“I will kill every man in your legion!” he yelled as he let the flames encase his body. Men of this Age would never have seen a Mage do such a thing, and he hoped it would frighten the less-seasoned soldiers away. “Do you really wish death on all these people?”
Nolen laughed before he turned to leave. “Enjoy your last moments as a free man,” he called before motioning for attack. The camp suddenly became alive with the shouts of a thousand voices and the ring of a thousand drawn swords.
Gabriel let patterns fly to his hands without discernment. He began with defensive Earth patterns, drawing energy from the trees around him, throwing up mounds of soil, creating barriers and blocks and distractions. Reaching, he found no Water energy; not a stream or raincloud or spilled mug. Men poured into the firelight brandishing swords and spears, their faces angry and determined.
He laid a side-slide pattern and moved the soil around him sharply. His attackers slipped and fell on their faces as the ground ripped up like a rug. Dropping the spreader Fire pattern across his skin, the fire around him shot out in a circle like a dying star and drew back in. He channeled into the ground beneath his feet. He formed a web-pattern that recreated the substance of a spider’s web and set it between a dozen trees. Lastly, he made a Tarmen-blast that shot rocks and soil from around him high into the air.
The sharp scream of an arrow passed by his ear. He ran through the patterns he knew as he fueled another side-slide pattern to jerk the ground before him, searching for something to stop arrows. Soldiers bypassed his earthworks, so he reached far back into his memory for the darker patterns he was told never to use unless his life depended on them.
‘May the stars damn me. I will kill them all to be free of a Castrofax.’
He formed a dozen light-shards of compressed energy and sent them flying into the crowd. The first man to fall was but a boy. His gaze lingered on Gabriel’s before death took him from his knees to his face. Gabriel would never forget the haunting look. He formed a dozen more with a guilty conscious. They skipped through the men, passing through a couple before they faded out. A chorus of screams assaulted his aural senses as smoke and fire toyed with the rest of them.
Another arrow shot passed him, clipping his forearm. The pain was fleeting as he forced it to the back of his mind. Summoning Fire again, he drew a wide ring around him to hold off the men getting past his defenses.
The razor-pattern would be enough to take many soldiers out, so he moved his hands in fluid triangular movements. He drew the lines of the pattern, connected them, and fueled it. A faint green light shot out from his chest in a circle, kissing the edges of leaves in the trees.
“Bring him down!” Nolen’s voice bellowed in the foray.
Gabriel clenched his fist and abruptly jerked it down, loosening the leaves from their branches. A sharp pain exploded from his shoulder and threw him to his back, but the pattern was already fueled, and he had to wait only seconds for the fluttering leaves to touch down. Sharp as razors, the leaves cut through anything they touched. Shouts and screams mixed with his own as his shoulder shot pain through his torso.
He found a solid arrow buried deep and when he tried to rise, he realized it had stuck itself in the soft loam beneath him. He snapped the slender shaft, sending blinding pain through his body, and left the rest in his back where he could not reach it. As he rose, an older solider with flame licking his black trousers jumped over an earthwork and drove the head of his spear towards Gabriel’s torso. Gabriel did not have enough time to lay the pattern he wanted, so he rolled sideways as the spear cut through the soft flesh above his hip and drove itself in deeply.
A root of the nearest tree shot up at the man, piercing him in his chest, and he died quietly suspended and burning. Gabriel pulled the spear free and stood, flicking exploding patterns into the oncoming soldiers as he kept his cries of pain inside. He pulled up the fire he sent into the soil, this time closer to where he believed Nolen to be, and screams filled his ears. He knew thousands of patterns, but only so many were for attacking and defending.
He formed a white puzzle he liked to call the ash-pattern, a pattern he had created. It worked with heat energy but was not fire, and when it made contact with anything, it turned the object to ash. He never tried it on a human, but as he sent it into the army, he remembered the pattern was created to better carve stone and wood. With it he carved off the faces and limbs of men unfortunate to follow orders from a man who did not know what they were dealing with. It sickened him.
