Tesem

The ground shuddered.

Tesem’s stomach flipped as he sprang to his paws, instincts flaring to life from a half-doze. The foul beasts squawked and growled in disapproval. The conjured creatures didn’t like it either.

“A quake?” Vlam yelped as she rose and dusted off her scarlet grieves. The scorched smell of dirty fire, smoking blood, and burning flesh clung to her like a veil that irreparably marred her handsome features in Tesem’s mind. Gossip said she’d once burned a whole town to find a replacement body with her favorite shade of red hair because she couldn’t get it with dye.

Verglas shook his head once, not the least bit disturbed, “A Rock-type Essence… perhaps Mountain, or even Jade.”

The heartless Ice mage was right—this single tremor didn’t have the usual little shakes and rumblings before or after. With Tesem in full-on big dog form, his animal senses would’ve alerted him to a natural event.

“Good thing we didn’t follow them in. We’d have been massacred.” Vlam snickered, but the other mages didn’t seem to appreciate the dark humor. She made a rude gesture when they ignored her.

With a terrible crash, one distant slope crumbled in a rockslide. Then they saw a smaller landslide nearer to the side. Then another, closer still, that knocked over a pillar of Ice. The tunnel is collapsing, Tesem realized. Plumes of dust shot into the air across the mountain range, accompanied by tremendous sounds of destruction.

“Should we be worried?” Ansbach asked, his voice trying to conceal the fear that stank so obvious in Tesem’s nose. Like many cruel, small-minded men, the viridian gloved wizard’s streak of cowardice wormed to the surface whenever real danger presented itself. The White Wolf sensed this, eying him with disdain when his back was turned, otherwise feigning slumber.

“Get up, lazy mutt,” the Wind mage kicked his familiar’s side.

The Wolf didn’t flinch. It didn’t growl. It stood with silent steps in disregard of its master.

The mages’ head Stone user, an idiot named Tommy Knocker, said, “Look at the Bear, we’re probably fine,” and tilted his head in that direction. Tom wore a bodybuilder’s pilfered physique like a fake-abs novelty shirt. The man had never been to a gym in his life; Tesem knew the smell of dumbbells and hard work.

The Bear hadn’t budged its head from resting on folded paws. It wasn’t big, six feet at the shoulder—though that’d be ridiculous for a common bear. Many larger beasts prowled the arena, but its incredible density set it apart. Tesem suspected bones of granite and veins of metal couldn’t account for the whole of its weight.

Kleodora smacked Tommy upside the head. “The Bear wouldn’t flinch at a car crash. Put some thought into your words next time. I swear, having to ‘hold your hand’ is embarrassing.” She had a hobby of hurting people, especially those whose bodies she’d stolen over the years. It sometimes bled into her otherwise professional attitude. All sorts of unpleasant smells from that history clung to her aura.

With Kleodora, they had two Stone mages to mind the Bear’s leash, and it still seemed to do what it wanted. Knocker could Summon the Bear alright, but his control lacked stability. The stone slinger maintained an ochre aura thread to her partner with dour obligation as she mounted a parrot-rhino beast.

Rasant the cobalt mage nodded at the settling stones, “Someone in there doesn’t like our kids.” He tapped his Lightning Rune sneakers, adjusted his leather jacket, and then shivered with a feral grin. The swarthy man’s hair stood straight as ozone wafted off him, already amping up.

He winced as a spark arced between his ear and shoulder. When he went to itch his neck, static shocks popped at each point of contact between his fingers and head. The more agitated he became, the more he sparked, the more he itched and twitched.

“They were rather rambunctious last time,” Praxithea the Water witch made a production of bringing out her levitating whitewater ‘feather’ boa as she stretched. Idly, she petted the head of her mudfish-tiger beast. She smelled rank with cheap perfume and cheaper booze, though the Ice mage kept her sober for the mission.

“Places,” Verglas didn’t raise his voice, but it carried all the same. “If they come out alive, it will be in the next minute.” Another landslide punctuated his statement.

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The last group of mages, two Water users, a Lightning, and a Wind, hadn’t signed up for this. They’d tagged along for a promised share of the profits with little stake in the hunt. They’d be the first to turn tail if things got rough. Tesem didn’t expect that to be the case.

He doubted those kids would get past the beasts, let alone the arsenal of weapons the mages wielded, even if they did manage to slip past his guard at the tunnel entrance. There were dozens upon dozens of creatures on the ground and in the air, starving for a taste of flesh, hoping for another whiff of the magic that brought them to life.

They’d never get that, though; only riding mounts had their Glyphs maintained daily. The mages wouldn’t bother disposing of whatever beasts survived this encounter. Instead, they’d release them to wreck the local ecosystem.

