Soaring in Air: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Magic of Nasci Book 5)

by DM Fike

  Weak from asphyxiation and numb without pith, I shuffled forward toward that wall of wind. Guntram had wound the tornado so tight that although the gusts swiped me here and there, I didn’t actually encounter true resistance until I tried sticking my hand through. If you’ve ever tried to swim against an undertow, you’d understand the sensation. Guntram had made a solid object out of motion. I had no idea how to get through it.

  But I had to. Guntram faced a Nasci-fueled Rafe alone in there. Guntram would try to bind him using that awful technique. A deep anger surged within me. This was supposed to be my Shepherd Trial. My fight.

  I would not let Guntram die for me.

  I tried to push through the tornado by sheer force of will, each time more painful than the last. It nipped at my skin, threw dust in my mouth, and simply would not budge. I even opened all my pithways to let air flow through me, like I did in order to breathe underwater, but without an accompanying sigil to let me pass, all it did was make me dizzy and push me back toward the river’s edge.

  A huge magical surge threatened to overwhelm me, a cascade of all the elements together. The ground beneath me trembled as the river stopped flowing for a brief moment. That fierce pressure had originated from within the tornado. Rafe and Guntram were locked in some intense duel.

  Why couldn’t I get through? I stared upward at that column of air, frustrated with myself.

  Realization dawned. I shouldn’t go through. I should go up.

  I’d never mastered the flying in air sigil, but I was an eyas to a wind augur. I couldn’t fail this. Not now, when everything hinged on me.

  Running my fingertips through the tornado, I absorbed a full fury of air inside my pithways. I didn’t try to slow its velocity, letting it whirl inside me like a milkshake in a blender. As air dominated my pithways, my body levitated. My heels floated upward so only my toes touched the ground. Light-headed, I crouched down low in a tight ball, letting the dizziness overtake me. My fingers turned around in a long string of Ss, one after another until they blended into one another. I needed to become lighter than air. To shoot upward.

  To fly.

  Then, when my pithways felt as tight as an overstretched rubber band, I let go.

  I realized belatedly that I still had my boots on. The air blast ripped them to shreds as I shot upwards. Oh well. They’d been pinching me anyway.

  I had other things to worry about. I closed my eyes to concentrate on the repeating air sigils. I didn’t bother to measure my upward progress. I simply swept upward, fingers tracing unending Ss. I thought of Guntram, who until recently had believed that I could be a great shepherd. One who could make history if she could only control herself.

  So, I controlled that air, letting out bits and pieces while simultaneously absorbing more pith as I paralleled the rise of the tornado. It wasn’t unlike driving a manual car, shifting gears, slowly releasing the clutch, and stepping down on the gas. I became featherlight, accelerating upwards, not knowing if I’d made it ten feet or a hundred.

  “CAW!”

  My eyes shot open and I found myself face to face with Fechin. He flapped his wings furiously around me, the leader of a swarm of ravens that surrounded me. In the surprise of finding myself in a cluster of black birds, I faltered and slipped down a bit.

  But the birds wouldn’t let up. They flew directly underneath me, forcing me to steady myself or crush them if I lost my flight completely. Tugging on my pithways, I released a jolt of air pith that steadied me, narrowly missing one bird. Then I continued to absorb and release air at a rate that kept me stationary even as I floated high in the sky.

  And I had flown up quite a ways, higher than the tornado that surrounded Rafe and Guntram. I’d reached all the way above the layer of clouds that covered Eugene. A vast sea of fluff spread below the pristine sky, the sun impossibly bright this high in the atmosphere.

  “Whoa,” I breathed.

  I spotted the top of the tornado, its circular funnel creating a whirlpool of clouds not far below. Bits of firelight shone at the center of the vortex, indicating the epic fight occurring within.

  I drifted over to the top of the narrow hole that led all the way back to the ground. I must have been a few thousand feet in the sky, and therefore couldn’t actually see much as I peered at the empty space underneath my feet.

  “Well,” I said to Fechin. “Here I go.”

  Then I stopped expelling air pith.

