Loyalty and War

by Devon Vesper

  Cheers erupted from the army so loud that Valis had to wonder if his soundproofing parameter on the camp’s shield could contain it. He grinned, his spirit renewed for the fight ahead.

  “Let’s hope Setira City has enough beds, boys and girls! Tonight we sleep in the city!”

  As more cheers arose, Valis laughed. Just like his friends, his army was predictable. Promise them a bed, and their hearts were more into the fighting spirit than ever.

  “Move out! Get into position and await my signal. Let’s win this!”

  Chapter Six

  The tension in the air grew so thick and cloying that Valis had to focus on his breathing. Thirty minutes, and the final battle would be upon them. The other teams rode their horses toward their targeted areas, so it wouldn’t take long for everyone to get into position. Just thirty minutes until he could give the signal. But something didn’t feel right.

  Taking out his pocket watch, Valis focused his mind and started a scry of the area. He moved the scry around, tracking the progress of his men and women as they moved into position. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  Then it happened. Valis’s stomach pitted as a dark mark flashed in the grass ahead of the southernmost team. They stopped their advance just in time not to get caught in the trap, and Valis’s breathing eased. He rushed to the edge of the shield he had over the city and touched it, sending the parameter for soundproofing. Then he pushed magic into his vocal cords and lifted his voice to carry.

  “All forces! Halt your progress!”

  He heard the clamor of shouts, then all went silent. Valis whistled and called, “Rasera!” His horse screamed in the distance, then he heard the pounding of hooves on the hard-packed ground coming toward him.

  “What are you doing?” Brogan asked.

  “There are traps around the city,” Valis said. “I need to disable them before we progress.”

  “Gotcha.” Brogan sighed and glanced around. “What about us?”

  “Wait here until I return. I just need to travel around the city and disable traps. I’ll make a full circle, free any who might have gotten caught, and return as soon as possible.”

  Rasera plowed his way through the ranks until he stood at Valis’s side. He tossed his head, mane flying, and gave Valis’s hand a nudge of his nose until Valis stroked his muzzle. “Good boy. Let’s get running.”

  “Be careful, love,” Tavros said. “Want me to go with you?”

  “No. I’ll be fine. Wait here.”

  Valis mounted up and urged Rasera into a full, fast gallop. After an hour of hard riding—an hour that Valis hated to waste—Valis found all of the traps and disabled them without further incident. Only two people had been caught. Once he freed them, he went around, making sure everyone was in place before riding back to his position.

  It was time to begin the final battle. Valis wanted this done as fast and clean as possible. He returned Rasera to the herd back in the camp’s shield, and after jogging back to his team, he took a moment to calm his heart and breathing. As Seza had taught him what seemed like years ago, excitement could lead to frantic fighting, and that was the fastest way to lose any battle, whether it was of wits, fists, or magic.

  Heart and breathing under control, Valis took another moment, then sent up the mage flare high over the city to signal the attack. Then organized chaos ensued.

  Valis led the charge with his team. They streamed in through the city’s main thoroughfare, heavy boots pounding on the hard cobblestones that lined the street. Valis heard the thunder of boots echoing through the streets as the other teams filed in, herding the Qos adherents into the center square.

  This time Valis didn’t have to phase in behind the enemy. This time, there were forces on all sides. This time, they had the advantage.

  A woman screeched from the other side of the square, “We’re surrounded. All to the square!”

  Valis tried to pick her out from the masses, but it was impossible. The area teemed with too many bodies, all in black with their red tabards. But she was apparently their leader. How many others were there in this group?

  “Break their shields!” she shouted. “Kill them! Kill the Aesriphos!”

  Ignoring the screeching woman, Valis drew his sword. There were way too many to worry about her. Then a thought came and Valis charged his sword with golden magic and swung. With a single swing, he shattered four shields. Tavros quickly dropped them into stasis. In the next moment, the bodies disappeared as the laymen grabbed them up and their translocator phased them away.

