Awakening Camelot: A Wizard's Quest (Awakening Camelot Duology Book 1)

by Dan Wingreen

  He was so damned tired of being civilized sometimes.

  Before Noah could say anything, Lee lashed out with a blade of air. Noah blocked it, but Lee had been expecting that. As soon as the hunter was distracted with the spell, Lee reached out, slipped his hand under Noah's pant leg and grabbed his ankle. Of course, it was only because Noah was trained so well in combat magic that Lee could touch him at all; anyone else would have wasted magic raising a big enough shield to cover their whole body, instead of just enough to stop Lee’s attack. Lee took a moment to savor the poetic irony.

  Then, he helped himself to more magic.

  Noah let out a small shout and scrambled back. Lee surged up off the ground, following the startled hunter and hit him with an uppercut right under the jaw. Noah's teeth slammed together with an audible clack, and then he collapsed to the floor, stunned.

  "Guess you ain't never been hit before either?" Lee asked. His grin turned into a snarl. "Glad I could introduce you to new things."

  He jumped on top of the dazed hunter, straddled his chest, and started pounding away on his face.

  It felt good. Lee couldn't believe he'd forgotten how good this felt, actually feeling the damage he was causing, instead of just seeing it. Feeling Noah's nose break, hearing the bones in his cheek crack under his assault as he rained down blow after blow like he was wielding a hammer. The fact that the hunter deserved it only made it better. Lee couldn't summon up an ounce of pity anymore. He'd tortured Lee. Taunted him. Torn out his eyes and left him blind and in agony. He'd threatened Aidan.

  Lee wanted to feel him die.

  He wanted it so badly he forgot exactly how dangerous Noah was.

  The head butt came out of nowhere. One second, Lee was pounding away, intent on turning Noah's face into soup, and the next he was howling as Noah's forehead cracked against his face, his nose breaking in a spray of blood. Lee cried out, stopped hitting Noah, and then he was flying back as a hard gust of wind struck him in the chest.

  Lee landed hard but quickly scrambled to his feet and cast a healing spell on his nose. He let out a growl of rage as he saw that Noah had already healed himself, too.

  No!

  Noah should be dead! He should be lying in a puddle of blood like Lee had been, in pain, confused and struggling and dying! But he wasn't, and Lee was too lost in the haze of wanting to tear him apart, of needing to feel Noah’s vitality spilling over his hands like a waterfall, that he couldn't slow down, couldn't think.

  Noah narrowed his eyes, glaring at Lee with a hatred Lee was sure was mirrored on his own face as the hunter clenched his fists and held out his arms. Two double edged blades of magic, about two and a half feet long each, materialized from the top of Noah's wrists. He raised them slightly, then arched his brow in a silent challenge. It was a stupid, wasteful display that had no place magical combat.

  Lee summoned two identical blades of his own, and charged.

  They met in a furious clash of magical swords.

  Lee parried a thrust from Noah, the magical blades eerily silent as they struck each other, then blocked the follow-up slash from the other blade. He deflected a few more strikes, gauging Noah's pattern, then when Noah went for another thrust, he slipped by it and went for a stab of his own, right at Noah's throat.

  He wasn't all that surprised when it was blocked. Noah didn't seem like the kind of person to get into a sword fight if he didn't know how to use a sword, but as much as Lee wanted to see Noah’s flesh torn by his blades he couldn’t help grinning.

  This was fast and brutal. Two men, blade against blade, skill against skill, the will to survive meeting the need to kill in a perfect dance of death. This was combat at its most basic, its most primal.

  This was fun.

  They fought, thrusting and slashing and parrying, neither one striking the other, but even so, damage was still being done.

  Magical swords functioned a lot like magical shields. Each hit ran down the blade, and it didn't take long to get to the point where the person using the sword needed to keep pumping magic into it to keep the blade from collapsing in the middle of the fight. The more furious the fight, the faster it got to that point. And they were fighting furiously.

