by Rosie Scott
Azazel stood just where the right end of my army merged with the left end of the beastmen's unit, his eyes on the heir as she fought. His hellishly dark bow lifted. He nocked one carbon arrow. His black eyes stared unceasingly. Unblinking. Calculating. Precise.
Hundreds of allies and foes alike were between Azazel and his target. Flashes of magic and sprays of blood lit up the battlefield between them in splashes of color. Arms wielding weapons swung through Azazel's view. Beastmen leaped and flew through the air. So much was happening between Azazel and Gwen that I couldn't pretend to know how he kept his focus. But I knew better than to question his skill. Out of all the Renegades other than myself, Azazel was consistently one of the deadliest because he could dispatch of so many foes before they even knew he was there. Now, he had only one target. All he needed to do was time it right.
Gwen had no idea she was in the sights of the same lethal archer whose skill had aided her earlier plans so magnificently. She fought courageously against one of Rek's orcs between two companions. Gwen had a life shield given to her by an ally, but it flickered. As the orc came at her with a flurry of ax swipes, Gwen dodged a few before lifting her sturdy shield until it merged through her own magic guard, allowing her to save the energy of one protection by forcing her foe to cause damage to the other. The orc continued to swing in rage at her steel shield, and with each hit Gwen gritted her teeth and struggled to hold her ground. Her boots skidded through mud created by a combination of bloodshed and water from elemental debris. The companion to Gwen's right held a mace, and he screamed with fury as he hacked the weapon into the orc's ribcage to protect the heir.
The orc barely felt the injury in his bloodlust, but he switched his attention to the companion instead. The next swing of the soldier's mace was intercepted violently by the brute's ax. Gwen's companion yelped with severe pain, and the mace fell out of his hands at the mercy of broken fingers from the orc's superior strength.
“Jordan!” Gwen screamed, rushing forth to bash her steel shield into the orc's right arm before he could slaughter her friend. Jordan rushed back a few steps, and another Chairel soldier hurried to heal his hand.
Watching her friend get injured gave Gwen a burst of adrenaline. The heir watched the orc swipe the ax toward her once more, and she lifted her shield just to the left of her face, blocking the hit with perfect timing. Meanwhile, she screamed with fury, thrusting her sword all the way through the orc's gut toward his spine. The brute retaliated, swinging his ax around her steel shield and into her life magic, finally breaking the weakened guard. Still holding her physical shield up in defense, Gwen put all her strength into shoving the sword farther into the wound until it punctured the spinal cord. The orc twitched with the resulting nerve damage. Gwen tugged the sword back a few inches before ripping it to the right, splitting the orc's gut open from the navel. Blood and bile leaked from the wound in sheets before the orc fell backwards, dead.
The Chairel soldiers noticed Gwen's act of valor and it boosted their morale. Those who also fought the orcs turned their attacks from defensive to offensive. Gwen finally turned toward Jordan, looking to check up on his injuries.
“You need a shield, my lady!” The life mage healing Jordan let go of his injured hand, but Gwen shook her head.
“Heal him first,” Gwen commanded, before lifting her steel shield to call attention to it. “I have this. Besides, the orcs have no archers. This horde of them has no slaves.”
Far across the battlefield, Azazel loosed his arrow. The ammo whizzed just above the glimmering talons of a jaguar-kin in mid-leap before it threaded through the golden toes of a roc-kin in flight. It darted over the heads of many Chairel soldiers, its darkness reflecting from the mirror-like flats of raised blades. The black carbon shone purple as it flew past an enemy mage using chain lightning against nearby orcs. The razor-sharp arrowhead glinted in the afternoon sunlight as it raced toward its date with a newly unguarded eye.
The Chairel life mage finished healing Jordan. Next, he thrust a new shield toward Gwen. The heir was surrounded by a fresh, glimmering magical guard, and her companions prepared to continue the fight.
But Gwen wasn't moving. The heir stood deathly straight within her new protection, and her heavy shield dropped limply to her side. Her loyal followers asked questions, and then they screamed in panic.
