A small flame ignited within her. It was barely an ember, but it lived and burned, nonetheless. She gritted her teeth as she listed to Remmy’s prayer.
If you are going to have the courage to offer us one last prayer, Remmy, then I swear it shall not be in vain.
She moved her hands down to her sides and pressed hard against the ground, but her body would not budge.
“Lend us strength we know not…”
Slowly, steadily, Rialta began to creep upright.
“We look to you for power and hope when all seems lost…” Remmy’s voice was becoming stronger and clearer while he watched Rialta struggle to get up.
Rialta managed to get a foot on the ground below her. It took everything in her to keep from crying out in pain as she fought against the spell.
“We didn’t do anything wrong. We were just some kids looking to make some money, and then all this bullshit happened to us,” Remmy continued through clenched teeth, righteous anger lacing his voice.
Rialta stood up, breaking free from H’s spell entirely.
“So for the love of all that is holy, could you please, please cut us some slack? Could you please lend us the strength to get through this one last ordeal so that we can see our way home? Please!”
Despite the pains and aches in every corner of her body, Rialta began to weave her wand though the air again and again.
“Fyorferstruit!” Wild arcs of red, blue, and purple fire erupted into being, twisting and turning around Rialta, then hurtling forward toward H.
H turned around just in time to see the volley of fire rushing toward him. He put up both hands and muttered a spell which sent all of Rialta’s fire ricocheting off into the sky. Rialta was pleased to see that although he was unharmed, H’s shield spell had apparently cost him something. The old man stumbled forward and fell to one knee.
The magic holding Remmy and John in place was immediately dispelled. They both stood up at Rialta’s sides. “You can do it, Rialta!” Remmy said, and he grabbed her hand. A bright green aura illuminated around her.
“You two keep him distracted,” John said. “I have an idea.”
“Right!” Rialta shouted. Eager to press their advantage, she charged forward with Remmy, willing a continuous stream of fire to pour from her wand as she charged toward H. For his part, H got to his feet and leapt backward. With a great grunt, he threw his arms forward, and an invisible force lifted Remmy off his feet and heaved him backward through the air.
“Remmy!” Rialta shouted as she looked over her shoulder. But this was a mistake. The same invisible power that had just thrown Remmy backward hoisted her into the air as well. She flew high into the air before landing on the ground with a crash, the force nearly causing her to drop her wand. Despite every base instinct within her telling her to stop—telling her that she had no more left to give to this fight—she willed herself to stand back up. She staggered forward, running toward H. She continued to conjure as much fire as she could manage while she charged toward him, screaming in rage and pain.
Despite his immense power, H was clearly limited by his advanced age. Although he managed to block or parry every one of her spells, he began to pant with the effort of keeping up with her onslaught. But just before Rialta could close in on him, she collapsed onto the ground; her body could not take any more strain.
Rialta closed her eyes tight, anticipating a finishing blow from H to strike her at any moment. But it did not come.
“Rialta?” Remmy called from somewhere behind her. She managed to get up on her trembling arms to get a look back at him. He was lying on the ground at the crest of a little hill some fifty feet behind her.
“Listen to me, Rialta,” H said between labored breaths. Rialta turned to face him, and she felt her heart sink. His eyes were wild, and his face was contorted with a mixture of ferocity and fear. He looked like a starved, wild animal who had been backed into a corner. He was using his magic to levitate a long, sharp knife, which he pointed straight at her heart. “I don’t want to do this. I truly do not want to do this. But if you continue to attack me, I will kill you right now. Cease this fighting. Let me do my work in peace, and I will let you go, consequences be damned.”
Rialta’s eyes widened, and her pulse quickened. “You’ll have to kill me then,” she hissed through her teeth, pointing her wand at him.
H grunted. “If that’s not motivation enough, how about this?” he asked, taking aim at Remmy instead.
“Wait—” Rialta said, but she was too late. With one sweeping gesture of H’s hand, the knife shot through the air.