  The descent downward came so rapidly, I realized I would splatter on the ground without opposing thrust. I caught myself midway down, taking a second to finally observe Guntram and Rafe locked in their battle.

  Guntram had encased Rafe in a mound of mud. In retaliation, Rafe had conjured a human-sized water golem that wrapped its body over Guntram like armor, covering even his face. Guntram floundered with cheeks full of air. Unable to move his fingers, he couldn’t write an underwater breathing sigil, and thus, relied solely on his internal air pith stores for oxygen.

  I resumed falling, more purposefully this time and at a reasonable rate. I waited until I hovered thirty feet above the pair before letting out a war cry and cut off all air pith. This gave me enough speed that I came crashing down almost on top of a bewildered Rafe. In fact, had Rafe not maneuvered the golem to intercept me, I would have crushed his fat melon head to pieces.

  I apparently had not come solo. Guntram’s ravens had followed me down the vortex, creating a virtual blanket of sable around us. I ran to check on a wet Guntram, releasing the last of the water golem’s hold on my augur as the birds pecked Rafe on all sides. Rafe, unable to concentrate under the relentless assault, screamed as the birds pushed him directly into the wall of wind. The wind whisked Rafe away, straight off his feet and out of sight, vanquishing his golem as well.

  With Guntram slumped over and dazed, the winds slowly died until they became sharp breezes whipping over the river bank. I kneeled next to him.

  “Guntram?” I patted the cheeks under his closed eyelids. To my incredible relief, his chest rose and fell. He moaned, no water in his lungs.

  With the tornado now gone, the sounds of police sirens echoed all around us. Smoke still rose into the sky from the fire, although the building remained out of view from where I sat. I had no idea what had happened to Rafe.

  The birds settled around Guntram, Fechin landing at my side. “I need to go after Rafe,” I told him. “Can you stay here? Keep him safe?”

  Fechin’s chest feathers burst out with several sharp caws. I interpreted that to mean he was insulted that I’d even asked.

  Weak in the knees, I floundered up the slick, steep embankment to the edge of Wonderland’s headquarters. No one appeared anywhere near the bike path, probably scared away by the sudden tornado. In the distance, the courtyard had been all but cleared save a few firefighters setting up trucks and ladders for the third floor. A glance at the street revealed a blockade to prevent new people from entering the area. I didn’t see Vincent anywhere, which worried me, but I also didn’t have a great view of the east side of the building.

  Then I caught sight of Rafe, my prime target. He hobbled away from Wonderland into the adjacent half-constructed apartment building. He glanced over his shoulder at the police lights as he snuck behind a slightly open fence and disappeared out of sight.

  “Oh no, you don’t.” I broke into an all-out sprint. I only tripped twice, absorbing as much pith as possible on the go. If Guntram had managed to injure Rafe, this might be my only chance to stop him before he killed anyone else. I thought I heard someone yell at me to stop, but I ignored them, not allowing local law enforcement to delay me at this critical juncture.

  I wedged inside the perimeter of the construction site only to find Rafe gone again. The dark shell of concrete and metal didn’t exactly make things easy for me, either. The crew had already put up the apartments’ walls and roof, but the interior promised the dark gloom of a cave. With nowhere else to hide, I figured Rafe had slithered inside. I marched in after him.<
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  Inside the framework felt like wandering around a half-finished labyrinth—lots of random twists but then some surprisingly open areas. Extension cords with electrical lanterns every few yards gave off a faint glow, but I still had to light a fingerflame to keep my bearings. I strained to hear any movement, keeping close to the walls and glancing behind me often. But nothing.

  Rafe seemed to have vanished.

  I rounded a corner and blinked as I came upon a brightly lit, almost warehouse-like space. The crew must have used this as a staging area, with various piles of beams, boards, and other materials stacked in the corner. A huge breaker box stood nearby with wires feeding off in every direction, an electrical heart with veins. The room had several doorframes to exit into other spaces, so I arbitrarily picked the closest one to investigate.

  I chose poorly.

  The moment I turned my back on the right door, a stream of fire smacked me in the back. It sizzled the base of my skull for a half-second before I tapped into my own pith and forced it to burn off in an arc. Wincing from a scorched neck, I switched to absorbing fire pith into my nearly-depleted pithways.

