by DB King
But it was evident who had the advantage. Koshi’s movements began to slow, and his breathing became ragged and shallow. A shadowy sword actually broke through his defenses once, and he had to dodge from its path, leaving it to slice a mound of scrap metal into pieces.
He had to duck beneath another one. His bow started to dissolve in his hands. He let go of it, allowing it to dissipate into the night, and crossed his forearms in front of his face.
“Koshi!” Raphael cried, his heart beating frantically in alarm.
“The Fifth Brazier, Raph! This is the Elemental Breath!”
Koshi dropped his hands and opened his mouth. A torrent of flames burst out, hotter than anything Raphael had ever felt. It swept over Sylvia’s tide of shadowy blades, burning them out of existence, and rolled toward the elf.
Sylvia picked up her massive sword with her hands. She leveled its tip at the heart of the flames.
She dove into the inferno.
For a moment, Raphael thought that she’d been utterly consumed, but the light of the Dragon Meridian allowed him to make out her silhouette pushing through the flames. As he focused on her form, he was able to see that the purple light swirling about her arms and sword shunted the fire away from her flesh. She wasn’t entirely successful, however. The hair on the left side of her skull was singed, and her right pauldron had been burned away to reveal blistered, weeping flesh beneath.
But she was still driving through the inferno, her blade leading the way. Twenty feet separated them, then ten. Koshi let his flames die out and inhaled once more. Sylvia dashed forward, closing to within five feet.
Koshi breathed out a bolt of lightning. It struck Sylvia’s sword. The elf screamed as the current traveled down its length and tore through her body. The massive blade flew from her grasp as her limbs flailed in uncontrollable spasms.
Koshi charged in. He punched Sylvia in the abdomen, folding her over his fist. His next blow struck her in the temple and sent her reeling away. He pursued, closing the distance in an instant, caught a handful of her hair, and pulled her head back, exposing her heart.
Sylvia hit him with a thunderous uppercut that lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing down into a spread-eagled heap a few paces away. She moaned and clutched the areas where she’d been struck as she swayed on her feet.
He hit her in the Spell Vectors!” Eliza realized, her eyes wide. “Abdomen, temple, and heart.”
“Is that how you fight mages?” Raphael asked.
Eliza nodded. “It’s extremely effective. He’s hit her in three of her four Spell Vectors—that’s why she looks so beat up.”
Koshi gasped breathlessly as he struggled to stand. Blood poured from the corners of his mouth. He made it as far to his knees before he had to stop and catch his breath.
“You’re much tougher than I thought, old man,” Sylvia said, her face pinched in obvious pain. She was very badly hurt. Koshi’s punches had probably ruptured something inside her stomach and perhaps even cracked her skull. And that was on top of the weeping burns on her shoulder and along her now-exposed arms, the bite marks of Dragonfire and Dragonshock.
“Likewise,” Koshi managed to say, in between bouts of bloody coughing. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had to fight so hard.”
“I think this victory’s mine, though,” the elf replied. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll be taking that Spell Core and going on my way, now. Oh, and about your son, he doesn’t have to come with me tonight. I’ll come pick him up later, when I’m feeling slightly better.”
Koshi pushed himself to his feet and clenched his fists. “The only way you’re taking that Spell Core is over my dead body.”
Sylvia brought her fists up, too. “That works for me.”
While they’d been speaking, Raphael had made his way to the Spell Core. He seized it in his hands.
“Stop! Stop fighting!” he cried. “You’re going too far! Someone might die if you carry on!”
Sylvia blinked blearily. One of her eyes was swollen shut. “Well, yes. That’s the idea in the first place, right?”
“I’m not letting her desecrate the Spell Core,” Koshi snarled. His fists were trembling, and as Raphael watched, a fresh stream of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
“This? The two of you are fighting over this thing that came out from Wormy’s body, right?” Raphael held the Spell Core high.
“Be careful with that!” both Koshi and Sylvia snapped. They exchanged uncomfortable glances, but it was the elf who spoke first.
