by Dante King
“But why would they steal it? They have no hope of powering it.”
“Why do you say that?”
The bespectacled mage got to his feet slowly and took a few steps back as he eyed my axe warily. “The Terminus Seal requires a doom mage to activate it,” he said. “As far as we know, doom mages went extinct a long time ago.”
I could tell there was more to this story, and I was willing to bet that the guild had buried the details a long time ago.
“What do you know about Kalazar?” I asked, acting on a hunch.
“Kalazar?” Mira asked. “The necromancer?”
“That’s the one. Or do you deny the tainted guild has anything to do with him?”
The bespectacled mage took another step back. “We’ve already told you too much.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So why stop now? As I said before, you have nothing to fear from me if you simply tell me what I need to know.”
The bespectacled mage gulped. “We only hear whispers.”
“Whispers will do. Tell me what you know.”
“We know that Kalazar is working on a personal…experiment,” Mira replied when her friend hesitated. “Something really powerful—a special kind of death spell. I don’t know the details but I know that whatever he is working on could not charge the Terminus Seal. Only a doom mage can accomplish that.”
“We’ve said enough,” the bespectacled mage said. “Let us go now.”
“Grab your friend,” I said, gesturing to the ash-blond mage still lying on the floor a few feet away from us. “All he needs is a splash of cold water.”
When they hauled him up, his head hung limply on his chest, but he was starting to moan and shift his feet a little. What a sorry sight they were.
“Why the hell did you lot allow yourselves to get caught up in this shit?” I wondered whether this was a case like Winnie’s, but immediately came to my senses: Winnie had a magical strength these students couldn’t even have dreamed of attaining.
Mira looked at me with sunken eyes. “Our families live in lower Trysca. We were trying to save them.”
I realized I could no longer blame the young mages for their choices. I might have made the exact same choice to protect my family. I was about to offer them some advice when the deep, dark scent of tainted magic invaded my nostrils. I noticed Mira and the bespectacled mage tense as they read my expression.
“Go now,” I hissed.
They didn’t wait to be told twice. They turned and headed toward the alternate exit at the back of the lecture room, dragging the ash-blond mage along between them. They had just closed the door behind them, when the main entrance was flung open with a bang that made my head rattle.
Yarina and Winnie came flying through the door backwards, in a cloud of putrid smoke. They landed on the floor a few feet from where I stood, both struggling against the hot pincers of tainted magic that had transported their bodies this far.
When I looked back up to the main entrance, five figures were emerging from the smoke. All five were mages drenched in the tainted stink. This was shaping up to be a serious fight; these were not students who would roll over and present me with the answers I needed in a ribbon-tied gift box.
I gripped my axe tight and braced myself. Oh well—then I would just have to beat the answers out of them.
8
The scent of the five tainted mages was similar to the stink that had clung to Kalazar. It was corrupt to the core and fiercely immoral. None of them were as powerful as Kalazar had been, but there were five of them and that posed something of a challenge. Luckily for me, I liked a challenge.
I strode forward, past Yarina and Winnie, who both rose to their feet behind me. The five tainted mages stood in a perfect V-formation that revealed the mage in the middle, directly opposite me, was the leader. He was tall and bulky with white-blond hair that hung to the small of his back in a thick braid tied together with jagged bone claws.
The two mages on his right were both women. One was short with tufts of dark hair sprouting from the left side of her head while the right side remained raggedly shorn. The second female mage was ebony-skinned, slightly taller, and more muscular.
To the leader’s left were two male mages. The first one had aquiline features and a black patch that covered his left eye. The last mage was the most physically imposing. He probably stood at around six foot five and he had a shaved head and a ridged nose that looked like it had been broken a couple of times.
I could sense the strength of their magic; it sent a tingle of fear course along my spine. This was natural, of course, and I’d long learned to convert such slight initial fear into more energy for a fight.
