Arai survived the fall, but he had no idea how. A gigantic section of the Long Wall, at least a hundred feet of it, had been blown apart by the exploding Volcanic, and collapsed into rubble. Some portion of the Wall was still standing -- it hadn't been completely annihilated -- but another blast like that would surely finish off this section of it.

His ears still ringing from the explosion, Arai found himself lying within a pile of debris, his right foot trapped beneath a heavy stone. He had somehow slid down to the ground, into the midst of the Skirrish army, but it was hard to see exactly where he was, or what was going on around him; the explosion had kicked up an enormous amount of dust.

Though his foot was trapped beneath the stone, his greaves had apparently protected his leg, and apart from a few cuts and scrapes he did not appear to be seriously injured. He struggled to pull himself free, and as the rain drove down the dust, and as his vision cleared, he looked around for Lillandra, Shell, and Sir Estil, who must have fallen with him. But he saw no sign of any of them.

He heard a terrific screech coming from above. It was the Aeromancer's dragon, and it was coming right for him -- a hideous lizard-like head mounted on a long, sinuous neck, and flying on membranous bat-wings. It landed directly in front of him.

It spotted Arai, trapped in the rubble. He tried to get to Silus, but he had fallen into an awkward position and was unable to remove the sword from its scabbard.

The dragon hissed, and then reached for him with its razor-sharp claws. He flinched. He was sure he was about to die.

And that was when Sir Estil appeared, leaping out of nowhere, wrapping one arm around the dragon's neck. The monster screeched again, even louder this time, trying to dislodge the knight, but Sir Estil hung on, and even managed to get a better grip on the thing, somehow climbing up onto its back and proceeding to stab it in the spine with a dagger. Enraged, the monster took flight, with Sir Estil still on top of it, pumping its wings furiously and lifting them both off the ground. Though it swung its long, serpent-like neck around, trying desperately to throw Sir Estil clear, he managed to hang on. The dragon took them higher and higher, and then flew off, awkwardly, while Sir Estil continued to hack at it. Lightning flashed over the scene.

Arai had fought plenty of monsters before, and even a dragon, once, but he had never seen anything like this. Sir Estil's reputation was well-earned; this was the boldest man and bravest knight he had ever encountered.

It took an agonizingly long time, but he eventually managed to free his foot from beneath the stone and to pull himself up. What had happened to Lillandra and Shell? He found a handful of other knights and soldiers in the rubble of the ruptured Wall, who had somehow survived the fall as well -- most of these were buried in debris as he had been -- but he couldn't find Lillandra or Shell. Now beginning to panic, he shouted for them, but he got no response.

The Skirrish soldiers had not yet approached the devastation, but the Skirrish mages were beginning to come forward now, hovering closer and closer, examining their handiwork. Arai wanted to keep looking for the girls, but he couldn't ignore this threat; he turned to them, and drew his sword.

One of the mages noticed him. A dark, hooded figure, he floated down to Arai and started gesturing with his fingers. Arai had seen those motions before; the man was attempting a fire-spell.

He didn't wait for him to finish. He charged forward with Silus.

The sorcerer might have risen into the air to avoid him, but, under the mistaken belief that he could incinerate Arai before he reached him, he remained on the ground and continued casting the spell. He managed to complete it just as Arai came barrelling forward. Silus, however, protected Arai from the sorcerer's magical flames, the fire parting before him like a river running off in two directions. He stabbed the surprised sorcerer in the heart.

Another sorcerer came to the aid of the first one, but Arai cut this one down as well, and then, for good measure, he struck down a couple of Skirrish soldiers. By now, however, the storm above had grown to incredible proportions -- churning black clouds, alive with lightning, were pouring over the Long Wall, drowning the scene in rain, snow, and hail. Without Lillandra to keep the storm in check, and without the Long Wall's magic to keep it at bay, it grew stronger and stronger, completely wild and completely uncontrolled. Arai had trouble believing a single sorcerer could summon up a storm of this size and strength, but here he was, in the middle of it.

And then he saw something very strange: a single man, standing upright in the face of these hurricane-force winds. He was a tall figure, with long blond hair, but though the wind was howling all around him, his long hair was not disturbed at all -- it was as though he was standing within a bubble of stillness. He was about fifty yards away, looking contemplatively at the scene, while Gallean knights and Skirrish soldiers battled each other at the foot of the Long Wall, and while Sir Estil continued to battle the dragon in the storm-wracked skies above. He was obviously a sorcerer; some of the Skirrish mages who had just blown up the Long Wall were flying over to him, consulting with him, and he was surrounded by heavily-armored soldiers.