“It’s quite a sizable Spell Core and will fetch a small fortune! I think we can get enough Spell Dust from that one alone to power the spells of a dozen mages for a month or so!”
Koshi threw Sylvia a venomous frown. “Spell Cores aren’t meant to be touched, Raph. Put it down and let nature claim it.”
“Dragon Knight or not, your father is a shortsighted fanatic,” Sylvia said. “Give it to me. It’d be such a waste if you break the Spell Core.”
“No! Don’t listen to her! Put it down, now!” Koshi demanded. “Leave it alone!”
Raphael looked closely at the Spell Core in his hands. It came from the scrounge-worm, and somehow, he could feel all the things the creature had felt in its last moments: pain, fear, and the overwhelming desire to protect him from Fenix. And there was one other thing, too: regret. The scrounge-worm hadn’t wanted to leave yet. It still wanted to chase Raphael around, to play, to eat more apples.
Something warm trickled down his cheek, and he dimly registered it as a tear. But his focus was on the swirling emotions inside the Spell Core. They called to him, and something inside him answered their call. It reached into the glowing amber sphere and…
“Raphael! Raphael!” Eliza’s voice cut through his dreamlike state. He shook his head, coming to his senses.
“What did you do?” the battlemage asked. She was standing beside him.
Eliza’s eyes were wide, and her jaw was slack with awed disbelief. He swept his gaze to Koshi and Sylvia, only to find Eliza’s expression mirrored on their faces as well.
“The Spell Core…” Sylvia stammered. “It… changed.”
Raphael looked down at the object he held in his hands. The elf was right. The Spell Core was now a blue, greenish object, rounded but not entirely spherical, large enough to fill both his palms. It was an…
“Egg.” Koshi drew in a sharp breath. “A faerie dragon’s egg. I didn’t think I’d ever see another one in my lifetime. But here it is, and right on the cusp of hatching, too.”
“What happened? Did I do this? Turn Wormy’s Core into some kind of egg?” Raphael asked.
“You cast a spell. Without any Dust and with your Vectors still shut,” Eliza said, staring at Raphael. “And that spell… it can only be Spontaneous Transmigration, something spoken of only in myths and legends. Just who are you, Raphael? Koshi is a Dragon Knight, but you… you’ve got to be something more.”
“He is, young lady.”A huge smile spread across Koshi’s face. “He is so much more than I ever was and will ever be.”
Sylvia fell to her knees and buried her face in her hands. “It’s not possible,” she murmured. “True Magic was gone… is gone. It has to be. Otherwise, all these years, I’ve been… I’ve been…”
“You’ve been stamping out the life-force of worthy creatures,” Koshi said, sighing.
Sylvia trembled. “All those Cores—all those creatures. What… What have I done?” Her shoulders heaved as she sobbed loudly and uncontrollably.
Koshi looked at her, but Raphael saw that his regard bore none of the earlier anger he held for the elf.
He walked over and patted her uninjured shoulder comfortingly.
“I’m sorry!” she said. “I… I thought it was all gone! That True Magic no longer existed! But I couldn’t let go… I…!”
Koshi pulled her to her feet. “But now you see that it’s not true. What was lost can be reclaimed. And now, it will be reclaimed and returned to th
e world, where it rightfully belongs.”
Sylvia nodded numbly. She walked toward Raphael and clasped her hands around his.
“Thank you,” she whispered, before turning away and walking off into the night. Her sword followed her, floating despondently by her side.
* * *
Eliza followed Raphael and Koshi home. She had nowhere else to go, by her own admission, and neither Koshi nor Raphael would turn a destitute stranger away from what little shelter they could offer.
She lit the brass lamp in the middle of their house as Raphael helped Koshi to a chair. Then, she began filling a cracked porcelain basin with water from their rain barrel. By the time Raphael and Koshi had time to blink, the battlemage had retrieved a collection of small ointment bottles and bandages from her belt pouch and laid them out on their table, along with some rags she’d found in Koshi’s tool basket.
“We’ve got to clean and dress your wounds,” she said.
