Remnants

by Honor Raconteur

  In a purely cannibalistic move, Toh’sellor absorbed the energy of the spell and noticeably grew another foot.

  Bannen yelped at my side, and he wasn’t the only one. “Honey, you might want to work faster!”

  “Side effect,” I gritted back, already focusing on the next segment, analyzing the best way to destroy it quickly. “Any spell I destroy in its vicinity, Toh’sellor will absorb the dregs of.”

  “Rena, love of my life, that’s not what we wanted to hear.”

  “Do you see me jumping up and down with joy?” I snapped. He might have said something else, but I tuned him out at that point, focusing hard on the next segment. It went down a little harder than the next, but with the same side effect. Toh’sellor grew another foot, its base spreading out that much wider. It now pressed completely up against the protective barrier, and I could see fissures cracking it upon that contact.

  An internal clock ticked away, and I knew I was taking longer than that promised five minutes. I could see, as I looked through the Maksohms’ shield, that the attacks they protected us from hammered away at them. The cousins wouldn’t be able to hold it for much longer. I’d get the harness down, but not Toh’sellor itself. Not before the Maksohms’ shield failed.

  Worse, the mages around us redoubled their efforts, shouting at each other to stop us. Me, specifically. The familiar-minions were also close to getting through our barrier and that…would not be good. I was completely out of time and surrounded on all sides.

  Three segments down now, and I really wished I could ignore the last four, but I didn’t dare. Magical energy sparked weirdly, almost arcing in between the missing pieces, trying to join the gaps.

  Someone in the very back noticed and raised the alarm in a language I didn’t speak. But tone told me clearly enough what it meant, and the attacks on us redoubled. Our shield went from being able to maintain another two minutes to maybe a minute, if we were very lucky. Swearing, I whirled to Bannen, catching Chi’s eye as well. “Cover me. I need to get past our shield.”

  “That bad?” Bannen stared at the path ahead of us and grimaced because there was no path ahead of us, just a lot of very trigger-happy mages flinging every spell in their arsenal.

  “Um.” Vee stared uncertainly at us, glancing toward Toh’sellor, chewing at her bottom lip.

  Bannen nodded slowly. “I fully endorse any plan that starts with ‘um.’”

  I smacked his arm. “What, Vee?”

  “I think I can shake up the earth, scatter them; sort of like bowling pins?” she offered. “And it will buy you a window to get through.”

  “I’ll take it.” Because I frankly didn’t see any other option.

  “Vee, pull aggro,” Bannen requested, words quick and smart. “Chi, left, I’ll have right. Maksohm!”

  “I heard,” he responded between clenched teeth. “I’ll release on three. Form up. One, two, three!”

  The shields dropped and within a split second, Vee lifted up her foot and slammed it against the earth, one hand pointing down in a flat palm, then drawing sharply up. The gesture and half-song tumbling from her mouth invoked the giant’s earth magic, and the ground roiled away from her foot, pitching everyone in front of her to the ground. Then she slammed her foot again, her hand coming up sharply at the wrist, fingertips down, and they did more than fall—the ground came up sharply in a tee-pee line, scattering people to either side in a rough yank. It opened up a five-foot gap of clear space, the ground settling again immediately.

  Vee charged forward, acting like a battering ram for anyone who found their feet quickly. I immediately ran at her heels—or tried to. When Vee got excited, she sometimes forgot that the rest of us couldn’t keep up with a giant at full speed.

  I did my level best to keep up.

  I charged forward on Vee’s heels, keeping Rena immediately to my left, but my attention focused largely on the minion-familiars already back on their feet. Nine of them went straight for us, ignoring the rest of the agents stuck battling with the rogue mages behind us. Divide and conquer, same tactics as us. I pivoted on one heel, attacking a wolf as it lunged for my throat, unable to dodge or risk it hitting Rena. Taking its strength full on was not easy, and I slid backwards a good foot before an arrow took it out.

  Bless Chi for having my back.

