Daniel
The group erupted into a shouting match of conflicting advice. They were far from Via Labicana. No poaching tax could save them from the mages now.
:What are their Elements?: Rana’s practical question overrode everyone else.
:I don’t know yet,: Cassie admitted. :They haven’t used their magic, and I haven’t Listened that far ahead. Sorry:
That non-answer irritated Rana. :How powerful are they? What Faction?:
:I think they’re Nephilim—they don’t sound nice.:
:They’re probably a Hunting party. Nothing for it then.: Rana sighed over their connection. :We either face the beast or blow past the mages.:
This was Daniel’s choice, ill-informed though it may be, and everyone knew it. They depended on him for a decision, one of his first and biggest as a leader. Worst case, they’d get sandwiched and have to deal with both enemies.
With his most confident voice, he declared, “We blow past the mages!”
Doubts removed, Cassandra the Bat’s wings beat faster and harder as she reached her maximum speed. They flew as high as the bubble hall permitted until Cassie announced, :Their Elements are Stone, Water, and Wind.:
“Dammit!” Rana shouted.
:What?: he sent, her sudden outburst giving Daniel a bad feeling.
As they passed over the mages far below, she replied, :‘No one outruns the Wind.’:
The silver note of a whistle cut the air. Daniel saw a shooting star of viridian aura drafting in their slipstream. Cassie anticipated it, her misdirecting swerves and dives keeping it at bay. Wendi squeezed the air from Daniel’s lungs clutching him through intense spinning stunts, and still, the missile gained.
Despite his meager strength, he gritted his teeth and twisted against the g’s of acceleration to get the projectile in his sights. Daniel cocked his fist and projected his magic into a punch. The viridian ball swooped under his attack and approached on the right. Cassie spiraled left and up, attempting to escape the spell’s range in vain.
Knowing what was coming, she flared her wings to let it overshoot. Instead, the viridian ball doubled back to explode point-blank with the sound of a stun grenade. Though it hurt his ears, Daniel remained uninjured. Damage, however, had not been its purpose. In a moment of pained confusion and broken concentration, Cassie reverted to humanoid form.
They fell from the sky.
Caramboles flew to their aid, and shots of sticky slime linked kids together, buying time for strands of Kenta’s hair to lash themselves to freefalling wrists and ankles. Paul the candlestick and Lea the balance scale shapeshifted to minimize falling damage. As Cassie roused, dozens of slower balls of Wind advanced. Unable to flee or mount more than a token defense, the kids couldn’t stop the viridian orbs from maneuvering into position.
These projectiles had customized properties. Small dense Wind orbs blasted Lea and Paul from Kenta’s grasp. Medium-sized ones batted away caramboles that had been slowing the others’ descent. Large ones expanded between the falling kids, pushing them apart until the tension unraveled hair and snapped sticky slime strings. As Rana’s tongue darted to grab the neck of the tumbling balance scale, spinning viridian razors severed the band of pink flesh.
Rana reeled in a bloody mouthful.
Their hasty and feeble resistance failed. With gravity working against them, the viridian mage didn’t have to hit hard. Daniel watched the others be scattered by the wind and fall.
While the candle snapped on impact, Paul had a strong, metallic base. The candle boy reassembled himself while stumbling to his feet in humanoid form unharmed.
Meanwhile, Lea regained control of her situation in the air. When her obsidian spheres fully enlarged, the viridian balls couldn’t budge them. She shifted to human and descended sitting on one carambole as the remaining six blocked a firehose torrent.
“Hey, pretty girl!” a beautiful azure mage called. “Wanna play with me?”
The woman rode a grotesque beast covered in the cold, slimy-brown skin of a mudskipper with the claws, teeth, and shape of a tiger. She wore a black wetsuit under a skirt of the same material and azure gloves to the elbow. She kept a handful of yellow mosaic rings on holsters attached to her waterproof saddle.
The mages all shared a gold-rimmed black capelet fastened at the neck with a Shew Stone clasp. Their backs displayed a Vitruvian human drawn in gold, two superimposed positions with four arms and four legs inside a circle and square. Nephilim, each with gorgeous stolen faces.
Just as Cassie righted herself in freefall, a bright viridian ball split into more rotating blades of compressed air. Though she preternaturally dodged most of them, and though they were little more than shaving razors, a lucky few among dozens tasted blood. They nicked her arms and tore her shirt, but worse, they ripped the delicate membrane of her wings.
Cassie couldn’t fly.
The viridian mage cackled and sang, “Bye, bye, batty!” He was as lean and hungry as the white Wolf he rode, but the malicious glint was all his own.