  Valis took a brief moment to push magic into his voice with the intent that only those with his mental shields in place could hear him. “Capture that screeching bitch. She’s their leader. I want her alive!”

  Every Aesriphos and laymen under his command barked, “SIR!” so loud that the windows in the surrounding buildings shook with their unanimous shout.

  “Find their leader!” the woman shouted, easily heard above the sounds of battle. “Find them!”

  Valis swung his sword again, magic arcing from the blade. Five more shields fell. Tavros dropped them into stasis with such precision that Valis almost didn’t feel his lover drawing from his power reserves until the last one fell. But the throng was so thick, bodies packed in tight quarters, that it was like fighting against a black wall.

  Qos adherents shoved at Valis’s team, trying to break their lines, trying to flank them. But their feet remained rooted to the ground, sparks of magic keeping them in place as they continued to shatter shields.

  It wasn’t enough. Valis shouted above the din, “Team! Advance! Push them back!”

  Valis raised his sword and shot a concussive force that blew a swath of enemies off their feet. Shields went down, and his team cleaned them up. In the next breath, Valis drew on his black magic. He sent it out in a mist that crept under the Qos adherents’ feet. Concentrating, Valis turned that mist into dark tentacles that wrapped around the enemies’ feet. He yanked back with his left hand, and more fell with shouts of surprise and pain echoing off the buildings that hemmed them in.

  The sun shone down, the radiance glaring off the light tan walls of the buildings. The light shone down on the Qos adherents, and it gave Valis an idea. He raised his right hand, sword point up, and focused his power into the blade as he called to his men through their shields. “Aesriphos! Shield your eyes!”

  With a surge of power, Valis closed his eyes and let the power explode. The flash of blinding golden light burned Valis’s eyes through his closed eyelids, but he healed it in the next moment with a spare thought. Cries of agony almost deafened him as the Qos adherents writhed in pain. Valis watched them as he kept his sword raised, sending out bolts of magic to throw everyone who had dropped their shields into stasis.

  The laymen teams with their translocator escorts worked fast. Bodies phased away almost as soon as they dropped. Once they were all out of the way, Valis sent another series of concussive blasts. It became a routine. As some fell, Valis sent out another blast and another. He didn’t give the enemy time to recover. With each blast, Valis changed the trajectory, taking down swaths of people in each direction.

  “Keep it up, love!” Tavros called from beside him. “They’re thinning.”

  Valis led the push. As the laymen teams cleared bodies, Valis and his team moved forward at a steady pace. All the while, the woman leader of the Qos adherents shouted. “Keep your shields up! What are you doing? Don’t let them break your ranks!”

  But the Qos adherents weren’t even in any discernible ranks. They seemed like a mass of untrained adepts. Then Valis remembered that this group was most likely the same army who had captured his fathers and killed their team. Valis’s stomach curdled with that thought.

  Valis knocked another group down, and then he saw her. The woman wore the same black chain mail armor as the others, but her red tabard had Qos’s black mark outlined in silver embroidery, while the others had only the one color. How stupid was she to differenti
ate herself from the rest?

  He glanced over at Tavros. Tavros must have felt it because he looked over at Valis at the same time. They shared a look for a brief moment, one of love and tenderness before Valis said, “Follow me.”

  Nodding, Tavros stuck beside him. He kept up, casting the stasis spell as Valis cut through the enemy’s shields. Together, they made their way toward that woman. She didn’t seem to be paying them any attention. But even so, Valis added invisibility to his and Tavros’s shields so she wouldn’t see them coming until it was too late.

  With Tavros at his side, they cut down a good number of Qos adherents. Most of them didn’t know what hit them. When Valis glanced back, most of the bodies had disappeared. Aesriphos closed in behind him, following in his wake to close the channel and deal with the enemy from inside their ranks, breaking their lines.