Arai was curious about the man, but he was more concerned with finding Lillandra and Shell. After dispatching the most immediate threats, he started climbing over the rubble, searching for them, calling out their names. He refused to believe they were dead -- Arai had survived, after all, and they had been standing right next to him. Sir Estil, too, had emerged unscathed. But where were they? If anything were to happen to them...

He shook his head. They were here, somewhere. He just had to find them.

But he couldn't ignore the chaos going on around him, either -- battles were breaking out everywhere. A contingent of Gallean knights and regular foot soldiers had emerged from the ruins of the Long Wall to stop the Skirrish advance, but the storm was pounding them all, hammering them with hail, the wind nearly lifting them off their feet. Arai was not as seriously affected -- though he could feel the wind, and the rain, and the cold, Silus seemed to be preventing these things from actually harming him. The wind tore at him, but it did not knock him down; the hail conveniently missed him; the lightning never struck anywhere near him.

He had to fight his way through several more Skirrish soldiers while he searched for Lillandra and Shell. One of the soldiers managed to strike him in the chest with a mace, knocking him down; had he not been wearing the breastplate Sir Estil had given him, the blow probably would have killed him. Fortunately, while Arai was lying on the rubble, gasping, a Gallean soldier tackled the man, and the two of them rolled away, leaving him alone.

He got to his feet, and was about to resume his search, when he realized that the blond man he had noticed before -- the sorcerer -- was hanging in the air above him, and looking down at him. The weather seemed to be having no effect on him at all; the air around him was curiously still. He was wearing an unusual outfit -- a large blue coat, with epaulettes on the shoulders, yellow stripes on the sleeves, and gold buttons running down the front. Up close, Arai saw that he was also unusually handsome, with a perfect jawline and eyes that almost seemed to glitter. His features were so perfect, in fact, that Arai immediately suspected he was wearing some kind of glamour.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The man's bodyguards -- several heavily-armored Skirrish soldiers, whose black armor made them look like twisted versions of Gallean knights -- were with him, making their way up the shattered remnants of the Long Wall.

The blond man levitated down to within fifteen feet of Arai and called out to him: "Are you the mage?" But then he stopped, blinked, and shook his head. "No, you're not the one. But there's something special about you, isn't there? Your sword..."

"Who are you?" Arai demanded.

"You don't know?" The man smiled humorlessly. "My name is Mustaf Draj."

"The Aeromancer? Here?" This was interesting. The all-powerful ruler of Grand Skir, apparently, was not afraid to get his hands dirty on the battlefield. But then, why should this man fear anything? He was probably the most powerful sorcerer in the world, his skills rivaling even Lillandra's.

Arai grit his teeth. This was the last thing he needed.

"Intriguing," the Aeromancer said. "That sword. Is it some kind of new Gallean weapon?" When Arai failed to answer, he shrugged. "It can wait. Where is the mage? He must be around here somewhere."

Arai played innocent: "Mage?"

"Someone's been disassembling my spells," he said, sweeping his long hair over his shoulder, "and making little changes to the foundational elements of the Long Wall. Gallean sorcerers aren't capable of that level of skill -- I've been fighting them for years; I know what they can do, and what they can't do. They must have someone new working for them, someone very skilled. And so I'll ask again. Where is this sorcerer? Where can I find him?"

"Come a little closer," Arai growled, brandishing his sword, "and I'll tell you."

The sorcerer frowned at him. This was not the type of man who was accustomed to backtalk. "You are either very brave or very stupid. Probably the latter." He raised one hand over his head, as though he were saluting the storm, and then brought it down. At the same moment, a bolt of lightning suddenly exploded out of the sky.

The lightning struck Silus, which Arai was holding upright. The blast should have annihilated him, but as soon as the lightning touched the sword, it simply disintegrated, as though it had been nothing more than a mirage. Arai felt no heat from the lightning, and no thunder followed it. Silus had protected him.

"You'll have to do a little better than that," Arai called out.

The Aeromancer stared. "Intriguing," he muttered. "Very intriguing." He shouted down to his men: "Kill him. I want a closer look at that sword."

But the soldiers hesitated -- they had seen the lightning bolt bounce off Arai's sword as well. They probably thought he was some kind of sorcerer himself.

They feared the Aeromancer more than they feared Arai, however, and three of them began to make their way forward. Arai grimaced at the situation. There was some irony here -- the Aeromancer, one of the strongest sorcerers in Iona Magister, was actually less of a threat to him than these three men. Silus protected him from magic; it did not protect him from physical threats.