Something about the creature in its winter coat, standing tall as a stallion, caught Daniel’s eye. The Wolf had no saddle, and its aura shone bright viridian. The man wore a plain long-sleeved shirt with uneven rolled cuffs, baggy pants with zipper pockets, viridian gloves, and sneakers. He kept a violet blade sheathed over his shoulder.
“One down, five to go,” said the ochre mage, built like Slate but with a rougher stoniness to her cleft chin as if made of granite. She dressed in tunic and breeches, cotton and leather, with thick ochre gloves that creaked when she clenched her fists. Her mount resembled a red and blue feathered rhino with a parrot beak. She kept a red heat shield on her heavy saddle but didn’t reach for it as the battle started.
In his fluffy twenty-foot diameter defensive hairball, Kenta bounced on impact with the ground. He then ascended from a cracked eggshell of hair to observe his surroundings. The ground around him dampened with the tide washing in. A whip of water cracked at him, but he raised a wall of hair in time to break the vertical wave.
“Now I have two pretty little toys to play with.” The azure mage cooed soft and low as she rolled her shoulders beneath a ‘feather’ boa of levitating frothy whitewater. “Though I do prefer boys.”
Together, the inseparable two, Daniel and Wendi plummeted to the unyielding ground as Wendi slowed their descent with air resistance by cupping her enormous hands.
Then she hoisted Daniel up to thrust her free arm forward. She took the force of their combined mass and acceleration with one palm hitting the ground, her whole strength against the equivalent force of a highway collision. Displaying split-second timing and immense body control, Wendi lowered Daniel while decelerating him to avoid an instant stop after she touched ground.
With his landing eased, the dust plume cushioning him from the impact consumed a chunk of his power instead of bottoming his well. His vision blurred momentarily as pain blossomed and faded inside his head. He shook himself; plenty of gas in the tank.
Daniel rolled out of her open palm and stood on wobbly legs. He turned to Wendi as he heard her scream in pain. The bone of her forearm had torn its way into open air through bleeding skin that shivered between red and blue.
His veins ran hot. “Fight it, Wendi! Don’t give in to the pain!”
Her horns curled then jutted as her whole body convulsed between two forms, tail waxing and waning, hands becoming claws, then meaty fists. She eked out a strained, “I-I’ll try-y, Danny,” then an animal yowl as her broken arm rippled.
Contracting muscles pulled the fractured bone inside the arm and into place, then set it with a snap and a yelp. The bleeding wound closed, her healing factor mind-boggling. However, by the way she cradled the arm, a complete repair would take too long. The battle would be decided by then, one way or the other. At least she’d stayed in red form; her erratic shifting ceased.
Then Daniel saw the white Wolf looming. Their gazes met, and its eyes held the fascinating spirals of the Wind Rune. It padded with persistence, not mindless but—for lack of a better word—dogged. He felt it beautiful in its way… not an ephemeral rose, but a star in heaven… eternal in its alien symmetry as no animal born could be. It was not a wolf but the wolf. Every wolf there ever was or ever would be. Examining this entity, he suspected he didn’t see its entirety—but rather some minor part that mirrored the whole. A fractal fragment.
As it approached, it didn’t snarl or raise its hackles. It was fearless in the face of death and ruin. It didn’t breathe, didn’t need to, and there was something else… Daniel concentrated and saw no dead cells in its hair or nails. The Wolf was deathless as a demon—but not evil. This was no creation of the conniving mage who had it on a leash.
How this immortal came to be bound by human hands was a mystery Daniel had no time to solve. No matter its majesty or grace, the white Wolf had no mercy. If Daniel hesitated to strike, he’d lose.
So, he cocked his arm, focused his mind, and launched a lethal fist-shaped wave of Ruin that would annihilate whatever it touched.
Unfortunately, it touched nothing.
The Wolf hit as hard as the fall, its paw batting Daniel, and he tumbled like a ragdoll. His arms slapped gravel, his head shattered a rock, his foot caught on something and nearly twisted out of its socket, he skidded on his side, his back, his stomach, and rolled to a stop. His neck felt sore, his head worse, but Daniel picked himself up with a fist raised in self-defense. There was the path of dissipating dust and desolate soil where he’d skidded over the ground, twenty feet long.
It’d happened so fast Daniel needed to replay the scene to make sense of it. The Wolf hadn’t predicted his attack like Cassie; it watched his movements and reacted on flawless instincts. The Wolf circled around his attack, flanking him with supernatural speed. His magical eyesight saw the air offered the Wolf no resistance, parting as the subservient masses before their king. The Wolf tread not on dirt or rock but on gust and squall, weightless, running untethered by ground or gravity.