“And don’t forget the frog,” Verglas added.

“Don’t forget the frog,” the other mages and Tesem echoed automatically, not looking up from their tasks.

He’d gotten sick of saying it, but the Batrachian girl had made the difference last time. Verglas blamed Kleodora’s team for not taking precautions before and allowing her to become a threat. The Ice mage wasn’t one to make the same mistake twice. Although, repeating that phrase every minute sure was annoying.

These past few days had been a trial. Tesem’s tough act succeeded; none of the mages wanted to mess with a Black Dog baring his teeth. His plan to claim the children as his sole prize had failed, however. Now, they’d be at the mercy of these monsters in human skin no matter what he did.

The mages would’ve eaten each other alive if Verglas hadn’t occupied them with their little projects. Give Stone mages free time, and what do they do? Build a wall.

Foot by foot, stone by stone, they’d raised a hundred-foot barrier curving concentrically around the mountain slope to enclose the tunnel’s ‘secret’ door. No way a thirty-foot wingspan bat could carry six passengers over a wall patrolled by this many beasts and mages without being shot down.

The azure mages each secured their own chamber at three points halfway up the wall. Rising on reverse-flowing waterfalls, Praxithea and her peers mounted the lips of their hollows and filled them with Water. This gave them a secure place to pressurize their Water, a panic room to retreat to, and a high-ground advantage.

Above them, six mages of Fire, Wind, and Lightning walked the wall’s parapets. At the wall’s base, the two Stone mages stood on a raised platform with a pile of rocks for ammunition.

As the mages vacated their resting spots in the arena, Verglas covered the ground with a layer of rime. The floor of this coliseum was the Ice mage’s domain. Everyone else’s job was to keep the kids down there with him.

For three days, Verglas had taken his time growing pillars of Ice. Today, a layer of white covered everything. Astride his blubbery mole-elephant, sitting on his cold throne, holding his Second Generation Taotie blade, the Ice mage showed every confidence of victory.

Tesem, as a sixteen-year-old Black Dog, knew his capabilities. Few matched him at his zenith: on the ocean, at night, during a full moon. Water empowered his mist and speed, night allowed his mist to distort direction and distances in strange ways, and the phases of the moon strengthened his canine forms.

The faint image of a gibbous moon hung in the daylight sky. Despite its waning, he perched at the top quarter of his strength. Tesem could handle these kids without his mist. Standing on Ice, foremost before the tunnel doors, wasn’t a problem. The cold didn’t bother him. Few things did.

A crack split the concealed stone doors as they opened. Tesem didn’t hold his breath; he inhaled deeply. He knew the seven by scent… though one was sharply different. He couldn’t place how at first, and it didn’t matter—he growled into the darkness, waiting for his chance to strike.

The accumulated dust of multiple cave-ins erupted forth to obscure the mages’ visual and his sense of smell. Then a hot beam of radiance shot through the dust to hit Tesem between the eyes. It didn’t hurt, though it disrupted his form a moment. He thought the attack premature but soon learned a moment was all the kids had wanted.

A giant bat burst through the cloud with a massive flap of her wings. Something had changed about her, not just her claws or the shape of her transformation, though he wasn’t sure what with the dust clogging his nose. She threw the Caprid at him.

The red devil girl bunched a fist and clobbered him in the snout with all her momentum. Tesem reeled with pain, so foreign to him, and fell on his side. He wasn’t hurt, this First Realm Caprid couldn’t damage his vitals, but somehow her fist had found him.

The sting of the blow disoriented him. He reverted to human form and struggled to regain his feet. Daniel, their leader, stepped from the Caprid’s palm and strode past Tesem onto the battlefield. He turned to stop the young angel and saw the other kids dismounting the bat as the Chiropteran climbed skyward. Did they seriously mean to fight?

Then he finally caught a clear whiff of that bat girl.

The smell of fear was gone.

She rose higher, flying directly into a swarm of flying beasts, a hail of spears, a flurry of rings, and a half dozen Elemental attacks.

“Hey!” a girl’s voice said. Tesem turned to face the grinning blue Caprid. “Your fight’s down here—and I’m not going easy on you just because you’re cute.”

Cute? Tesem blinked in confusion. Taking advantage of the opening, she raked her claws through the air to send a quintet of rending energy blades tearing into his chest. He fell again, the pain intense and real, though he didn’t bleed.

Gathering himself, Tesem shifted into half-dog form and lunged. He thrust his hairy fist into her stomach in a fearsome uppercut that lifted her hooves off the ground. In midair, she shifted to red and grabbed his shirt.

“Our names are Wendi and Ziege!—And we’re going to make you remember them!” The red devil shouted in his face and pulled his head toward her curved horns for a devastating headbutt.