He felt something constrict tightly around his legs and threaten to topple him over, and as he wheeled his arms to stay balanced, he shot a string of Spirit into the sky and opened his hand. Dozens of lightning fingers streaked across the cloudless sky, striking where he directed. It was not enough to break Nolen’s concentration on the pattern wrapped around Gabriel’s calves. A man splintered into blackened ash before something solid struck Gabriel in the face.
It sent him to his back, bloodying his lip against a tooth and pushing the arrowhead deeper. He saw the flash of an Air pattern before it struck him again, this time in the throat. He slammed a fist into the ground and opened the earth up, sending the fissure in Nolen’s direction. Both patterns vanished from him.
He stood, gasping, and sent pinch-patterns out, filtering into the brains of soldiers to pinch nerves and veins. Some men fell instantly, others took a few strides before collapsing, while a few writhed in pain and stumbled blindly forward. Advancing soldiers pushed them aside continuing their march. It sickened Gabriel deeper. ‘This or the Castrofax,’ he repeated in his head.
Stamping a foot into the ground, he sent the earth before him launching at a group of soldiers. With his hands he molded the soil to wrap around them like a cocoon, trapping a dozen men beneath the mound. Seeing the success of the pattern, he threw two more to his sides where the men were thickest.
‘I’ve never fought so many men at once—I don’t know how this works.’ His mind seeped doubt as overwhelming feelings sank into him. Soldiers came from every direction, each one with a purpose to wound him until he could no longer fight. The sensation turned his stomach.
The smell of blood and smoke rose around him. Men screamed, and Gabriel resisted the urge to run and heal them. Instead he sent a ball of blue fire bouncing through the army.
He felt the slice of another arrow pierce through his leg and collide solidly with his femur. He opened his mouth in a silent scream and doubled over. Heat rushed up his face as the pain throbbed with every heartbeat. Grasping the slender shaft he yanked the arrowhead free and screamed as it broke through his flesh. A flash of red permeated his peripheral vision, and he shot a beam of fire into whatever man broke through his defenses, hearing their sharp exhale of breath before there was nothing else.
He fell to the knee of his unwounded leg and swooned against the blood loss. Putting a hand on his side, he felt it slick with blood, and he saw it had bled down his shirt into his trousers. The shaft, still lodged in his shoulder, limited his movement, and now the arrow to his leg gave him a sick realization that the leg was compromised. Sweat dripped down into his eyes, and he wiped a hand across his brow inhaling deeply, feeling the drain the Elements took on his body. Stamina dictated how long he could continue. It could be built with time, but he had grown soft.
He pulled apart pieces of a fallen soldier’s coat, and used the red thread to bind his waist and wrap a tourniquet around his thigh. There was nothing he could do for the other wounds, so he mustered his strength and slowly climbed back on his feet, favoring his right leg. Pushing through the screaming in his head and ears, he continued to battle for his freedom.
The men were closer now, kicking dirt over his fire barrier and pushing frightened horses to jump over. He reached out again for Water energy and felt it far away, someone swirling a canteen. Seizing the energy Gabriel flicked his thumb, index and middle finger at the cavalrymen, filling their windpipes with water from their own bodies. Once riderless, the hor
ses bolted.
‘Should I bury myself and hold a defensive position?’ he wondered but knew they would break through eventually, and he could be trapped. He had sparred with many Mages while training in Jaden, but this was beyond the pale. No Mage could consider training for such battle because it was inconceivable. ‘Then show them what a Class Ten can do.’
Pages of patterns, tomes of movements and details of new patterns filled his mind. He selected one. People saw the stars as wondrous and terrible. They cursed by and praised with their names. Legends said the first Water Mage was born of the sea, the first Air Mage formed when the four winds collided, but the first Spirit Mage fell from the stars. ‘Meet those stars you so love.’