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The Wolf’s strength far exceeded its size. Focusing on the moment prior to the strike, Daniel recalled a bright flash of viridian. He’d actually been hit by a pressurized air cannon the Wolf fired from its paw pads.
It watched him.
The white Wolf waited for another opportunity to strike with the patience to wear down mountains. Daniel stopped himself from shooting a punch in frustration. He needed to think and find a solution. Nearby, the viridian mage reached Wendi as she kneeled, and her broken arm healed.
“Does that hurt?” the man asked with mock concern as he leaned in temptingly close.
Wendi grabbed at him with her good hand. He retreated like a flitting mosquito. The viridian mage weighed far less than a human but couldn’t levitate like Goldie. Instead, he fired gusts of wind from his feet to jump and used his hands to balance or turn his body midair.
“How about this?” He kicked low, and a blade of Wind swept in, curving into her side with a dull impact. She didn’t bleed, but the force knocked her spinning to the ground. Wendi stood and threw herself at the mage. “Not enough?” He sidestepped, the matador to her raging bull. “Having fun?” He threw a bright orb that spilled razors onto her shoulders for dozens of stinging papercuts. She growled and swung her fist in futile anger.
He evaded, proceeding to pummel her with compressed air punches. “This is pathetic. I heard Caprids were strong, so I thought this might be a challenge, but you’re a joke—a disgrace to your family!”
Wendi turned blue.
“No!” Daniel shouted, ready to rush to her side until he saw the Wolf circling to blindside him. If he lost to the Wolf, they’d lose this battle. They’d be put in Head Cases.
Daniel bit his lip and tasted blood. He told himself to wait as Wendi’s horns curved forward, her hands became claws, and her teeth sharpened. Anger and sorrow wrenched a wordless scream of denial from his throat as the Wendigo attacked.
Blue claws rent the air with the sound of ripping cloth, and tears in the wind flew at the viridian mage. Where his razors barely cut her skin, the Caprid’s magic cleaved elongated claw marks into the ground as they passed.
“Hah! How do you like it?” Wendigo laughed as the man dodged around her flying energy blades.
“They might be worth something if they hit; too bad you’re nothing but a clumsy oaf,” he replied with mock sympathy.
The Wendigo snarled, leaped forward, and launched wave after wave with her good arm, but the mage breezed around them as he led her on a wild goose chase. Daniel supposed you couldn’t catch the Wind either.
Turning elsewhere, Daniel found the ongoing three-way battle between the azure mage, Lea, and Kenta.
Lea levitated above the new pond spreading across the battlefield. To reach her, the azure mage squeezed spheres of water into hydro-blasting jets that could strip fossilized gum off concrete. The Libra diverted the streams with the attractive fields of her seven caramboles. However, the azure mage’s constant assault didn’t allow her to switch off the black orbs’ gravity. Water accumulated in orbit, causing them to sink as their increasing mass overwhelmed Lea. Soon to be defenseless, Lea was losing her war of attrition.
On the other hand, Kenta was protected but powerless inside his personal quagmire. Although he’d once boasted about his hair’s waterproof oils, Kenta hadn’t considered this situation. The pond water soaked into the ground, and every move he made churned dirt into a slurry, slathering his mane with muck. The added weight slowed his attacks to the point of ridicule. Kenta was stuck in the mud like a car with no traction.
The ochre mage observed the progress of her partners like a commander, making no move to interfere while things went smoothly. Meantime, she fought Paul—if it could be considered fighting. A ring of two-hundred-pound boulders spun around the Stone Slinger. By releasing her magic’s grip, their momentum created projectiles.
Paul raised a pillar of wax, and a passing boulder squashed it flat.
“Don’t waste your effort. You can’t help them,” she said. Paul turned and ran into a dead end as a sheet of rock burst from the ground to stop him. “Believe me, surrendering is your best decision. The more you resist, the more Praxithea and Ansbach get excited. You don’t want that.”
Paul lifted his face, took a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut as if to cry, bared his teeth, and shouted, “I call upon my Progenitor, Girandole: The Way! Come to me in my hour of need!”
His words echoed off the landscape. Spooked, the ochre mage swung her head about, searching for the eerie phantom voices. Even the floating stones faltered. The other two Nephilim heard Paul as well, both taking a beat to glance around. A breath and the moment passed. When nothing appeared, the relieved ochre mage returned her eyes to Paul.