  Spinning, I checked on Rena, found her still at my side and untouched, but that split second was all I could spare. A jaguar ran at me, its jaws unnaturally wide as it roared a challenge, loud enough to set my ears to ringing. I saw a rogue mage approaching behind the jaguar, his teeth bared in a snarl, which alarmed me. We had no barrier up to protect us at the moment. “Vee, need a barrier!”

  I could hear her stop abruptly, boots slamming against the earth, and felt more than saw a barrier thrown hastily up to protect us. The rogue mage still managed to get a spell off that nicked my right leg, the barrier coming down a second too late. Hissing in pain, I blinked away the dark spots that threatened my vision, because if I didn’t focus on that jaguar soon, I’d be in trouble.

  The jaguar leapt and I moved to intercept, sword aiming for its neck. It tucked in its head, thwarting me, and lifted a paw with razor sharp claws that nearly caught my arm. Dodging that attack, I moved, bringing the sword back up and around, this time in a side graze along its side. Howling, the big cat jumped to the side, and got a face full of Seton for its efforts. The cat died before it hit the ground.

  Several arrows sang in the air in short flights, hitting multiple targets, and I knew Chi fired away. Did we get all the familiars, at least? With the barrier up, I dared to look around, because not even a rogue mage could get through Vee’s barriers that easily—

  “DOWN!” Vee barked at us.

  Not questioning, I went down to my knees, yanking Rena in sharply so that I could shield her with my body. She squeaked a little at the abrupt maneuver but didn’t resist me, which I appreciated, folding up onto her knees, her back pressed to my chest. I frantically turned my head this way and that, panning the area. Just what had scared Vee?

  An explosion rocked over my head and I ducked even tighter, swearing. “What in thunderation?!”

  “Those complete morons,” Rena hissed. Even with her directly under me, I could barely hear her. The explosion had made everything dim in my ears, and they kept popping for some reason. “They’re deliberately throwing the magical artifacts at the shields.”

  “Why does that result in explosions?” Chi demanded, then yelped and flinched when another one got chucked at us and lit up like a bomb over our heads. I could see a visible crack develop in Vee’s shield from the impact, which alarmed me right down to my marrow.

  “Because it’s already got magic of its own, it’s been infected with Toh’sellor’s energy, and the mix of yet a third magic is overloading its design.” Rena bit off the explanation curtly, and she lifted her head enough to take in the barrier overhead. The flickering, failing barrier overhead. “We’re not going to survive another hit. Get up, move!”

  I saw sense in that order and did as told, helping my wife up and running with her. I could feel the necklace barrier around my neck activate, the world shimmering slightly, which told me how close I’d gotten. We only had another twenty feet before we hit Toh’sellor, so where did Rena think she was going?

  Because she wasn’t an idiot, Vee veered off when we got to that mythical fifteen-foot mark, not getting any closer to Toh’sellor. Even this close threatened to do permanent injury to her. She went right, skirting along the edges, and Bannen and Chi moved to follow her.

  I didn’t.

  I couldn’t. We had two dozen rogue mages still attacking everyone, over twenty minion-familiars still up and fighting, and now magical artifacts being thrown at us like hand grenades. None of the barriers would last another hit. I had to stop this now, I was flat out of time, and there was only one method I knew of to manage it.

  Bannen would really strangle me for this.


  It took only a second, a moment to let go of the iron control I maintained on myself. I’d only done this once before, seven months ago, but my magic remembered how liberating it felt to be fully turned loose. My body remembered too, the cost of that liberty—something I still hadn’t fully recovered from—but its protest echoed distantly in comparison to the joy. I let all of it go, my magic soaring out past my skin, radiating from me like I carried around my own bonfire.

  “Rena, NO!” Bannen howled behind me.

  He couldn’t stop me. He couldn’t even approach. It would kill him instantly. The shields he and Chi wore around their necks were designed to shield against Toh’sellor’s residual energy, not the chaotic thing itself. It wouldn’t hold up to both his energy and mine. Bannen knew this, didn’t try to fling himself at me, and I couldn’t even give him an apologetic glance. I had Toh’sellor right in front of me, and that took precedence over everything else.

