Tsia stood up and nearly pitched over the edge of the cliff as her leg, which had fallen asleep, promptly buckled beneath her weight. But she managed to catch herself on one hand, and shoved herself back up, shaking her leg vigorously until the feeling returned, while she surveyed the cliff that hid her destination. At a certain point, the shaking of her leg became nothing more than a delaying tactic, as she tried to work up the courage to throw herself over the edge.
The confidence in her abilities that she had expressed to Nekelmû had been a bit of an overstatement. When it came to fighting, she was more capable of holding her own, even if she lacked the experience of more veteran warriors. Flying, on the other hand, had never been a strength of her. Oh, she had more than enough power to lift herself above the ground and clumsily thrust herself forward, but what she did was more like clumsily catapulting herself through the air than true flying. She simply lacked the fine control that was needed for a more guided approach.
It also didn't help that Tsia couldn’t actually see the entrance to the Djinn's base, leaving her no spot to even aim for.
But she couldn't put it off forever. She really only had two options: either she jumped, or she’d have to slink back to the merchant with her tail between her legs, and that was out of the question. Taking one last deep breath, Tsia flung herself out over the void.
The wind answered her call immediately, rushing up to embrace her. But she had been a bit too forceful in her call and a veritable hurricane rushed up to meet her. In a split second, she left the top of the cliff behind as she was she rocketed skyward. Panicking, Tsia lost control of her essence and the winds promptly died. She plunged downward, leaving the clifftop behind her just as quickly as she had soared above it until she came to a sudden, jerky, halt no more than fifty feet above the water.
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment, but as she glanced above her she saw, cloaked, the faint outline of a cave. Got it. Slowly, this time, she ascended up the side of the cliff toward her target.
The cave was hidden in the cleft of a small promontory. The entrance was so small that she was surprised she had seen it, as the narrow ledge was barely large enough to accommodate more than one or two men. It took her a few failed attempts to land on the ledge, including one particularly painful miss where she smashed herself face-first into the cliff about three feet to the left of the ledge, but she did eventually stick the landing.
Tsia took a moment to compose herself before heading in. Her nose had been crushed by her unintended make-out session with the cliff. In a matter of moments, a steady stream of blood had dripped down her face and pooled around her mouth, leaving the pale girl looking like a bloodthirsty vampire caught in the act. The only blood that will be spilled is theirs, huh? She shook her head ruefully, as her overconfident words from just a few hours earlier surfaced to taunt her. Haven’t even gotten to the fighting yet and I've mucked it up.
She awkwardly wiped at the blood with her sleeve, but it accomplished little save to smear the blood on her face and her clothes so, in disgust, she gave up. It wasn’t worth wasting a healing potion, at least not yet. After the fight, on the other hand - well, there was simply no way Tsia would let her face be marred by a mangled nose.
Once the worst of the bleeding had slowed, Tsia ventured into the underground chamber. A narrow passage led into the heart of the cliff, as small and cramped as the landing outside, but the passage extended no more than fifty feet before coming to an abrupt end.
Tsia glanced around, confused by the apparent dead end. Is this the wrong cave? Is it an illusion? She reached out a tentative hand, pushing against the walls to just make sure they were solid, but they resisted her charms. She was about to give up, to head back out to the cliff and search for another opening, when a faint sound echoed above her. Far above her. Her eyes darted up, and relief flooded through her vein when shesaw the way forward.
The small, rough cave she’d been standing in had looked completely natural, but the ceiling above her was definitely not. A long slender shaft soared up through the cliff, high enough that its peak was completely shrouded in darkness. The shaft was a perfect square, with the sides so unnaturally glossy and smooth that Tsia recognized it immediately as the work of a mage. So that’s why they needed me - not climbing up that.
Fortunately, while she wasn’t the greatest flyer, ascending up in a straight, completely bounded line was a relatively easy affair. Tsia rocketed up the shaft with a bit more force than she’d intended, but it didn’t matter this time. It proved to be taller than she’d expected, rising a good two hundred feet before the first sign of a landing appeared, illuminated by a flood of light that poured out into the dark shaft.