Yarina was the only one who had any real experience. I was new to the world of battle magic and I sensed Winnie was too. Though you could probably say I had been quite properly introduced to it today.
“You chose the wrong guild to mess with,” the leader sneered.
“Quite the motley crew you’ve got there,” I said, trying to work out a strategy in my head.
The leader scoffed. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Oh, I think I do know who I’m dealing with. Craven mages who send children to do their dirty work. That’s going to stop.”
All five mages laughed.
“And who’s going to make us?” the leader asked. “You?”
I could understand their derision; respect must be earned. I lifted up my arm and sent my axe hurtling across the room toward the leader’s face. The precision of my throw was so fast and so accurate that the butt hit him right in the nose before he could decide to react; exactly what I intended..
He stumbled backward, clutching his face. I’d been waiting for the moment I could use my new trick; I stretched out my right arm, my palm facing the axe lying on the floor. Instantly, my beloved weapon flew in a straight line back to my hand with a mighty zing. By the time he had recovered from the shock, I was ready to throw again.
“Yes,” I replied. “I am going to make you stop…and it’s going to hurt.”
“Kill him,” the leader raged, his face bloody and his eyes glowing a brighter red.
As they closed the distance between us, the mages started to morph.
“What’s happening?” Winnie asked.
“They’re modification mages,” Yarina replied. “They’re shapeshifting.”
“Fuck,” Winnie said under her breath, as the leader took on the characteristics of a bear.
He doubled in size and his great jaws parted to emit a roar so chilling Winnie gasped out loud. The massive bald mage took on the shape of a bull with gleaming white horns. The short female mage raised her arms, and I saw her skin erupt into a pattern of reptilian scales. The ebony-skinned mage transformed into a two-legged she-wolf; her teeth were bared and saliva dripped from between her fangs. The one-eyed mage took on the characteristics of a mountain lion; his large, powerfully agile body was angled toward Yarina.
Yarina came to my side. “I’ll take the feline and the reptile,” she said hastily. “You take the bear and the wolf. Winnie—”
Before she could finish her instructions, they were on us. I raised my axe and smashed it into the already-bruised face of the leader. He stumbled backward and roared like a wild animal. I didn’t wait for him to recover as I had the first time. I tuck rolled behind him and jumped onto his back, straddling his neck with my legs as I sent my axe smashing down onto his head.
Magic zinged all around me. It was a chaotic tornado of differently colored spells. I was now familiar enough with Winnie and Yarina to be able to pick out their magic despite the mayhem that enveloped us.
I sensed Yarina’s Holy Flash building up. She was going to temporarily blind our opponents to give us the edge. I sensed Winnie’s magic too; it was less powerful but still effective. She was summoning up a weakening ray that would slow down the tainted mages’ attacks and leave them ripe for the kill.
I was still sitting on top of t
he mage leader’s shoulders when I felt the Holy Flash explode from Yarina’s body. I shielded my eyes just in time and a second later the bear mage stumbled, blinded by Yarina’s formidable spell. I threw out my hands and propelled myself off his shoulders with my legs To avoid being crushed. I thudded to the floor on my back, never forgetting to squeeze shut my eyes.
When I opened them, I saw that Yarina had succeeded in temporarily blinding three of the five modification mages. Winnie’s weakening ray must have helped knock them to the ground, too. As the need arose, it seemed my two companions had—perhaps temporarily—put aside their differences to combine and coordinate their magical powers.
The reptile mage’s nictitating membrane had protected her against the Holy Flash, though, and apparently Winnie’s ray alone hadn’t been enough to knock her down. She was still in fighting form and she advanced on Winnie with zeal. As Yarina and Winnie banded together to defeat her, the wolf mage snapped at me from the side, coming short a foot—a clear announcement of her intentions.
I flung my axe at her as hard as I could; and she jumped out of its path with equal speed. I called my axe with an open palm and made use of its speed by positioning myself just in front of the wolf mage. The butt of the axe hit her in the back of the head. She reverted back to her human form and before sliding unconscious to the floor.
