Air

by Rosie Scott

  HUUURRRNNNNN!

  I spun to the left, eyes searching for the Sentinels. Uriel had made the call farther south near where I had started. The sixth Sentinel regenerated a ward before preparing his spear for melee battle. My heart thudded in my chest as I realized why.

  The Icilic Army in the grasslands below was still more massive than our own, but even still, our enemies had managed to find the tunnel leading into the Cleves. Foes spewed out of the hole of the highlands like vomit from fevered lips, freshly prepared for battle after their trek underground. Magic and weapons alike were thrown into our smaller army, killing many allies from the surprise of the attack alone. If it hadn't been for Uriel's call, the Icilic ambush would have been as deadly as ours had been.

  The Icilic Army hadn't known we would be waiting for them, so the plan to split their army into both the tunnel and the Highland Pass meant they'd wanted to take Makani. Attacking the city from two sides would have made it easier to take, especially considering its location on the coast. I found our new foes annoyingly intelligent given the fact they'd never attempted such conquest and tactics before.

  “Now I got someone to fight!” Anto shouted, rushing toward our new challengers. Both arm blades glimmered as they were held out to the sides, prepared for blood. Maggie was on his heels, eager for battle with her war hammer. Both warriors were shielded, I noted with contentment.

  As the Icilic flowed out of the tunnel like a river, one of them stood out from the crowd. He was a sharp contrast of long pitch black hair and translucent skin, and he stalked forward without a care. One of our soldiers hacked toward his throat with an ax in a move to decapitate, and while the hit was accurate, the blade only sliced through the skin of his throat. Blood dripped slowly from the wound, but the man was otherwise uninjured.

  “Azazel,” I breathed, pointing to the man. The archer paused from shooting, following my direction. “Eyes,” I requested.

  “Silver,” Azazel replied.

  Not a god. A necromancer. It wasn't like that was any better.

  “Famiin.” The man held both palms together, not caring in the slightest as our soldier hacked into his neck again. The ax deepened its cut and the necromancer's face grimaced in pain, but he focused instead on the spell swirling in his hands. It appeared much like the plague, a mix of black and the sludgy green of decay.

  The necromancer forced the spell to the ground. Ugly magic expelled forth in all directions before seeping into plant-life. The beautiful green grass affected shriveled and browned with death. Wildflowers lost amongst the grasses wilted, all color taken from their petals. As plant-life all around him died, it released energy back into the air. Much like the enervat spell, it imploded back into the necromancer's chest, and the foe trembled with new power. He reached toward the allied soldier with one hand and to the wound on his neck with the other. The soldier's life was stolen from his body a moment later, and the cut began to close with the aid of life magic.

  It's true. Hades wasn't so hard to kill because he was a god; it was due to him being a necromancer. All of our suspicions were correct. The death dealer barely looked a day older than twenty-five, but he had to have been much older. The same powers that kept his aging stagnant also strengthened his organs, and it had to have taken time. After all, Cerin and I could still be injured more quickly.

  He will be strong, I thought, but he is not immortal.

  I ran forward to face him.

  Thirty-two

  Crackling reverberated through the air between us as the necromancer siphoned the life from my chest. His face was emotionless at first, but when I retaliated with two leeching spells of my own, his silver eyes registered surprise. Judging by the exchanges of energy, my spells were stronger than his. He also understood this. One of his hands dispelled with its leeching spell, and next, he summoned the plague.

  Energy the color of disease spread over my alteration shield, and the necromancer watched it get absorbed like this was new to him. It was finally clear, then, that the lesser magics were not favored by the Icilic. Even so, the lesser magics were not infallible. Though my shield absorbed most of the spell as it rolled over me from the front, it flickered out from eventual weakness, leaving the last hints of the disease to sink in and infect the flesh of my back.

  Shik! Shik!

