Iron was harder and denser than stone, and by no small amount. There was a reason it had been the material of choice in the construction of Arion’s own cell back in Magira. His winds were powerful, powerful enough to cut through steel plate armour, but they’d need to cleave apart an order of magnitude more material here. Could they do it?

Yes, of course they could. The real question was how quickly. Arion wasn’t certain about the answer to that.

“Wait.” The Paladin snapped, her voice a jagged thorn lodged deep through his thoughts. Arion turned to her, confusion blossoming. “You need to leave.” Ensharia whispered.

Anger flared up in him at that.

“I’m not leaving without you.” Arion snapped.

“You have to-”

“No.” He growled, interrupting her with an anger that surprised even him. “Twice now, you’ve saved my life, I’m not leaving you to lose yours. I’m getting you out of here, then we’re heading back to the others and escaping this shithole of a town.”

The woman’s fury grew to match his own, and Arion ignored it. Just kept on examining the bars for some sign of a weakness. He found it, fortunately. A great, thick lock made of iron or steel. It would have been the strongest part of a boulder, but around the surrounding obstacles it left Arion sighing in relief at how much easier his task had become.

“Falls, leave, there’s no point in bringing me. I’m too weak to move myself, I can’t fight, I can’t even run. You’re only endangering yourself.”

Arion tuned her out, concentrating on the lock. He felt its interior, in the vaguest sense. He couldn’t glean enough information through the touch of his air to know exactly how to unlatch it, but he had other options in any case.

His will infused the air within the lock, expanding and hardening it like a growing bubble underwater. The pressure around it grew by the moment, iron straining against magic. He was growing close to breaking it, that much was clear. Solid metal was one thing, but the delicate mechanisms of a lock were no match for the most gifted magus alive.

Second most gifted. Bugger.

Noise reached his ears, running down from the rooms above. It was Ensharia who reacted first, speaking in a hurried, strangled tone that spoke of primal fear and haste.

“Arion, someone’s coming, you need to fucking leave.”

It almost gave him pause, hearing her swear. She never had before. Perhaps it was ridiculous, that that of all things conveyed the severity of his situation, but one couldn’t choose one’s own wake-up call.

What he was doing was insane, beyond dangerous. Perhaps even suicidal. So why did he feel so right in doing it? Why did every nerve of Arion’s body scream at him to keep going?

He was a thing of magic unrivalled, and he’d been told from the first moments of his memory that that made all the world’s luxuries his due. But why?

In House Shaiagrazni, a man’s magic earned him power and privilege only because of how he could use it to help the collective. Somehow that made it all taste better. Somehow, Arion realised, he found himself wanting to be more than just a pampered trophy. He kept working.

“Listen, even if you get me out now, you’ll need more than just your own power to fight a path out. General Venka is here, and his soldiers- the elites- they’re stronger than you’d believe. We need help. Get the Saviour, King Galukar, come back later. Just don’t try to fight this fight by yourself.”

Arion hesitated, and in the moment he spent thinking more footfalls rang out from the space above them. He cursed, feeling all of his strength and courage evaporate at once. Was it just pragmatism? It was a convenient excuse, one way or the other.

“I’ll be back.” He promised her, and Ensharia nodded.

“Go.” She insisted, voice as soft as a summer breeze. “Go to Kaltan and find the Silhouette, they can help you out of the Dark Lord’s lands.”

Arion went, hurrying from the room like a panicking rat and scrambling his way back out through the building. He’d memorised his path in, and didn’t need to exert much of his intellect to reverse the directions in carving an exit. His mind was good for handling information, it seemed, just not doing anything righteous or worthwhile with it.

Up the stairs, down the hall, three lefts and a right. Then Arion was closing in once more on the hatch he’d come through. That was when he heard the footsteps behind him, rapid, terrifying. Sending a shiver down through skin, muscle and into the very marrow of his bones. He didn’t dare look back at whatever was causing it, just hurried on in his flight from the building, teeth chattering all the while.

On the roof, he finally turned. Slamming the latch shut, then slamming down a wall of air atop it. He felt the stone ceiling creak, crumble, then collapse entirely as tonnes of rock rained down to fill in the cavity below it. Arion was already running farther away by the time he heard it start to happen, rushing for the ledge.