  Lee had gotten into the fight of attrition he'd been trying to avoid all along. His magic against Noah's: brute endurance instead of finesse and strategy. He may have taken some of Noah's magic, but that didn't mean anything. Lee was the one who had been drained, the one who had broken himself by using magic that was never meant to be used rapidly or carelessly; the one who had been tortured for hours. As he parried a slash from Noah and pushed more magic into his sword to erase the dark purple bruise that had formed where it had been struck, a single thought broke through his fury.

  He was going to lose.

  Chapter 11

  Aidan had just finished switching his spell books again, trading the purple for the slightly older grey with its pre-written spells, when the first bolt hit him in the stomach, driving the air out of his lungs. He flew backwards, landing on the floor several feet away and bouncing once before rolling to a stop. His lungs burned as he coughed and hacked and tried desperately to gulp down more oxygen. It wasn't until he saw Bryce stalking towards him that he realized he'd lost the spell book he’d just taken out of his bag.

  Another bolt struck him in the face, snapping his head back to crack against the ground. Stars filled his vision as he let out a pained yelp. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear them. He needed to see. If he couldn't see Bryce, he was dead. Despair welled up inside him as he remembered the lost book.

  Seeing wouldn't do him any good anyway.

  Two more bolts hit at the same time, one on his chest, the other one just below his left eye. He could feel wetness on his cheek and the small part of him that wasn't hurt and panicked realized the last bolt must have cut him open.

  Force bolt—not dead—why didn't he kill me?—where are my spells?—what am I going to do?

  Thoughts flew rapidly through his head, one barely even fully forming before the next raced to take its place. He couldn't focus. His head was ringing and the hazy blur in front of him he assumed was Bryce flickered and bent like a candle in the wind.

  And then stopped right in front of him.

  No more bolts followed, and Aidan's vision slowly cleared. Bryce stood above him immaculate as always, with his arms crossed over his belly and his lips twisted into a sneer.

  "Seems you've finally found your proper place, wizard."

  Aidan tried to push himself up, to move away, to try and find his book, anything, but he met another force bolt to the chest that left him gasping for breath.

  "No, don't get up. You're right where you belong."

  Aidan would have tensed if he was capable of doing anything besides trying to breathe, but the officer didn't throw anymore spells.

  "We all have our roles, wizard, or so I've been told," Bryce said bitterly. "We only get to rise so high, and then we stop. My role is to spend my nights walking deserted streets. A wizard's role is to be on the ground, staring up at a sorcerer, and begging him to be allowed to live."

  He flicked his hand and another bolt hit Aidan on the chin.

  "And if I can never be anything but a beat cop," he said, leaning in towards Aidan, "then you're not going to be anything more than another wizard at my feet."

  He hit Aidan with three more bolts, all of them connecting with different parts of his body. Something snapped inside his chest with a loud crack. Aidan screamed. For some reason, he noted absently through the bright red curtain of pain that had fallen over his mind, the sound just seemed to make Bryce even angrier.

  "Why do you matter?" he snapped, stopping his assault. "Why do I have to get dragged across the entire country to hunt you? Why does Barnes get killed by you? What makes you so special?"

  He snarled the last part, his eyes bright with fury. Bryce's corn-silk hair fell over his forehead with the force of his words, the first time Aidan had ever seen it anyth
ing other than perfectly coiffed. Bryce didn't even seem to notice.

  Could killing Barnes have upset him that much? Or was it Aidan as a whole that bothered him so? Aidan's head rolled listlessly to the side—

  And right there, not even five feet away, was his gray spell book.

  His body was aching all over from the magical beating he'd taken, but Aidan didn't hesitate. He rolled over and scrambled for the book. If he could just get to it before the next bolt hit him…

  He made it to the book before Bryce could fire off any spells. Aidan grinned as he reached out for it—

  And let out a cry of despair as a gust of wind picked it up off the ground and deposited it gently into Bryce's outstretched hand.

  Aidan collapsed, unable to hold up his battered body any longer as Bryce slowly flipped through the remaining pages.