“Remmy!” Rialta screamed. She watched in abject horror as the knife hurtled toward Remmy’s supine form in the distance. He was about to die, and there was nothing she could do about it. Her vision seemed to pop and fade to white, as though her consciousness was rebelling against what she was watching, refusing to accept reality itself. It was going to be like Nivin all over again. And she would have to watch it happen.
But just then, something glimmering and glittering leapt from the lapel of Remmy’s cloak and soared into the air. The sudden clang of metal striking metal rang out in the air, and the knife fell harmlessly to the ground. Rialta watched as the shining object fell from the sky, landing only a few feet away from her. It was the little sun pendant Remmy had bought from the shady merchant all those weeks ago.
“Oh thank the gods,” Rialta said with relief. “So it was enchanted after all.”
H let out a crazed, mirthless laugh, his eyes bulging with rage and disbelief. “I suppose that’s Remmy in a nutshell, eh Rialta? Cheap, weak imitations of true magic masquerading as the real thing,” he snarled and pulled another knife from his belt.
“Fuck you!” Rialta shouted. Rage—nothing more than her sheer rage—allowed her enough strength to stand up, every inch of her body aching in agony as she did so. “Halt,” she said pointing to H’s knife. The knife feebly popped out of his hands and landed a few feet away.
H likewise got to his feet and began to hobble over to the knife.
“Rialta!” John shouted. Rialta turned to find John running toward her from the shore. “Come here!”
Rialta didn’t need any further instruction. She ran toward him, and John caught her up around the waist the moment they met. He turned on his heel and hurled her up and away, toward the top of the hill where Remmy had fallen. As she soared through the air, Remmy leapt from the hillside, reaching a hand out toward Rialta. They grasped each other’s hands in mid-air, and Rialta felt a surge of power rush through her veins.
There was no incantation. She didn’t need to speak to produce the effect that she and Remmy intended in their hearts. The ruby in her wand grew bright with a brilliant light that threatened to blind her and Remmy both, and an enormous charge of white flames and scarlet embers rocketed from her wand and poured down over H, who screamed in rage as he struggled to shield himself from the onslaught.
The spell was over as quickly as it started. Rialta had pushed herself to the limit for the final time. She held Remmy’s hand and they both careened toward the beach. She was too tired to even brace for impact.
“Gotchya!” John shouted as he caught Remmy and Rialta just before they struck the ground. “Are you guys able to run?”
“No,” Rialta whimpered.
“No worries, you’ve done more than your share already,” John said, flinging Rialta over his shoulder. “How about you, big guy?” he asked Remmy.
Remmy slowly lolled his head to the side to look at John. “Who used all my salad dressing? It was you, wasn’t it? You sonavabitch… I’ll kill you…”
“Right,” John said, heaving Remmy over his other shoulder. “You two hold on tight,” he said, and he ran toward the shore.
Rialta forced herself to cling to consciousness. She looked toward the shore to find that every last one of the locks securing the ship to the dock had been picked and tossed aside.
“Fool!” H screamed, and John’s steps became s
lower, more labored. He grunted with the effort of moving forward against H’s binding spell.
“You don’t have the scroll! It won’t create a rift without the scroll!”
“There’s something—you—don’t—know!” John shouted a word with each step he took toward the dock.
H laughed manically. “And what’s that, John?”
John stopped and turned to face H, who was himself barely standing with the effort of trying to hold John in place. John slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrew the glowing scroll. “I jacked your shit, bro.”
“Rauuuuuaaaaaaaagggghhhh!” H screamed, releasing his spell and running toward John, who in turn spun around and continued to run toward the ship.
“He’s coming for us,” Rialta managed to whisper to John as he ran toward the ship.
“I know, Rialta, I know!” John said. He picked up his pace, but his strides were still weighed down by his companions on his shoulders.
