Battle With Fire

by Breene, K. F.

  “That went downhill fast,” Charity murmured.

  The Red Prophet started in on a spirited rendition of the next part of the song, but Charity focused on the battle drums in her mind, beating in time to her heart. The world went still and all sounds ceased for her but for that drum. But for the inner song of battle flowing on the breeze.

  “One minute, counting down,” Karen said over the Red Prophet’s singing.

  The Red Prophet cut herself off abruptly, then said, “It will be she that saves the day. Not with the sword. But with the soul.”

  “I didn’t See that,” Karen replied. “I don’t even know who you are talking about.”

  “You don’t See all, and soon that will be very apparent to all who matter,” the Red Prophet replied.

  “Keep it up and you won’t See anything. You’ll be too busy falling from someplace high. You might heal fast, but when all your insides are on the outside, I doubt you’ll heal fast enough.”

  “Threats. What fun.”

  “Thirty seconds,” Karen shouted, her frustration and anger at the Red Prophet drowning out her worry for her daughter. She might not know it, but the Red Prophet’s antics were actually helping her push through the fear for her child.

  “Go!”

  Charity took off running, shoving through the portal at the same time as Roger and Romulus. Magic sucked at her energy and ran its claws across her middle, but she ignored it out of practice. A swell of enemy appeared before her amid the puffy green trees and colorfully speckled flowers on the sides of a limestone path. At least four dozen elves waited there, their power thrumming around them, and a troop of centaurs waited to the side, swords in hands and hooves stamping. Looked like Vlad hadn’t grabbed them all. Some were still loyal to the crown.

  Two large forms flew through the air, great wings beating at the sky. Sun shone off their glittering scales, and smoke curled from their great maws, curling upward. Dragons. Holy shit, they were fantastic. Charity was suddenly incredibly envious of the people sitting on their backs, leaning over to look at what was unfolding down below.

  Charity rushed forward as their people gushed through the portal behind them, traveling in twos and threes. She pulled her sword to the side, ready to swing at the back of the first elf, when the blue dragon roared. The sound vibrated off her body before digging inside, freezing up her muscles and clamping her jaw shut. The white dragon swooped down, belching fire at the gathering enemy. It seared across the lines, blistering skin and forcing out high-pitched wails of agony.

  The roar stopped, and Charity unstuck her feet from the ground, shaking and suddenly winded. Crap, that was intense. She’d had no idea they could do that.

  “Marshal your will to overcome the dragon’s magic,” Romulus yelled through the din. “Except the fire—will alone won’t keep you from burning to death.”

  The elves at the front threw up their hands, and the dragons’ great wings stilled for a moment before tilting away from the onslaught of magic, each turning in a different direction.

  “They’ve assembled a lot of power here,” Halvor yelled from behind as more of their people pushed through the portal. “They must’ve known the heir and the dragons were coming. We have to take out these elves.”

  Fire erupted from the pale orange sky, and only then did Charity see the third dragon, smaller than the others and pink, with a musclebound man on its back. The fire cut through the line of elves, sending them running. This dragon’s fire wasn’t as powerful, however, and only a few perished in the blast. The rest scattered, spreading out, giving the dragons less of a tightly focused target. It did the trick against the elves’ attack, though, cutting it off so the larger dragons could regain their composure and lift higher into the sky.

  A lion’s roar reverberated through Charity, signaling that Steve was on the scene and ready to go. She grinned maniacally, cutting into the back of one elf before kicking the chest of another so she could land a kill strike on a third.

  Another dragon roar loosened Charity’s bowels, and she clenched and balled up a little, worried she’d crap herself right here on the battlefield. What her dad had said echoed through her mind—marshal your will. She fought the effect of the roar as a dagger enlarged in her field of vision.

  She dodged the strike and swiped with her sword before rolling across the ground and popping back up. The dagger now lay on the ground with the elf’s arm. Roger snarled before lunging, tearing out its throat.

