by Dante King
“That reminds me, do you know what might happen if I combine my spells?”
“You mean, if you attack a monster with both spells at the same time? It might confuse the monster, which I’m sure would provide an advantage.”
“That’s not quite what I had in mind,” I said. “I mean, what would happen if I threw an ice spear at a fireball?”
“That’s a good question. It would seem to defeat the purpose of having an ice spell, since it wouldn’t be cold anymore, but I suppose it’s worth an attempt.”
We’d come to a wide spot in the road, and off to one side there was a spot where the trees gave way to a rocky outcrop. There was a deep cutting in the rock, as if stone had been quarried there in ages past. At the base of the cutting there was a wide patch of coarse gravel. I pointed at it.
“I’m going to try combining my spells now,” I said. “I’ll aim for that gravel patch, so the fireball can’t set the forest on fire.”
We stopped. I glanced up and down the road to make sure nobody was approaching from either direction, then I pulled some Mana from my pool and pushed it into my left arm. The Fire tattoo lit up as I infused it with Mana.
Then I reached for some Mana to push into my ice tattoo. Immediately, the Fire tattoo started to fade, as though I could only empower one tattoo at a time. I wasn’t satisfied with this conclusion, so I reached with my willpower and pushed the Mana back into my Fire tattoo. Immediately, the ice tattoo completely faded.
“I can’t do it,” I said. “I can’t control both strands of Mana at the same time.”
“What you are attempting sounds like a great challenge,” Amelia said.
“Damn. I wanted to see how the two elements might interact.”
“Wait a moment,” Amelia said, her face lighting up in a bright smile. “I can cast an ice spear! Perhaps we can work together?”
Not for the first time, I was taken aback by the ingenuity of the beautiful scholar.
“That’s brilliant,” I replied. “All that learning is good for something after all.” I nudged Amelia playfully.
“Hey, watch it! I might just see how good your defense against ice attacks is.”
I held up my hands. “Only joking. Come on, let’s see if we can make this work. Tell me when you’re ready to cast the spear.”
It took Amelia a little longer to prepare her spell, as she still wasn’t as used to having a Mana pool as I was. I waited with a fireball on my palm.
“Ready,” she said, holding a spear of ice over her shoulder, ready to throw.
“Throw it now,” I said.
She hurled the spear forward at the patch of gravel. I threw my fireball half a second later.
The ball of fire whooshed forward and grazed the spear. A puff of steam hissed into the air, and the spear splashed against the ground, totally melted.
“Well, we can make a monster really wet,” Amelia said wryly.
“Might be good against cats?”
Amelia laughed. “Let’s try again.”
We tried a couple more times, but with no better luck.
“We’ll obviously need to practice this some more,” I said. “I still have a good feeling about the possibilities.”
“We’ll just have to wait for my Mana to regenerate first; I’m feeling a bit drained,” Amelia said.
We continued to practice as we walked, waiting in between for our Mana to recover. We both started to recover Mana faster as we practiced concentrating. Focusing on our Mana pools seemed to increase our recovery rate.
The results were a little better each time, making the puff of steam a bit larger. I was excited by the progress since we could use the combination to blind an enemy temporarily. I got better and better at aiming my fireballs and regulating the size of them. I was confident that I could throw fireballs at the dirt of the road in front of us without sending them into the trees to start an accidental fire.
I also practiced trying to hold more than one strand of Mana in my arms at a time, but that skill continued to elude me for now.
The landscape was changing, the trees becoming thinner and the ground becoming hillier and rockier. As the sun reached the middle of the sky, we stopped at the foot of a hill overlooking the road. The ruins of a stone tower stood at the top of the hill.
“I suppose that was meant to keep travelers safe,” I remarked. “Doesn’t look like it would do much good now.”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Amelia. “Its upkeep must have been neglected for some reason.”
“Oh well, it makes for a nice view,” I said. “This seems like as good a place as any to take a break. Are you hungry?”
Amelia nodded, and we walked off the road a little way until we came to a flat expanse of ground where we stopped to eat. From here, we had an unobstructed view of the hill and the crumbled remains of the stone tower at the top. The sky was quite clear, nothing but birds and a few small clouds to see. Not much to hear either. We hadn’t passed any other travelers so far that day. That was a good thing really, since the road was frequently used by slavers. Neither of us were particularly keen to risk being recaptured by a slaver caravan.
As we ate, we watched the top of the hill. The toppled stones stuck out like teeth against the horizon. I heard animals moving in the undergrowth around the base of the hill.
“Do you hear those animals?” I asked Amelia. “I’ve never been this far north. Do you think they could be magical Beasts?”
She shook her head. “I doubt it very much. Those two we stumbled upon yesterday were likely the only ones for miles around.”
“What makes you think that? Didn’t the Librarians send you to investigate Beasts that had escaped from the mines?”
“They did, but there were only one or two firsthand accounts of escaped monsters. Those reports were from three months ago, so perhaps the number of monsters has increased. Still, we won’t be taken off-guard; our sensitivity to elemental magic will notify us whenever a magical monster is near.”
