Crisis of Faith by Benjamin Medrano (z-lib.org)

by Unknown

“I thought I felt someone watching us and wasn’t about to let my guard down. The last time I did, I was captured by those who wished to destroy everything I was,” the angel said, her voice beautiful but as cold as the air around them, at least until an aura of fire began to burn around the angel, heating the air. “I will not allow that to happen again.”

  “First you’ll have to survive,” Alexander replied, his heartbeat quickening as she glared down at him, and he resisted the urge to cringe, since he was afraid of what was coming. He hated getting burned, as the recovery was always horrible. “You’re no match for a ruiner, I can tell that much.”

  “I don’t need to be a match for it. All I have to do is hold the pair of you off,” the angel replied, her sword lashing out to knock a tongue of the creature away from her. Her words sent a chill down Alexander’s spine, but he shook it off.

  “We’ll see about that!” Alexander snapped, and he raised his arm, beginning a spell of unravelling as he took aim at the door.

  The angel lunged toward him but the ruiner wasn’t about to let her get away with ignoring it, and the battle ensued more fiercely, though a blast of fire forced Alexander to hastily abandon his spell for the moment.

  Her disadvantage was that she was trying to protect others, Alexander knew. All they had to do was get through her defenses once, though, then the angel would die.

  Elissa stepped out of the teleportation chamber calmly, and frowned as she did so, her instincts claiming something was wrong. That wasn’t a surprise, considering the city was supposedly under attack, but the problem was she didn’t know what was wrong.

  The old manor where the Adjudicators had ruled Westgate was in ruins, though it was still better than just after the destruction, as the elves had been working on clearing it up for the past couple of months, once Everium had solidified their control of the city and finally gotten a makeshift government in place. It probably wouldn’t be cleared entirely until the next spring, with how the majority of the building had imploded, but the stables, several outbuildings, the walls, and the teleportation chamber had all survived the destruction.

  Captain Desa and her soldiers were already in the courtyard with the golems and some local soldiers, and as she paused the golems that had arrived with her strode forward to join the others. Four of them were armed with halberds, while the other four had gigantic arbalests attached to one hand, which Elissa imagined would be painful to be shot by. Her guards had formed up around her and Nadis, and Elissa looked over the walls, frowning as she did so.

  The haze of smoke from fireplaces made it a touch harder to tell where the problems were at first glance, but she heard faint noise even so, with more smoke rising from the direction of the markets. They were too far from the temple to be able to tell more, but Elissa wasn’t going to assume it was safe.

  “Lady Elissa! There were four creatures attacking the city in total, but we know the one at the garrison was killed. One is in the market and at the gates, and we’re—” Desa turned to her and began speaking, the elf’s gaze focused, but she never got the chance to finish as a flurry of bolts of fire slammed into the gates, reducing them to splinters that flew across the courtyard, prompting everyone to flinch and shield their faces, even if the gates were far enough away that they weren’t in much danger.

  “You were right,” Nadis said, her voice barely audible as men and women poured through the gate, though mostly men.

  There were more than a hundred people rushing through the gates, all of them armed, and Elissa instantly identified a few magi among them, causing her lips to tighten. Worse, she thought she recognized a few of them, particularly the quartet of strong, fast men and women in front.

  “I hate being right,” Elissa replied grimly, and shouted, “Enforcers in front!”

  With that she launched into an incantation, her old instincts coming to life at long last, as she found herself in the middle of a battlefield for the first time in ages, and not one where she was trying to keep people alive. Words spilled from Elissa’s lips, and the golems and the soldiers began moving as well. Desa’s voice was raised, her wand glittering as mana pulsed through it, and her soldiers were rushing to face their opponents. Elissa grew a bit more surprised as she realized those guards were moving nearly as fast as the Enforcers, but she didn’t have time to think about it further.