The candle boy hadn’t waited; he’d made his second getaway attempt. Recognizing she’d been deceived, the very real fear in her granite eyes evaporated before a startling fury. Beneath his concern for Paul, Daniel prepared a mental note: Joking about calling the gods down on your enemies won’t go over well at parties.
Another sheer rock jutted forth at Paul’s feet, then three more boxed him in. “You dare try to frighten me with cheap tricks?” she raged at him. The walls contracted on Paul in a crushing trap. “I only need your head.” The ochre mage gazed skyward and gave a cold smile. “It seems your little friend is finally coming down.”
High above, Cassie hadn’t surrendered to falling. She beat her torn and frayed wings against her inevitable descent to stay in the air for a few more precious seconds. The ochre mage extended a hand, causing pebbles and sand to levitate as a projection of that hand to catch the girl.
Daniel’s attention returned to the Wolf as the azure mage’s spreading water touched his feet and boiled. The vigilant Wolf would strike the moment he committed to an attack.
Bishop threatens Rook. They’d done well pitting it against him.
Then the puzzle pieces clicked into place. The black-cape mages had selected their targets and picked the game. Daniel had let them. He didn’t have to.
He had only to remember what Kenta said in Eastwood, how some abilities were suited for particular tasks. He had only to realize each of them was different, with talents and weaknesses. He had only to take a deep breath and shout, “Everyone! Switch opponents! We can win this!”
They heard him.
Rana sprang into relevance as she leaped from Camouflage. One of Lea’s caramboles had saved her from the fall, then she’d hidden both it and herself for the right opportunity.
She landed on the sandy palm in time to catch Cassie, yet fast enough to elude the clenching fist. Next, Rana landed on the stone guillotine as it closed on Paul. He squeezed an arm out and shifted to candlestick form as she grabbed him.
The black orb Rana hid now floated in position for a free attack on Praxithea. The azure mage couldn’t attack Lea, evade Kenta, and defend at the same time. Praxithea raised a water wall with each hand to block Lea’s wrecking ball and Kenta’s clumpy hair fist. The firehose water jets abated, allowing Lea to dump all the water she’d accumulated on Kenta, who used it to wash off the worst of the mud.
The Libra and Kaminoke, slow but determined, made their way toward the Stone mage. Praxithea shot at their backs and shrieked in anger, unable to catch them again.
With Cassie slung over her shoulders and Paul in hand, Rana moved like a roller skater gliding around the rocks thrusting up in her path until she escaped the ochre mage’s range. Then she paused to tend to Cassie. After aligning strips of skin, she applied sticky slime to bind together the bat girl’s tattered wings. In seconds, Cassandra was flight-ready and blinking away shock as Rana sped towards the water’s edge.
She dove forward, skimming on her belly, and Daniel discovered Rana swam remarkably fast, hydroplaning with her frog kicks. With Paul’s flame held above the water, she zoomed past Kenta, Lea, and the azure mage. Praxithea seemed torn on who to go after until she saw how well Rana dodged waves and jets of water, then ignored the frog girl.
:I thought you’d be best suited for fighting the Water mage,: Daniel sent.
:Paul can help pin down the Wind whistler—:
:—I’m going to what?: Paul exclaimed.
Rana ignored him, :Daniel, you take the Water weaver.:
He locked eyes with the white Wolf. :I’m a bit preoccupied.:
:Not for long.: In shallow water, Rana stopped surfboarding and ran straight into the four-way Wind melee.
“A frog!” Ansbach said as he dodged a sweep of the Wendigo’s claws. “I always wanted to try fried frog legs!” Between this guy and the devilishly grinning blue girl he danced with, Daniel couldn’t pick the craziest. Maybe we should’ve gone with Goldie. At least she didn’t want to eat us.
The ochre mage scolded Ansbach while wrecking ball caramboles slammed into her rock barricade. “Don’t kill the girl. She’s worth nothing dead.”
“I’m not going to kill her, Kleodora; I just want to practice my knifework!” The mage conjured a handful of Wind blades like throwing daggers.
Rana shot a stream of slime at the Wolf, which leaped away on a zephyr. Daniel didn’t hesitate when the Wolf shifted its attention. He ran for deeper water, knowing Rana wouldn’t fight the Wolf if she couldn’t handle it.
“Do you trust me?” Her words echoed in his mind.
He couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder. Daniel saw the Wolf circling Rana—the girl stock still, eyes shut. In a panic he almost doubled back to help far too late. The white Wolf attacked her from behind with deadly gliding grace. Its swinging paw aimed for her neck.