He reached heavenward and extended his hand to the dark night sky. Ahead the stars twinkled, and the gibbous moon sat fat in the west. While the stars gave off their own energy, Gabriel could not feel them, but their pinpricks in the velvet of darkness were all he needed to create an illusion. He threw lines of Spirit from his chest through his fingertips and lost them in the darkness. There were thousands of stars in the sky, and he chose the most brilliant. Securing thousands of strings of Spirit to each pinprick, he solidified the end of each thread to turn it into a glowing orb.
Men stopped to see why the Mage with his hand to the sky was not fighting, and for a moment even the screaming dimmed. Gabriel felt the pattern wane on his stamina and was grateful when it was finished and fueled. To the untrained eye the night sky looked the same.
Gabriel looked in Nolen’s direction and gave the man a moment to call his men back, but the Prince did not know the pattern. He couldn’t have known it; it was Gabriel’s.
Gabriel drew his hand down sharply, feeling every thread pull on the framework of his body. For a moment there was nothing. Then one man shouted and pointed skyward as a glittering star grew closer. As faces rose to see, thousands of stars fell shrieking to the earth. To an uneducated soldier, it looked as though the heavens had loosed their hold on the stars, but a skilled Mage would see little balls of compressed energy.
The stars fell and gained speed before crashing down. Each orb was the size of a plate and had enough energy to fall, bounce at least once, and fall again, killing two if not more before evaporating. Soldiers screamed in horror, some ran, some bellowed of the end of days. Gabriel found himself on his good knee again, forgetting when he fell. He listened to the chorus of screaming and felt he might sick up. Flashes of light hauntingly illuminated him.
He looked to see if Robyn had gone. She never left, and she stood atop a cliff shaking a canteen. He made sure the stars had not fallen near her.
The flows of Spirit energy were slowing down with each death, but there were still so many more advancing. He tried to rise to his feet but fell back down to his knee. His wounds screamed at him, and sweat stuck his shirt to his skin. He tried to rise again, failing. He would have to continue the battle from his knee.
He selected a pattern not seen in an Age and split the largest trees up the center. Every time he bent a finger, a massive tree fell forward, opening the split like a cavernous maw, and slammed down onto the soldiers. The trees closed their mouths and straightened, or threw their tops high and flung the men into the darkness. The crunch of bones and pop of joints filled the air for a moment. The soldiers scurried around, trying to avoid the flailing trees, only to be caught up in an absent Fire pattern and light-shards. Gabriel called lightning down again, feeling it drain his stamina.
‘This or the Castrofax. Murder hundreds for my freedom. How can I honestly justify that?’ He stopped for a moment, keeping his ring of protective fire high. ‘I must. My power in the hands of a man like Nolen would be disastrous.’
He sent a creeping-choke pattern to his left where the soldiers were thickest, pulling men to the ground with wild vines. He gathered Water energy and threw balls of icy water that wrapped around a man and froze. The air was nearly parched of water, but Gabriel knew how to draw it from the earth or people. Hurling the last of the wrapping-balls, he expended the water close by.
One of Nolen’s patterns suddenly formed around him in a dome, blocking sound and heat. It constricted and forced him to crouch lower. Forming a green pattern, he blew the bottom of the dome off and broke its connection, frizzling it back to nothing. A solid object hit him in the small of his back, and he realized Nolen was mustering his strength again.
Gabriel did not bother rising but instead threw balls of blue fire in Nolen’s direction. By now many trees were alight, and branches snapped and crashed to the floor. The air was filled with crackling flames, neighing horses, and dying men.
A section of his fire barrier suddenly died from an Air pattern, and a moment later a rider pushed a stout charger through. Gabriel wasted no time seizing a rock and launching it at the rider with an Earth pattern. It struck the man in the chest and pierced through, and as the man screamed and fell, Gabriel realized the scream was too high-pitched to be male.
He somehow stumbled three paces before his leg could bear his weight no longer, and he crumpled by the side of the woman. Her helm had fallen, revealing shorter brown hair tied back messily. While she was not the fairest of maidens, he could see the femininity in her eyes. He looked into them with uncertainty, knowing he could heal her but would cost him stamina. Blood came to her mouth as she coughed violently, her chest filling with fluid.
