
Cerin and Holter followed Maggie while Nyx and Azazel came with me. I darted right and up the steps Thorn had used, pushing between undead corpses as they followed their foe. When a walkway veered off of the stairway one floor up, the corpses shambled onto it. The path ahead was seemingly empty, but the necromantic magic animating the corpses sensed invisible enemies better than I could. Corpses came to clash with unseen foes, and blood soon splattered over the wooden boards from bodies I couldn't see until their camouflage dispelled upon death. I sent more death magic through the area, raising corpses new and old. For the first time, I noticed that Azazel's earlier warning about Celendar having reinforcements was right, for some of the recent corpses were human and wore the green and black armor of Chairel.
“Kai.” Azazel pointed above us. Two more floors up was a rope bridge leading from our tree to the next planted closer to the center of the city. Thorn was running across it while calling for aid. A pale Celdic mage near the end of the bridge slowed Thorn down to gain more information about his request. As Thorn rambled off words to the man, the mage regenerated his shield and ward.
“Nyx,” I said as we ran back the way we'd come to continue chasing Thorn, “focus on charming life mages and killing the others. We need Thorn alive to get intel. We can't let him regenerate his wards, and we can't let the others kill him until I get what I want.”
“Sure thing,” Nyx agreed, her voice labored with heavy breaths as we hurried up more steps.
My lungs burned from exertion when we finally reached the story with the rope bridge. Thorn was on the other end, pointing at us and screaming directions at nearby soldiers. I gave them no time to attack before I sent two death bombs into their ranks. Black fog escaped a handful of Celds, but it only le
ft others with flickering wards. One of the human Chairel soldiers with hair as fiery as mine pushed through to the frontlines. Anticipating her element, I summoned water.
Fff! Fff! Fff!
Fireballs flew toward me in quick succession, lighting the surrounding bridge up with flashes of orange light before the flames fanned out over my alteration shield, feeding me with more energy. I thrust my right hand out, unleashing a torrent of water. The gushing river overwhelmed the last few fireballs, and then the mages on the bridge. I stalked forward, knocking over mages and archers alike with an onslaught of water.
“Azazel!” When I called for him, he immediately appeared on my left. Water continued spewing out of my right palm, and it threw more soldiers back as I paved a path for us. “Arrow.”
Azazel nocked an arrow. With my free left hand, I imbued the arrowhead with lightning. I felt his eyes on me, waiting for my signal as I continued forward. When we were halfway across the bridge I stopped, watching one soldier get shoved through the rope railings of the bridge by the force of the water current. Her body spun from the momentum of the hit even as she fell.
“Aim far,” I directed Azazel. Still forcing water toward our foes, I finally said, “Now."
Sizzling veins of white and purple electricity embraced the arrowhead as it arced toward the farthest reaches of the ever-flowing river. As soon as the arrow splatted through the water, the electricity fanned out, crawling over the surface in every direction and seizing bodies in electrocution. I dispelled the water magic and ensured all of our alteration shields held strong. Before us on the bridge, fallen foes rattled in seizure, tendrils of electricity crawling over their bodies and casting the entire overpass in a bright purple light. Some of the bodies moved so violently they fell over the sides of the bridge. The air magic crawled closer over soaked wood and rope, but when it reached us, the currents skidded over our shields before being absorbed, refueling us with energy.
Thorn breathed heavily while he looked over the damages, his handsome face tinted blue from proximate bioluminescence. The majority of the soldiers between us were dead. Where there was once only arrogance and rage in his beautiful eyes, panic and fear joined the mix. The remaining Celds around him waited until the last of the electricity sizzled out before they moved forward to face me.
Black tendrils raced through the area, coaxing the recent dead from their rest. There were now more corpses than soldiers, and I directed them to surround Thorn and his men, keeping the royal Celd trapped beside the bark of the tree at the end of the bridge. One at a time, Thorn's soldiers were defeated.
“Don't let the corpses kill him,” Nyx reminded me.
“I'm directing them,” I reminded her in turn.
Only Thorn was left, now. He stood back against the pearl-white bark, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his eyes scanned over my minions. The undead surrounded him, hissing and gurgling protests even as I urged them to hesitate from attacking.
“You wish to toy with me?” Thorn asked, his tone exasperated but defiant. His formerly energetic eyes were fatigued from fighting. The environmental energy had died down severely since the outbreak of battle. Far below on the forest floor, magic was being used more often by my allies than our foes, for our armies were now relying on life and death dual casters to regenerate others.
“I seek information from you,” I replied, summoning the leeching funnel in one hand as I filed through my minions to approach him. Thorn still had a ward that I needed to wear down before I could charm him.
Thorn's nostrils flared nervously as he watched me come closer. His blue eyes flicked back to Nyx and Azazel before he sneered at me, “I'd rather die than give you anything.”
“Oh, you will die,” I assured him. “You're just going to give me Vipin's location first.”
Out of all the emotions I expected to exude from Thorn's face then, satisfaction hadn't been one. His smirk made no sense to me until the last few minions parted between us. I caught just a glimpse of the large summoned stone between Thorn's hands before he threw it.
The solid earth broke straight through both of my shields, hitting me so hard in the gut that I momentarily forgot how to inhale. I flew up and backward from the tree while hearing Thorn's screams of defiance and the whistling of wind past my ears, and my vision filled with twirling bridges and open air. For the first time in a while, I felt fear. I was thirteen floors above solid ground, and I had no spells in my repertoire that could save me.
