by Dean Murray
I lost track of how many fae Jace and Kat killed—it was all I could do to keep track of who I was fighting. We split up—not the best idea for when we ended up facing the incoming Awakened, but absolutely the best option for killing as many Unseelie fae as possible before that happened.
I killed something that was part woman and part bird, and then caved in the chest of a woman who had the bottom half of a snake. It was at that point that I realized the bigger, slower, stronger members of the Unseelie Court had arrived.
The Lady and her warriors were fighting back now. They had their weapons out and were doing their best to defend themselves, but it was like watching a bunch of knights from some kind of historical movie flailing away at each other. Nobody was moving very fast, all of them were off balance, and the blows that were landing mostly seemed to be wasted against our side's armor or the other side's unnatural vitality.
It was painful to watch in comparison to the time that I'd seen the Lady disembody Fenrir, but it was the only thing saving Kat, Jace and me. We were four-hundred-pound tigers rampaging through a pack of stray dogs, but even tigers could be taken down by enough dogs.
I slammed my scepter into the leg of something that had the body of a man but the head of a jackal, and was rewarded with a sharp crack as his limb folded up under him. I would have taken advantage of his sudden lack of mobility to crush his skull, but something that I was pretty sure was a manticore threw itself at me, and it was all I could do to whirl back out of the way without losing my head in the process.
I was fast and strong, but there were just so many of them. I slammed the haft of my weapon down into the leg of a woman who looked normal other than the white, iridescent scales covering her body, but it was nothing more than a flesh wound—I couldn't generate enough force to break her femur because I immediately had to reverse my weapon and use it to check something that looked like a six-foot-long, wingless dragon.
As the Unseelie fae pressed harder and harder I was forced to move faster and faster myself, and I felt my technique starting to slip. The biggest advantage of amping up my time sense had always been that it provided me with plenty of time to figure out how I was going to move, but now there was so much going on that I was having a hard time processing it.
I was having to make tricky judgment calls regarding who was moving the fastest and which blow was going to land first as I retreated back away from what felt like a constantly moving wall of fanged, clawed flesh. My movements became more sporadic and jerky as I was forced to wait until the last possible second before moving.
Part of me wanted to forget trying to land blows of my own, to just retreat backwards as fast as I could, but I knew that would only be delaying the inevitable. Running away wasn't going to save me—I had to kill the fae in front of me or I'd end up dead myself.
The stress on my body—and my shoes—was intense. I was managing only weak, ineffectual blows—little more than I could have done under normal circumstances without amping my strength—but I still held out hope that one of them would make a mistake. I cut sharply to my left at the last second, trying to dodge a blow from the big brother to the wingless dragon from before, and I felt my right shoe give way completely.
My skin was amped up enough that I couldn't even feel the rocks underneath my feet, but my bare foot didn't provide as much traction as my shoe had. I went down to one knee as my leg went out from underneath me. I was as good as dead, but that didn't stop me from reaching for my anger and the heat I would need to tap into a peak memory that might have a chance of producing a sun lance capable of stopping the monster that was about to end me.
Between one second and the next, a shining form interposed itself between me and my attackers. Intravil never even had a chance. Even the Lady probably couldn't have withstood that blow, but Intravil never even flinched as the dragon tore her nearly in half.
I heard screaming as I lunged forward and slammed the thick end of my scepter into one of my opponent's front legs. It wasn't until I felt the bones in that leg break that I realized the screaming was coming from me.
It was a mistake. I'd hurt the dragon—which was easily as heavy as Fenrir had been the last time I'd seen him—but it wasn't a fatal blow, and the fae to either side of him shot forward, fully intending on swamping me under…only as Intravil hit the ground there were suddenly half a dozen other figures between me and my enemies, and the one in the center was the shining, slender form of the Lady.
The energy being bled off of the ward hadn't gotten any smaller—if anything it had continued to grow as Byron lost control of what he'd started. Everyone was still moving like frat boys on the tail end of their second keg, but they were there, fighting, and they'd bought me the time I needed to recover.
I tried to slip between the Lady and the warrior on her right, but she checked me with her elbow without even looking back at me. I'd seen her hit Fenrir and shatter ribs that I couldn't have broken if I'd hit him with a garbage truck. She could have easily snapped my neck, but instead the blow was just enough to send me spinning away from the battle a split second before one of the Unseelie fae would have taken my head off.
I caught glimpses of the fight as I tried to regain my balance. Jace and Kat had left behind a trail of Unseelie bodies that dwarfed anything I'd managed to do, but that was hardly surprising given that I didn't know the first thing about fighting with my current weapon. I was relying on my speed and strength to carry the day against slower, disoriented opponents rather than any native ability.
I'd done well, better than I would have believed possible, but Kat was unchained fury and Jace was a model of efficiency. Kat landed two blows for each of Jace's strikes, and every one of her blows drew blood, but each of Jace's attacks was targeted precisely to end his opponent's ability to fight. They didn't always kill, but after each stroke of his ax he was able to move on knowing that even the ones who survived wouldn't last for much longer.
