CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN—SWORDS AND SORCERY
As the large shaman stepped forward with his heavy footfalls he lifted a hand, pointed at them with his scepter, much like the scepter of the one who was going to sacrifice Jafa.
It was a golden rod with the likeness of a Yamu at the top, feathers and jewels adorning the gold.
“Look out!” Debaku called, and he lunged past Shiro as a portal into what looked like a rip into the air formed. Something came out, a pulsing orb of black magic with veined-red tendrils encircling and lashing out.
“Do not attempt to deflect it with your blades!” Jessamine said.
The shaman hurled the magic at Shiro and he jumped, missing the attack by a mere hand span as the orb impacted the ground behind him. It issued a strange sound that he could not describe. Glancing back at where the magic had landed, he saw nothing there.
“My turn!” Razul said, and lunged forward with his iridescent fish-fin blade, but the large shaman shimmered out of his path, his body sliding blurrily across the tiles several paces away.
Razul glanced back at him in surprise. “Ha!” he scoffed. “Tricky. Very tricky.” Then he struck with a speed Shiro had never seen before, and still he missed his slash as the shaman shimmered and slid across the tiles, striking out at Debaku.
The Mar’a Thulian raised his blade and blocked the attack, but the power behind the strike forced him back into a noisy slide across the tiles, now sticky with thickening viscosity. As he slid back, he pushed his heel out and knocked a hardening corpse out of his path.
Despite his newly acquired top-tier status, sometimes Shiro was not certain he was at the level of Debaku and Razul were—the way they reacted during tense moments. With new scratches and blood covering his forearms, Shiro got to his feet, ready to jump or block an attack by this impossibly fast savage shaman.
Jessamine took two steps back and whirled away in a plume of luminescence, then reappeared on the wall, far enough away so that the shaman could not attack her had he tried.
Glancing up at her, Shiro wondered why she wasn’t helping them fight this monster of a sorcerer.
The gates into the courtyard thundered open and revealed dozens of fresh warriors to be flung at them.
Razul sighed. “Shiro, do you think you can handle them?”
Glancing back, he said, “No!” with such incredulity even he surprised himself. “There are dozens of them!”
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“No,” Debaku said. “He is right. There are too many. Help him.”
“Fine!” Razul complained. “But don’t kill this shaman—hm? I want a chance at him, too.”
The shaman, as if called upon to perform more dark magic, raised his scepter into the air and tendrils of green magic coalesced to the jewels in the thing’s depicted eyes. He lowered the weapon at the oncoming warriors, who lunged forward onto their knees and spread their arms. The new orb of magic, white with a shimmer of green luminescence and shiny golden vapor hit the warriors.
The men were enveloped with tendril-like magic as they convulsed and shriveled up into desiccated corpses.
Shiro shunted back, his eyes wide and his heart thundering in his chest. What is he doing now?
“What is happening?” Razul barked. “Why did he strike his own men?”
“Wait!” Debaku said. “Something is happening. He is doing something.” The Black Cobra of Mar’a Thul moved forward quickly and struck out with his scimitar, but the shaman—just like he had done when Razul attacked—shimmered and slid away out or reach.
The shaman then jumped into the air and came back down, his scepter slamming into the dirt of the lower courtyard, the force of which sent a shimmer travelling across the dirt, kicking up dust and debris that remained in the air.
Not knowing what kind of fell magic this was, Shiro almost wanted to jump atop something to get away from it. The warriors still hadn’t moved, were standing still, what ones were still alive—which most of them were. Like Shiro and his allies, they looked on with awed fascination, curiosity, and dread.
All except Razul.
He is too crazy to care.
Something noised from the distance, a sort of ceramic-like sound sliding against another similar material. Whatever it was, it was heavy and landed on the ground. What came next was the groaning and breathing of something…
Not human.
Shiro flicked his eyes from the warriors, back to the huge shaman, then back to the warriors, as he was confused what was happening.
“Look,” Jessamine said from atop the wall. She pointed.
Shiro glanced past the warriors behind the bend in the courtyard as a figure ambled out. The warriors spread out, making way for the man.
“Gods and goddesses and all the planes of the underworld,” Razul breathed.
“Yes,” Debaku said. “You should not be surprised by this evil we see.”
What ambled forward was a desiccated man, long dead, his eyes gone, save for a tiny inner flame of green light. Over his bony chest hung a golden necklace, the material as thick as a hand span.
And in his hand, a rusted blade.
“So what?” Razul said. “It is just one corpse.” He lunged forward, landed on his feet and rolled over the ground toward his opponent. He thrust his blade upward and cut the undead creature in two, his blade passing up from the groin through the dusty torso and out the shoulder.
As the two halves fell to the ground like so much petrified wood, and writhing, Razul snorted with amusement. The savage warriors around him backed away, hissing and snarling as they raised their weapons, ready for an attack.
But before anything more could happen, pieces of ceramic all about the courtyard began to grind and crack against one another.
Shiro’s eyes widened. “This…” he said in a low growl, “is not a courtyard.”
“We are standing in a tomb,” Dabaku said.
Shiro glanced about and swallowed as dozens of newly arrived corpses ambled forward from every direction. It was then when the shaman ripped another tear into the air and pulled out a second black orb.
“Watch out!” Jessamine warned.