  "So, this is how the wizard uses magic," he murmured, closing the book with a snap. The violent anger he'd been showing not even a minute ago seemed to have faded as Bryce regarded the book with amusement. He held it up lengthwise, perched on the fingertips of his right hand, the way a waiter might deliver a plate of food. A smirk pulled at his lips.

  And then he set the spell book on fire.

  "No!" Aidan yelled, reaching out towards the burning book as though that would somehow save it. Tears welled up in his eyes. It wasn't just that his only hope of surviving was going up in flames. Lee had given that book to him. It was the first real gift he'd ever got for Aidan, given in love and the hope it would make him whole.

  Aidan had loved it.

  And now he couldn't do anything but watch as it turned to ash in Bryce's hand.

  "Is that why you thought you were special? Because you could use magic?" Bryce eyed his ashy hand with distaste and cast a quick spell to clean it away. Aidan choked on a sob. It was like the book had never even existed. "That doesn't make you special. It doesn't make you a sorcerer. It doesn't make you worth anything. All that does is make you a wizard that can use magic." Bryce let out a snort edged with dark humor. "We followed you to an entire village of those. And do you know what happened to them?"

  A smile spread across his lips, flinty and cruel.

  "They burned."

  Aidan's heart stopped.

  Cold. That was all Aidan could feel. Not the floor, or his clothes, or the purely physical pain of his beating. This was a different pain; a deep, soul numbing cold that spread through his whole body and froze away all other feeling. There was the possibility Bryce was lying, of course, but even if there was another way he could have known about the People being wizards, it still didn't change the fact Aidan knew he was telling the truth. He'd seen it in his vision, the one that showed him he could still save Lee. He hadn’t let himself think about it, hadn’t let himself even attempt to draw the logical conclusion. He could save Lee because, in his vision, he hadn’t yet turned to stone the way Two Rivers and the Shaman had. Which meant Bryce was right, they were dead—

  —the Shaman's head torn off, lying next to his body—

  —along with everyone else in the village, their village—

  —Two Rivers' throat slit, a gaping wound with blood pouring out—

  —and it was all because the hunter had been chasing Aidan.

  When he'd had his vision, he couldn't feel anything about the village. That wasn't what the dream wanted to tell him, so it kept his emotions dull and muted, kept him from being distracted.

  This wasn't a dream. It was real, and there was nothing to dull the pain and the guilt and the cold that was tearing him up from the inside out. He hadn't even had the chance to send them to their deaths, he realized as silent tears began to pour down his cheeks. He didn't even need to screw up to get them all killed. All he needed to do was show up, and now none of them would ever fight for him. The Shaman would never defend his village. Two Rivers would never get to enjoy his childhood. The woman crying over the body of her husband—Brother? Father?—would never be able to heal and move on. The children playing in the sand would never grow up.

  And it was all because of him.

  Then, Bryce laughed, laughed, and the cold was burned away in a wave of white-hot rage.

  Aidan might have been responsible, but he wasn't the one who killed them. Bryce was the one who had. And Barnes. Because if there was fire, then he would have been the one to set it, and Noah too, because they wouldn't have done anything unless he told them to. But Barnes was already dead, and Lee was dealing with Noah, but Bryce was in front of Aidan. Right in front of him. And he deserved to bear the full force of that righteous anger.

  Aidan's magic, still and content ever since he started using the spell books, boiled and churned in his chest, begging to be let loose, to burn the way Bryce had said the People had burned. And just like in the cave, Aidan let it out.

  Unlike in the cave, though, this time Aidan had experience with controlling it.

  His body erupted in flames, but he didn't want fire, he'd already had enough of fire to last him a lifetime. The flames melted into a bright, white light, healing Aidan's injuries and mending his torn and dirty clothes until he was as immaculate as Bryce could ever hope to be. The light turned into a burst of wind that lifted Aidan up off the ground and set him gently on his feet.