“Hold on,” he commanded and flicked together a white delve-pattern to feel for the damage. “Inhale and hold the breath.” She sucked in, gurgling while trying to keep the air in. He sent a healing patterns through her chest, mending skin, repairing bone, and attaching nerves. It took only a moment before she began coughing again; her lungs alleviated.
The wideness of her eyes lessened, and she put a hand on his shoulder and gripped his shirt. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
He felt something cold wrap around his left wrist as her warm fingers brushed him.
He wrenched away from her grasp and fell back on his free arm to look at his wrist. A copper band that glowed a faint yellow in the center secured around it, and as he turned his arm, he saw it bore no seam. He grabbed at it with his free hand to yank it lose, pry it open, or slip it over his hand to no avail. Panic flooded through him, and he grabbed the soldier’s boot knife before he knew what he was doing. He put the blade’s edge against the side of his wrist, prepared to cut the damned thing off, starting with his hand.
“Stop!” the woman yelled a moment before a crossbow quarrel drove into his upper ribs. The force threw him back so hard it shoved the air from his lungs and shot pain through his torso. The knife made a sharp line across his thumb before it fell from his hand.
‘Are…are they trying to kill me?’ he wondered, gasping. It was now not just a battle for his freedom, but for his life. Gabriel tried to rise, but the woman put a hand in the center of his chest and held him down, forcing the arrow through his shoulder into the soil.
“It’s better if you don’t struggle,” she said. As her hand went to the quarrel Gabriel saw another two riders break through the fire barrier.
‘I’ve not lost yet.’ He threw his hand in their direction, but before he could release a pattern, an arrow took one out in the temple. ‘Happy coincidence,’ he thought a moment before the other rider fell with an arrow to the back of the skull. ‘Robyn’s joined the fight.’
He pushed the woman off him and tried to sit as more riders filtered through his barrier. They dismounted quicker than the fired arrows, and only two more soldiers fell. The women descended on him, some going for a leg as he kicked. Others toppled onto his torso, and somewhere in the fray, a second cold band slipped around his right wrist. Adrenaline poured through him as he fought back, striking one in the nose and feeling it break. He called Earth to him and drew a creeping-choke pattern to wrap around three women, pulling them back and off him, but more soldiers were coming.
He reached skyward and called lightning down, feeling its hot crackle strike beside him
to split a man in twain and throw a woman back passed the fire barrier. In the crashing he heard someone yell to grab his hands, and two strikes later both hands hit the ground spread-eagle. One woman sat on a hand while a man knelt on the other, stopping his mobility completely. Two more soldiers knelt over his calves to keep him from kicking. A man fell to his right with an arrow notched in his eye.
Through the flames Nolen strode triumphantly, his coat blown out behind him. An arrow streaked for his skull but bounced off an air shield he held. He stepped up between Gabriel’s legs and stood above him, his feet on either side of Gabriel’s ribs. Gabriel must have been a sight for Nolen, bleeding from his face and sides with a quarrel and an arrow shaft stuck in him, muddied and sweaty, and in the most vulnerable position he could think of.
Another arrow bounced off Nolen’s shield.
“And so it was the Class Ten who caused the stars to fall fell to a Mage half his Class,” Nolen whispered.
“Don’t,” Gabriel spat, bordering on pleading. “What do you want of me? I will come with you but please—”
Nolen held up a finger. “Let us not say the Class Ten begged for his life in the end.” He bent and took a knee as he pulled the neckpiece Castrofax from his coat. It glimmered in the firelight as though alive. A soldier grabbed Gabriel’s hair while another put a hand under his jaw and pulled his head back exposing his neck. Gabriel strained at his limbs to no avail; the soldiers were too heavy. His body tensed as his breath rasped in his throat.
“Please,” he whispered as Nolen stretched his hands forward. The last thing he heard was the click of the Castrofax as it closed around his neck.
The Castrofax (Book 1) Page 13