  Elissa completed her spell with a sharp, precise gesture, and a wave of rippling light blasted out from the middle of the attackers, almost like an explosive rainbow. The ground was unaffected where it passed, but many opponents were caught in it. A couple of them fell over, twitching and possibly dead, while all but one of them began moving more spastically, as if they’d lost track of what they were doing. Only the one managed to shield himself, but Elissa wasn’t going to let them—

  A multitoned roar interrupted her, and Elissa paled, spinning around as she muttered, “Oh, shit. A dragon? Goddess help us.”

  An immense, winged shape swooped upward, as if it’d just launched from the watchtower that was behind it, and Elissa wondered where the creature had come from. It was more than seventy feet long, measuring from nose to tail, and it glittered with bright blue scales, its eyes glowing an unearthly blue, and fangs filling its mouth. The dragon inhaled, and that gave Elissa just enough warning to shake off her shock. Her hand darted into a pouch, pulling out a tiny crystal orb, which she threw to the ground hard.

  The dragon exhaled suddenly, and a torrent of water like a geyser erupted from its mouth, gushing toward her and Nadis unerringly. The instant before the wave struck them, the crystal orb shattered on the ground and a crystalline barrier snapped to life, forming a magical dome twenty feet across and which covered the majority of her guards.

  Water hit the barrier with enough force that the shield trembled, cracking in a few places, but it sprayed off the barrier harmlessly, to Elissa’s relief. After a few seconds the torrent ended, and just in time, as the barrier began to shimmer, then faded. A tiny part of her thanked Tyria that she hadn’t ever sold off all her adventuring gear, as otherwise she might have died from the sudden attack.

  “How unfortunate; I’d hoped to deal with the pair of you painlessly,” the dragon said, her voice distinctly female and cold, then she clicked her tongue in an almost motherly tone, a change which sent a shudder down Elissa’s spine. “I suppose I’ll just have to make it painful, and—”

  Eight spears made of ice slammed into the side of the dragon’s head at that moment, cutting her off, then a pair of steel bolts hammered into its chest, cracking a couple of scales. Elissa’s breath rushed out, a bit shocked as she realized that Desa had turned on the dragon, and didn’t waste her breath speaking, just launching into casting a spell.

  “Right. I know a couple of shields, I’ll use them,” Nadis muttered, her voice shaking a little, but the archpriestess started casting her own spell.

  “Keep the soldiers off us! We’ll try to stop the dragon,” Elissa ordered her guards, her heart pounding almost like a drum.

  “Yes, Lady Elissa!” one of them said, his eyes wide, but he turned toward the main fight.

  The battle was fully joined, and Elissa barely glanced at it, surprised at how the battle was going so far. The Enforcers were tangled with Desa’s guards, and while each of them were obviously using magic to enhance their speed and power, the elves almost matched the Enforcers individually, and had split into pairs to deal with them, while the others were helping the golems and soldiers stem the tide of attackers. Not that they’d be able to hold off all of them, Elissa knew. There were just too many attackers, and only the relatively narrow gates kept them from being able to swarm the defenders under.

  As she wondered where their additional reinforcements were, the dragon growled, then spoke angrily. “Naughty children, attacking me. Obviously you need to be punished.”

  The dragon swooped down at them, coming in for a landing, and Elissa gritted her teeth, rushing to the side as she ran through her arsenal of spells mentall
y, cursing as she did so. Dragons were virtually immune to most mental magic, which was not good for Elissa.

  “I suppose I’ll have to go with basic spells,” Elissa muttered, and she began chanting the words to cast a fire bolt.

  Alissa swore as a fleeing civilian ran through the line of fire, obviously not realizing what he was doing. Unfortunately, that gave plenty of time for the horrible creature to grab and swallow another woman. The sight made her stomach clench, but there wasn’t anything she could do to stop it, and she’d already lost a soldier who’d been a bit too brave. Without his head, Chen wasn’t going to be getting healed.

  The market was on fire, and the sheer amount of destruction shocked Alissa, as she wouldn’t have expected this much damage quite so quickly, not even if the monster seemed to decay anything that came near it. The problem was that she only had three more shots, and she didn’t want to waste them.

  So she prayed for people to clear the line of fire, holding her breath as she drew the arrow back fully.