  A black arrow stuck out of the necromancer's right eye, and a crossbow bolt stuck out of the thinner temporal bone of his skull. Both Jakan and Azazel were attempting to defend me, but neither hit felled our foe. Both of the necromancer's eyes became teary with pain, and he reached up to the arrow in his eye before thinking twice and leaving it. Though I still leeched from him with one hand, I bent my elbow to direct energy to my back meant to promote my skin's immunity to disease. The skin between my shoulder blades was breaking into open sores, and I shuddered in immense pain as thin pus leaked from the wounds, leaving them at the mercy of the burning oxygen in the air.

  “Persuadua!” Jakan shouted, thrusting coral-pink energy to the necromancer. Now charmed, he immediately turned around, hurrying to the nearest Icilic soldier and leeching her life.

  “Kai! Kai!” Cerin rushed up behind me, and I immediately felt warmth over my back from through my armor. “You need to stop and heal.”

  “I don't have the time,” I retorted, continuing forward. As the charmed necromancer proceeded to kill one of his own, I muttered my next spell. “Enflic le plague del agua.”

  I thrust the combination spell of death and water toward the still charmed foe. If the necromancer was hard to kill from the outside, I sought to destroy him from the inside. The magic went to work on filling his body with water, forcing his cells to burst with the excess and deplete themselves of oxygen. Unlike the last time I used it, however, the necromancer did not fall right away.

  The dual caster started to wheeze before he gasped for breath. Even so, he still fought his kin, shooting plague into the unprotected Icilic and leeching the lives from others. Jakan's charm spell had helped keep him off of us, but it was also a curse. Though he was temporarily on our side and killing our foes, every person he leeched only gave him more strength.

  A ball of emerald energy shot out from Azazel's hand, paralyzing the necromancer. The man froze in place and started to fall, but Cerin ran toward him, screaming to the archer. “Grab him, Azazel!”

  Azazel rushed forward, grabbing the necromancer before he hit the ground. He held the foe in place as Cerin lifted his scythe, using both the force of gravity and his strength to bring sharpened steel to the man's throat. My lover was immensely strong and talented, but when the scythe hit, Cerin jolted in place from the resistance the man's flesh put up against the blade. Azazel lost his grip on our foe from the hit, and the necromancer fell to the ground.

  “Anto!” Jakan was yelling it even as he ran to the scene with his scimitar. The hooked nature of Cerin's scythe would not allow him to decapitate someone as easily when they were fallen, and the thief knew this. Jakan stood over the necromancer, grunting with effort as he brought his blade to the flesh of his throat. Just the skin was split at first, but Jakan hacked at the same spot like he was trying to fell a tree, deepening the cut over and over until the blood leaking from the wound started to spurt upward with trauma. Nearby, Azazel directed another paralyze spell toward the foe just to ensure he'd stay down.

  Anto ran up to us moments later, having heard his lover's desperate cry. His arm blades had done massive damage. The fluids dripping from them were thick with matter, and as my eyes scanned the battlefield where he'd been, it was easy to see why.

  There had been no need for the orc to come now. Jakan had hacked through to the trachea, and excess water from my earlier spell was leaking out, diluting the blood. When Azazel's spell finally dispelled, the necromancer did not rise again.

  Jakan's chest heaved with intense effort, and his bronzed skin glistened with sweat. He glanced up at me with fire in his eyes and teased, “That's how you do it, Kai.”

  I laughed ti
redly. “Thank you for teaching me.”

  Jakan and Anto rushed off to other foes, and I nearly joined them. Azazel came to me and grabbed one of my arms, keeping me still.

  “What are you doing?” I blurted, confused.

  “You need healing,” the archer said, pulling my red hair to the side as Cerin walked up behind me. I felt my armor get tugged out a bit, giving Cerin greater access to my damaged skin.

  “Be careful with touching my hair, Azazel,” I murmured. “It may have brushed against my skin. The plague can spread.”

  “I know how it works,” the archer replied, unconcerned.

  “How?” I questioned.

  “There were a few assassins that would come back to Hazarmaveth seeking tonics after facing necromancers,” Azazel answered. “And that is what you will need. I have ingredients in my satchel I've collected from all over Eteri. Haven't had the chance to make potions with them yet, but I will make you one. I like to wait until I know what I need.”