  Another group of elves to her right were poised to throw more spells at the dragons. These ones conveyed a confidence that suggested they actually had some experience. Maybe they were old enough to have fought in the last battle with Lucifer. They’d be trouble for him in the coming conflict.

  She ran that way as the figures on the dragons above jumped, falling through the air.

  Charity knew one moment of blind terror, worrying that the elves had thrown the riders to their deaths, and then the figures dramatically slowed within ten feet of the ground. Reagan had them.

  A sword sliced through the air, and Charity barely spun in time. The blade cut through her skin, pain welling up and sending tingles down to her fingers. Fucking ouch.

  Devon flew through the air, his paws hitting the elf in the chest and his teeth clamping over its face. He ripped his strong neck from side to side as he took the elf down, wrenching the head loose. That ended that problem.

  Charity threw up her hand and called down lightning as more elves turned toward them, finally registering that the attack wasn’t just from the front and now splitting their forces.

  Good. That had been the plan.

  Reagan and team pushed forward from the front, clearly targeting the strongest elves in order to protect the dragons. Bodies started flying upward, thrown by an unseen hand. The blue dragon dipped down and snatched one out of the sky with its big teeth, chomping and ending the screams. Another dropped down beyond the crowd. The blue dragon let out another roar, slowing the roiling mass of bodies, then rained down fire.

  Charity hacked through two elves, paused for Devon to take down a third, and caught sight of the druid coming toward them, aiming for the same force of elves they were battling. Sword moving so fast it was a blur, he walked forward as though marching through the jungle, determined though graceful, hacking through elves as if they were nothing more than vines. Her small hairs stood on end at the display, his cool efficiency with killing something she’d never seen before, not even with Halvor.

  Another stream of fire rained down from the sky, rolling over Penny and Emery as they shot magic at their foe. It enveloped them but didn’t hinder their progress. They were obviously protected by Reagan. The elves around them, however, were burned to a crisp.

  Reagan ran through the middle of a cluster to Charity’s right, throwing invisible knives and stabbing with an invisible sword. Hellfire bloomed from her hand, punching through an elf in front of her. An elf to the side of her froze and then squirmed before its body flattened in a spurt of entrails. Gross.

  A centaur barreled through three fae, their swords slicing down its side but not stopping it. It thundered toward Reagan, his horse shoulder at head height and his long sword held at the ready. Charity sent a ball of lightning zipping across the melee. It smashed into his bare chest, and lightning erupted all over his body before the magic turned to fire. He screamed and stopped, beating at himself and dropping his sword.

  With a sweep of Reagan’s hand, his head was lopped off and fell to the ground. She glanced Charity’s way and bent her head, a small bow in thanks.

  Another roar that threatened to loosen Charity’s bowels distracted her attention before she renewed her determination, running at a group of elves pushing toward Emery and Penny.

  Charity sliced through one’s back, pulled her sword back, and stabbed through another’s chest. She pulled down the lightning, stabbing them in the heads with electricity as the natural dual-mages shot spells at the centaurs.

  A huge roar e
choed through the landscape, larger than any dragon, vibrating in her ears and turning her blood to ice.

  She snapped her head right to see a huge T. rex stomp down, its big foot passing through the middle of a centaur. A magical distraction, then. Callie and Dizzy had stepped up their game with its size and sound.

  Steve the lion pushed up to her side and lunged, smashing into an elf that had been intent on sending Charity into the afterlife. It screamed, showing its teeth, before the lion smashed into it. Devon was there a moment later, taking out another elf that had been running for help.

  Charity needed to pull herself together. She’d thought she was ready for battle. She’d thought she was experienced enough to be an incredible asset. She had to stop getting frozen up by dragons and distracted by large-scale magic!

