“Holy shit,” the black-armored Malus knight swore. “They’re already here.”
“You’re right,” the man in robes next to him said. “I can’t believe they were right.”
“Hi,” I growled dangerously. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced. I’m Wes Malcolm, and if you tell me everything I want to know and save me time, I won’t violently tear the information I need from your minds while you are all reduced to gibbering husks. Can we work together here?”
“Holy shit he’s pissed,” another guy said as he walked into view from the nearby intersection. This one wore mail with boiled leather over it. “Guess his psycho-bitch of a girlfriend just got grabbed. We’d better—”
Fire and lightning roared out of my hands.
The idiots in front of me flinched and began to react, but they were too slow. Arcane heat blasted all over their bodies, overwhelmed their protective wards, burned into their clothing and armor, and seared away giant chunks of their vital guards.
They screamed in surprise, clearly not expecting me to bring two different powerful magics to bear so quickly.
But I noticed the strength of their wards as I overwhelmed them.
They were of different sources—mostly a combination of Ideals and Malus magic—but through my archmage senses, I could gauge that they were solidly in the Practitioner level, an impressive accomplishment even for Challengers.
But they were each struck with two different spells, because the tight quarters of the hallway allowed my lightning bolt and fireball to catch each of them.
And now I had finally realized that, with over 40 ranks in my Ideals thanks to my last Rise, I had crossed the threshold into becoming a High Practitioner.
They were still not quite dead, though my spells had burned their armor and smoked their flesh. They fell screaming on the floor, and I pounced on them a moment later.
“WHERE ARE THEY?” I screamed as I grabbed the half-dead Malus mage by the throat.
But before he could even consider answering, someone shouted from down the hall.
“Get him!”
Wind wrapped around me as my Gale Cloak activated, and I leaped backwards with the speed of a High Practitioner-level Air mage.
I had finally crossed the threshold that Stell’s Satellites and a few of the specialists on my team had already reached.
And it had better not be too late, I reflected as arrows, quarrels, and Practitioner-level magic blasted all around me.
My jump had carried me out of the epicenter of their little ambush, and my shroud of wind had knocked away the missiles like they were swatted flies.
But the edge of the explosions from their own fireballs and other magics caught me, and eventually got through my own protective wards—though it was a near thing.
The jump from Practitioner to High Practitioner was beginning to make a difference.
I just hadn’t noticed it until now, because I had barely used my magic since my last Rise and because most of the High Practitioners I had known before now had all been on my side.
It still hurt like hell, though, as the fire and ice and sharp rocks crashed against my armor. Injuries erupted all over my body, only to be immediately stabilized the next moment by the same vital guard that had allowed me to bleed nearly a few bathtubs’ worth of poison a few days ago.
I looked to see the smoldering corpses of the mall cop-quality guards whose job had been to bait me out in the open. I couldn’t see my more elite attackers, and I couldn’t hear them speak.
Which meant that for the first time since my prison escape, I was finally fighting competent rival Earthborn.
I crouched down and held my breath. Teeth exercised control over his own senses, feeling the vibrations in the floor and checking the air for the scent of my enemies.
They’re advancing forward slowly, he told me. Two groups. Coming in from both corners of the intersection…you should hit them…now.
At Teeth’s words, I unleashed the newest signature ability of my Gale Cloak.
Two large portions of the billowing air tore away and formed sharp, spinning disks. I sent them spinning around both corners, and was rewarded with the pleasant sounds of pained screams and tearing flesh and fabric.
They weren’t nearly as powerful as Anahita’s Friction Slices, and I certainly couldn’t ride them, but they could turn corners, unlike my fireballs and lightning bolts, and I could throw as many as I wanted as long as I gave my Gale Cloak time to recover between volleys.
I darted forward immediately after I launched my latest attack.
I had to wrap this up quickly, find out where Anahita had gone, and help her with whatever trap our enemies had somehow sprang on us.
So I dove into the intersection my enemies were trying to converge on, stretched out my hands again, then fired a lightning bolt into one group and a fireball into the other.
As the torch-lit hallway exploded again with arcane light, I summoned Carnwennan, activated its shroud, and disappeared.
Shouldn’t we have done that in the beginning? Teeth asked as I darted behind a robed man blinking and rubbing his face.
Yes, I sent back as I reappeared long enough to stab my enemy’s throat, then reactivated the shroud and danced away. I caught another man by the helmet, yanked him downward, then jammed the blade of my white-hilted dagger through his visor and into his eyesocket.
The black-armored man jerked violently as my electrical magic activated and traveled into his brain, probably killing him outright, but I couldn’t spend the time to check, as another nearby body swung its mace at me. I threw my latest victim into the way of the incoming weapon and darted to the side, staying close to my enemies and stabbing any vulnerable spot I could find.