The light wasn’t the only thing that appeared, though.
The landing opened up into a fairly spacious room, carved out of the rock with the same care and skill that the shaft had displayed. A crackling fire in the middle of the room lit up the space, with the smoke ventilated by a perfectly positioned hole in the ceiling.
But the room was not empty.
Rows of tables circled around the fire pit, and their benches were occupied by a handful of men digging eagerly into some savory substance. But any chance she had to catch them by surprise was lost as the whirlwind of air that had lifted her up the shaft, now free of its narrow confines, exploded into the room like a rogue wave, knocking their plates and chairs aside.
Time seemed to slow as Tsia and the Djinn stared at each other, her own shock only slightly less than theirs.
One of the Djinn moved first. Lurching to his feet, his hand flickered forward so imperceptibly that Tsia wouldn't have seen the projectile until it was too late, if not for the faint reflection of the flames that glimmered on the edges of the dark, steel blade. A gust of wind exploded from her hands, sending the blade flying harmlessly across the room, but it came at the cost of her concentration on her other spell.
With a startled shriek, Tsia plunged down the shaft, this time catching herself well before she neared the bottom.
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The shouts and cries of the Djinn echoed down the shaft as she steadied herself mid-air. Her cheeks were burning with embarrassment, and Tsia wanted nothing more than to run away until the shame melted away. But she couldn't afford such petty feelings. She needed to act. Now.
The wind howled behind her as she rocketed back up the shaft, far faster than she had gone before. As soon as the opening loomed above her, she smashed a blade of wind into the wall behind her. The force of the gust altered her momentum, and she was flung sideways into the middle of the room, and into the midst of the men. Tsai landed hard, smashing through a wooden table and its benches with such force that they splintered beneath her, and she rolled to the floor, landing in a tangled heap with one of the Djinn.
The mountain Djinn was fast to act. His hand latched around her neck in an instant, clamping down on her windpipe with unnatural strength while the rest raced to aid him Black dots swelled to fill her vision as her air and blood flow were cut off, and Tsia knew she only had seconds of consciousness left if she didn’t do something fast. Fortunately, she had just the answer.
With one hand, she cast her windshield. A spherical vortex of wind sprung up around her and the Djinn sprawled on top of her, the winds spinning with such velocity that the other Djinn racing toward her were flung aside when they came into contact with it. With the other, she cast her favorite spell. Ṣelzâq.
An extremely thin blade of air erupted from her fingers, smashing directly into the face of the Djinn that loomed above her, his powerful hands still clutched tight around her throat. The wind hit him and he blinked, his hands loosening slightly as a final moment of horrified confusion flitted through his mind. And then the upper half of his skull slid off, sliced clean through by the deadly spell. It landed with a plop on her chest.
Ewww. Trying not to retch, Tsia pushed him - and it - off of her, gingerly massaging her crushed windpipe as she took stock of the situation. The rest of the djinn were beating against the barrier with near-frenzied energy. Their blows bounced off ineffectually, but Tsia knew it was only a matter of time before their screams attracted more attention.
“Time to finish this,” she murmured.
She didn’t even need to cast another spell. Most mages thought of defensive spells as just that, a fantastic tool for preserving your own, usually squishy, life, but they gave relatively little thought to its offensive potential. They had other spells for that, after all. But Nēs̆u was no mage. “There is no defensive ability,” he told her time and again, “that can’t be used as an attack, given a sufficiently creative mind.” Tsia wasn’t sure if he was entirely right about that, but he was definitely right when it came to her windshield.
She dumped more essence into the spell and the whirlwind ballooned outward. Before the seven men attacking her even recognized the danger it posed, the impenetrable barrier of wind swelled to fill the room until there was nowhere else for them to go. Tsia averted her eyes as the Djinn were crushed against the walls, but she didn't relent, not daring to release her grip on the spell until the cyclone-speed winds had ground her adversaries into a handful of bloody smears along the magically smoothed walls.
