Chapter 20 — Cat and Mouse
The small ball, almost invisible against the dark sky, sailed through the air as Victor hastily formed an ice shield. He was guided more by reflexes than anything else, though he needn’t have—
Liquid fire erupted across the shield.
Victor’s vision went white as the fire turned night to day. He was stunned for a moment before turning his attention fully to his mage sight. The fire had melted through his shield in an instant, but the defense had done its job, killing the momentum of the projectile and its contents. Even now Victor could hear the splatter of still flaming gel melting and boiling through a hapless snowman immediately in front of him. If that had been a direct hit…
Victor raised another ice shield, facing the void in his mage sight that was the young woman’s aura.
A small divot was punched into the snow three meters ahead of him and off to the side. The snow around the divot immediately disappeared to his mage sight as he heard yet another fire bomb go off. With two now in his vicinity, the acrid smoke began assaulting his lungs, forcing him to move. But he wasn’t the only one moving.
Victor’s physical sight was effectively blinded, but to his mage sight, it appeared as if there was a roughly ten meter radius spherical crater in the snow that was quickly moving towards the forest while giving him a wide berth.
He had to admit that an aura that size and well controlled was impressive, especially for someone her age, but it wouldn’t ultimately save her.
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Rína almost felt nostalgic as she ran for her life towards the forest. Just a little further and she’d—
A blade shot in front of her face.
It had come from the side, outside her aura, and spun through the air as if thrown. Only missing her nose by centimeters, Rína jerked back on reflex, but her forward sprint turned the jerk into a downward tumble.
Another blade sang through the air where Rína’s torso had been a moment ago.
Rína scrambled to her feet while—
A stab of pain came from Rína’s shoulder. She cried out as her concentration slipped and chunks of her aura fell into the Astral.
Adrenaline surging through her veins, Rína rose and returned to her dead sprint. Her aura wobbled erratically as she ran and she tried to get it back under control, all while the blades continued to fly.
The next blade missed her by a full meter, and the one after that missed by two.
Confused, Rína spared a glance at the mage, only to see a veritable wall of steam and smoke blocking her sight. But if she couldn’t see the mage then how—
Of course. His mage sight. He was just targeting the center of her spherical aura, and as it wobbled, it threw off his aim.
Rína could use this. True, keeping her aura unstable sounded like a bad idea, but there was another option. All this time, Rína had been sending her aura down from her soul core in the rough shape of a cone, similar to a searchlight, centered on her soul roots and thus body. But there was no reason she couldn’t just aim her aura a bit off to the side instead.
Rína’s aura slowly steadied as she ran, and the incoming blades all began missing, hitting instead an empty spot a few meters to her side. Her offset aura did mean that its furthest edge, around fifteen meters away, was harder to control, but it was still within her means.
The blade throws became more and more numerous as Rína approached the treeline, all still going wide save for a few near misses. But once she was in the forest proper then—
The blades stopped coming. And in a pregnant pause Rína caught the glint of ice forming out of the corner of her eye. It was close and on her side opposite her aura’s center. But it was not a single blade but a full dozen, all pointed straight at her. Rína reflexively forced her aura out to smother the forming blades, immediately losing large pieces of her aura from its opposite edge.
Rína’s aura cut through the spell aether of the blades, but not entirely in time. A half formed blade was launched the short distance and sliced across Rína’s thigh.
Rína cried out again as she staggered and struggled to both keep her aura stable and keep on her feet.
Her running turned halfway into a limp as she passed the first trees but didn’t stop. More blades came but nearly all of them were shattered or had their throws spoiled by the odd trunk or branch of a tree. Eventually they stopped coming altogether, but Rína had no illusions about her safety. Once the mage had line of sight again—once he could see with his eyes the trees that were fully hidden inside Rína’s aura—the forest’s cover would be next to useless.