I had to keep moving, or they would overwhelm me.
I also had to stay close enough to make them get in each other’s way.
And I had to hurry up and finish both groups in time to help Anahita.
A man in leather and mail managed to find an opening and reach me, stabbing at me with two short blades.
I twisted my body to take both weapons on my script shield and multi-layered armor. The two gladius-like blades forced their way through my script shield, then skidded off my scale mail, making my lunging enemy lose his footing and stumble. He recovered the very next instant, but by then I had grabbed him by the top of his head and slammed his unarmored face into my dagger three times, feeling my Lightning magic discharge every single time.
“Holy shit, he’s strong!” another plate-armored warrior swore as he charged at me with a spiked shield.
I reinforced his statement by hurling my latest dead enemy into him, sending him tumbling away.
Then I turned to face two more men in mail with maces and the mage that was still recovering from the throat wound I had given him.
They had just gotten into formation when I disappeared again.
As my enemies swore in frustration, I leaped high overhead, my Gale Cloak allowing me to somersault behind them easily.
As I did so, I spared a quick glance at the other Malus group. Half of their number lay prone on the floor, and as they stumbled about with their spells and weapons, pink light flashed across another one’s neck, and Breena came into view as she flew away from her latest victim, the tip of her powerful wand crackling with energy.
But that was all the attention I could spare as I landed behind the robed mage and jabbed my dagger into where his lung should be.
I stabbed him again as my enemies realized I was behind them now, and this time electricity went into the Malus dirtbag’s lung.
Once again, I launched him into one of my other attackers, then I charged the remaining mace wielder.
He launched a horizontal swing at me as I tossed my dagger into my other hand. Then I caught the shaft of the mace with my newly free hand, yanked the weapon out of the weaker man’s grip, and proceeded to try and bash his own head in with it while I stabbed him repeatedly in his stomach.
/> He covered his head with his arms, but Carnwennan pierced the mail on the second stab, and I yanked the weapon out in a wide tear.
He cried out in pain, one hand going down to keep me from disemboweling him, and with that my new mace was able to break through his block and crack his unarmored skull.
“How the hell is he so fast?” the remaining mace wielder said as he finally threw the dead body off himself and charged me.
I deflected his overhead blow with my forearm, then stabbed at his torso. To his credit, he deflected my attack with his own mailed arm, but as we struggled I hooked a leg behind his knee and brought him tumbling to the floor.
He landed hard, just in time to take my own new mace right in the face.
The flanged ball crunched into his skull just in time to trigger my lightning current, frying his insides and probably overpowering his vital guard, but I slammed the weapon down another time for good measure, and this time his head opened up completely.
A heavy, shield-wielding body slammed into me just as I rose up from my latest kill.
I felt the spike on his shield pierce my script ward and glance painfully off my scale mail, and then I was struggling in a grapple with someone who was finally skilled enough in close combat to punch me in the face.
He slammed me against the wall with his shield, and tried to pin me there as his gauntleted fist slammed repeatedly against my unarmored face.
“Damned cripple-headed prick,” the armored man snarled as his shield knocked the mace out of my hand. “You think you can just waltz in here and make us all look like a bunch of chumps?”
“Short answer: yes,” I replied as I twisted my head out of the way of his next punch, then grabbed his gauntlet and completely discharged my Outer Current spell, sending all the electricity coursing through my body directly into him.
The knight screamed as his body jerked and his arm nearly exploded off of his body. In that moment I was able to push him away completely, twist his arm behind his back, make him face the same direction as his friends were, and then cast Vein to Vein.
Since he was wounded, and we were grappled, the spell activated instantly. I siphoned away his health, stamina, mana, and memories, learning his abilities and the enemy’s plans in the process.
He was a Malus knight, an operative with high physical abilities and various magics that could enhance them even further—much like many of my own spells.
He was here because Cavus had decided to lure Anahita here instead of going after some orphanage, like Warren had originally suggested. He said he could do it, now that the other hunter had been chased away.
But it was the Malus asshole’s job to handle the ‘ugly stupid boy,’ in case he showed up with her.
They hadn’t expected us to show up so quickly, however.
They figured we were both hiding somewhere back in Mejem or Tajam, and even if we had made it all the way to Sejmera somehow, there should have been no way we had managed to break inside the Vault less than three days after their own army had arrived there.
They still didn’t know about Anahita’s Wind Trails and still hadn’t figured out how she had managed to confront them on so many fronts, especially with Cavus making such an obvious show of chasing her in this world.
She had guarded her secret well.