Gwen's blonde eyebrows dipped forward as if her remaining consciousness only knew confusion and shock. Blood slowly drained over the freckles of her right cheek like tears from one black arrow to the eye. Her friend had shielded her, but he'd been just a second too late. Gwen fell abruptly to her knees before collapsing forward to the bloodied field, her corpse in sharp visual contrast to the hopeful life magic that meant to protect her.
The Chairel soldiers nearby were only recently invigorated by their leader. Now, as Gwen bled out on the field and left them to face Rek and his orcs alone, they panicked.
Jordan and the other close companions screamed and cried with both mourning and rage. They pointed fingers as they followed the black arrow's angle to Azazel across the field. Since the archer stood amongst a combination of beastmen and mages, they easily picked him out of the crowd. When Azazel sent more arrows flying into their ranks, many of them charged, now leaderless and motivated by vengeance.
“Oh, hell no,” I breathed, moving forward and to the right to intercept them. Not a single one of them would harm Azazel if I had any say in it. I knew I wouldn't be able to make it in time, however. I couldn't use enervat, for my soldiers were mixed in with Chairel's during our brawl. I also couldn't leave my men. I instructed them to only follow me or Azazel, and he was away on the field.
I fought on the frontlines with my soldiers, stealing lives through funnels of black. If I couldn't reach him, I would call him back to me. “Azazel!”
Azazel heard my shout, and with a flick of his eyes, he noticed I'd moved closer to support him. He sidestepped to the north, shooting arrows into the panicking Chairel soldiers as they rushed him. One by one, their heads snapped back from the arrows that stopped their charge, but magical guards protected some of them. As Azazel finally made it back to my side, I kept leeching with one hand and drained my high into life magic with the other before passing it to him.
Azazel's breaths became heavier with the influx of power, and as he loosed arrows into the crowds, he asked, “Did you see that shot?”
I chuckled at his enthusiasm. “I did. It was beautiful, friend. Your skill never ceases to amaze me.”
“I could say the same to you,” Azazel replied. “I didn't want to follow your order and come back here since I knew that would lead them to you.” He nodded forward at the approaching onslaught. “But then I remembered how much you enjoy being surrounded. Consider it a gift, Kai. From me to you.”
I laughed and teased, “Cheapskate.”
Azazel shrugged with a grin. “It's the thought that counts.”
“Back! Cover my flanks!” I ordered my men, wishing to protect them from friendly fire. Turning my face slightly toward Azazel, I added, “Not you. I want you by my side.”
“Wouldn't dream of going anywhere else,” Azazel admitted, though he took the time to move around behind me to my left side. He smiled and said, “Looks like I just promoted myself from right to left-hand man again.”
“I'll just keep ignoring that joke until it goes away,” I retorted teasingly, and he laughed. Just as our pursuers pushed their way to the enemy frontlines, I asked Azazel, “Earth or water?”
He couldn't have known what I was referring to, but he answered anyway. “Water.”
Erupci a friz reservur. The creamy skin of my palms glowed a light blue as ice crystals crawled over the magical barrier between them. Just as I thrust the spell at the ground before us and pulled Azazel back from the area, I informed him, “This is for you.”
The Chairel soldiers running at us were angry, but they weren't stupid. There was enough distance between us that they saw the magic before they rea
ched it. Even though the spell was foreign to them, the casting site was a wide circular area covered in icicles that poked a few inches out of the ground like frozen nails, and they knew to avoid it. Unfortunately for them, Azazel had seen the flashy spell enough times in action to understand how it worked.
One of the enemy soldiers jumped over the patch of ice during his charge, looking to avoid it entirely. In mid-jump, his body went slack with death due to one of Azazel's arrows puncturing his brain. As the others ran behind him, his body fell back to the ice, triggering the spell.
