MARBLE 6.6: BATTLE IN ETHERIUM
“Retaliation is a form of worship. As the scholar of Locus submits her text for peer review; as the healer of Wythyldwyn seeks aid in mending a grievous wound; as the chronicler of Chraunator argues her point; so is the warrior whose blow invites riposte.”
– taken verbatim from ‘The Swordfaith Lectures’ recordings, Urdara 966 NE
“Very good!” Killstop blurted psychically.
Before I could stop her, before anyone could say anything, she raised her mask slightly and tipped a healing elixir down her throat.
She vanished in a burst of green foam.
Damn seals.
“Take a leaf out of your little friend’s book, Feychilde, before you take a leaf out of Leafcloak’s, Sunspring.” Winterprince soared up into the air between two of the gigantic reeds, forty feet up, surveying us. “Killstop’s got me shocked – the girl’s actually sensible. Why not follow her example? Come back to Materium with us. You’ve led us a merry chase. It’s over.”
“You’re all just dancing to Lovebright’s tune,” I replied. “Fairness, Star? And you – you really think my neck’s got your name on it, don’t you, Winterprince? That couldn’t be further from the truth.”
He floated too close to my shield – my force-blade chipped the armour above his right knee, knocking him away slightly, and he quickly retreated back within Netherhame’s shield before I could press forwards.
“Feychilde…” Stormsword said over the link. Her lightning was clearly fully-brewed; she’d stopped collecting the stuff in, and her voice was tense, taut as a bowstring at full draw.
Ready.
“We’ll be as invisible as I can make us, as soon as it starts,” Spirit said. “They’ll be able to pierce parts – Wilder, you gotta back me up now!”
I held my breath for a moment. There was no way for me to check whether he was right, check whether Wilderweird was doing his bit – and seeing us disappear would force their hand.
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Good.
“We have no way to cheat without Killstop,” I reminded them. “Once her spell fades, they’ve got us. They’ll have minutes to go at my inner shields – they won’t hold. We can’t get at their amulets –“
Valorin, Netherhame and Shallowlie came together and started a weave; and they got to work weaponising it immediately. With three of them, the multiplicative effect of weaving – it’d be ten, twenty times stronger than anything I could conjure.
But the arch-sorcerers weren’t spreading the barrier around us to contain us. They were only fighting at half-strength, robbed of their natural ingenuity, their resourcefulness. Robbed of the true desire to fight, of their champion’s hearts.
Or maybe they were just too afraid of us to spread out too far, thin their forces.
I looked away, regathering my thoughts.
“– we can’t get at their amulets without defeating them,” I finished. “They have their druids. We have to assume the… dragon hasn’t barred them from healing each other. We need to fight them – for real. Sunspring – if you can heal their sorcerer’s marks away…?”
“Not at a distance; don’t you know, it’s taken as ill-will, and the seal of a sorcerer is different to…”
His voice dropped away, and I didn’t prompt him.
It was happening.
They made their move, transforming the hypothetical into the real, causing what I thought of as my battle-rage to seep into my mind.
Focussing my thoughts.
Starsight and the two arch-diviners in grey behind him – Bookwyrm and Bladesedge? – took off, one of them going right, one of them left – Star himself ran over my shield, racing atop it, his knives flashing.
Shield Twelve was failing – failed – fell.
Starsight dropped a few feet in the air as the first layer of the dome beneath him evaporated.
Winterprince, Withertongue and two arch-wizard magisters took up lofty positions and started unloading spells, frost, fire and pink lightning rippling out from their hands in clouds and rays and waves.
Shield Eleven.
Fangmoon, Wanderfox, Petalclaw, others – they took their accustomed shapes and swelled, barrelling forwards, hundreds of tons of muscle striking my fortifications.
Ten – Nine –
And then their enchanters’ invisibility went to work, rippling out across them, until there was nothing left except the spell-effects of the wizards, the odd glint from a diviner’s knife as they went hurtling around us, the pressure on the shields. Here and there, I could glimpse the robed bodies in motion, the odd flash as Spirit (and possibly Wilderweird) counteracted the spells of their opponents.
Eight –
Our foes were coming forwards to meet us – I could see the weave that no invisibility-spell could hide from a sorcerer’s eye, expanding –
“Now, Storm!” I cried.
“Thank you,” she replied, her voice small, soft.
The eruption was anything but.
She thrust herself into the air, threw up her incandescent hands and screamed.
* * *