But the paralysis from my Lightning spell finally wore off on my opponent, and roughly at that same time one of the casters fighting Breena got a clear shot and pegged me in the helmet with a Script missile. Again, my wards and armor took most of the blow, but it distracted me just enough for my weakened enemy to twist his way out of my grip.
His posture sagged as he turned to engage me, the result of having his Strength drained by a High Practitioner Blood mage. I could feel the extra power coursing through me, now that I realized it. I also realized that unlike the vital guard and mana I had also taken from him, it wouldn’t last long in my body.
So as he fumbled for the back-up weapon he probably should have grabbed a long time ago, I charged him, caught his weakened body in a tackle, then spun him around to use him as a shield for the next wave of Script missiles blasting my way.
His body jerked with each impact, his own wards, armor, and shield helping him withstand the volley, but it still taxed his already-weakened vital guard to its very limits.
He managed one more weakened punch as I lifted him over my head, ran forward, and hurled his four hundred pounds of armor and body weight into the remaining operatives of the other group.
“Elite troops my ass,” I muttered under my breath as Breena’s opponents swore and struggled to get out of the way. But the hallways were barely wide enough to swing a weapon, and so most of the remaining fighters either tumbled into each other or directly into my organic missile’s path.
It’s because we caught them by surprise, Breena sent to me as she darted down and began blasting fiery darts out of her wand and into a prone enemy’s eye. And they’re not used to being surprised like we are, so their teamwork is off. But we have to hurry up and take them out so we can help Anahita!
She didn’t need to tell me twice. I ran forward, still keeping my dagger out in the narrow passage, and pounced on another prone Malus Member, finishing him off by stabbing into his brain.
By then, Breena had blown apart the remaining two enemies with a wand-empowered Lightning bolt. I turned to look for any remaining foes, quickly refreshing as many spells as I could.
I found over a dozen, streaming in from the three opposing hallways.
But they were all short, dusk-skinned goldfolk, the native humans of the Golden Sands.
They were clad in dark robes, and they stared at me with the most open hatred I had ever felt, Raw-Maw and Cavus included.
“I greet the traitor-prince,” the closest one said to me in a vaguely familiar voice. “Hello Wes Malcolm.”
I glared back at the angry men, matching their rage with my own.
“Tell me where Anahita is,” I spat. “Tell me who and what you actually are. And then go fuck yourselves. And please do all of those things in order.”
“The chief prey of this world is beyond your reach, False Son,” the man-wearing monster spat, “and your unnatural urge to both hoard and abstain from her is just one more example of your tragic degeneracy. One more dagger in the hearts of the ones who foresaw so much potential in you. But know this: if I believed for even a moment that you would pursue the kind of relations with her that Father Aegrim intended, I would not only reveal her location, I would fight our own ally to enforce your right to possess and use her however you wished. But since your mind is too wounded to think with any kind of dignity, then I will not reveal her location to you. Not unless you refuse to run from us. Not unless you swear to stand your ground and meet our knives and talons and claws.”
Their glares hardened even further as he spoke.
“But since I cannot count on your broken mind to be wise, I will answer your next question. I am one of those who tried to save you, back before we came to this world.”
His face lightened, and his height grew, until he resembled a man in his late twenties that I had barely remembered.
The one who had all but effectively kicked me out of my old youth group at church.
“Travis?” I spat in disbelief. “Fucking Travis Gordon? Why the hell are you talking like a Hordebeast?”
“Do not refer to those with more sentience than yourself as ‘beasts,’ traitor-prince,” my former youth pastor rebuked as he finished settling into his new height. “The Pits in their own way offer two things to all creatures of the Expanse: kinship or dominance. Because all creatures are worthy of either one or the other. With yourself as the sole exception, traitor-prince. It is why my brothers and I have assumed the mantle of the Pits’ Knights. To protect them from abominations like you.”
“Tell me where Anahita is,” I repeated with bared teeth, “or I will take the knowledge from your minds as I rip you apart, piece by piece.”
&
nbsp; “Swear that you will not run, traitor-prince,” the Hordeman spat back with contempt. “You should not even be here at all, yet, and so you likely have some contingency to flee from us. I know you have been racing across the dunes of this world to evade our search, sending your prey-lackeys to destroy your former family for you. Swear here and now that you will face us, instead of fleeing in fear like you have done with your very birthright, and I will risk the waste of the chief-prey herself to assure that you will die and heal here and now.”
“Fuck your perverted mind,” I snarled, finishing my last spell and fully refreshing my stored signature magics. Why they had sat there and let me do so, instead of swarming and attacking immediately, was baffling to me. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to tear my way through every one of you, and then I’m going to find the Starsown’s Satellite, help her beat the everloving crap out of Cavus for the fourth time in a row, and then finish taking this place apart.”
Knives in the Night Page 57