  Then Alissa loosed the arrow, launching the incredibly powerful missile across the market.

  Chapter 39

  “Sistina, what’s wrong?” Diamond demanded, her voice impatient enough it actually registered for Sistina, and she paused, then inhabited her body quickly.

  “Ley line disrupted, like I was. Preventing reinforcements,” Sistina explained precisely, pausing as she considered, then added, “Preparing spell to… fix. Ambush must have happened.”

  “Oh, gods!” Phynis said, her eyes widening. “Do what you need to do! Are the golems going to be enough?”

  “Don’t know,” Sistina replied, turning back to the circle, and transferring her awareness back to her domain. She could still hear the others, but trying to split her awareness was hard, even now.

  “We’ll go,” Diamond said, and that almost made Sistina make a mistake with the spell she was hastily crafting.

  “What?” Phynis demanded, obviously shocked. “But—”

  “We’ve been going through lessons with Kassandra for a reason, Phynis. If the city’s in danger, and the people there deliberately stopped reinforcements… we’re the most powerful magi who can help them,” Diamond said, her tone determined, and through her domain Sistina could see the determination and worry on the faces of the others, as well as Phynis’s fear.

  “Sistina can’t go, and it’s daylight so Kassandra isn’t able to help,” Sapphire added calmly, her voice controlled as she spoke about the vampire. “We’ll take as many golems with us as we can, too.”

  “I… well, be safe, then. Assuming Sistina’s plan works,” Phynis said, taking a couple of quick steps forward and hugging Diamond. Sistina wished she could do the same, but she didn’t have time, and couldn’t risk taking too much of it.

  Instead she finished her preparations and returned to the body just long enough to warn them. “About to find out.”

  Before they could say anything, she channeled mana into her spell recklessly, hoping she hadn’t made any mistakes, and the magical diagram surged to life, carved into the stone around where the metaphysical ley line passed through her mountain. The mana surged, and reality warped inside the circle as her spell began manipulating the magical conduit. Sistina’s breath would have caught in her breath if she’d been in her body, but the circle held… even if the stone around it cracked, and she had to hastily reinforce it against the raw mana bleeding off.

  A precisely targeted pulse of mana suddenly rushed down the ley line, forcing the mana flow back into alignment, but that was merely a secondary effect of the spell. The question, in Sistina’s mind, was how the pulse would affect the device destabilizing the ley line.

  Sistina rather hoped that it would explode in the user’s face.

  In the tower Lisa had left not long before, the ley line destabilizer was whirring softly, using its mana to prevent anyone from using the ley lines to reinforce Westgate. Next to it was the neatly folded clothing that the dragon had abandoned before returning to her natural form, along with the bodies of the two guards she’d killed.

  Then the pulse hit the device, and there was a grinding sound from it as a high-pitched whine filled the air. The spells carved into it had been designed to deal with some magical feedback, but this was far beyond what they’d been designed for, and the pulse had been very carefully designed.

  The whine reached a crescendo, and then the spell overwhelmed the device. All at once, the pulse turned every bit of mana stored in the destabilizer into fire magic, and it exploded violently.

  Desa swore as the dragon’s tail hit her ice shield, shattering the barrier almost effortlessly, and her curse cut off abruptly as the tail hit her in the side, sending her flying a dozen feet to the right. If it hadn’t been for the enchanted armor and the months living inside Sistina’s domain, Desa would likely have broken ribs or might even be dead. She certainly wouldn’t be conscious.

  Even so, she was definitely bruised, and casting a spell wasn’t happening for the moment, which was bad with the dragon bearing down on her, its eyes glowing brightly.

  That was when the guard tower behind the dragon suddenly exploded, the walls erupting off it in every direction, while the roof launched upward spinning, then fell toward the ground with a tremendous crash.

  “What the…?” the dragon asked, pausing in mid-lunge as she swiveled her head to look at the wreckage, and despite her own shock, Desa took advantage of the opening to dive to the side and hide behind one of the halberd-wielding golems.