  “You know the plant-life of Eteri?” I asked.

  “I didn't, no. But you gave me two hundred gold in Mistral all that time ago and told me to spend it how I wished. I bought the hood, an alchemy recipe book, and a comb.”

  I couldn't help but chuckle. “What a unique combination.”

  “They are all useful items,” Azazel replied.

  Cerin finished healing what he could without resorting to taking my armor off. Most of the open wounds were closed, but it was probable that the disease still spread through my veins. If there was a life spell to stop that, I didn't yet know it. I would take Azazel up on his offer for potions if we made it out of this battle alive.

  In the span of a few seconds, my eyes looked over the battlefield to assess it. The skies overhead were clear, but the atmosphere of Arrayis was determined to send a storm our way. Tumultuous clouds rolled in from the north, but the energy of the oncoming storm was only feeding the mages of both armies, keeping it from ever beginning. Thousands were dead everywhere I looked. Thousands of Icilic casualties were in the Pass, and thousands of both armies were killed beyond it to the north, where Zephyr's army was taking on too many foes. The battle did appear to be attracting the attention of the giants of Reva directly west, who came running to Eteri's aid with lumbering gaits, carrying massive melee weapons a dozen or so feet in length.

  On the Cleves surrounding us, hundreds were dead, ally and foe alike. The Icilic in the tunnels outnumbered us, but we surrounded them. The Sentinels were fighting near the frontlines, and as I watched, Uriel refreshed Nyx's protection when hers flickered out. Maggie and Anto were both so immensely strong that they took on mages with and without shields because their strength could whittle the magic down quickly enough.

  Cerin and I focused next on leeching lives from foes and refreshing friends and allies with energy, and then we raised the dead. Both Icilic and Vhiri corpses pulled themselves off of the bloody grass to fight again, and most of the soldiers remained unfazed. Both armies were used to fighting amongst necromancers. For the first time ever, using necromancy in battle could not give us an advantage in intimidation, only in numbers.

  “Half-breed!” It was a hiss of disgust. The woman's cry drew the attention of other Icilic around her, dozens of pairs of eyes turning to look at Cerin.

  “What of it?” Cerin spat, refreshing his ward. I reached over to my lover, giving him a new alteration shield. The action caused the foes before us to pay attention to me as well, putting two and two together.

  “The half-breed and Kai Sera are here!” One of the mages screamed, turning his head back to his comrades still pouring forth from the tunnel.

  Our own friends would try their hardest to keep the newly alert foes from us, but they were only so many people. Cerin and I prepared to be outnumbered with Azazel just behind us as support.

  I knew now that my elemental bomb spells could be thrown, so I funneled my energy into preparing one before the enemies reached us. I shot the fire energy forward, and it hissed through the air before hitting a mage straight in the chest and exploding outward, hot flames licking at dozens of mages and setting many on fire. Those with wards rushed forward without a care, but many dropped to the ground in a desperate attempt to squelch flames. Others quickly built water spells to put themselves and others out.

  The woman who'd alerted the others reached Cerin first and reached toward his chest. A funnel of black soon attempted to take his life, but the energy was absorbed by the protection I'd given him. She appeared confused for a moment before grabbing a sword from her belt. The weapon was lifted just in time to meet Cerin's scythe, and the clang of steel shattered through the air.

  “Look at you!” She seethed, struggling to keep hold of her weapon. Her eyes were crazed as they looked over my lover. “You are despicable! Just a tarnished blip in the bloodline! Beauty corrupted by human filth.”

  “I tire of hearing you speak.” Cerin thrust his scythe forward, staggering the woman back two steps. With both hands on the weapon, he spun it in a powerful arc toward the woman's neck. Her head flew over the battlefield seconds later, tumbling over the grass until it came to rest beside a corpse. Evidently, this necromancer was not as old as the one we'd killed earlier. Her body fell to the grass, emptying of blood around an exposed spinal cord.