What she needed was somewhere to hide so she could catch her breath and bandage the wounds that were quickly soaking her lower layers of clothes with blood. Though how the hells Rína was supposed to hide when absolutely everything was covered in snow, she didn’t know. And even if she could hide, she was leaving a trail of footprints through the snow that would lead straight to her, aura or no.
“Hells, that’s how he got me.” Rína said to herself, looking down at the slice through her thigh. Even if her aura had been offset, beyond it, she was leaving a trail of footprints pointing straight to where she was.
What she needed was some place within the forest that wasn’t covered in snow, and the only things that fit that description were the innermost branches of the trees she was passing and that large stone.
Rína did a double-take amid the black and dark silver of the nighttime forest. There, sticking up out of the snow, beneath the bough of a tree, was the tip of a presumably large boulder, its very top untouched by snow. And there, another one just like was only a few meters away.
If Rína recalled her local geography, she would be nearing the edge of the valley, making these boulders the remnants of landslides long since past. And if she kept going in the mountain-ward direction, she might just find… well she wasn’t sure, but so long as it was probably different from her current surroundings she was willing to take that risk.
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The sweater Rína wore beneath her outer coat had gladly given its life to serve as bandages. They weren’t ideal, and Rína had to cut them herself using her boot knife, but the tie around her thigh and the awkward wrap over her shoulder were better than nothing.
With the immediate danger of bleeding out somewhat mitigated, Rína turned to her next step, which was… well, she wasn’t sure.
Currently she was sitting on the snowless top of a boulder beneath the broad canopy of some evergreen tree, though it was hardly the only one. Around her was a veritable archipelago of similar stones that she had scrambled across as she avoided touching any snow. Despite the danger she was in, the means of travel brought a slight smile to her lips, reminding her of a certain childhood game. However her personal game of ‘the floor is snow, and will alert a murderous mage to your location’ was proving to be far less fun.
Naturally, once she was among the boulders, she also pulled in her aura, keeping it close to her body. It wouldn’t do to have the void it created to give away her position, but still, she felt exposed without pushing it to its maximum radius.
Theoretically, she might not have even needed to keep it around her body, but she still kept it close for the simple reason that she didn’t know for certain whether the mage was using ice magic, or the more general water magic. Rína briefly remembered the blade of ice melting on her neck, its water then running down her throat. If he was using water magic, wouldn’t the melted water stay where it was with the rest of the blade? It seemed like good evidence, but Rína wasn’t willing to risk it. If his mage sight extended to water in general, then he’d be able to immediately see the water in her body.
As for what she was going to do about the mage? She really only saw two options: either stall for time until Yvette showed, or…
The second option made her stomach churn. If the mage was intent on killing her, then her only recourse was seeing him dead instead. She hated how easily the thought had come into her mind, but with her sliced and still somewhat bleeding leg, escape was looking less likely by the second.
And even if Rína could stall long enough, she had no illusions about what Yvette would do if she arrived and the mage was still alive. Yvette had outright said that she had killed before in either self defense or the defense of others. So really, all the scenarios in which she survived the night involved the mage being dead. And for all Rína knew, something may have happened to the three others, and Yvette might not even know what was happening.
Rína took a steadying breath, careful to exhale into her coat so as not to shoot a plume of ice crystals into the air.
She was going to kill someone tonight, or literally die trying.
Rína pushed her rising bile back down.
But how to actually go about it? She’d need to get close, one way or another, and preferably get the drop on him as well. What she could do is…. Yeah, that might work.
“You know, this isn’t how I expected my night to go,” came the mage’s distant shout, “the firebombs were a neat trick but at this point you’re just delaying the inevitable. And don’t think I didn’t notice that nice little trail of blood you’ve been leaving. I can’t imagine you have much time on your hands, one way or another.”
Rína kept low and silent as she slipped her snowshoes back on. In the distance, she could almost see the silhouette of the mage nonchalantly approaching the boulders along the footprints she had left.
“I really rather not waste any more aether on you than I have to,” the mage said, “Could you at least respond? You know that it is ever so rude to ignore someone who is speaking to you.”
Silence hung in the dark forest.