  There were still so many people left. So many Qos adherents shouted orders and called for backup that Valis’s ears rang with it. His own men and women fought in near silence, their concentration so tuned into the fight that they only let out occasional grunts and the barest communication.

  Valis blew a wide arc of concussive blasts in rapid succession. Twenty feet ahead of him looked like an explosion had gone off in a forest, laying the trees down from the force. Each body struggled. Tavros threw stasis as fast as he could. Instead of making Tavros exhaust himself, Valis raised his sword, and with a push of his power, arcs of golden lightning sprayed out from the blade, putting anyone it touched in stasis.

  It worked so well that Valis did it again. And again. But while his power still swirled strong and sure inside him, his body and mind slowly fatigued.

  They neared the woman shouting orders. Valis growled as he saw she stood in front of a closed door. Somehow he could feel the civilians inside, cowering in their fear. She stood guard, ensuring they couldn’t escape, and Valis could almost guarantee there were guards at the other exits.

  Valis murmured, ensuring his voice could only be heard inside his team’s shields. “On my mark, everyone blast this bitch’s shield. I want it shattered and her in stasis too swift for her to raise the alarm. I want the enemy’s focus to continue to be divided among the teams.”

  “Sir!”

  “Excellent.”

  They made it twenty more feet, leaving bodies in their wake. Valis blew one more concussive blast before shouting, “Now!”

  Golden bolts streamed around Valis and Tavros. Tavros threw bolt after bolt so fast Valis only saw a constant stream of strobing magic. It only took a few brief seconds for her shield to shatter, and the second it did, Valis threw her in stasis. A moment later, a translocator appeared by the enemy leader’s body and phased away with her after giving Valis a nod. Hopefully, that meant she understood the need to keep that woman separate from the others.

  Valis turned to the rest of the enemy, doing a quick headcount. There were still so many left, but it wasn’t as overwhelming as when they first started this leg of the battle. With a deep breath, Valis searched for and took stock of the other teams and their progress. He couldn’t tell from this far away how many they had lost, or whether they had lost any at all. He saw one Aesriphos limping after his mate. Most of those he could see seemed whole.

  “Mizelle is gone! Find her!”

  Valis readied his sword. Apparently, their leader’s name was Mizelle. He would have to remember that for when it came time to interrogate. For now, he had to focus on breaking shields. It didn’t help that with each spell the enemy slung at his army, that magic got funneled from his army’s shields into Valis’s magic reserves. So, his focus was divided between the battle before him and trying not to let the darkness overtake him. It made his fatigue progress so much faster than normal. He had to find some way to mitigate it, or he’d faint before the city was theirs.

  You are a silly boy, Roba muttered.

  Now is really not the time, Dad.

  Roba let out a ghostly snort. Use your gold magic. You are letting it go to waste.

  Valis cut through six more shields before he understood what his father meant. With a thought, he focused his gold magic into fighting off the fatigue. He pushed it into his mind to wake himself up, and into his body to alleviate the sluggishness. When he no longer felt like he was going to fall over, Valis added another parameter to the shields of his army. All black magic that siphoned to him would now be turned to gold through those shields as if they were filters.

  He noticed the difference almost immediately. Instead of feeling mentally and physically drained, he felt renewed.

  “What happened?” Tavros asked. “You just perked up like someone gave you a birth anniversary gift early.”

  Valis laughed as he cut down more of their enemy. This time he accidentally cut the bastards in half with his sword, instead of just their shields. Gore sprayed everywhere, draining off their shields in grotesque rivers. Valis could only imagine how much of a madman he seemed at that moment—covered in gore and laughing.

  “I started filtering the black magic and turning it into gold. I feel less fatigued.”

  “Good,” Tavros called. “Now start hacking. And try not to spray us again. That was nasty, Valis. And stop laughing when you murder people. It’s creepy as fuck.”