  Bryce didn't waste any time being surprised. He fired off several, rapid-fire spells with precision and calm, and Aidan curled his lip in contempt as he absorbed them with a shield. He could feel his power, the tempestuous ocean of magic inside him, and he knew Bryce couldn't hope to match it. Aidan barely paid attention as the forcebolts turned into deathbolts. The sheer power that was flowing out of him made the difference meaningless.

  He took that power, gathered it up into a ball between his hands, pressed it together tighter and tighter until the air around it began to warp and bend, and then not just the air, but the magic in it as well. That magic twisted away from the strength of the growing maelstrom even as it pulled closer, desperate to be a part Aidan’s fury. Magic that was every shade of blue whipped around Aidan like a violent wind, blowing his hair wildly around his face and making his jacket flap behind him. With a flash of insight that could have been his prophecy, or possibly his magic itself speaking to him, he knew he could make his magic so dense not even light would be able to escape. He could create a magical hole that would swallow the world and the sun and not even come close to being sated.

  But he didn't want to do that, so he stopped gathering his power. The ball of magic thrummed in his hand, buzzing like a million angry wasps desperate to swarm an enemy.

  And right now, Aidan only had one enemy.

  He looked Bryce in the eye. There was panic in his face now, but not fear. Not even the way the magic swirled around Aidan could wipe away Bryce's arrogance. He still thought he could win. Aidan was just a wizard and there was no way a pathetic wizard would ever be able to kill someone like Bryce. Arrogant and ignorant right until the very end. A memory stirred deep in Aidan's mind. Bryce facing off against Lee for the first time, the same pompous tilt to his lips as he spoke to Lee in his pompous drawl. Aidan remembered what he said, the words clear as crystal in his memory and elegantly appropriate for the situation.

  "I think we've had entirely too much of you," Aidan said, his voice echoing throughout the magic surrounding him.

  Then he released the ball, and sent it flying straight towards Bryce. Aidan had no idea whether he managed to get a shield up or not. Either way, the ball never so much as slowed down before it crashed into Bryce's chest. Bryce screamed, a horrible sound Aidan knew would be haunting his normal nightmares for months; a scream of pure, unfiltered agony, like every tiny part of his body, every infinitesimal scrap of being that made up Officer Bryce, was being ripped apart all at once.

  Because, of course, that’s exactly what was happening.

  The scream only lasted a moment before Bryce's body exploded into a fine red mist, and then even that was gone, torn apart into pieces so small they were impossible to see, and
smaller still until there was nothing left of him. It was like he'd never even existed.

  Aidan had the feeling, for Bryce, that would have been even worse than the pain.

  He couldn't waste another second thinking about Bryce though; the magic pouring out of him demanded his concentration. But that was okay, because he could deal with that, too. With a twitch of his fingers the blank purple notebook flew out of his bag and landed in his hands, flipping itself open. He gathered up the magic that was desperately escaping his body, begging to be used, and shoved it all onto the blank page in front of him. There was no word written down, no spell, but right then there didn't need to be. Aidan tore the page out and it burned to dust.

  Then it exploded. Not with fire, but with force, flattening the cubicles near Aidan and sending the ones beyond flying across the room into other cubicles. They picked those up as well and sent them crashing back into yet more cubicles, repeating the process until Aidan was surrounded by a fifty-foot ring of mangled metal and drywall. The magic inside of him spun and churned, but it was contained, grounded by the spell. Slowly it settled, until only the static charge running over Aidan's skin remained to show it had ever escaped.

  Aidan expected to collapse, and let out a small, shaky laugh when he didn't. His legs weren't even shaking. He hadn't even used half his magic.

  He thought it should probably be more exhausting to completely obliterate someone.

  As exhausting as burning an entire village?

  The anguish that had never really left flared up again. They had all been slaughtered because Aidan and Lee had managed to stumble across their village. Even destroying Bryce couldn’t begin to make up for that.

  Nothing can make up for that.

  His anguish was stoked, like flames in a kiln, before being banked by steely determination.