The mage sighed loudly, “Very well.”
Above Rína, the canopy of all the trees softly swayed in a nonexistent wind. The motion was slight, but enough to liberate a small amount of snow as a kind of false snowfall.
“Hells,” Rína cursed as she stared wide-eyed at the oncoming powder that would soon blanket everything.
It felt almost futile, but Rína pulled two more bombs from her satchel. With the benefit of two hands, she armed them in seconds, throwing them desperately in the direction of the mage. The burst of light illuminated the forest ahead of her as she ran for the second time that night, but now she had an actual plan.
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The firebombs were really getting on his nerves. Yes, they were in theory dangerous, but so long as he stayed out of the range of the apprentice’s throwing arm, they were harmless. However, the damn things were still quite good at ruining his night-sight.
No matter, with how much snow there was around, he practically didn’t need his actual eyesight. Yes he’d probably need it to eventually land the killing blow, but with how the little mage was bleeding, simply following behind might be enough.
Even now in his mage sight he could see her by her aura. She was adapting, he’d have to give her that: shifting her aura’s offset while also weaving through the trees, not keeping to any straight line path for too long. But it wouldn’t matter.
Victor casually jogged through the forest after the apprentice. The years were catching up to him, and a proper sprint was a bit out of the question, but she wasn’t particularly mobile herself by the looks of it.
Victor continued the chase before frowning. To his mage sight, it appeared as if she had walked straight up to the base of some small cliff or rock face—perhaps five meters tall. He couldn’t see the stone directly, of course, but by how the snow was packed against it, its shape was obvious. However what made his mood properly sour was the fact that the apprentice’s aura was now much smaller and protruding out of the rock face—it would seem she had found herself a cave to hole up in.
Just his luck. Victor approached, but stayed out of sight, sending a trio of blades into the aura. Predictably he lost sight and control of them as they entered her aura, and at the same time he heard the sound of ice shattering on stone—it was worth a try.
So what was her plan? To bunker down in a cave, deny line of sight, maybe throw the odd fire bomb out of the entrance? Well it wouldn’t work for her.
As was the case everywhere else, the top of the rock face was piled high with snow. With just a small amount of aether, Victor shook loose a small avalanche down onto the cave mouth. The snow at the top must have already been unstable because when the powder settled, the mound extended beyond the smaller aura covering the cave mouth.
All that was left was the coup de grâce.
Victor strode out from the tree cover to directly survey the miniature avalanche. Now at short range he slammed his aura against the one the apprentice used to cover the cave entrance. It folded in a moment, letting him see straight into the—
There was no cave. The miniature avalanche was piled up against a smooth rock face. Victor’s eyes went wild. To his mage sight, the footprints—the snowshoe shaped voids in the snow—now led up to the pile of snow. But his eyes saw them ending much sooner. He saw them stop at the base of a nearby tree. A tree from whose foliage came dark, palm sized spheres.
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The mage’s screams burned into Rína’s memory as his flesh was burned from his bones.
The mage had thrown up shields of ice, which stopped the first and second bombs, but not the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth ones. Rína’s frantic throws only stopped as the satchel was emptied.
The area around him turned into a maelstrom of fire and ice. Most of the ice tried to smother the mage’s burning body to no avail, while the rest seemed to be a final scattershot of blades.
One blade sliced across Rína’s forearm while another sank into her hip. She cried out as she lost her footing and fell into the ice storm that was the mage’s death throes.
Rína flared her aura, not caring as she lost chunks of it to Astral.
The storm soon died with the mage, but not before the side of Rína’s body was splattered with the same fire the storm had tried to douse.
Despite the pain, Rína quickly threw off her coat, and tried to scrape the gelatinous incendiary off onto the snow instead of putting it out like a normal fire. And by the looks of it, she would need some of that fire in just a moment to cauterize her wounds.
Rína lay there on the snow, meters from the charred corpse, taking slow, shaky breaths.
She was bleeding and burnt, but above all, she was alive.