The echoes of crackling crystallized water shattered through the late afternoon air as the ice exploded upward like an obelisk of shooting frozen blades. Soldiers flew through the air trailing sprays of blood from recent impalement. It tossed those with shields and wards around in the air and continuously chipped at their protections. Some were thrown out of the spell's hold, uninjured but newly unprotected. Azazel reloaded his bow expeditiously and fired arrows into their bodies in mid-air before they fell like they were merely target practice. Dozens of Chairel soldiers were in pools of blood before us, impaled by icicles and black arrows alike. The prowess of Azazel and I combined with our sodality boosted the morale of the men who watched us from our flanks, and cheers rose to prominence along with their battle cries.
I threw two enervat spells to either side of the ice death trap, and the soldiers who tried to avoid it collapsed, releasing their life force all at once until the battlefield surrounding the water spell had a lush carpet of black energy. The dark magic raced back to me, and my brain throbbed with the influx of power.
A flash of orange lit up the field just beyond the still-shooting ice, and fire exploded against the protruding icicles, sizzling as it melted the element and warmed the area enough so that the spell was now merely gurgling water. The same mage who had countered my spell wasted no time in shooting another fire bomb straight at Azazel.
Zwip. Azazel refreshed his alteration shield, for mine was still robust. The fire bomb hit the front of Azazel's shield and the element exploded outward, affecting mine as well. Our vision of the field disappeared behind orange, yellow, and white-hot twirling plumes of enraged flames. I glanced over at Azazel since we were close enough to one another that our shields overlapped. He'd closed his eyes protectively against the brightness of the element as it beat angrily against his shield only to be absorbed. As if he knew I was checking on him, he yelled over the roaring flames, “Feels like High Star all over again!”
I smiled at his quip and released tendrils of death magic at my boots. I couldn't be sure that the Chairel soldiers weren't strategically taking advantage of our current visual impairment. The least I could do was raise the nearby dead to give them something else to focus on.
The flames subsided, rolling up into the sky before dissipating into a blurry heat haze and wisps of smoke. I expected to come face to face with multiple charging Chairel soldiers. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see my own men charging forth to meet the enemy with gusto, so affected by our valor that they sought to recreate it. Warriors and mages alike came to clash with the onslaught of foes, already aided by the masses of corpses I'd called to arms.
The other Renegades finally caught up to us. Thousands more corpses rushed forth as Cerin brought his collection of minions with him from farther back on the field. The more we fought, the more we overwhelmed Chairel's forces. Their northernmost unit of forty-five thousand men had dwindled to a fourth of its original size. They'd lost around thirty thousand men from this army alone, and the swarms of necromancers from my unit and the underground on the other side of our foes had added those corpses to our numbers. Their loss was only our gain.
Rek and his orcs moved south since they were running out of foes in the north. Nearby, handfuls of Chairel's soldiers routed, rushing toward Tieren Lake in the northeast. Chairel generals screamed orders at them to stay, but the fear of facing hordes of the dead and flesh-eating orcs was too much for many of them to bear. One general who had witnessed Gwen's death earlier but hadn't allowed it to change his strategy lifted an arm in the air, desperately waving a golden flag over the heads of foe and ally alike as if sending a message to Comercio itself.
“Gold flag, Kai,” Azazel commented, just in case I hadn't seen it. “What is it used for?”
Throughout all of my years reading and studying Chairel's military history, I had never heard of such a flag. It was a simple pennon, with a metallic gold rectangular cloth attached to a thin wooden pole. So simple, in fact, that I immediately suspected Chairel had never used such a symbol in war before.
“It hasn't been used for anything yet,” I replied. “Keep your eye out for any—” I paused, noticing Azazel's stare to the north. “What do you see?”
“Nothing yet,” the archer admitted, though he pointed toward Comercio's eastern wall. “But I heard a gate.”
“Open?” I asked.
“Open and close.”
I gazed out over the battlefield. This battle had lasted for the better part of an entire day, for it had started at dawn, and now the sky glowed gold and coral as the sun prepared to set. Tens of thousands were dead. The field was a mess of elemental debris, broken bodies, and dropped gear. Chairel had gained the advantage early in the fight, but we'd gained it back. To make matters worse for them, the heir to the throne was dead. My foes only had one trick left up their sleeves. A trick that was a last resort due to its repercussions. While I stared out at the bloodbath of the southeastern plains of Comercio, I realized that they'd decided it was worth trying. The war general who had waved the flag was willing to sacrifice himself and his men to wipe us out for good.
