Chapter Seventy-One

The Pain of Belief

The priest let his ghastly pale face harden as Rose began descending toward him. Her steps rang out in the echoing dark.

He shook his head. “We’re too close to salvation. You shan’t intervene!”

“Shan’t I?” Rose asked, and punched him square in the nose. It sent him hurtling down the staircase in a tangle of limbs and shouts before he hit the bottom with a crunch.

Rose ran down the steps and saw the single brazier blocking the door and firelight flickering underneath. She glanced down to the priest, groaning at her feet and said, “Stay there.”

He mumbled something incoherent and passed out, going limp on the ground.

Unconcerned, Rose grabbed the brazier and shifted it to the side so she could rip the door open. As the air rushed in, she only narrowly stepped back in time as a blow-back of flame leapt out toward her.

Through the inferno, Rose saw her friend encircled by the fire. “Sarah!”

Sarah was backed into the corner of the room, surrounded in flame and coughing her lungs up into her shirt. The oil had flowed in a tormenting circle around her and roared up so fiercely that it licked out of the skylight.

Sarah spotted Rose through the tall flames and managed to yell, “Rose, are you okay?”

Rose backed away, feeling the heat burning her eyes. “I’m fine! You need to get out of there!”

Sarah glared at her and waved angrily to the encroaching wall of flame. “I’m open to suggestions!”

“Your Arcancy! Isn’t it based around strength? Could it protect you?”

Sarah forced herself closer to the skull-ridden wall as the flames moved steadily towards her. “It doesn’t work like that! It needs to be specific and focused! It’s not an arrow-proof cloak!”

The oil-fire was now only two feet away, and Sarah could feel the heat beginning to blister her shins as she winced her breaths. “Rose!”

Rose tore her hair, looked to the cloak wrapped around the shoulders of the priest and wondered if there would be some way to wet it down. She glanced back up to room engulfed in flame and knew it wouldn’t get her far before she went up in smoke.

“Rose!” Sarah yelled in panic, accidentally ripping bones from the catacomb wall behind her, sending them tumbling into the blaze.

“Sarah, listen!” Rose fought down the panic in her throat and yelled, “I’ve watched you drive your bare fists through stone! I watched you break bones and wood and steel with your bootheel! And I know your power isn’t bound to your hands and feet... It bows to you… you just have to believe it. I know that this flame can only burn you if you let it!”

Sarah began to yelp in pain as the flames practically leapt at her feet. “You have to know a spell!”

“I only know flora magic! Love, listen to me!” she yelled, feeling the pain in her friend’s voice. “Your power is balance! Arcancy is just another word for creation magic, so make your power something more! It’s only restricted to focused things because you believe it is! Broaden your mind!”

Sarah could smell her clothes cooking as she flattened herself on the wall. “How!” she screamed.

Rose shook her head and shouted, “Your Arcancy controls the balance between strength and pain! And this fire is trying to consume you! It is breaking the balance and overwhelming you!”

Sarah let out an ungodly scream and her entire body erupted with golden veins, bright as molten brass.

Rose kept shouting, “Your Arcancy shows itself through flame, Sarah! Now show me why!”

Sarah’s scream, born from panic and pain, darkened into a roar of deep, unadulterated rage and the light of her rigid muscles burned into her eyes, and her entire body, from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair, exploded in electric blue flame. The inferno around her leapt and lashed at her, trying to light her but the blue flame of her own aura was absorbing the heat like a rag soaking up water.

Sarah threw herself into the wall of fire, both arms instinctually covering her head as the sapphire flames swirled around her like a hurricane.

Rose reached out her hand but the flames blistered her and she recoiled. She watched in terror as Sarah’s blue flame began to flicker and her face became tight with pain again. Rose looked down and ripped the cloak off the priest and wrapped it around her own shoulders.

Sarah felt the flames prying at her flesh again as her surge of untested Arcancy began to flicker and her pain-flayed legs slowed as Rose burst into the room, covered by the cloak.

Rose’s layer of protection immediately went up in flame but within a moment she had Sarah’s hand.

Rose pulled her into the hallway and as they both collapsed on the floor of the stairwell floor, she pulled off the flaming cloak and pitched it away while Sarah booted the door shut behind them. They coughed out their lungs as smoke rose from their bodies and after a moment of utter chaos, they slumped into the floor.

Rose looked sideway at Sarah. “Are you okay?” she breathed.

Her eyes shut, Sarah nodded, and finally a shaking breath left her lips. “What time is it?”

Rose bent her head back and looked up the stairwell. The sky was still bright but the pinks and oranges of sundown were colouring the clouds. “We better go.”

The priest groaned and rolled onto his side to see the two Legacies finally standing up.