She ducked. The Wolf overshot by dozens of feet.
“Whoa, whoa, since when do frogs get to be Clairs?” the Wind mage wondered as he approached Rana. Ansbach wasn’t under attack.
A strange thing had happened. As Daniel fled the Wolf, Wendigo stopped pursuing the viridian mage and followed him. He cursed as he saw both the mage and his Wolf fighting Paul and Rana.
He wanted to stay, though Wind had proven his bane. Instead, he focused on Praxithea, who had Lea and Kenta between the hammer and the anvil. Kleodora played a deadly game of catch as Kenta tossed back the rocks fired at him with soggy fists of hair, and Lea returned those flung her way with the passive majesty of a celestial body dancing with comets. The Stone Slinger accelerated the juggling pace while Praxithea gave them the quagmire treatment from behind.
Daniel wasn’t sure of his target until Wendigo clawed her way to the witch through the waves set against her. Like playing in the sea, Daniel felt no resistance from the knee-deep water. By contrast, Wendigo used her claws for traction and pulled herself through whirlpools and undercurrents with tremendous strength. Wendigo’s thick blue tail and sharklike fins cut the water like knives.
Forced to address her oncoming attacker, Praxithea’s jet cannon spheres rotated with a slosh as they targeted Wendigo. That was it! Even a mage had to pressurize liquid to make a water jet. Those water spheres must act as pumps. Daniel struck with his fist, pushing past the wave of dizziness marking his dwindling reserves to blast apart a sluggish waterspout.
Water demanded a mage’s attention and willpower to keep shape; flatlining whenever its user got distracted. Praxithea couldn’t conjure more cannon pumps while surfing to escape Wendigo’s reach, allowing Daniel to demolish Water constructs as he pleased. Freed of her Water pressure, Lea and Kenta turned the tables on Kleodora and hammered the anvil.
Paws hovering above ankle-deep currents, the white Wolf growled in frustration as it circled Rana. She dodged the viridian mage’s Wind razors with her eyes closed. Ansbach spat and seethed, grabbing larger swaths of air for a stronger attack.
That’s what she’d been waiting for.
Rana shot a stream of slime at the mage, who, unsure of her plan but not wanting to get that stuff on him, darted left. It just so happened a wall of wax grew to block his path. With nowhere else to go, Ansbach shot up—directly into Cassie’s prepared Noise Blast. From on the wing above, coordinated with prescience and a telepathic connection to Rana, the bat girl would have to be blind to miss.
Dazed and confused, Ansbach splashed into the water. He shot unformed gusts of Wind at random while twisting and rolling to make himself unapproachable until he regained his senses.
However, their focus on the mage surely left an opening for the Wolf to strike—but it didn’t. At least, not at them. Daniel couldn’t believe his eyes. The Wolf loped forward at the mage with a feral grin.
“Down!” Ansbach shouted, projecting a viridian spiral with an outstretched hand. He’d recognized his situation an instant before being taken by those jaws. The Wolf obeyed, reluctance diminishing as the mage rose to his feet.
What had Rana said a year ago? ‘Life in the Wilderness can depend on a mere scrap of information.’ Without knowing how it was controlled, he wouldn’t have guessed it could be turned on its master.
Ansbach reached over his shoulder with a loathsome glare and gripped the violet sword’s hilt as if to draw the weapon.
Kleodora stopped him with an announcement, “We’re done here.”
Her allies objected.
“I can beat the damn frog; that was a bloody fluke!” the wind mage said.
“This isn’t over!” Praxithea insisted, “I’m not done playing with my toys…”
“No. The battle is lost. We retreat.” The ochre mage rode her beast away, using levitated boulders to block Kenta and Lea from following.
Praxithea’s mount couldn’t swim faster than Wendigo but didn’t have to fight the current. The mage’s beast slithered through water and mud onto land as the kids regrouped. Ansbach hopped onto the white Wolf and, steering with his legs, the two rode into the air on an invisible path.
As Daniel suspected, the Wolf was the mages’ strongest piece. Jeopardize it, and they folded. From the beginning, they’d been outmatched by Daniel’s group in terms of raw power.
The mages attacked because of a reasonable assumption—that a group of Wildling children trying to skate past would be undisciplined in battle. They seemed to know or intuit which pairings worked best for them and played to their strengths. They’d aimed to separate Daniel’s group and stall until the weakest link broke so they could knock down the kids like dominoes.
If Daniel’s group had fought tactically, this wouldn’t have been a contest.