“You’re carrying all this medicine around but didn’t bring any water into the junkyard?” Raphael asked incredulously. He exchanged a glance with Koshi, who’d obviously also concluded that Eliza had been one of the slow kids in school.
“Now, now Raphael,” he said. “Don’t make fun of her. It’s rude.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
“Good boy.”
“If the two of you are done being condescending, take off your shirts, so I can wash out your cuts!” Eliza snapped, her left brow twitching wildly. “And stitch them up, if they’re bad enough.”
Koshi winced. He mumbled something about hating needles and sighed, obviously too drained to engage in a contest of will against Eliza. He complied, and Raphael followed his lead.
By the time the battlemage had finished tucking her bottles back into her belt pouch and Koshi and Raphael were leaning back in their rattan chairs, stiff and bandaged, it was late at night.
His stomach growled. A moment later, so did Koshi’s.
“We haven’t had dinner yet,” he said. “I cooked some oats this evening while waiting for you. We were going to have it before we started on the apples. The oats are in the pot, but they could do with some warming up.”
“I’ll start the fire,” Raphael said, getting to his feet with a groan.
“Let me do it.” Eliza pushed him back into his chair.
They looked at the faerie dragon egg as they ate. Raphael had placed it on the middle of the table in their house. It gave off a faint blue glow.
Eliza wolfed down the contents of her bowl. A sheepish look came over her face as the last spoonful disappeared into her mouth.
“It appears you haven’t eaten in a while, young lady,” Koshi said gently. “Please, feel free to cook more oats for yourself. We have enough to share.”
She blinked furiously. A single tear rolled down her cheek, but she sniffed, forced a smile on her face, and shook her head. “No, that’s alright. Thank you so much for the meal.”
“What’re you going to do now?” Raphael asked. “You can’t join the Hell Drakes, and I don’t think you’re going to find a warm welcome back home, either.”
“I’m not really sure,” she said. “But I do know what I mustn’t do anymore.”
Eliza took off her gloves with the shiny stones and began unbuckling her leathers. Koshi covered his eyes with one hand and slapped the other over Raphael’s.
“I’m fully clothed,” she told them, her voice laden with more than a tinge of annoyance. And she was, her torso clad in a gray short-sleeved tunic. “You’ve got to wear something under this ridiculous getup. Too much chafing otherwise.”
“What I meant is that knowing what I now do of Spell Cores, I can no longer pursue the vocation of a battlemage,” Eliza said. “Magic is dead to me. At least magic that involves Spell Dust, that is.” She sighed.
“A wise and courageous decision, young lady.” Koshi nodded approvingly. “In time, your Spell Vectors will close up by themselves.”
“So what’re you going to do now? Find a job at the marketplace?” Raphael asked. “You could stay with us, if you want.”
“Raphael! You can’t have an educated and refined young lady like her stay with us here! Our roof lets the rain in, you know!” Koshi chided.
“I’ve lived in much worse conditions,” Eliza said, a faint smile creeping across her face. “As far as I’m concerned, your home is warm and cozy.” There was something else in Eliza’s expression, something that Raphael would have missed had he not been staring right at her. It was interest. While she had given up the use of Spell Cores for power, it was clear she was interested in how Raphael and Koshi were able to perform their physical feats.
Raphael smiled back at her. If Koshi had taught him, then maybe he could teach Eliza too? Raphael wasn’t sure whether he liked the idea of having Koshi teach someone else, but he definitely wouldn’t mind having a girl around the place.
A yawn forced itself from Raphael’s lips. Koshi chuckled.
“It’s been a long day for all of us. Let’s get some rest. You can take my bed, young lady. I’ll share Raphael’s,” he said.
Chapter 8
Many things happened that morning. Raphael woke up later than usual, shortly after the sun had already risen. A delicious aroma greeted his nostrils. He sprang up from his bed, clambered over Koshi’s form, and hopped to the table.
A pie, freshly baked and golden, glistened in the rays of the rising sun. The faerie dragon egg sat on the table.
“Oh, I overslept,” Koshi mumbled from behind. He shuffled sleepily to stand beside Raphael. They looked at the pie. Then they looked at each other.