A gust caught him, as they always did, and flung Arion far into and through the air. He’d seen rocks hurled at lower speeds by catapults, and felt less pressure from the attacks of amateur windmagi than he did from the wall of air breaking against his face. His time in the sky was closer to a minute than a second, ending as the streets below began to close with a terrifying speed.

Arion was not Walriq, not yet. Flight, even levitation, were powers denied to him by the demands of time and experience. But he’d always learned half as fast again as the old man, and he’d worked at few things as hard as mastering the skies.

When the floor came up to meet him with its crushing embrace, he wrapped himself in a cushion of pressurised air that deformed and decelerated him while he was still yards from the ground. His body’s weight still kept him from breathing while he bounced, and it took all of Arion’s focus to stabilise himself once he was flying from the point of contact. He just about managed to turn his flight into a rapid sprint without falling.

Had almost anything in the world been chasing Arion, he’d surely have escaped. Dozens of yards cleared in mere seconds, and a sprint started faster than any man could manage, then sustained farther by the continued press of wind at his back and stabilising pressure at his sides, he would have bet money on himself out-racing a horse, let alone a biped.

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Once more, the urge to turn was on him. Arion resisted it just as he had in the corridor, but it only grew stronger now that there was no potential escape awaiting him within a few strides. If he’d gotten his directions right, and a windmage of half his competence could not have failed to, then he had a good few hundred yards to reach Silenos. Ordinarily he’d have been confident of clearing such a distance, not now. Whatever was chasing him, it seemed well equipped for pursuit.

Arion finally risked reaching out after himself to feel the presence, and almost vented his fear out as a verbal groan as he did. It was humanoid, cold, covered with metal and moving in on him like a bloodhound. He didn’t need his book learning to tell him it was an undead chasing him, nor did he require his newly gained worldly experience to realise that there was a second one falling in beside it.

He churned the mud up in his wake, creating a great wall of clotted air and debris to try and distract them, then sent heavy items flying from nearby. Buckets, carts. Arion found his panic growing as the enemy came closer and closer, and then a sudden, inexorable sort of calm washed over him.

If he simply kept as he was, death would catch him before he reached Silenos. Arion cooled his wits, gathered his focus, then plucked himself from the ground once more with wind.

Nine times out of ten, such a move as that was devastatingly dangerous for him. He’d not yet mastered the art of vectored, aerial thrust, not yet managed the hundred tiny little subtleties that kept a person both aloft and stable at once. Arion could never have turned a corner, let alone evaded a strike. Not in the air.

But he didn’t need to. All his magic did as he called on it was throw him, lifting him and hurling his body like the stone from a whistling sling. He moved so quickly through the world that he scarcely felt a part of it, faster than before, faster than he’d ever gone. His few moments in motion were well needed to wrap himself in decelerating coils of pressurised air, then the ground met him.

Arion had thought he’d landed hard before, thought he’d been hit hard once or twice in his life. What met him in the dirt proved the ludicrous delusion of both beliefs. He broke the ground, so hard did he strike it, and bounced several of his own height back up skyward before hitting it again on the return stroke. Spinning, ears ringing, blood dragged to all the wrong ends of him with the accelerative forces of his rotation, he barely had any wits left in his head by the time he finally came rolling to a stop.

Groaning, twitching, gasping. He stood. It was an effort done more with magic than muscle, for every fibre of Arion’s body screamed and trembled like a battered dog. Even the arcane struggled to heed his calls, mind left blunt and clumsy by the concussive disruption of his impact. Arion glanced back over his shoulder as he lurched on, finding some sliver of satisfaction at the hundreds of yards he’d cast himself across in mere moments.

Finding a much larger lance of fear as he saw something else.

There was a crater some handful of dozen feet behind him, no doubt the point of Arion’s initial impact. It was wider than he was tall, and almost as deep, the sort of ruin left by an impact which would leave no room for survival. Had he not shielded himself his body would be a sack of blood and floating flaked bone fragments. But it was the sight beyond that truly brought about thoughts of his mortality.

Still coming, still faster than charging horses, the undead he’d felt earlier were powering on. Moving with that lifeless gait they all did, carrying a dexterity and grace born from muscles moved by nerves too dead to tremble. Arion swallowed his fear and surged on away from them.