It was this same sensitivity that had led to Amelia and I being captured by slavers, the special ability that was used to detect the location of monsters in the mines.
“Those clouds seem to be forming quickly,” Amelia observed as we neared the end of our meal.
“Whoa, you’re right.” I looked up at the top of the hill. Above the tower, a stormhead seemed to be gathering.
“Is that natural?” Amelia asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. What could be causing it?”
We watched for another 30 seconds or so as the clouds grew. They were heavy and dark, but they seemed mostly to surround the top of the tower. They swirled in a vortex toward the tower top, but where we were sitting, the sun continued to shine.
I shuddered a little as a sensation arose in my mind. It was the same feeling I’d experienced when we’d stumbled upon those monsters yesterday.
“Did you feel that?” I asked Amelia as I scanned the area for magical Beasts.
She was looking around fearfully. “I felt it,” she said, then she reached out and grabbed my arm, pointing to the base of the hill. I looked to where she was pointing and saw the monster.
About 100 yards from where we were sitting, a great brown creature lumbered up the slope. It was a fire bear, like the one I’d fought yesterday. Curling horns protruded from its head, tapering away to cruel spikes. Gouts of flame and puffs of black smoke leaked from between a mouthful of sharp teeth. The creature flexed long claws as it reared up on its hind legs for a moment before continuing up the hill. Its red eyes were fixed on the storm-wreathed tower.
“There’s another one,” I said.
Amelia looked where I pointed. Another bear had emerged from the edge of the treeline and followed the first. If anything, it was bigger and more evil-looking than the first.
To our amazement, the two bears were followed by a group of three monstrous boars. Again, these were very much like the one we had fought the day before. They were bigger than reg
ular boars. Spikes protruded from their backs, and freezing mist puffed from their noses and mouths, leaving a trail of frost on the grass behind them.
We sat very still. One monster at a time had been challenging enough, but five at once might prove too much even for Amelia and my combined talents.
“They haven’t seen us,” said Amelia quietly.
“It looks like they are intent on reaching the tower,” I replied. “Even if they did see us, I’m not sure if they’d care. They seem to be being drawn uphill.”
Sure enough, even as I spoke, the second bear reared up on its hind legs and scanned the area with its fierce little red eyes. It looked straight at us. Then, it snorted flame, dropped to all fours again, and ignored us to continue uphill.
We had no time to consider what this might mean, because at that moment a shout pierced the air, coming from the direction of the tower. It was followed by shouts, the voice definitely that of a woman.
I jumped to my feet. “We have to help her!”
Amelia put her hand on my arm. “Wait, we don’t know what’s up there. It might not be safe.”
“Obviously it’s not safe, there are monsters running up that hill. But we can’t leave a woman up there to die. We might be able to help.”
“What if the voice is a trap? I have read of enchantments before that could lure strangers to their doom with false voices.”
The clouds above the tower flashed with lightning, and thunder boomed out overhead. The sound of a woman shouting came once more.
“You might be right, Amelia, but I can’t take that chance. If someone is in danger up there and I could have helped, I won’t be able to live with myself.”
“Alright, I’ll come with you.” Amelia smiled, as if she was secretly pleased that I’d made the right decision, though her face still had lines of worry in it.
“Leave the food,” I said. “We can come back for it if all goes well.”
And if it didn’t, then it would become food for flies, just like we would.
Chapter Eight
Side by side, we both began to make our way up the hill. As we climbed, we glanced around to see more and more bears and boars emerging from the trees at the bottom of the hill, all moving upward.
“Be careful,” I said to Amelia as we crested the top of the hill, “we don’t know what we’re going to find.”
The top of the hill flattened out into a broad, open space littered with fallen stones, the remains of the tower and defenses which had once stood here. In the center, two remaining walls of the central tower still stood, soaring up from the middle of a wide flagged plaza with weeds and young trees growing from cracks in between the stones.
All around the hilltop, bears and boars were converging on the central tower. Flames flared from the mouths of the bears, and freezing fog blasted with every breath of the boars. My sense of their Elemental Cores was pulling me in every direction, and a glance at Amelia’s grim expression told me she was feeling the same thing. It was an assault on our Elemental Sensitivity.
At the same time, the roaring and stampeding of the magical Beasts made an incredible racket. Above the top of the ruined tower, the spinning vortex of cloud blocked out the sun. Lightning flickered from within its depths.
Suddenly, a great fork of lightning crackled down from the cloud to the base of the tower. Unlike regular lightning, this elemental force was a deep purple in color. The boom of thunder that followed this was deafening, and we both ducked instinctively. Through the ringing in our ears that followed the roar of the thunder, we heard the fierce shout of the woman again.
“Come on!” I yelled to Amelia, and we both broke into a run.
I dodged the great stones lying on the hillside all around the tower, Amelia at my side. The tower walls blocked our view of the central plaza, but as we ran around the side of the tower, bringing the central plaza into view, I pulled up short.
Amelia gasped as she stopped beside me.
In the middle of the plaza, flanked by the ruined walls and tumbledown stones of the old tower, a woman was holding her own against a relentless attack by monsters.