It was a shrewd tactic. A dead fairy was in no position to continue to absorb the maelstrom of energy surrounding us, but an injured, dying fairy was still apparently able to absorb at least some of the power being bled off into the air and ground.
The carnage left behind by my two friends was nothing less than unimaginable, but it hadn't been enough. Our side was still outnumbered by more than thirty percent, and it was starting to show. I didn't see any sign of Fenrir—maybe he didn't trust Kyle after their last encounter—but the dragon had the Lady more than occupied and I could see a horned figure that could only be the Minotaur making his bloody way through our lines, cutting down some of the best fighters the Seelie court had to offer.
The Lady had saved me, but in doing so she'd lost the battle. She and the warriors closest to her were holding their own against the dragon and his allies, but it meant that the odds against the rest of our people were even worse and they were falling at too quick a rate.
Apparently I wasn't the only one to realize how dire our situation had gotten; Jace had adjusted his course and was cutting his way towards the Minotaur. I'd seen Kyle go up against Fenrir and survive, but he'd had the advantage of Excalibur and an actual time-bending effect that had allowed him to move and fight at twice the speed he otherwise could have managed by mere time amping.
Jace was good—maybe even Kyle's match, I didn't know for sure—but everything I'd heard indicated that the Minotaur was every bit as powerful as Fenrir. Without the advantages that Kyle had been operating under, I wasn't sure that Jace could win—even with the distraction of all of the energy flying around us.
There was only one answer. I planted—ruining my one remaining shoe—and then threw myself over the top of the Lady. She and the dragon were locked in what looked like a ponderous, slow-motion exchange of blows, and it was the easiest thing in the world to clear both of them and land just behind the dragon. I spun in place and hit the dragon with every ounce of strength my amped-up frame was capable of generating.
If I'd had any questions regarding
whether or not the Scepter of Storms was more than just another mundane weapon, they were answered in that moment. I hit the dragon with so much force that I felt the shock of contact even through the sensation-deadening layer of my augmented skin, which split open in several spots across my palms as my overworked body failed to keep up with the demands I was placing on it.
Any normal weapon that size would have bent under that impact, but my scepter simply transmitted a portion of the blow back up through my hands, arms and shoulders as it shattered the dragon's spine. I wasn't close enough for a blow to its head to be a possibility, but paralyzing it halfway down the length of its body would be more than enough to leave it a sitting duck for the Lady to deal with.
I didn't waste any time hitting it again. Instead, I used the momentum imparted to me as my weapon bounced back away from the dragon and slammed the Scepter of Storms into the next Unseelie fae in line with enough force to pick it up and launch it several dozen feet through the air.
A flicker of movement, barely visible out of the corner of my eye, caused me to throw myself forward, and I just managed to avoid what looked like a giant jaguar as it sailed through the space I'd just been occupying. The Lady's sword licked out, striking with a casual grace and speed that was only possible because she was at least an order of magnitude stronger than I was—even while I was amped up. Her strike cut completely through the jaguar, and then I was running towards Jace with everything I had left inside me.
The ground blurred underneath me as I dodged the corpses of fallen fae, but all of my attention was on Jace. He and the Minotaur had already exchanged several blows. The Minotaur was limping, but Jace's left arm was hanging limply at his side, obviously broken.
Jace was trying to retreat, trying to buy himself enough time to work a healing effect, but his opponent knew better than to give him enough room to do that. Jace dropped his ax and clawed desperately for the sword he'd strapped to his back so many hours before.
I understood what he was doing—the sword was a much better option for fighting with one arm. He needed a weapon that he could stab with, something that wouldn't leave him completely vulnerable with every swing, but it was the wrong move. Jace should have been faster than the Minotaur, but his shoes had disintegrated somewhere along the way. Even worse, the Minotaur had dropped down to all fours in an effort to get more traction and when he threw himself forward he did so with limbs powered with the kind of strength that flowed through Fenrir or the Lady's bodies, strength that no mere Awakened could possibly hope to match.
I screamed again—a combination of useless warning and rage. I wanted to look away, to spare myself the sight of what I knew was coming next, but some iron core inside of me refused to miss out on Jace's last moments. If I couldn't do anything else for him, at least I could do that.
The Minotaur shot forward like a bullet out of a gun. He'd dropped his massive bronze ax in order to make it so he would be able to generate the maximum possible speed, but he didn't need it—not when his head was topped by a pair of razor-sharp black horns. Jace tried to compensate for his error in dropping his ax. He planted his left foot and threw himself to the side, but it was too late.
The tip of one of the horns pierced Jace's chest, and part of me wanted to throw up, but there wasn't time for that. I was still too far away to stop what I knew was going to happen next, but that didn't stop me from trying.
There was less than a dozen yards between Jace and I now, but the Minotaur had landed and I saw massive muscles in its arms and legs flex as it started to whip its head to one side in an explosive motion that would finish Jace off.
My anger was already stoked as high as it could go, but it felt brittle, like it was barely strong enough to keep my current effects up and running. I would have tried to work some kind of effect regardless, counting on the fact that peak memories required less in the way of emotional reserves to burn them, but none of my effects were capable of stopping what was about to happen.