One down.
I turned to survey the scene before me. Yarina and Winnie had managed to overpower the reptile mage, and I watched as Yarina cut her down with the point of her rapier.
But there was no time to breathe; just as the reptile mage fell, the remaining three tainted mages recovered from their temporary blindness. The bull mage charged toward Yarina, the feline mage zeroed in on Winnie, and the bear mage turned to me.
I felt Winnie attempt to cast another Weakening Ray on her attacker, but her magic came in short panicked bursts that were too weak to have any real effect. The bear mage’s deathly teeth gnashed wildly as he closed the distance. If he managed to get a grip on me, he wouldn’t let go until I was dead.
I hopped onto a desk to launch a kick at the bear mage’s face. My leg hit him square on the cheek and he stumbled backward as he struggled to stay upright. Before he could regain his footing, I sent my axe hurtling toward his stomach.
The butt of the axe hit him in the abdomen, and he doubled over with a grunt. I called back the axe and aimed it once more, this time at his bent-over head. There was a sickening crunch when it made contact. It felt like I was back in the catacombs trying to extinguish another rodent infestation. These were bigger, scarier, more powerful rodents, true; but I would annihilate them in exactly the same way.
The bear mage fell backward, but I still hadn’t managed to put him out of commission. His magic was strong; I could see it in the green spots that peppered his dark-gray aura. I called back my axe, which zoomed through the air eagerly as though it couldn’t wait to be reunited with me. I was about to attack the bear mage again when I heard Winnie scream.
I looked back and saw that the feline mage had Winnie cornered. The lecture hall didn’t offer a lot of cover, so she was crouching down with her hand raised up to shield her face. I abandoned the bear mage without a moment’s hesitation.
The feline mage heard me coming, and he turned and pounced. His hands were still human, but instead of fingers he had the retractable claws of a lion. They landed on my chest and pushed me down onto the ground.
I felt my axe at my side but it had slipped out of my fingers during the fall and I couldn’t quite grip it with the feline mage on top of me. He tried to bite at my chest, but I held his neck back with both arms. I wouldn’t be able to hold him back like this for long. He shifted his head up and down and back and forth wildly and my arms had to follow. Almost imperceptibly, I felt my Negation Aura activate. I wondered if the mage could see its glow when he stopped snapping at me and stared at his hands.
“How are you doing this?” he growled.
His retractable claws were slowly reverting back to normal human fingers. My Negation Aura was nullifying his magic. Making use of the distraction, I went for the attack that was most readily available: the humble headbutt. He hissed like a cat and fell backward.
I pushed myself up and landed on my feet in front of him. Blood spurted from his nostrils as he gritted his teeth and finally got to his feet. I could sense the bear mage closing in on me behind. Before I could turn, Winnie had sent a weakening ray straight at him. It hit him in the chest and he roared with anger. Realizing that I only had a couple of moments before the weakening ray wore off, I grabbed my axe off the floor and hurled it at the feline mage’s head. He tried to avoid it, but I’d confused him by spinning the axe at an angle, and panic got the best of him. He crumbled to the floor with my axe lodged in his face.
I saw Winnie cringe at the sight, but there was no time to be squeamish.
“Come on,” I told Winnie, as I pulled out my axe from the shattered remains of the feline mage’s face. “Stay close.”
Winnie didn’t need to be told twice. She leapt to her feet and hurried to my side. Yarina was still fighting the bull mage, who was trying to gore her with the two gleaming horns protruding from his head. She was only barely managing to keep him at bay.
“We need to help her,” I said, rushing toward Yarina with Winnie following close behind.
The bull mage backed off slowly when he saw the bear mage recover of the weakening ray and come running to join his last remaining soldier. The two of them faced us with dark, determined eyes..