She was tall, nearly my height. A leather skirt with shining runes swirled about her slender legs, and her long, silver-white hair was whipped about by the wind of the storm. A leather breastplate hugged her figure, showing off the curve of her hips and her generous breasts. Her skin was olive-colored, her eyes a bright violet, and her expression was fierce but terrified.
Scattered around the plaza were the corpses of several monsters; it looked as if she had fought off several waves of attackers already. As we watched, more were lumbering toward her from every direction.
Most of them were bears and boars, just like the monsters I’d fought yesterday, but there was one creature that was different. Its body was like a gigantic lizard, scaly and shining, with a neck and head like that of a snake. It stood on all fours like a lizard, but it was easily twice as tall as a man. The long, sinuous neck swung the horrible head back and forth as it moved toward the woman. As it swung its head, a long, forked black tongue flickered in and out, and lightning crackled around its jaws.
The bears and boars were congregating around this monstrosity. They crowded forward as a group, spouting flame, frost, and lightning at her, but then they snarled and drew back rather than press the attack.
For a moment, I wondered how she had defended herself so far. She had a sword, a broad-bladed shortsword, but I couldn’t see how she could have held off so many monsters single handedly.
How had she done it?
The answer came when the woman let out a shout and slashed the air with her blade.
The thunder boomed again, and lightning shot down from the clouds, striking her sword. With visible effort, the woman swung the weapon in a great arc downward, and purple lightning surged out from it, crackling along the ground. The lightning flashed out over the stones, dozens of tendrils blitzing out at the nearest Beast. A bear exploded in light and was left as a smoking corpse on the ground.
She held her sword up in the air, ready for another strike. It was obvious by now that she was controlling this storm. I had no idea such power was possible, but now was not the time to stand and stare.
Amelia was standing ready on my right. I glanced back at the hillside behind us. It seemed to be clear. All the Beasts had now made it to the top of the hill and were converging on the leather-clad woman.
She brought down another strike of lightning against the Beasts. One of the tendrils struck the lizard-snake, but the lightning appeared to be absorbed into its skin, leaving it unharmed.
“Amelia, you take the fire bears, I’ll attack the ice boars,” I said.
Amelia nodded and started producing an ice spear. It made most sense for her to attack the creatures vulnerable to fire, while I took on those most vulnerable to ice.
I pushed Mana through the flame tattoo on my wrist, then through the three spears beneath it, generating three fireballs on my palm. I waited only a moment, taking aim at a couple of boars to my left, near the outer edge of the plaza. The three fireballs shot out together, spreading only a short distance apart. They whooshed through the air toward their targets, which were still facing the woman in the middle.
One fireball sailed to the right of them, bursting harmlessly against the stones, but the other two hit one boar each. Both Beasts let out screams of pain, blasting ice from their nostrils against the paving. Then, they both turned to face me.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Amelia’s ice spear skewer the side of one of the bears, spreading ice over its fur. The monster roared, pouring fire from its nostrils, setting one of the shrubs on fire. This would take the pressure off the woman we were helping. I just hoped we could take the Beasts as they turned to face us.
I quickly summoned three more fireballs as the two boars began to charge toward me. This time I was even quicker. The two boars were only a few yards away from me and right next to one another when I shot three fireballs
at them. One fireball hit each Beast straight in the face, while the other exploded on the ground in front of them, searing their legs with flame. Both Beasts roared in pain again. I jumped to the side to avoid the blast of cold air that rushed from their snouts.
As the boars reeled from my attack, I drew my shortsword and summoned fire on the blade. The sword blade instantly became red hot. I leaped forward and plunged the blade into one Beast after the other. Steam rushed from their wounds, and they both slumped lifeless against the ground.
Thunder boomed as the woman in the middle of the plaza cast another Lightning spell, frying several more of the Beasts.
I looked up to see Amelia holding her sword aloft above a bear, which was struggling against the ground. Her blade was coated in ice. I smiled. She was getting the hang of this.
She plunged the sword into the bear’s back. With a loud roar, the bear’s legs gave out underneath it, and it collapsed to the ground.
The only Beast left was the snake-lizard. This monster was waddling forward, ever closer to the leather-clad woman at the center of the plaza. Its tongue flickered in and out, lightning crackling around its mouth. Her Lightning spells seemed to have little effect on it, and she was looking exhausted.
Amelia stepped back from the bear she’d just killed and looked at the snake-lizard. The Beast had evidently survived the leather-clad woman’s attacks. It would be a tough monster to kill, but we both needed to see what we were dealing with.
With a yell, the woman summoned another bolt of lightning from the sky, thunder booming and crashing as the raw power rushed into her sword. She grunted loudly as she swung the blade downward.
This time she poured the lightning in one huge bolt. Thunder boomed from her swordpoint, knocking us both a step back with the powerful sonic wave. The bolt of lightning exploded against the snake-lizard. A hot burning smell filled the clearing, and I was blinded for a moment by the flash of light.
When my vision cleared again, I saw the snake-lizard still advancing toward the woman. It hissed and shot out its tongue, and a bolt of lightning burst from its lips. The lightning struck the ground where she was standing, as she leapt to the side, narrowly avoiding the blast.