  I ran straight into the lion’s mouth, knowing what would happen. The battle still raged behind me, I could hear it; I could feel the heat of spells bursting off of each other; but I couldn’t focus on that. Wind and chaotic energy swirled ahead of me like a tornado, gaining speed and magical ferocity with every revolution. That took my entire concentration, as it battered against me, the chaotic nature of its energy repulsive and making my skin crawl.

  The harness shield around Toh’sellor disintegrated at the first brush of my magic, leaving it as no obstacle. I was wide open, my magic pouring out like a raging bonfire, and it took me a second to realize that more than just my magic flared up.

  Oh. Sards. I didn’t think this through. The energy barrier around Toh’sellor splintered as I hit it, and when it did, it released all of that stored energy. Stored, concentrated energy of Toh’sellor. It hit me with a backlash powerful enough to overload my already sensitive nerves. I seized as if I’d been hit with an electrical charge or a lightning bolt, my nerves flaring white hot in pain, my very bones protesting it. It lasted a second, an eternity. I nearly went unconscious, the pain so intense it was a visceral thing.

  I couldn’t even keep going. Something went very wrong in my legs and I fell abruptly forward, barely catching myself on my forearms to avoid slamming nose-first into the stone under me. Sards, waesucks, this wasn’t good. I couldn’t move. I lay two feet from Toh’sellor’s core and I couldn’t move. Even trying to roll over was a no-go—that caused an intense amount of pain as the area around my hips screamed.

  Bannen yelled at me, his voice going high with alarm. I wanted to respond, to say something, and couldn’t. Just keeping my magic open cost me dearly. I had to, though; I couldn’t stop now. Stopping now would both leave me open to Toh’sellor without a defense and unleash its power against everyone else in the cavern. If I was to survive this, I had to defeat it, even if I stayed flat on my face doing it.

  My magic blazed upwards, happily bulling through Toh’sellor’s defenses and shredding it as if it had all the substance of cotton candy. Toh’sellor wasn’t a thinking being, it didn’t have that kind of higher form of thought, but on an instinctive level, it recognized me. I knew it did, because it openly flinched, drawing all of that growing power back into itself, trying to shore up some sort of defense against me. Not that it mattered.

  An unholy grin spread over my face as I battled against it, watching as the towering giant once again whittled down to size. The analytical part of my mind knew that I couldn’t keep this up for much longer, doing this was insanely dangerous, and I didn’t want to experience a Mind Down for the third time, thank you very much. I lay there with my head craned upwards, watching Toh’sellor’s core visibly shrink, letting my magic do as it wished.

  It destroyed Toh’sellor down to its barely flickering core and purred in satisfaction at a job well done. Even before I could try to rein it in, my magic curled back into my chest, like a contented cat in a patch of sunlight. I blinked in astonishment, not expecting that. Well, granted, there was nothing left to do, Toh’sellor back to its original state now.

  I sent an internal thank you to my magic, felt it glow briefly in response. Then the euphoria died and I felt every single cell in my body scream at once. Owwwww. Before I could get a word out, my husband skidded to a halt near my side. “You lunatic, what was that?!”

  “Shield,” I gasped out. Owww, legs. Owww, lungs. Owww, hair. It was bad when even my hair hurt.

  “Got it,” Vee assured me, stepping up to my other side, and indeed she had her grimoire out and a barrier around what remained of Toh’sellor with record speed. “Team Two, work with me, cap from the top!”

  “Cast now!” someone from up top commanded and the dual barriers snapped together with an audible hum, cutting off Toh’sellor’s energy so that it no longer grated along my nerves. I relaxed, then flinched as I did, as just breathing hurt.

  “Honey,” Bannen’s hands hovered without quite touching, his eyes going over me from head to toe. “Tell me what hurts. You went down hard.”

  “I think my legs are broken,” I admitted, breath hissing from between clenched teeth. Oh sards did that hurt.

  “EMILY!” Bannen called, voice loud enough to be a thunderclap. “Right, she’s coming. What else?”

  “Might be on the verge of a breathing attack. Could just be me lying on top of my lungs, though. Hard to tell right now.”