“It’s no good, John, he’s going to get us!” Rialta said. “I just—I can’t cast any—any more… any more…”
“That’s okay, Rialta,” John said as he continued to run. “I have one more trick up my sleeve, but I need you to do something for me.”
“What?” Rialta asked.
“Wish me luck.”
“Fine,” Rialta said incredulously, her feeble response somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “Good luck, John.”
“Thanks,” John said. He reached over his back and removed the half-time-all-the-time spear, which he immediately hurled out to the side.
Time seemed to stand still as the spear hung in the air. Rialta watched as the spear drifted lazily off to the left, ready to fall onto the beach. And then it took a sharp turn behind them, flying directly for H.
Rialta could not see what happened from her position, but H’s sudden shriek of anger came from behind her. John took three huge, bounding steps across the dock and leapt into the boat, then ran to the upper deck and slammed the throttle forward.
“How’s that for a physical attack, bitch?” John shouted down to the beach.
The engines below the deck roared, and the ship lurched away from the dock. John crouched low to the floor, where he gently set Rialta and Remmy by his side.
The sound of an explosion rang out from below, and the ship began to increase in speed.
“Are we going to make it?” Rialta asked.
“I think we just did,” John said, a huge smile spreading across his face. “Look.”
John pointed up to the heavens. The sky flickered back and forth between a dull, dark green and a bright blue, both colors seeming to grow brighter and more vivid while the ship gained speed. The ship rocketed forward as the blue sky began to wash away the green one. With one last great flash of light, the world temporarily resolved into an infinite ocean. And then, the harbor of Laelynn Province came bursting forth into existence.
Chapter 30
She Rose the Morrow Morn
Rialta stood behind a barrier the construction crew had set up just outside her mother’s house. The roar of massive demolition vehicles echoed into the early morning sky and shook the ground. Bitterness swelled in her heart as she watched the crew prepare excavators and bulldozers. She paused and began to turn away, but she stopped. She drew a deep breath, sighed, then turned back and squared her shoulders directly toward the house. No sooner had she done so than a massive excavator claw dug into the rotting wood siding on the north side of the house. The wall came crashing down as easily as a stack of wooden blocks knocked over by a toddler.
Only a week had passed since Rialta, Remmy, and John had returned to Ro, but to Rialta it had felt like an eternity. She hadn’t seen Remmy or John since their return. This was not due to any lack of want or effort on her part, but a three-day stay in the hospital followed by several days of getting her personal affairs in order had taken its toll on her free time. She had only just managed to stave off eviction, given that her rent was nearly two months overdue—a conflict that had grown even more tense when Rialta accidentally attempted to pay her landlord in amyth and beryth. She had since managed to smooth the whole thing over, but not without expending a very large chunk of her savings.
When she had first returned to her apartment from the hospital, it was with a sense of sadness she couldn’t quite place. It had felt supremely surreal, as if she were looking in on a memory from a lifetime ago. Everything was just as she had left it, only now covered with a thin layer of dust. Rialta felt an inexplicable lump in her throat while she packed away her bag from Tyntala in the closet. She neatly folded the Cloak of Nightshade, lamenting that she had never seen its enchantment in action as she put it in her wardrobe. When everything was put away, she sat idly on the corner of her bed. When her gaze drifted upon the photo of her mother, Rialta gasped.
The house.
Rialta immediately ran downtown and checked in with Gregory Campbell, the vice president of the bank that owned her mother’s house. But just as she anticipated, it was much too late. The banker could only offer Rialta his condolences for losing the house. A developer had long since bought the rights to the property and planned to tear it down to make way for a small cluster of apartments. Upon hearing the news, Rialta had sprinted all the way across the city, hoping to catch one final glimpse of the house before it was destroyed. But she’d been too late. As she’d come to a halt on the edge of the property, it was to find the old cottage besieged by gigantic demolition machines. And there she stood, watching as a crew of construction workers tore her childhood to pieces.
“Rialta?”