I heard pounding boot steps over wood, the ringing of shooting metal, and then Nyx cried out in pain. Next, in mid-air, something jerked me back so hard in the opposite direction that nausea rose in my esophagus, but I kept from vomiting. In my spinning vision, I saw glimpses of Thorn fighting Nyx while she was invisible and trailing blood. Much closer to me was Azazel with his hands outstretched, trying desperately to save me from falling by tugging me back toward the bridge with two telekinesis spells.
Azazel yelped in surprised pain after the echoes of another onslaught of shooting metal shards shattered through the forest, but the telekinesis didn't relent. Suddenly, it felt like something snapped me in half. A burning pressure clenched my gut, and everything came to a screeching halt before I slipped backward. I blinked rapidly, trying to orient myself. Azazel saved me from falling, but I'd landed on one of the rope railings of the bridge. Now, I was slipping off of the rope, and the forest floor waved evilly in anticipation beneath my hanging boots.
I grasped desperately onto the cord railing with both hands as my body slipped abruptly toward the abyss. Both palms throbbed with searing pain as the skin burned through with rough rope, and when my body weight was caught by my grasp, my right elbow snapped out of socket. I hissed through my teeth, blinking back tears of pain as I hung limply from the rope with only one good arm. The threads on either side of my hands slowly darkened with leaking blood. My left arm shook with both pain and pressure. I attempted to pull myself up, but with just one good arm and nearly non-existent muscles, I only jerked uselessly.
Azazel and Thorn were amid a melee fight at the end of the bridge. Azazel bled profusely from three jagged metal shards sticking out of the dark armor covering his upper back. My racing heart warmed as I realized he'd once again risked his life for me; he'd continued pulling me to safety when injured instead of defending himself from further spells. For now, Thorn wasn't using magic, but Azazel regenerated his own alteration shields just in case. Azazel no longer had protection from physical damage; Thorn knew this and looked to take advantage, using a short sword against Azazel's karambits.
“Nyx!” Azazel screamed, his eyes darting between me and Thorn as he fought. “Please!”
Nyx did not respond, but my eyes followed drops of blood that slowly appeared over the wooden planks of the bridge in a trail from Thorn to me. Raspy, wheezing breaths met my ears just before Nyx's invisible hands grabbed my arms.
“Come on, weakling,” Nyx murmured as she pulled, her tone not as playful as her words.
“My right elbow's out of socket,” I replied, my voice strained with the pressure.
“Then I'll pull from this side,” Nyx responded, before she leaned over the rope, grabbing ahold of my left side and looping her fingers through my belt to pull me up.
“Careful,” I pleaded. “Your lung is punctured. You shouldn't be doing this.”
“I'll let you fall, then,” she teased dryly, her voice weak. “How the hell could you know that, anyway? I'm invisible.”
“I can hear it,” I replied, grunting as I pulled as hard as I could on the rope with my left arm to relieve the pressure on Nyx. Between the two of us, I finally slipped back over the railing, landing awkwardly on the wooden planks before standing. “Besides, you've punctured it before.”
“Yeah, and I can tell you that it's definitely not an acquired taste,” Nyx mused dryly.
“Save your breath until I can heal you,” I requested despite being amused by her quip. I hurried to Azazel and Thorn as Nyx limped
along behind me.
Azazel focused on dodging, for his karambits weren't effective for blocking. Even though he was injured and weakening with blood loss, his eyes followed Thorn's movements as the Celd swung his sword messily, desperate for a hit. It was clear Thorn wasn't nearly as well-versed in melee as he was in magic. When Thorn missed his next swing entirely, Azazel let go of one of his karambits, letting the blade hang loosely from its finger hole as he shot black alteration magic at the sword, cursing it with many times its own weight.
Clunk.
“Fucking hell,” Thorn cursed, attempting to pick up the fallen sword before dropping it again as he realized it was still extraordinarily heavy. In the meantime, Azazel shot two paralyze spells at the Celd, looking to weaken his magical ward. The life magic flickered as Thorn backed up rapidly toward the tree again, almost out of options. An ice shard began to form in his hand, but it was clear he was draining his own life to summon it, for he tired excessively before dispelling it.
Thunk. Azazel shoved the royal Celd harshly against the pearl-white tree bark. A nearby cluster of bioluminescent fungi cast both men in a mixture of white and blue light as they breathed rapidly from their fight. Azazel held Thorn still, but the Celd didn't have the energy to try freeing himself again.
I leeched from Thorn through a funnel of black until his ward finally dispelled. The Celd said nothing, only staring at me with hatred and defiance. I charmed him next, and his expression relaxed as the illusion magic took hold of his mind.
“Tell me where Vipin Elwood is,” I commanded.
“My coward of a grandfather is in his home just a few trees north,” Thorn replied. It fascinated me to hear his name-calling; not only was I unaware that the Elwoods had turmoil amongst themselves, but I was also unaware that charming someone could reveal personal biases. It was the first time I'd experienced such a thing. Perhaps Thorn was just such a spitfire that his personality shone through the magic more than most.
“Which tree?” I asked. Thorn looked to the right and pointed. I followed his finger as he continued.