“Mages!” I screamed desperately, and many of my soldiers hesitated, listening to my order. “All of you who know alteration magic, give everyone you can anti-magic shields now!”
Azazel understood my thinking and yelled out his own order. “Pass the message south and east!” He took a breath from his yelling and glanced at me. “We know nothing about her powers.”
“No,” I agreed, watching as brand new alteration shields bubbled into view across the masses as they followed our orders. “But Amora charmed our entire army and caused massive damage. If Melodi's powers are similar to the sirens—”
“They can't be similar,” Azazel interrupted desperately. “Amora said Melodi's powers threaten all of Comercio. If Melodi simply charms, that wouldn't be a threat at all to Chairel's soldiers.”
I hesitated, realizing he was right. An unsettling ache made its home in my gut. Overlooking the battlefield again, I saw Chairel's men trying to retreat farther south. Chairel's still-living generals gave the directive, and the line led back to the one who waved the golden flag.
I leeched from my foes until my head felt like it was shattering with the power, and then I drained all of my energy into an absorb magic shield until its strength appeared as robust as the shield I'd given our ship to withstand Ciro's power of the sun years ago. I repeated the gesture with Azazel.
I turned to Holter, grabbing the younger man's arms to make him face me. “Listen very carefully,” I started. “I want you to leech from foes until it hurts and drain that energy into alteration shields.” I nodded toward Maggie and Nyx and Cerin. “Give them the strongest protections you can. When you're finished, continue doing that for every soldier you can reach. Keep doing that for as long as you can until I come back.”
Holter's eyes widened with concern. “Kai...where are you going?”
“To fight a god,” I replied. “And I'm taking Azazel with me.”
“But whose orders should we follow?” Holter questioned, looking perplexed.
I exhaled heavily and said, “Consider this a test run, Holter. If you can take care of this army for me now as well as you did earlier when Azazel and I were incapacitated, we'll talk more about that promotion I said I wanted to give you.”
Holter breathed so hard with shock and anxiety that he wavered on his feet. “I don't know,” he pro
tested, overwhelmed. “I can't.”
“Yes, you can,” I told him. “I need you to.” I motioned toward the other Seran Renegades. “The others will be with you. They will help you if you need it.” In my peripheral vision, Cerin nodded with agreement.
“Kai.” Azazel pointed to the north. “We don't have time. Melodi is on her way.”
I stood back from Holter. “Shields first,” I reminded him. As I turned away from my friends with Azazel beside me, Cerin called after us to be safe.
Azazel and I walked northward through crowds of our men. Far ahead on the grassy plains leading from Comercio's eastern gate to our northernmost army was a single woman, unprotected by any shields at all.
“Golden eyes?” I asked Azazel to be sure.
“Yes,” he replied. “It's her.”
“Take the shot as soon as you can,” I requested, and he agreed.
Melodi took the form of a human, but she appeared to have originated from Nahara instead of Chairel. Her skin was flawless and reminiscent of the darkest cocoa, glimmering dark bronze in the setting sun. She wore black light leather armor, but the buckles and rings adorning it were gold instead of silver. She kept her black hair in thick dreadlocks that swished past a strong jawbone as she walked confidently toward our army like she wasn't the least concerned about her lack of magical shields. As Azazel and I neared the northern edge of our army, Melodi's golden eyes regarded us with only slight interest as she continued stalking east, like she was equally intrigued in the masses of Alderi soldiers on the opposite side of the battlefield as she was in me.
The underground soldiers glanced up and noticed Melodi's arrival. My calls for preparation with alteration shields evidently hadn't reached the eastern army yet, for most of the Alderi didn't have them. Some allied soldiers noticed my presence from our distance, so I pointed south, urging them to retreat from the area. Individuals followed my pleas, but as usual, the Alderi had trouble following the order en masse, for they did not pass it along or work together to heed it.