The wind fell silent immediately, but her head snapped up instantly as the sound of thudding footsteps raced away from the room. Rushing to the nearest passage, she saw that one of the Djinn had survived. Perhaps he was more durable than the rest, or perhaps he had been fortunate enough to be thrust through a doorway rather than being ground against the wall. All desire to face her had been utterly broken as he fled down the passage, limping with every step, but Tsia had no intention of letting her quarry escape and raise the alarm. She fired off another wind blade, cringing as, a second later, the Djinn’s legs were cut out from beneath him. Oops, I missed. His plaintive walls echoed down the halls for only a second before she cast her second spell. This time, she didn't miss.
Tsia was a little shaky as she leaned against the wall. Every breath she took was a challenge, her lungs wheezing as they fought to pull air through her crushed windpipe. But she ignored her wounds for the time, keeping her eyes trained expectantly at the door that led deeper into the underground settlement, with two wind blades waiting on the edge of her fingers. They must have heard that, didn't they?
It was only after fifteen minutes or so had passed in silence, that she finally dropped the spells. Glancing around the room, Tsia felt an odd mixture of pride and disgust. Even after losing the element of surprise, she had managed to take out 8 combatants before they could raise the alarm, but that pride was tempered by the knowledge of how close she had come to disaster. A few more seconds the other way, and I would have been dead. A shudder ran down her body. Or worse.
Fishing a potion out of her bag, she downed it, sighing in satisfaction as she felt her nose and throat mend themselves. She cast the vial on the ground a moment later when a sound echoed in the corridor beyond. All other concerns fell aside, as she quickly tiptoed over to the entrance, pressing herself tight against the wall.
A flickering shadow stretched across the threshold into the room, and a moment later its owner emerged. The Djinn stopped, stunned by the carnage of the chamber. His heel turned a fraction of an inch, as his every impulse screamed that he needed to run and raise the alarm, but he never got that chance. Narrowly missing her feet, his head joined his kin’s on the floor. With a frown of distaste, she stepped over it, into the passage that led into the heart of the cliff.
The underground enclave proved to be far more extensive than she had expected. Unfinished passageways trailed off in a bewildering variety of directions, with no apparent floorplan, but she encountered surprisingly few Djinn compared to the massive size of the base. Where the hell is everyone?
She was grateful for it, though. While Tsia had no problem killing in combat, she wasn’t especially fond of the prospect of cold-blooded murder. The mountain Djinn had a well-deserved bad reputation, so she didn't feel too bad killing them but, still - it wasn’t like they were Gemlirians. So she kept to the shadows, moving as quietly as possible as she swept through one passage after another.
Her strategy paid off. She successfully avoided the few Djinn she came across, passing them by without a need for further death until, turning down an unremarkable passageway, she found what she had been sent to retrieve. Rows and rows of crates marked with the logo of the Kallāt-S̆ams̆a lined the back walls of a small warehouse. A handful of Djinn sat around a fire, so thoroughly engrossed in a game of dice that they did not even notice as she crept close to them, but she saw absolutely no way to reach the crates without going through them. Guess I’m going to have to fight them after all, she realized.
It took little effort for her to craft a wind blade and, with a somewhat heavy heart, she cast it toward the guards in a wide arc.
But as soon as the spell left her fingers, the earth shook violently. She was tossed to the ground as a wall of stone burst through the ground in between her and the guards, intercepting her spell. Her windblade bit deep into the rock, but it did not have enough force to penetrate. She struggled to push herself to her knees, already summoning more essence to her fingers, but her efforts were futile. In an instant, the stone around her liquified. She sunk into it, attempting to throw herself free, but it solidified as rapidly as it had melted, trapping her in the rock.
Tsia pulled frantically at her limbs, as the panic surged through her, but her strength was no match for solid stone, and her struggling ceased as a shadow loomed over her, a raspy voice echoing in the dark chamber.
“Looks like we’ve got a rat loose in our granaries."