  Once Rafe realized he hadn’t caught me off guard, he switched to rumbling the ground beneath my feet. I crouched low and stabilized, letting everything else around me sway dangerously under his assault. The lights in the room dimmed considerably, but even so, I now had a clear view of Rafe leaning against a sawhorse. He rasped in exertion, striking eyes bloodshot and face gaunt, the result of his battle with Guntram. But he also had a fierce determination in his stance, the kind that cornered animals portray when they have nothing left to lose.

  I waited for the trembling to stop before I announced, “It’s over, Rafe.”

  “Is it?” he challenged. With surprising speed given his condition, he switched to a water stream that struck me in the hip. I gasped, half-absorbing, half-pushing it away.

  Rafe knew how to leverage an opportunity. He resumed the earthquake, succeeding in tilting me backward. I kept my balance, though, redirecting the water stream at Rafe. He dodged it with a last-minute sidestep.

  Rafe chuckled. “You can’t hurt me. You don’t have the pith!”

  As if to prove his point, he shot a blast of air that nearly slammed me into the wall. As I strained to move forward, he suddenly let it go, and I stumbled right into his follow-up fire blast. That one got dangerously close to singeing an eyeball. A raw ache lit up my cheek. Stunned, I took too long to assess the damage. Yet another wind gust hit me so hard, it bashed me right into a corner of the breaker box. I cried out as it tore open a gash near my elbow.

  I prepared myself for another elemental attack but misjudged again. Rafe closed the distance to grab my throat, choking me like he had before. He shoved me against the wall in such a way that he gained full leverage over me. I gasped like a fish, rasping for air even as he sucked it and all the other elements out of me. Using what little water and fire pith I’d absorbed, I tried to fling it back at Rafe, but they petered out from my stiff fingers.

  That sick gleeful glint returned to Rafe’s expression as I struggled. “This is your problem, Ina. You already know I can kill you, but you don’t ever stop to think. You just barrel right ahead and attack, as if your will alone can beat me.”

  I slumped backward, hand smacking against the breaker box, which let out a hollow metal clang. As my fingers raked across the individual switches, a familiar sizzle shot through me.

  Rafe increased the pressure at my throat, causing my lungs to scrunch in agony. “You have no magic, no one to save you. You will die right here like the bitch you are!”

  I opened up my pithways. The electrical force felt too weak. Desperate to find a more powerful source, I slapped against the breaker box, searching for a strong current.

  Rafe shifted, thrown into shadow so I could only see his awful smile. “Tell Tabitha ‘hi’ for me.”

  And that’s when I located it.

  A switch that surged as it crossed my pithways. I plunged my fingers through the plastic, making contact with the wires underneath. Electricity soared throughout my pithways. I drew a zigzag pattern furiously with my other hand, then pressed it up against Rafe’s chest.

  Rafe couldn’t ignore the static flowing off me. “What are you—?”

  I blasted him right in the chest, releasing a breaker’s worth of electricity right through him.

  Rafe screamed as he flew across the room and landed in a heap on the concrete. I scraped both hands across the breaker box, absorbing as much lightning pith as I could. It had the same potency as a natural lightning strike, maybe more even, but I found that I could control it better by carefully touching the many wires running through the box. As electricity accumulated in my pithways, long strands of my hair floated in front of me. My eyesight improved to a crisp, sharp focus, almost as if I’d put on special night-vision goggles. When I finally pulled myself away from the box, I grimaced under the strain of all that energy, sparks lighting off my elbows, fingers, chin, shoulder, everywhere.

  I took a few heavy steps toward Rafe, lightning arcing between both my palms. “Still think I can’t beat you?”

  Rafe shrank like a frightened toddler. He knew he wouldn’t escape this. “Please, Ina,” he begged. “You can’t kill me.”

  “Why not?” I growled, my voice distorted as if speaking through an autotune filter. I couldn’t keep holding onto this lightning for long.

  “Because you’re not a killer. You love Nasci. I am her creation. You vowed to protect creatures like me.”