Every second of movement was a new torture as bodyparts ached and groaned at the exertion. Muscle, bone, even tissues so deep he thought they must have been close to the median points of his torso. Every pause he took was worse, a stabbing, damning moment of progress he’d allowed his enemies to make in hunting him.

Stride by stride he neared the hill, the one he could only hope was right in his memory as hiding Silenos and Galukar. Chain by chain the enemies closed, halving the distance, then passing the crater, then halving it again. Soon enough they were within fifty yards of his back, and mere seconds away. Arion roared, turning himself around and mustering all the power he could manage.

He was going to die, fine. He’d hurt the fucking monsters responsible before he did. Dent that black armour, smash the necrotic bones beneath, leave rotting juice to drool out through whatever gashes he managed to make. There was nothing of a magus in his will, as he waited for the towering plate-clad figures to close. Only raw animalism. Perhaps that was what he needed to make the most of his last few moments.

The rain of fire was all the more of a shock in his bestial frame of mind, snapping Arion from his savagery and leaving him gawping. It was not like any flame he’d seen before, almost a liquid as it dripped down in broad sheets, clinging to the ground around and atop the undead, burning so hotly and bright that there was scarcely any sight of them within it. Arion took a moment to recognise the magical fire his Master had conjured, only just doing so before Silenos Shaiagrazni dropped down beside him.

“We must leave.” The caster said, instantly, hosting Arion over one shoulder as if he weighed nothing, then taking off at a sprint. His head still left facing the undead, Arion got a good, long look at the inferno continuing to scream around them. No figures emerged, though he had no way of knowing whether they’d perished. If nothing else they weren’t being followed.

It did not take long to reach their new safe haven, naturally Silenos chose a different hill from before, and Arion wasn’t surprised to find King Galukar seated behind its crest. The Necromancer was lying down beside him, thoroughly gagged and glaring daggers.

Arion couldn’t imagine the fury she must have felt, knowing her allies were within shouting distance, knowing she couldn’t shout. He hoped it was worse than he was picturing, the bitch deserved it.

“What happened?” His Master asked, interrupting Arion’s thoughts with his usual tact-shaped vacuum.

Turning to him, Arion made a concerted effort to focus. Silenos must have gotten tired of waiting after a moment, for the caster lifted a hand to his head and extended magic to his flesh, banishing the throbbing pain from his skull, then quickly moving on to work at the rest of his body.

Arion took the moment of clarity to speak.

He told Silenos of all he’d seen, all Ensharia had said. Told of his endeavours, his failures, her position and his flight. Silenos was finished with the healing before Arion was with his account, and eyed him in much the same way he did whenever observing a mistake made with magic.

“You were foolish to remain as long as you did, almost getting yourself killed. Nearly threatening me, even. It was pure luck that saved you, had I not heard the impact of whatever caused that crater, you I can only imagine, I’d have not known to come and meet you on your way back.”

“I wasn’t going to just leave her there.” Arion growled. “Now that we know where she is, now that I have you too, we can go back and-”

“And do nothing.” Galukar interrupted, voice like a needle. “I’m sorry, magus, but we can do nothing. An army of thousands, with elites in the area of power you’ve described…And a Hero on the enemy’s side…That is too much, even for us.”

Arion felt like the sky was falling down and leaving his shoulders alone to bear the impact. He glared at his Master.

“And you agree?” He growled. “You’re Silenos Shaiagrazni, how can you not even try-”

Silenos hit him, a blow just fractionally harder than most he tended to discipline Arion with. It sent him to the ground, left his ears ringing as they received the words that came after.

“I cannot try because I cannot muster my full power.” He replied, and for once Arion heard none of the iron-cast calm in his Master’s voice. “Because I have found myself in a world of simpletons and savages, grunting like apes and beating their chests in aggressive, fearful anger when they see sciences and magics they do not understand.

I cannot try because I have been travelling with one such primitive.” He glared a venom more concentrated and corrosive than any Arion had seen at Galukar, then continued. “And am thus now without an army of my own, and less options as a result. We will go to the city of Kaltan, we will contact this Silhouette, and we will see if something can be done about Ensharia’s capture. That is all.”

Nobody said anything after that. Not even Galukar.