Rialta jumped, then turned around to find Remmy, who was staring at the demolition crew with a frown on his face.
Rialta wiped her sleeve across her eyes. “Hey Rem,” she said with a sad smile. “It’s really good to see you. I was worried I might have a hard time tracking you guys down after they split us up at the hospital.”
“It’s good to see you too!” Remmy said. “But I’m really sorry about this,” he said, nodding toward the house. It was nearly half gone already.
“It’s all right,” Rialta said, her voice cracking.
“It’s—it’s not though. I mean, this is kind of all my fault,” Remmy said.
Rialta laughed. A genuine smile broke across her face. “No it’s not,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, if you hadn’t come along with John and me, maybe you would have been able to save the house,” Remmy said.
Rialta smiled and shook her head. “Going off with you and John was something of a wild, desperate, last-ditch measure. I never really expected to save the house.”
Remmy smirked and raised an eyebrow. “You don’t say?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Rialta said.
“Yeah you did,” Remmy replied, but he was laughing. “Can’t say I blame you for thinking that. We really didn’t have any idea what we were doing.” His smile faded, and he stared into space. “Still don’t, really.”
Rialta turned to look back at the demolition crew. “Are you and John going to keep on adventuring and taking on quests after all that?” she asked.
“Well, yeah. I think so,” Remmy said, shoving his hands in his pockets as he continued to stare off into the distance. “We figure if we made it through everything that happened on Tyntala, we can handle just about anything, can’t we?”
“I guess you’re right,” Rialta said. The house was flattened now, and the crew carried on in their work without a second thought, using their machines to scrape the remaining bits of brick and wood into a heaping pile to be discarded.
Remmy reached out as if to offer her his hand, but he paused, snapping his hand back as if unsure of the gesture. Rialta noticed, however. She smiled and cocked her head to the side as if to say,
What was that about?
“I—uh. Hm,” Remmy muttered. He reached into his tome pack. Rialta watched curiously, wondering what kind of magic Remmy intended to
work at a time like this. Instead of withdrawing his tome, however, he took out a small, gift-wrapped package and handed it to her. She took it.
“John thought this was a really stupid idea,” Remmy said quickly, “but I just happened to see it in a second-hand shop when we were at the bazaar this morning, and it definitely caught my eye—you know, after everything we went through—and if you really hate it I can just get rid of it for you, and I don’t mean to be insensitive or anything, I just thought, when I saw it—”
Remmy cut himself off when he noticed that Rialta had already opened the package. Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked down at the cover of Ten Little Cuddle Bugs.
“Oh no, Rialta, I didn’t want to make you cry. I knew this was a bad idea—”
Without a word, she stepped forward and pulled Remmy into a fierce hug.
“Okay! Okay! You’re seriously going to break my ribs!” Remmy managed to say through a fit of coughs.
“Sorry,” Rialta said, letting him go.
Remmy didn’t meet her gaze, but he was smiling broadly. “Glad you like it,” he said.
Rialta nodded. “I really do,” she said as she turned to watch a heap of rubble being scooped up and dropped into a gigantic dumpster.
“So,” Remmy began, his eyes darting from left to right at nothing in particular, “do you think you’ll just, ya know, go back to work? Like in a restaurant or something? Like none of this ever happened?”
Rialta felt her heart leap, but she did not show it. “I suppose so,” she muttered. Immediately, her thoughts turned to Mr. Calari, and getting up early in the morning, and running to work, and the monotony of it all; she thought of her life as it had existed before her adventure with Remmy and John. In reality, it had only been about seven weeks ago, but it felt like she had lived a lifetime in the interim. In one fleeting moment, everything that had happened on Tyntala seemed to flash before her eyes. And despite all the suffering, all the heartache, and all the pain, somehow, it all felt worthwhile—like it was a chapter of her life that couldn’t be replaced by anything but a new story—a new adventure.
A Quest for Chumps (Departed Dimensions Book 1) Page 28