  Another plume of fire rained down on the right, followed by a burst on the ground, Reagan working seamlessly with her dragon. Cahal strutted toward two centaurs, swinging his sword over his head and slamming it into the holster strapped to his back. He shrugged out a bow from who knew where, followed by an arrow from the sheath next to his sword, and then nocked and shot in one incredibly fast, smooth motion.

  One centaur reared up in shock and got an arrow in his underside. Another arrow, nocked and shot inhumanly fast, blossomed in the neck of the second.

  Charity sprinted and ducked, running under a third centaur while stabbing upward. Hot liquid spilled down on top of her, and she dove and rolled as the creature screamed and stomped her hooves. She’d rather not be trampled by a horse-woman, thanks.

  Back up in a flash, she sliced off a foot and dodged a kick, seeing Devon in trouble with another centaur. The bastards were big, and given that Cahal still hadn’t taken his two down despite peppering them with arrows, they were obviously tough to kill. She dodged another flailing kick, pushed in, and stabbed again, tearing the underside out. That had to do it.

  Devon yelped as a hoof took him in the hindquarters, and molten fear cut through her. Dodging an elf, ducking around Cahal, she dropped her sword and slammed her hands together. Hellfire shot out, blistering in its intensity, and struck Devon’s attacker on the right shoulder. She ripped it down and across, cutting the thing in half.

  Cole the yeti roared, lumbering over to protect his alpha, but it was done. The top half of the bare-chested woman slid off the bottom, ruining a pair of very nice breasts. Sorry, lady. You chose the wrong side.

  Charity picked up her sword, and Steve joined the yeti, targeting the final centaur on this side of the battle. They didn’t need her help, so she looked for the next elf to strike.

  Bodies littered the ground. Her dad stood among them across the way, Halvor at his back, bloody and disheveled. Roger was up near the natural dual-mages, his sides heaving as he caught his breath, and Emery and Penny seemed to be doing what she was: looking for another fight. Reagan and the monster version of Darius stood in the middle of a group of downed centaurs, both smeared with blood. The two of them were a helluva force to be reckoned with.

  Silence descended on the battlefield as the dragons flew overhead.

  They’d won their victory, but it was only the first in what would surely be a long, grueling fight.

  Eleven

  “I swear, I cannot take one more second with that woman,” Karen said, sitting across from Penny at the long table in the mess hall at the shifter compound.

  I sat on the other side of Emery from Penny, leaving enough of a gap that it looked like I was giving him space, when really I was politely getting as far away from Karen as I could. She was in a mood, and if she talked to me, I would be in a mood. That grudge I felt was still going strong.

  Cahal sat across from me, leaving a sizeable gap between himself and Ms. Bristol. He didn’t care about being polite.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, looking at his plate filled with vegetables. “I don’t get it. You don’t eat meat anymore? A guy your size?”

  “She is intentionally trying to jam up the works,” Karen continued. “I just know it.”

  “Centaurs are vegetarian,” Cahal replied.

  I held out my fork and lifted my eyebrows. “Yeah, and they suck. And the ones who attacked us are dead. Terrible point.”

  “They’re big, was my point,” he replied as Karen continued to unload on Penny. “Death weighs on me after a number of years. I cycle through various eating styles. Currently, I don’t wish to kill another living being if I don’t have to.”

  I leaned on an elbow as I surveyed him. “You’re kidding, right?”

  His eyes were flat as he popped a buttered carrot into his mouth.

  “You just cut down a whole bunch of living things.” I finished chewing and sawed off another portion of steak. “Eating horse is taboo, and eating man is taboo, but if they weren’t, you could’ve had your fill out there from your killings.” I paused. “Is eating elf taboo?”

  “Over the line,” Emery said, chuckling. “That’s just wrong. And probably not helping your argument.”

  “I don’t need help making my argument,” I replied. I poked at my steak, a little too rare for my taste, but I didn’t plan on mentioning it. If you complained about the food in the shifter commune, you had to get into the kitchen and help cook. Given Darius was busy checking out the vampire quarters and probably wouldn’t bail me out even if he wasn’t, I didn’t intend to raise a fuss. “This delicious steak is making my argument.”