Before he could say a word, Sarah kicked him in the face and sent him back to the floor, unconscious. She stared at him grim-face, her breaths seething until she sat back onto the stairs. “I just need a second.”

Rose nodded and took a seat beside her.

Sarah looked to her legs and arms and realised besides some redness, she was unburned. She looked to Rose and said with a quiet awe, “I had no idea I could do that.”

Rose could’ve watched the look on her soot-covered face forever and nodded softly. “And yet you did.”

The two warriors looked at each for a long minute before Rose quietly said, “This is why I never went to church,” to which they both gave tired chuckles.

After a minute, they helped each other up and hobbled their way up the steps.

As they rose, a parade of raucous voices and stamping feet grew louder.

Rose and Sarah shared a look of concern and as they stepped up and out from the crypt staircase, they the entire town gathered before the gnarled metal gates.

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The mob of black-cloaked villagers were armed with kitchen knives, pitchforks, torches and all other manner of farm-life weaponry.

Rose drew her wand. “Got to be kidding me.”

Sarah went to draw her sword when she heard the rumble of thunder amongst the clear blue sky and said, “These people are about to learn there’s always a reason to pray.”

At the forefront of the crowd a woman with a shaven head and startling green eyes began to yell, “The echoing song of our Lord descends. Repent.”

Rose saw the shadow of the dragon dart overhead and shrugged. “I actually feel bad about this.”

“Make peace with Him.” The zealot brandished her knife and the crowd began moving toward the Legacies.

Rose looked at Sarah and the swordswoman was trying to hide her smile respectfully when Raeken slammed into the ground with an eruption of dirt and grass.

The crowd immediately erupted in screams, broke apart and fled. All except one man, who deeply unwisely hefted his blunt pitchfork and threw it at the Drakonian.

It twisted in the air and hit Raeken flat, bouncing off of him and landing in the dirt.

The man was frozen. He was unfrozen, however, when Raeken drew in a deep breath and blasted the gravestone beside him with acid. He watched it melt into a puddle of molten rock before slipping over trying to run away.

Raeken’s eyes were bright as venom until he turned toward Sarah and Rose, where his expression immediately softened. “My Lady,” he said, in Common.

Sarah’s eyebrows shot up in and Rose nearly stumbled down the stairs in shock.

Sarah grabbed his scaly face. “Why are you speaking Common? You don’t speak Common! You made me learn a whole language to be able talk to you!”

Raeken, plain faced, croaked, “Your companions lacked the wisdom to converse. We had limited time. So, I learned.”

While Rose doubled over in laughter, Sarah mumbled, “We’re going to talk about this later.” She looked to the sun for the first time since her capture to realise it was just shy of kissing the horizon. “We need to go!”

Raeken shifted his wings out of the way and tilted his body toward his companion, allowing her to hop onto his back.

Rose pursed her lips, aware that there wasn’t much room left and anxiously muttered, “What if I slip?”

Sarah sighed dramatically and raised her arms so her waist was free. “I guess you’ll have to hold on tight-”

Rose nearly slipped over at the speed of which she moved and Sarah cackled as they took off.

*****

Nichole and Aroha slid to a stop at the edge of the treeline. They watched as James and Carter tore off toward Oliver, who was running around and playing bait for the cloud of Auderah. Despite being covered in a thick sheen of sweat, he remained fairly spry.

Michael fell in beside the rangers and began conjuring small lights, no brighter than dinner candles, and setting them in the soil every five paces or so like he was marking fence posts.

“What are you doing?” Aroha asked, nocking her arrow and sighting an Auderah.

Michael glanced up as James and Carter ran into the fray. They shouted and waved and the horde of flying beasts lost interest in Oliver for a moment.

Oliver let out a breath of relief and vanished into a cloud of smoke for a moment’s breath.

Michael mumbled, “I’m improvising. Would you two mind goin’ to give those three a hand?”

Nichole squinted at the cloud of teeth, claws and hooked-tails. “Not at all. Come along, love.”

Aroha sighed and the two of them ran into the open field, spending their arrows as fast as they dared, sending the plague of creatures into a furious shifting pattern of movement, like birds whisked up in a storm.

Michael felt the heat in his bones as he brought up a tenth petal-sized light. The veins in his chest were heavy and the muscles rigid. Every breath was more strained as he pulled another inkling of light and pushed it into the rusting leaves.

Out along the treeline there was now a dull line of lights, lying in wait.

Behind Michael, trees began toppling like dominoes, hitting the ground with concussive booms, all but exploding with dead, mushy wood as the sun dipped low, more than halfway submerged beneath the horizon.

