Summoner 7

by Eric Vall

  A portal suddenly bloomed behind Jace like a black eye, and she stepped backward into it as it began to seal shut.

  I lunged forward to try to grab her, but my fingers closed around thin air.

  The stranger was gone once again.

  At least I knew her name this time, and she seemed less hostile. Despite that, I had to admit Jace was still as ominous as she was at our first meeting. It brought up so many questions that didn’t have answers, and now I was even more concerned about how Phi had managed to open the permanent rift.

  I jogged back to my team as they walked over to meet me partway.

  “What the hell was that about?” Orenn asked as he gawked at the space where Jace had vanished.

  “I have no clue,” I answered honestly. “Apparently, when Phi opened the permanent rift, that woman felt it. Her name is Jace, I guess.”

  “And she wanted to, what, join the party?” Varleth joked.

  “I think she came to put a stop to it,” I said as I smiled at Varleth’s joke, “but she didn’t find anything, so she wanted to talk to us.”

  “Actually, she just wanted to talk to you,” Cyra corrected. “Plus, she knew your name.”

  “This is all super weird,” Layla insisted.

  “It really is,” Erin agreed with a frown. “Sleet said there were these vague, important conditions for Phi to be able to open up a permanent rift, but she did it in like a minute right after she entered your mind. Plus, she managed it despite simultaneously having to fight both you and Sera. Was the location the only important condition? It doesn’t add up.”

  “When Phi was in my head, she seemed adamant about drawing Gryff into the Shadowscape,” Gawain said with concern in his voice as he turned to me.

  “Like Gryff specifically?” Layla asked.

  “Yeah,” Gawain confirmed. “She never said why, so I don’t know why she wanted you.”

  “Maybe it was just for Sera,” I proposed. “Like, more than one Archon is necessary for the rift, but this was the only way to do it without Sera’s consent.”

  “Could be,” Layla considered as she squinted out across the desert. “Or maybe there aren’t any important conditions at all.”

  “Are you saying Arwyn and all those other geniuses were totally wrong?” Cyra asked with a careful look around at the whole team.

  We shifted uncomfortably.

  “I guess not,” I admitted as I looked over at Gawain’s bag, “but they were missing these two ciphers here. There could be more in them we don’t know yet.”

  “We should definitely get these back to the research team as fast as possible,” Erin suggested.

  “We should,” Varleth agreed as his mouth tightened in concern. “I think we should keep an eye on this, though. Between Jace, the permanent rift, and all this prophecy stuff we don’t know about, this mystery could get dangerous.”

  “I agree,” I admitted, and I pulled nervously at the straps of my travel pack. “We can’t let down our guard with Sera or anything else. I don’t think I’m going to get any answers today, though.”

  My team nodded in agreement.

  “Sounds fair,” Varleth agreed reluctantly.

  I smiled and jabbed a thumb back toward the airship in the distance. “Let’s return to the ship. I want to check on everybody’s injuries. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about all the hard blows some of us have taken today.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Gawain retorted as he limped toward the distant airship.

  I chuckled and shook my head. “Man, am I glad to have you back again.”

  “How long have I been gone?” the fire mage asked in a more serious voice as his eyes flickered over to me.

  “It depends how long we’ve been gone in that rift,” I said as I squinted around us. “I guess if no time has passed, it’s been about a couple weeks since you took the ciphers.

  It was afternoon, and the weather was cloudless and sunny, but I couldn’t tell from glancing around the desert whether we’d been gone a couple hours or multiple days. Ortych Sands was generally featureless and unchangeable, and as far as I could tell, the cacti looked the same as they had before.

  “I’m going to have a lot of apologizing to do,” Gawain murmured as he looked toward the airship.

  “You’ll be fine,” Layla comforted him. “One look at your face, and nobody will have the heart to blame you for what happened.”

  I stifled a laugh, but Cyra wasn’t so lucky, and she burst into snickers.

  “Thanks,” Gawain said dryly as he rolled his eyes.

  The fire mage still looked awful, and it was surreal to think that I’d just seen him dangerously close to death’s door. He’d pulled back from the brink with just a handful of potent herbs, and it was terrifying to think of what would’ve happened if Gracia and Ilda hadn’t run into us.

  Even though Gawain’s face was bruised and his shirt was bloody, I was incredibly glad he was healthy enough to sound like himself again.

  We were all sweating and breathing hard by the time we got back to the airship, since the heat from earlier had turned oppressive as the afternoon wore on.

  Well, whichever afternoon this was.

  We approached the airship, and I could see small piles of sand had collected over its metal feet. I wasn’t sure how to judge the passage of time from that, but I felt like it must’ve been at least a day since we had left.

  “All aboard,” Erin joked in a booming, overdone train conductor impression as she waved us toward the ship’s ladder.