He entered the Rising Tide stance and tried to guess which of the men would attack him first. It turned out to be the biggest and strongest of the three, a near-giant wielding a huge mace. Arai had no hope of blocking or parrying a blow from this man, so he sidestepped him; however, because the man was covered in heavy, thick armor, he had no hope of finding a good counter, either. The only thing he could do was slap the man on the side of his helmet, which might disorient him for a second.

Something strange happened when he struck the man, however: his entire body shimmered like a thousand broken mirrors, and suddenly a different man was standing there, a smaller man, wearing much less impressive armor and wielding a much smaller-looking mace. Arai blinked. The man, he realized, had been blanketed by an illusion, presumably to make him look more intimidating, and Silus had just shattered it.

Sir Eustace had mentioned that the Aeromancer was a skilled illusionist. Arai didn't like this; he didn't like not being able to trust his own eyes.

In any event, the man seemed to be as surprised as Arai at the loss of his glamour, and instead of pressing the attack, he faltered. Arai immediately took advantage of this, sweeping in quickly, brushing aside the man's mace, and knocking him off his feet. The remaining Skirrish warriors, wary, started to circle him, but before they could attack Sir Estil and the dragon, still locked in combat, came flying out of the sky -- the dragon screeching, Sir Estil shouting something Arai couldn't quite make out. The Aeromancer's bodyguards ducked, and again, Arai was able to take advantage of their distraction, destroying their illusions with Silus, cutting one down, and sending the other tumbling down the destroyed remnants of the Long Wall.

The Aeromancer scowled at the scene. A Gallean archer on the intact portion of the Long Wall loosed an arrow at him, which he almost casually deflected with a wave of his hand; then, still scowling, he began hovering closer to Arai.

Arai was sure he could kill the man, as he had killed the previous sorcerer, if he could just get close to him. The Aeromancer, however, remained suspended in the air, well out of reach. "Who are you?" the sorcerer demanded. "Where did you get that sword?"

Arai answered truthfully: "My name is Arai, son of Hetsu, and this sword is Silus, the Radiant Blade, given to me by the shade of Illu Matté in the arctic plain beyond the Frozen Mountains."

The sorcerer's scowl only deepened. "That means nothing to me."

"I'm not surprised."

"You're not Gallean, are you? Are you a mercenary of some kind? Perhaps you'd be interested in working for me."

"I don't think so."

He shrugged. "Suit yourself." And he cast his arms skyward, increasing the intensity of the wind and stirring the dark clouds above so that they would generate more lightning. A bolt flashed out of the sky, missing Arai by a few feet, but producing a colossal sound and showering the air with exploding debris. Arai gripped Silus tighter, trusting in the sword's protective power -- but the lightning bolts continued to rain down, one here, one there, and their sound and fury was disorienting. The sorcerer had apparently realized that his lightning bolts couldn't harm Arai directly, so he was blasting the area around him instead, which was almost as bad.

And then a huge, serpent-like creature, a monster of a sort that Arai had never seen before, suddenly exploded out the earth and started slithering towards him. Off-balance from the electrical assault, Arai swung his sword around, trying to meet this new threat, but when the huge, slavering snake got close, it shimmered like a desert mirage and faded away. An illusion.

But this was followed by more illusions. Suddenly he was in the middle of a pitched battle, and seeing soldiers lopping off limbs all around him. He saw murderers massacring women and children; he saw monsters, devouring grown men; he found himself standing on the edge of a precipice, thousands of feet above the ground; he was wading through a river of blood. He knew that these horribles were only illusions, but they were extremely realistic, and to be assaulted by them, while at the same time being continually battered by lightning bolts, striking the ground mere feet away from him, was almost more than he could absorb. He tried to concentrate, to focus on the Aeromancer, but the sorcerer was bombarding his senses; he couldn't take it.

One of the lightning bolts struck behind him then -- a huge, explosive blast, which knocked him off his feet. He fell forward, tumbling over the remains of the Long Wall, Silus flying out of his hand. All he could see was rain, dust, and smoke, and all he could smell was the hot ozone of the lightning. He heard the dragon shrieking in the distance.

He managed to roll onto his back and heave himself up. The Aeromancer was still hanging in the air in front of him; as Arai watched, the sorcerer raised his arms, preparing to strike him down with his lightning -- and this time, without Silus, Arai was helpless before him. He could already feel the electricity beginning to tickle the back of his neck.

"Lillandra," he muttered.

And then, suddenly, as if responding to his call, Lillandra was there, standing amidst the rubble -- her fists clenched, her long dark hair whipping about her face. She looked up at the Aeromancer defiantly.

For a moment Arai thought she must be another illusion, but then she spoke, her voice low and dangerous.

"You leave him alone."