  Chuckling, Valis led the advance, cutting through people with ease. They were close to another team, so a good many of the enemy were facing away from Valis’s team, leaving their backs open. None of them seemed to notice, and that’s when Valis remembered he had invisibility as a shield parameter for himself and with a thought, the rest of his team.

  “You’re invisible to the enemy,” he called out through his team members’ shields. “Spread out. We have one of the leaders. I’m adding the parameter that you can see through black magic. If you see any of the enemy forces with silver stitching on their tabards, capture them. Anyone else, dispatch however you see fit.”

  “Sir!”

  Adding that parameter was a bit more challenging than Valis expected, but he managed it by infusing the entire army’s shields with black magic. He repeated his orders for everyone else, making sure they knew that only his team was invisible. Once everyone was on the same page, Valis went back to hacking, trying to kick bodies away before the blood started spurting. But he wasn’t always successful. Each time they got sprayed, Tavros would let out this long-suffering sigh and groan.

  “Valis…”

  “Not even sorry.”

  “Of course, you’re not. Keep going.”

  Valis didn’t need to be told twice. He wanted this battle over as soon as possible. The quicker they could get this battle won, the quicker Valis could wind down. And after going from fatigue to being fine again, back to fatigue and up to a state of elation from the surge of gold magic, Valis needed to sit the fuck down and relax.

  But the day was far from over, and even after the battle was won, he would still have a lot of work left to do.

  Someone bumped into Valis’s shield. Before Valis could hack him down, he screamed, “They’re invisible! Behind us!”

  Every pair of eyes in the vicinity turned toward Valis, and his stomach pitted. It didn’t feel precognitive, but it did feel like an “Oh, shit” warning. Thinking fast, Valis shoved out an invisible mist of gold magic. He spread it, filling the entire square and the side streets. When he felt it covering the entire area inside the shield over the city, Valis took a deep breath and sent spikes of gold up into every black shield. The moment he loosed that spell, Valis raised his sword and called on the stasis spell, sending it into the shield above.

  Like a sudden lightning storm, arcs of blinding golden lightning streamed down in fast strikes, hitting everyone with black magic. People fell into stasis in droves. Valis saw a few re-erect their shields and groaned. “Break the shields of those who are coming to their senses. Hurry!”

  As shields fell again, Valis watched as his golden lightning struck. Over and over again, the sound of booming thunder cracked as lightning streamed down,
striking person after person in an endless blinding cycle.

  It seemed like it would never end. Valis broke the stasis spell off from himself so it would continue without his direct input. Then he sent out the mist again. Once the spikes shattered shields, the lightning storm took care of the rest.

  Then there was silence. Valis glanced around and listened. He sent his magic out, looking for any shields he may have missed, looking for any with black magic who had escaped the stasis spell. But he found no one. Not a single living soul had escaped.

  A moment later, cheers erupted from his men and women.

  They had won the fight.

  Chapter Seven

  “Get the injured back to camp!” Valis trudged through blood and bone as he helped clear the square of bodies. There were children in some of these buildings, and he didn’t want to frighten them further than they already had been the last few days. It would be bad enough that he couldn’t clean up the blood before releasing them, but at least he could get the dead-eyed bodies and severed limbs away from view before releasing the townsfolk.

  The pyres that night would be massive, but at least there were only a few losses on his side. It made his heart heavy that they all seemed to have been laymen.

  But what could he have done? Did he need to refresh the shields he cast on others in order for them to stay intact? Or could he have done anything differently that would have ensured they had lived?

  His mind whirled around with those thoughts as he helped the laymen and translocators clear bodies.

  It took hours to get the square cleared. When Valis checked his watch, it was past their normal dinnertime if they had been back at the monastery. The dining hall would still be open, but it would be a late dinner.

  Groaning, Valis snapped his pocket watch closed and headed to the largest building—the one that he saw Ella and Athar enter during his vision. He needed to make sure those two were still alive before Shyvus got back from his duties.