  “When Emily gets here, we’ll roll you over,” he promised.

  I dared to tilt my head enough to see him properly. One look at the dark thundercloud of an expression on his face, and I winced. Yeah…I was in trouble. “Sorry?”

  “You’re not,” he snarled at me. Yup, I knew that look. He was utterly pissed, the familiar bond likely demanding blood and retribution about now. “Rena, what by the sarding deities—”

  “Sorry, sorry,” I apologized again, trying to sound more contrite this time. I did honestly feel sorry about scaring him, so I could put sincerity into that at least. “We were just completely out of time and I had to take it down before we got bombarded completely. Wait, I still hear fighting.”

  “It’s not over yet,” Vee informed me. She assumed a defensive posture on my other side, I could hear it as she sent Seton whistling in front of her. “Come on, you gutless coward, you’re not getting at her.”

  “She has to be stopped!” a woman’s voice snapped, horror choking her words. “She’s wasted weeks of research, utterly destroyed all of it!”

  Research. Toh’sellor was being referred to as research? Was the woman crazy as a bed bug?

  “You either stand down, or I put an arrow in you,” Chi informed the rogue mage flatly. At least, I assumed she was a rogue mage. My head faced the wrong direction to see. There was more than one, though, as Bannen abruptly stood, sword held at the ready.

  Chi’s bow abruptly released with a thwack and someone gasped in pain. Then it snapped out again and I could hear someone else swear, further away. “Anyone who touches those crates gets an arrow through the shoulder! I am not sarding kidding! Try me!”

  From the top of the knoll, Team Two’s agents started firing off spells as well, and I could hear multiple rogue mages and minion-familiars go down. The battle turned quick and brutal with the rouge mages not having Toh’sellor’s energy to bolster their barriers. I tried not to feel completely pinned and helpless while lying there, listening to them fight, but failed miserably. It hearkened back to my pre-teen years and I loathed the feeling with every fiber of my being.

  “All rogue mages secure!” a voice barked out. Maksohm, sounded like.

  “All rogue mages secure, confirmed!” another man repeated from the right side, somewhere beyond my view. “Minion-familiars are either dead or in cages.”

  “Leave those, we might be able to get Rena’s help in saving them. Emily, with me, let’s get you to her.”

  It turned out that my legs were not broken but dislocated. Emily and Vee matter-of-factly put them back in their respective sockets (not a painle
ss process), then made me comfortable on the floor, half propped up against the cave wall some distance from Toh’sellor. I wouldn’t be able to move for at least two hours, not until the magic had a chance to do its job, and even then I’d be carried back onto the ship. In fact, I had orders to not try and walk until tomorrow morning.

  As I lounged there like a decorative piece of furniture, the mopping up began. Every black-clad mage lay flat on the floor, magically cuffed and looking miserable. The magical artifacts were being carefully repackaged under heavy shielding so I could strip off the Toh’sellor enriched barriers later. If necessary, I should say. By the time my magic was up to it, the energy barriers would likely be dissipated. I rested near the familiar cages. Those were more problematic. I could see even from my sickbed that two of them could be saved, as they were both under strong shielding. They contained only trace amounts of Toh’sellor, barely more than specks. I’d have to do it today, though; any longer and they risked losing more than a limb. The others, less than twenty remaining, had been corralled into an off-shoot cavern and blocked by a barrier. They snarled and snapped at it, mindless with their bloodlust. Them, I couldn’t save.

  “Renata.”

  I winced at hearing my full name growled out of my husband’s mouth. Right. I still had him to face. I peeked up at him under my lashes, trying to look innocent. I had a feeling I was very bad at it. “Yes, darling?”

  He stared back at me, eyes borderline a glare, mouth perfectly flat. “Why don’t you explain why, after promising me faithfully you wouldn’t, you let your magic loose?”

  “I, ah, had a very good reason for that,” I offered and resisted the urge to sigh, because if I started, I’d likely be at it for the next four years.

  Now he glared, a flush of anger in his cheeks, his hands tightly holding my upper arms to the point of bruising. “I’m all ears.”