  She did wonder where the other reinforcements were, but Desa had to assume that the attackers had done something to keep Sistina from sending more golems, and the ones she had weren’t in the best of shape. Whispering the words of a spell, Desa sighed with relief as a hint of healing magic flowed through her ribs, thankful that she’d spent some time mastering the basics of healing magic through the summer. The academy was an amazing thing.

  “No more toying with you; time to die,” the dragon said abruptly, spinning around as her claws extended, flashing with glittering blue light.

  Desa ducked, but then she realized that the dragon wasn’t aiming for her at all, and she yelped. “Elissa!”

  The dragon’s claws lashed out at the priestess and Nadis behind her, both of whom didn’t even look like they were trying to dodge, and Desa’s heart almost stopped as Elissa was struck. Her fear turned to surprise as the claws went clean through the woman, leaving trails of white light shimmering in their wake before Elissa shimmered, then popped like a soap bubble.

  “You’re going to have to do better than that,” Elissa said, suddenly appearing only a few feet from Desa, smiling as she did so, and she glanced back before she murmured, “Though if we don’t get help soon…”

  “Sneaky little thing, aren’t you?” the dragon snarled, spinning back toward them, a claw hammering into a golem and sending it flying, the construct’s halberd bending, and deep gashes cut into its armor. While it wasn’t destroyed, the construct shook the ground when it landed, and wasn’t getting up quickly.

  The dragon inhaled sharply, and Desa paled, quickly whispering the words of a spell, creating an icy shield shaped like a cone to stop the blast of water she knew was coming, hoping that she’d deflect most of it from hitting them, or the soldiers behind them. Their people had taken several losses already, and the attackers were starting to overwhelm them. That’s when a barely audible chant grew louder, and Nadis’s voice made itself heard.

  “Goddess, may the sun illuminate our enemies and render them powerless!” Nadis cried out, and a shining burst of light erupted from the entrance to the stables, showing that the archpriestess had also been concealed by an illusion, and an orb of glowing golden fire was in her hands.

  The orb shot outward from her hands, splitting rapidly into hundreds of tiny orbs, which in turn transformed into the links of glowing golden chains. A loop wrapped itself around the dragon’s mouth and tightened, quite abruptly muzzling the monster, while the othe
rs quickly took hold of the dragon’s limbs and planted themselves in the ground, drawing taut to immobilize the dragon.

  “Well done!” Desa’s exclaimed, relief rushing through her, and she continued. “Now let’s deal with—”

  “No!” Nadis quickly interrupted, her voice slightly panicked. “The spell will break if you attack her, and it’ll only last a minute or two at most! We have to help the others.”

  Almost as if on cue, an arrow slammed into Desa’s shoulder from behind, only to be deflected by her armor. Desa cursed and spun around, paling a little.

  The two golems with halberds which had been supporting the soldiers were both battered and scarred, while almost half their soldiers were either down or had fallen back with injuries. Only one enemy Enforcer was still up, but the man was fighting like a savage beast, driving back all three of her soldiers attacking him.

  Desa barely spared the dragon a glance, then growled as Nadis rushed forward, casting a spell as she moved toward the injured. She was frustrated to leave the dragon be but left it alone as the creature fought its creaking chains, instead turning to try to support the other soldiers.

  Of course, that was the moment when one of the enemy magi threw a fireball at her.

  The explosion launched the monster backward, and Alissa hissed in triumph, then ordered, “Hit it while it’s down!”

  “Yes, sir!” the nearest magi exclaimed and immediately began casting her spell, while the other magi in the squad followed her example.

  They weren’t the only ones, either, as a few of the city’s regular guard were alongside them, though they were fumbling with their crossbows while Alissa’s other soldiers began pelting the monster with arrows.

  The monster was trying to struggle out of the wreckage of a wagon, with a signpost snapped off in one claw, while its exoskeleton was cracked and had holes in it, much like the other one had after her first shot, though this time she hadn’t managed to hit it head-on. Alissa paused as she touched the next arrow in her quiver, unsure of what she should do. If her soldiers could finish it off without the arrow that would be ideal, since there was at least one more of the monsters at the temple, and—