  “It would be more prudent to eat centaur,” Cahal said, cutting his potato, skin and all. He didn’t scoop out the middle like normal people. “They are hard to kill. They are not raised to be food, like the useless animal you are eating.”

  “Well, that’s just offensive to cows.” I shook my head and sighed, tired but still going strong. The flight to the portal had thankfully been uneventful, and the help of the friendlies at the end a surprise bit of awesome. That might’ve been a tough battle, but it had ended up being manageable.

  A few things stuck out, though. “They were hard to kill, but they went down eventually. The elves nearly bringing down the dragons, though…”

  The guys fell silent in time for me to hear Karen rattling on. “I’m not sure I trust her, honestly. Sometimes the magic reveals a few paths to choose from, and she’ll just throw in another one willy-nilly. It’s almost like she just wants to throw everyone into danger so that the bad guys win. It’s madness. I’m starting to wonder if she is losing her faculties.”

  I shook my head and looked away, my guts churning. Then I put down my fork. I would give my house to not know what came next. I had this sinking feeling that it wouldn’t be great.

  Because in today’s battle, only the first few strikes had felt good, like I was seeking vengeance against the elves. When the dust, or in this case soot, settled, I hadn’t felt vindicated. I hadn’t felt better about what had happened to me. If anything, I hadn’t felt anything for myself at all. My only emotion was relief that my friends had made it through safely. The worst they’d been dealt was Dizzy’s pulled hamstring (the older dual-mages had stayed on the outskirts of the action, thankfully).

  Sadly, though, in this last skirmish, people had gotten hurt. No one I knew, but three fae and two shifters had gone down. It could have been much worse if we hadn’t outmatched and outnumbered the competition. In the final showdown, I doubted we’d outmatch either of the other forces. And if today was any indication, I wouldn’t be worried about vengeance; I’d be worried about protecting those I cared about.

  Emery’s words from the beginning of our journey came back to me. Why should we go into this with an agenda about preserving the elves’ rule? Why not just tear down everything and let them build it up?

  Sitting here, now, the answer was frustratingly simple: because you couldn’t leave an entire world unstable. The Mages’ Guild was basically a corporation of magical people. If it weren’t around, there would be instability, sure, but the mages would still exist within a greater framework of law and order. They would have
the shifters to keep them in place, and the Magical Law Enforcement, and the non-magical government. Those overarching systems would help avoid a complete clusterfuck. Plus, the corrupt leaders hadn’t been replaced with individuals from a different species, just a more solid organization of the same type of magical person.

  This was a different situation. The people battling the elves mostly didn’t live within the greater part of the Realm. They didn’t know the unique challenges and trials involved in leading such a place. They would have to learn it all from scratch.

  In the meantime, the world would plunge into lawlessness. Without direction, the fae wouldn’t know how to police. The Realm was also impossibly vast, and they couldn’t watch every nook and corner. In the shadows, the demons and vampires and whoever else crept into the open borders would take advantage of the lesser species that couldn’t defend themselves. The strong would take advantage of the weak.

  And sure, that was already happening, but at least right now the people of the Realm only had to worry about the elves. Take away their heavy-handed leadership, and you had a vacuum. So what was the answer?

  Balance.

  It was like the word had been whispered into my ear, and it kept pinging around my head.

  Balance.

  The worlds needed balance.

  I had to protect my friends and family, make sure the Underworld didn’t wipe out the elves, or vice versa, and force balance into the worlds.

  How the literal fuck was I supposed to do all of that, though? We were going to get crushed in the middle of those two forces.

  I held up my hand. “Karen, all due respect, but Penny isn’t going to help you pull your weight with the Red Prophet,” I said, cutting into her chatter and realizing Cahal’s eyes had been boring into me this whole time. He could look really creepy and stalkerish sometimes.