Their magic suddenly had a thick, swirling quality to it, the darkness growing in power. T
“What are they doing?” Winnie asked when the mages started to shift shapes again.
“It’s another modification spell,” Yarina replied. “One that allows them to take on each other’s characteristics.”
The two mages became larger and more alien-looking. They both sprouted the great claws and gnashing teeth of a bear, along with the sharp horns and brawn of a bull. They looked much less human now and more like lumbering monsters with bloodlust in their eyes.
“What do we do?” Winnie asked with a shaky voice.
“We fight,” I said.
“Winnie,” Yarina said. “How good is your bone-shaper spell?”
Winnie raised her eyebrows. “Pretty good.”
Yarina turned to me; I understood what she was thinking..
“I’m going to grab him,” I said, gesturing toward the dead feline mage lying on the floor in front of us. “When I say the word…”
Winnie gulped, but she nodded firmly.
The bull-bear hybrids charged. I could tell from the hard skin that covered their body that they might as well have been wearing armor. I ducked and rolled toward the dead mage and hoisted him up, using him as a shield. Yarina and Winnie stayed behind, mustering all the energy they had for their magic.
“Now,” I yelled, hurling the mage’s body at the advancing hybrids.
I felt Winnie’s spell home in on the flying corpse in a burst of orange light. It exploded like a bomb; the bits of bone hit the mages and left noticeable flesh wounds in their faces, the blood and flesh obstructed their eyes.
“Yes!” Winnie hissed.
I launched myself at the leader, who still had his silver braid. I sent my axe swinging into the side of his face, but he had the strength and resilience of a bear and he bounced back almost immediately.
The hybrid he had chosen was certainly effective. It had given him the strength of two wild animals. When I swung my axe again, he grabbed the blade with his clawed hands and pulled it from my grasp, before flinging it out of reach. I could have summoned it back easily, but he immediately swung at me with his grotesque hands and I couldn’t afford to miss a single beat.
I ducked one punch, then another, before jumping over a desk. Useless as cover.
“Fuck this,” I said under my breath as I turned back to face the leader.
He just crashed through the
desk and reached for my throat. Those claws could crush a man to death. And if they missed, his horns certainly would finish the job.
My only chance would be to go on the offensive. I avoided his horn by a hair’s breadth and sent a spin kick slamming into his chest. He stumbled back but managed to remain on his feet. I noticed that his naturally armored hide thinned somewhat when I made contact, giving way to our shared weak human skin. I thanked my Negation Aura in silence.
I kept sending punches and kicks at him, using my speed advantage. Hand-to-hand combat was more dangerous, but it was the only way to nullify his shapeshifting defenses. I needed to be close enough to him to weaken his magic. I was tired, but I knew hesitation would cost me the fight. So I kept jabbing, swinging, kicking, kneeing… until finally the leader tumbled to the floor, his hybrid form receding fast under the pressure of my Negation Aura.
I took the chance and called for my axe. It flew into my hand and immediately I brought it screaming down on his head. The sound of cracking bone was intensely satisfying, but what was more satisfying was seeing the leader resume his fully normal human features in death.
I pulled out my axe, which was gleaming with dark blood, and turned to see Yarina and Winnie desperately trying to contain the last hybrid mage. Winnie cast weakening rays that struggled to penetrate the hybrid’s tough hide. Yarina danced around him, gracefully twirling on and off the furniture, ducking and jumping. She was trying to confuse and frustrate him, ultimately to tire him.
I aimed my axe carefully and flung it across the room with a force that could have brought down a wall. The blade hit the outnumbered mage at the elbow and sliced his arm right off, leaving him howling. Yarina spun off the desk she was standing on and forced her rapier through the mage’s heart. He howled one last time before his knees gave way and the color drained from his face. By the time he hit the ground he was already dead.
9
The sudden silence after the fight was almost deafening. The three of us gathered in a loose circle as we surveyed the carnage.