“Don’t leave your mouth hanging open like that, Raph,” Koshi said. “And wipe that drool away.”
“You too,” he replied.
Eliza strode in, hoisting their freshly washed pot and some of their cooking things. “Oh, good morning. I made breakfast. I found some apples around, along with some spices, a little bit of flour, and lard on one of your shelves. I haven’t baked in a while, and the whim just struck me, so I dug a little earthen oven in front of your house and used it. Hope you two don’t mind.”
“It’s…” Raphael took a big sniff.
“An apple pie!” Koshi exclaimed.
They both raised their hands and cheered.
Raphael cut generous slices for everyone, and they sat down to eat.
“How is it?” Eliza asked nervously.
“Raphael,” Koshi said solemnly, clasping him on the shoulder. “You’re a bit young for such a responsibility. Nevertheless, a true man must answer destiny’s call when it comes for him. So you must do this one thing.”
“Do what?” Raphael asked, with his mouth full.
“Marry her.” Koshi pointed at Eliza.
She choked on a mouthful of tea.
“What? No! I’m only eighteen! You marry her!”
“That’s just wrong!” Koshi protested.
“I’m not marrying either of you!” Eliza declared, after she’d recovered from her choking, sputtering fit. “I take it you like the pie, then?”
“It’s wonderful!” Koshi declared.
“Heavenly!” Raphael agreed.
“The best thing I’ve ever eaten!” Koshi continued.
“I thought the best thing you’ve ever eaten was that potato dish at Mrs. Salvatore’s tavern? You said so, yourself,” Raphael pointed out.
“Well, now it’s this. Stop fretting the details, you little rascal!”
Sudden inspiration struck Raphael, then. He turned to Eliza. “Maybe that’s where you could go. Mrs. Salvatore was telling me the other day that she was shorthanded in the kitchen.”
Eliza smiled. “I’ve always enjoyed cooking and baking. That’s most of what I did at my Master’s academy, anyway, apart from cleaning.”
“We can stop by later today and introduce you to her, young lady,” Koshi said. “We’ve eaten many times at her tavern and done quite a bit of work for her, too. Wait. Raphael. When did Mr
s. Salvatore tell you this? She didn’t mention any such thing when we were at her place last.”
“Er… I just happened to run into her on the way to school?” Raphael ventured. In truth, he’d been running errands for Mrs. Salvatore instead of attending the Maestro’s classes, but he didn’t want Koshi to know that, not just yet.
“That’s quite a coincidence, since her tavern is so far away from school.” Koshi narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
“Maybe she was just taking a walk…?”
“No, that doesn’t sound quite right. Mrs. Salvatore has a bad leg, just like me. Why would she—”
“Hello!” a high-pitched singsong voice called from outside. “Good morning! Looks like I found you!”
“Is that—” Koshi began.
Sylvia kicked open their front door and strode in. Instead of her armor, she wore a loose, sleeveless tunic, baggy trousers, and cloth shoes. The left side of the elf’s face was bandaged, as was her exposed shoulder.
“The wonders of Healing Magic and a little spit and polish,” she said, noticing where Raphael was looking. “I’m here to wrap up some business, namely, Raphael becoming my lovely apprentice!”
“For an elf, a member of such a long-lived, introspective race, you do hurry along,” Koshi remarked grumpily.
“Life’s always too short, I say, no matter who you are!” She plopped herself down at the table, took Raphael’s empty plate, and cut herself a big slice of the apple pie, all the while ignoring everybody’s biting glares.
Raphael was surprised by her cheerful mood. The last time he’d seen her, she’d seemed sad and crestfallen. He’d half-expected her to quit the Hell Drakes and swear off ever touching Spell Cores again. As he watched her smile at Eliza and compliment her baking, he guessed that nothing kept Sylvia down, at least not for long.
“So, when can you move into the Guild dormitories today? In the afternoon? Or should we go after I’m done eating?” Sylvia asked, speaking with her mouth full. “The sooner we get all the paperwork done, the sooner we can get to your training. If we’re fast, we might be able to get started tonight, even.”