  “So did you!” My fingers itched to draw one final zigzag straight through his brain and get it over with.

  “And Guntram did too!” Rafe wailed. Tears streaked down his face as he trembled in sheer panic. “Even he wouldn’t kill me. Only bind me forever.”

  Every iota of my consciousness wanted to kill Rafe. I could fry him and there wouldn’t be much of him left. And the rash part of me, the part that jumped into things on impulse, almost did it.

  But I thought of poor Guntram. No matter what Rafe had become, Guntram refused to end his former eyas. He was even willing to try a technique that would kill himself first. I’d always admired his empathy before, his ability to see the good in things.

  To see the good in me.

  I would prove to Guntram that I could be a shepherd just like him. Instead of unleashing unbridled fury at Rafe, I etched out that awful hourglass sigil I’d witnessed in the library.

  If Guntram could risk his own life for this loser, so could I.

  That didn’t mean I couldn’t make Rafe wet his pants for a split second. “Burn in hell, Rafe!”

  Lightning webbed across the space between us, encasing us both in its crackling energy. But instead of cremating him on the spot like raw lightning would, a sick sensation shot throughout my pithways. The pith switched to a strange green light. Rafe’s pithways lit up like an x-ray, revealing all the corners where he held Nasci’s lifeblood.

  Our energies locked together. I had no idea what to do from there. I could view Rafe’s pithways, sure, but had no idea how to bind them. I hadn’t paid that much attention to the tome that Guntram studied from.

  In my hesitation, Rafe lashed out at me. Even crippled in pain, he managed to fling pith in the form of a fireball in my general direction. “You whore!”

  Despite feeling like I might snap in two, I redirected my lightning pith to counteract the fireball. Lightning zapped not only the attack itself but the exact point where his pithways had stored fire. Rafe wailed like a banshee as a green firework exploded where my lightning struck. When the lights diminished, that corner of his pithways simply vanished.

  Ah, so that’s how it worked.

  I became a human machine gun of lightning pith, striking everywhere the green aura illuminated Rafe’s pithways. Sparks flew and thunder crashed, drowning out Rafe’s protests as I decimated his magical system. It didn’t come without a physical toll on me, though. My muscles strained as I continued my
path of destruction. I even fell down to the ground toward the end, running out of lightning and unable to stand, but I soldiered on. I refused to pass out despite blackness creeping into the edges of my vision. I had to finish this, once and for all.

  When my final ounce of lightning pith struck the last glowing ember of Rafe’s pithways, I finally let myself go. I crumbled to the floor, the concrete cooling my sweaty face. I’d survived the hourglass binding, but it had taken everything I had. All I wanted to do was sleep for a year.

  Rafe, however, wasn’t done. Riddled with obvious pain, he crawled toward me on all fours. “Y-you…”

  “You’re just a normal person,” I finished for him in a whisper. “No more magic.”

  “No!” he screamed. “I am a shepherd of Nasci. I can wield the four natural elements.” He clawed at his bare arms. “I will find a way to restore myself. I have done so before. And then, I will come for you, Ina. I will destroy you and everything you hold dear!”

  He half-lunged for me, a wounded predator.

  A loud clicking echoed over us. Vincent moved in the doorway, handgun drawn and pointed straight at Rafe.

  “Stay down!” he yelled. “Or I swear my ‘pathetic’ little firearm will plaster your brains to the wall!”

  I closed my eyes as Vincent read Rafe his rights and arrested him. I could rest.

  Because this time, it really was over.

  EPILOGUE

  I WATCHED DARBY’S official shepherd ceremony from a hilltop far away.

  They chose a spot close to the Columbia River Gorge to commemorate the event. All the shepherds that fought on Mt. Hood turned out for it. Even the Oracle came, having finally woken from her coma. She officially asked Darby to protect Nasci until her final days, and then unofficially brought white-tailed deer from all over the region to swarm the hidden waterfall. Everyone cheered and toasted the new shepherd with homestead mead. Euchloe brought out her harp and played a haunting induction song, but Baot’s subsequent fiddle had everyone dancing as crowns of flowers were placed on Darby’s blond ringlets.