Right then the tsunami of energy pouring off of the ward to my left surged to impossible levels. The light it gave off as it discharged into the ground and the surviving fae from both sides was beyond blinding, but I welcomed it because I knew there was no way that even the Minotaur was going to be able to move while that much power was beating against him.
Despite the fact that I couldn't see anything, I never even slowed down. I barreled forward with nothing but my memory of what I'd seen a split second before to guide me. The Scepter of Storms had been up even with my eyes, but as I took what I thought was the last step separating me from my target, I spun my weapon backwards in a single revolution that brought it upwards with every ounce of force I had left. I'd dropped my weight as the head of the scepter passed behind me, and then as it started upwards, I rose up onto my toes and I prayed that I would be able to hit the Minotaur as I intended.
The impact of my scepter hitting something should have been the most welcome thing I'd ever experienced, but I was instantly overcome by a fear that I'd missed the Minotaur and hit Jace instead. I needed to be able to see, needed to know what I'd done. An unaccustomed weight settled on my shoulder a second later, startling me, and I reflexively reached for my anger, but rather than any of the effects I'd ever used before, something else burst out of my forehead in an invisible stream of destroyed memories.
I blinked, and then suddenly realized that I could see again. Bethany was on my shoulder, screaming something into my ear, but there was something else—something more important than Bethany—that I needed to take care of.
I turned the other direction and saw Jace, motionless on the ground in a pool of blood. More importantly, I saw the Minotaur rolling to a stop several dozen yards away from us. His shoulder was an unusable mess, crushed by my attack, but he'd just proved that he didn't need a weapon to be dangerous. He'd been bad enough back when he'd been surrounded by discharging energy. I had no chance of victory and I knew it, but I couldn't just give up—not when Jace's life was at stake.
I lowered the head of my weapon down onto Jace's chest and another stream of memories burst out of me as I worked an effect that I shouldn't have had the emotional reserves to force into reality. I heard a gasp from below me as Jace sucked in his first breath in several seconds, but by that time I'd already started moving forward.
I couldn't have explained it, but I'd somehow known that he was going to be okay as soon as the artifact touched him. All that was left was making sure that he had time to get away, time to run to safety.
The sounds of battle were thick around me as fae, Seelie and Unseelie, tried to destroy each other. I suspected that we were still outnumbered, but there wasn't time to look around and confirm one way or another.
The Minotaur pulled himself back onto his feet and shook his head as though disoriented. "That was well done, godling. It's been a very long time since someone hit me that hard."
"That? That's nothing, I'm just getting warmed up."
He shot forward, moving with the kind of speed that was only possible for an Awakened or the most powerful of fae. He wasn't as nimble as Fenrir, but if anything he was faster. That was okay though, I'd had a chance to take his measure while he was fighting Jace, and he was down one limb, which meant he wasn't as fast as he should have been.
He dropped his head as he came in, fully intending on goring me, but that also meant that he had to move his head slightly to one side so that he could connect with something other than his forehead. I waited until the last possible second and then committed, spinning to the side as I lashed out with my scepter.
I connected with the base of the horn closest to me, shattering it with a resounding crack that would have made me sick if I hadn't been so completely overcome by bloodlust. I'd succeeded in depriving him of half his natural weaponry, but the force of my blow changed his course and he barreled into me, leading with his damaged shoulder.
It was a glancing blow, but we both still cried out in pain—me because I felt one of my amped-
up ribs crack, and him because his joint was already a mass of agony. The collision knocked me to the ground.
I landed within arm's reach of him and he would have had me right then if not for the fact that Jace appeared above both of us and stabbed downward. Jace didn't succeed in landing the killing blow he'd been hoping for, but he did send our enemy rolling away, and that saved me.
I half expected Jace to charge forward while the Minotaur was off balance and still rolling across the ground, but instead he reached down, grabbing me by the arm. He pulled a shriek out of me that was part pain and part surprise as he yanked me to my feet, and then I felt a rush of energy shoot out of him.
His barrier effect materialized into existence behind us just in time to save us from being run over by several dozen Unseelie fae who were retreating back to the Minotaur in the hopes that he would be able to save them from the Lady and her warriors.
The Lady herself glided by less than a second behind the stampeding fae, running her hand along the edge of Jace's barrier without actually stopping to look at us.
"Get her far enough back that she's out of danger. We need her accessing the scepter's true powers rather than brawling with it like it is no different than any other hunk of metal."
Jace dropped the barrier and half led, half dragged me back over in the direction of Byron. Something about healing him—or possibly it had been the collision with the Minotaur—had sent me into shock. It was like I was trying to function through a layer of gauze. None of my thoughts could make it out to where they were actionable.
Kat met up with us at the same time as we reached Byron, and helped Jace pull me into the hidden doorway that Byron had revealed when we'd first arrived. One thought finally broke free of its restraints, and I tried to turn around, tried to get back outside where I had a chance of making a difference in the fight.