Michael gritted his teeth, tasting blood in his mouth as a trunk crashed into the soil less than a foot behind him. He pushed down the shock and ignored it, knowing there was no other way to make sure the Auderah would stay out of the forest.

In the fray on the field, an Auderah swooped toward Carter from his blind spot when Oliver flashed back into visibility and sliced it in half. “How was your guys’ trip?” he shouted above the screeches.

Carter closed one eye and whipped a knife into the heart of an overhead creature. It spiralled to the grass in an explosion of dust. “Not as eventful as yours!”

James slashed and stabbed at any Auderah that came near but he was limited to one Merhoii spear and couldn’t risk throwing it.

The rangers disappeared and reappeared under Nichole’s Arcancy, vanishing every time they were attacked by one too many creatures and occasionally cracking one across the skull if it came too close.

Aroha rolled out the way of a swooping attack, her short hair whipping across as came back to her feet, facing the near-fallen sun. “We’re nearly out of time!”

Oliver sliced through another great, demonic bat and in its wake saw Raeken soaring overhead with Sarah lying atop his back and Rose clinging to her stomach, whooping with manic joy.

Oliver allowed himself to smile for a moment too long when an Auderah came screeching down from his blind-spot and ran its hooked talons into the meat of his shoulder, sending them both to the ground, screaming.

Nichole sprinted to his side and booted the beast sharply in the head, knocking it off Oliver as Carter leapt and hurled a knife into its jaw, turning it to dust.

Oliver cursed, clutching his bloodied, left shoulder before picking up his sword and sheathing it. He saw Sarah dismount from the dragon and sprint toward him, pale-faced, as she drew her own blade and struck down another attacker.

Sarah yelled, “James, catch!” and tossed him her sword, freeing up her good arm as she helped Oliver up from the ground with Nichole.

As Oliver cursed out the pain, he saw three more dark creatures darting in from above. “Look out!”

Sarah narrowly caught one in her right hand and slammed it into the ground. Aroha picked one of Carter’s thrown daggers from the dirt and leapt across the way, slamming it into the creature’s back. James swept in and cleaved another in half with Sarah’s sword and the third turned and fled back into the sky.

Rose pulled roots and vines from the ground like a puppeteer. As the Auderah came close her green tendrils would lash out like whips, severing them in the air and sending them spinning to the soil. But each effort left her more hollow. “We have to leave, now!”

Michael stood from the treeline, yelling, “Now, now, now!” as his eyes dripped with blood and light threatened to tear from his skin.

The company ran as fast as their feet could carry them across the meadow as the cloud of monsters regrouped, tearing up the soil with their heels while the last rays of daylight shone through the collapsing forest.

Michael tried to raise his power. The lights set in the treeline flared. And then went dull. “No. No-no-no-”

“Take a deep breath.”

Michael turned in shock and saw Magnus knelt beside him.

“It’s been a long day. Dig deep. You ready?”

Michael blinked and stared at him for the length of three heartbeats. He went to say ‘yes’, but instead muttered, “What are you?”

Magnus smiled in earnest and the sight of it nearly shocked Michael out of his state of magical concentration. Magnus’ eyes then flared red, swelling like magma from the volcano’s peak, and the smile dimmed. “Would you believe me if I told you?”

Michael didn’t know how to answer.

Magnus didn’t wait for one. He gripped Michael’s shoulder and his power leeched into Michael.

The lights burst into a cascade of colour, washing the countryside in a kaleidoscope of shifting hues.

The Legacies from the field blew past the two light-benders and Magnus shouted, “I said dig deep, now let’s see it, Michael!”

The Paladin let out a blood-curdling roar and threw both hands out before him. His bones bent and the entire forest ignited in the red, pink, and orange light, forcing the cloud of Auderah to a crying halt. Many turned to dust. Many even fled for the darkening sky above.

Magnus ripped Michael backward and Michael’s lights snapped off. The darkness rushed in and the Auderah came hurtling toward the woodlands, free of their magical blockade.

Michael and Magnus to the huddled group where Michael grabbed Aroha’s hand and snatched Magnus’ without thinking.

The sun fell below the last of the hills and the dark raced across the land as Nigh covered Draendica in its cold blanket of night.

A couple dozen trees were left upright and they all tumbled at once as the remnants of the Travelling Forest’s magic slipped back into the soil.

The instant before the trunks hit the ground, Carter cried, “Wait, where are we going?”

Aroha blinked and she shouted, “How specific do we have to- Screw it! Lackton Farm! Lackton Farm! Three! Two! One!”

“Lackton farm!” they all cried at once as the sun vanished behind the horizon and the horde of monsters swooped toward the toppling trees, only to see every leaf, tree, Dragon and Legacy vanish with the last light of the Talisatian dusk.