  Orenn put on his metal form again in order to support Gawain on his way up the ladder. The fire mage’s right leg was injured in some way, but I hadn’t gotten a look at it to know exactly what was hurting him. He still held his ribs gingerly, and he winced often enough that I knew he was in a lot of pain. Gawain wasn’t the type to show pain easily, so I worried about him.

  “I want you to check him out before you go back to the pilot hold,” I told Erin after we all had climbed up into the cabin.

  “Happy to,” she agreed. “I don’t know much about injuries this severe, but I’d rather see it now than spend the whole flight wondering.”

  “We still have a couple weak healing potions,” Cyra added as she dug two small vials from her pocket. “Should we use them on him?”

  “Better not,” Erin advised. “I don’t know what Gryff’s herbs did to him, and mixing treatments might just make him feel worse.”

  The mimic lifted up Gawain’s shirt and examined the messy, raw scar that covered his stomach. It looked awful, but it was a far cry from the life-threatening wound from earlier.

  “Is it okay?” I asked.

  “Seems fine,” Erin guessed with a confused tilt of her head. “I’m not qualified for this, but I guess I’ll take a look at his leg, too.”

  I pulled out my father’s dagger and helped Erin to cut away Gawain’s right pant leg by slicing a seam up the side of it. His clothing was filthy and tattered anyway, so I didn’t think he would mind the loss.

  There was an ugly, enormous bruise the size of my face wrapped around the side of Gawain’s leg over the top of his knee.

  “Ouch,” Layla said after she whistled and looked over the wound. “What was that?”

  “I fell off a building,” Gawain said distantly. “I think I popped something out of place. I couldn’t walk at all before, so maybe the herbs fixed it.”

  “Remind me not to ask again,” Layla groaned with a shudder of horror.

  “I think he’s stable,” Erin said with a smile. “He should be fine without anything else for the rest of the flight.”

  “Wait,” Varleth said sharply. “Before we sit down and strap in, I need to say something. If Gawain is still in danger of being repossessed, and Phi is just playing another trick on us, how would we know?”

  An uncomfortable silence fell over our team as we glanced at each other.

  “She could be waiting for an opportunity like this,” Cyra admitted sl
owly. “She might take him over in his sleep. We should treat Gawain as a potential threat.”

  “I don’t blame you for wondering,” Gawain said softly. “I don’t know how to prove it either way, though.”

  So much drama, Sera drawled through my mind.

  It’s a serious concern, I thought back at her.

  I can tell if he’s possessed or not, if you want, she purred out alluringly. All I ask is for another kiss.

  My eyes widened in surprise. I had no idea she could do that kind of thing.

  Of course I can. The power of another Archon is unmistakable. How about a kiss tonight, in your dreams? You keep fighting me every night, but just give me this one small boon. I want to taste your lips again.

  I considered her offer. As much as my stubborn pride told me to say no, the truth was that our kiss had been insanely good. If I agreed, I would be more than happy to follow through on my promise when the dream actually arrived.

  So, that’s a yes? Sera asked in a pleased voice.

  I was definitely going to regret agreeing. This would just give her more leverage over me to convince me to do things her way, but I really wanted this information on Gawain.

  And I really wanted that kiss.

  Done, she said with a musical laugh. The boy has no trace of possession. Though, you didn’t really need me to tell you that. Just look at his shoulder, and the wing mark will be gone.

  “Sera says to look at his back,” I told my team.

  They stopped their conversation and looked up at me.

  “Oh, that’s what you’ve been doing,” Layla realized. “I thought you were daydreaming.”

  “He was licking his lips,” Cyra laughed.

  “Oh Maker,” I sighed as I ran my hands over my face.

  Gawain obediently turned around while I carefully sliced through the back of his shirt with my dagger.

  The fabric fell away and revealed smooth, unmarked skin, apart from some purple bruises across his ribs. There was no wing tattoo.

  We all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  “Seems like you’re free,” I told Gawain gratefully. “Phi has really moved on.”

  The fire mage laughed unsteadily. “Good. I’m looking forward to my first quiet night in forever.”

  I sure did miss those. At least I’d gotten a few peaceful nights next to Cyra or Layla, so I did know they weren’t impossible.

  “Alright,” I announced, “let’s get back to Varle. We had a nice, successful mission, and I’m sure Gawain’s ready to be back.”

  Everybody cheered up when they considered just how well we’d done this time. Despite the harrowing danger of Phi and her monsters, we had escaped with everybody’s life intact. Plus, with the final ciphers in hand, we were only a few steps away from having a complete translation.

  This might be the last mission we ever went on with so little information at our disposal. Maybe next time, we could charge into battle knowing exactly what was coming at us.

  Humanity’s fate was at stake, and I knew this wasn’t the end for us. We would show Phi and beat any Archon that dared to threaten our world.

  End of book 7

  End Notes

  Thank you for reading Summoner 7! If you enjoyed the book, please leave a review right here!

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Eric Vall