  Creatius el roc projectille a multipla. Over both hands, multiple heavy stones hovered in various states of lumpy rock. As the element formed and thickened, I shouted over to Cerin, “She was blind, Cerin! You are as gorgeous as you've ever been.”

  Cerin switched to holding his scythe one-handed as he reached out to leech from a new foe. “She was also ignorant, thinking I looked for her opinion. I did not. I only look for yours.” As the man before him fell from leeching, Cerin trembled with a new high, switching back to two-handed melee and immediately coming to clash with multiple foes.

  I sought to protect him. The stones above my palms shot forward, pummeling through Icilic soldiers like fists made of earth. One of the rocks crashed into the temple of a mage, shattering part of her skull and dropping her to the ground with open eyes full of shock. Another stone collided with a man's throat, collapsing it and leaving him gasping for air and panicking. Another left a foe's hand shattered and broken, leaving his two-handed ax heavy and useless to him. The man had just enough time to ponder a plan B before a black arrow took the path of his right eye to puncture his brain.

  Creatius la bolta a multipla. I thrust both hands toward the group of mages before me, and bright flashes of lightning veined into flesh, before arcing through bodies to reach others. The man just before me foamed at the mouth as he rattled in seizure, before dropping to the ground in a pile of flesh and smoke. Another foe was protected, but the bolts skidded over the surface of his ward, weakening it as they veined out to his comrades. The ward depleted, giving the air magic free rein to fry his flesh.

  I dispelled the chain lightning, not wanting it to cause allied casualties as I neared the tunnel. The air around me felt jumpy with residual energy, though it was quickly being used up by mages in the area.

  There were still so many Icilic surging forth from the tunnels that their army was pushing our men back. Our foes now spilled over the grasslands of the Cleves. We still surrounded them, but our ranks were thinning. My friends were all on the frontlines, and Uriel was doing a magnificent job shielding them when they needed it. Jakan and Nyx were switching between melee and ranged weapons and charming soldiers as often as they could. Neither of them had gone invisible, probably because they knew how dangerous it would be during a battle with the unpredictable elements. Maggie swung her war hammer through handfuls of the Icilic at a time, killing some and breaking protections of others. Anto was a one-man army at the far edges of the battle, taking on multiple foes at a time and coming out relatively unscathed.

  My friends and I were powerful. But my eyes fell upon all of the allied corpses even as I called them to arms with death magic, and I realized something that put fear in my
heart.

  We are losing.

  We had done everything right. Our ambush had whittled down the enemy numbers immensely. Soldiers had been taught alteration magic, and most of them who knew it were utilizing it heavily. The Eteri Army was powerful, but it was split into so many units, and the Icilic invasion was massive. They had caught us off guard. We had known the Icilic numbers were immense, but we hadn't known it was this bad. And now we had intel that reinforcements were coming.

  Zephyr's army was putting up a hell of a fight on the grasslands, and I knew she had necromancers among her ranks who could replenish their numbers. But so did the Icilic. Every advantage that had ever been ours save for the lesser magics aided our enemies.

  The energy in the air was depleting, leaving mages in both armies switching from magic to physical weapons. The only exceptions were the necromancers and mages who had replenished their energy by absorbing it with alteration, but most of our foes had stopped using magic, so there was little to absorb. All throughout both battlefields, wards and shields alike were flickering out, and very few were replenished. Ally and foe were at the mercy of arrows and melee swings, and the grasses were matted with blood.

  I leeched through the crowd of Icilic, refreshing my allies once more with the excess energy. Then, I leeched even more. I remembered Azazel's words to me prior to this fight. I had the power to change this. With enough energy, my magic could be devastating.

  I could not use enervat without hurting my friends, so I leeched from enemies one at a time, seeking a high. My mind racked through spells, trying to find the right one to devastate the Icilic Army on the Cleves while keeping the surrounding allies safe. I could not summon an earthquake because the result to the landscape of Eteri and nearby Makani and Welkin could be catastrophic. I did not want to risk destroying Eteri's settlements like I had done with Narangar's harbor, and the tunnels leading through the cliffs could collapse, keeping Welkin trapped and isolated.