The camp had descended into chaos. Billowing clouds of smoke stretched into the heavens, which, when combined with the flickering light of the flames, made it almost impossible to see. He scanned the darkness in vain, looking for any sign of his friends, but there was nothing, nothing at all.
The entire camp had caught fire, not just the grass but the Seraphs’ tents and supplies as well, and the group had scattered into the winds. Everywhere he looked he saw isolated groups of half-transformed Seraphs frantically fending off a surging crowd of attackers. The creatures looked much like the withered woman who had attacked him, most of them wielding spears and wearing tattered armor. On their own, they were weak opponents, their arms frail and their weapons old, but they vastly outnumbered the Seraphs - and numbers are their own form of strength.
“YAUGHH!” A frenzied scream echoed behind him and Jasper swiveled his head in time to see an explosion of flame burst from one of the hands of the withered corpse and completely engulf the Seraph it was fighting. Okay, maybe that’s not their only strength,” he realized. Guess that explains the wildfire.
He broke into a run toward the withered mage and drew on his essence. Sacred Star, he murmured. A volley of small, fiery orbs shot from his hand like a swarm of angry lightning bugs and rocketed through the space between them. They smashed into the mob of withered attackers around the Seraph and detonated in a series of bright flashes.
But as the light faded, the gushing flames from the withered mage didn’t waver. Great. I guess these things have some sort of fire resistance. At least I have a weapon for that. Gripping his glaive tight, Jasper charged toward the creature, but he was still a few seconds away, and the Seraph had not reappeared from the flames. His hands writhed with a second spell as he cast Purge.
The withered mage swiveled its head to look at him, and its hands followed its gaze. A wave of fire raced across the plains toward him, but Jasper didn’t even pause in his stride. As the fire engulfed him, filling him with a pleasant warmth, he coiled his body and struck with all his might. The flames parted before the glaive’s icy breath and then fell silent as he cleaved the mage’s head from its shoulders.
The remaining attackers, none of them apparently able to wield the fire, pounced on him. With a sweep of his blade, he pushed two of their strikes aside and turning to his side, made another miss, but the fourth hit home. His armor blocked the worst of it, but the blade’s head buried itself against a rib. With a yell of pain, Jasper swung the glaive wildly in front of him. It cut through two of the withered corpses effortlessly, and their torsos, ridden with ice crystals that quickly began to melt, fell to the earth, but the remaining three danced out of his range.
Where did that Seraph go? Why the hell isn’t he helping me? A flurry of blows came his way as the surviving creatures threw themselves upon him, and Jasper desperately backpedaled. Damn are they fast.
Another blow slipped through his guard, and he bit down on his lip as pain blossomed in his leg, but he managed to keep his concentration and finish the spell. Fiery Shackles. Burning manacles erupted from the ground and clamped tightly around the corpses’ legs and though the fire may have done nothing to harm them, their temporary binding made them sitting ducks. Two swift strikes later, they had joined the mage in a second death.
Gasping for air, Jasper leaned on his glaive and looked over to where the Seraph had been and his heart sank. A charred black figure occupied the spot. Crouching low on the ground, its two great paws were raised above its head in a plea for mercy that had not been granted. I guess he - she? - wasn’t high enough level to have fire immunity.
Feeling a little bit queasy, he averted his gaze. His eyes stung from the acrid smoke, as he surveyed the ground around him, looking for the next group of combatants. It was too thick to see clearly, but the clash of steel against steel echoed from the left, and he took off on a run.
This time there was no fountain of fire to deal with. Instead a group of three seraphs were being swarmed by at least five times that number. The Seraphs were faster than he was; fur and fang flew as they batted away the attacks and struck at the withered whenever an opening appeared, but, unless you’re the Flash, there’s a limit to how many angles you can protect at the same time.
As he drew near, one of the creature’s spears found its mark on the Seraph standing in the middle. Slipping past the man’s frenzied paws, the withered’s blow struck straight through his eye and buried the spear’s head deep in his skull.
The creature paid the price the next second, as its head was ripped straight from its shoulders by another one of the Seraphs, but the damage had already been down. The middle Seraph collapsed on the ground unmoving, and the mob of creatures surged into the gap, separating the two remaining Seraphs.
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Fiery Shackles. Fiery Shackles. Fiery Shac…. Jasper lost count as he cast the spell over and over again. For a few brief seconds, the withered mobs were frozen in their tracks, and he and the two Seraphs descended on the group like a school of piranha. His own blade cleaved a half-dozen of them in twain, and the Seraphs tore the rest apart, ripping them limb from limb until there was none left alive.
No words were shared between them as the three fought to catch their brief, just a simple nod of thanks thrown in Jasper’s direction. Their respite was brief. A few seconds later, another seraph emerged from the smoke. Her clothes were wreathed in flames, and she flung herself to the ground, rolling end over end across the rough terrain. A heartbeat later, the first of the withered manifested, chasing after her.
They were fast, but Jasper’s spells were faster. As the two seraphs raced toward the new foe, his iron shackles rose to bind the undead in place. Fiery Shackles. Fiery Shackles. Fiery Shac…
His head was already beginning to throb, but Jasper ignored it. Helping the woman up, the four dispatched the new foe and set off in search of the rest.
Jasper still found no sign of the other members of his party, but he and his small group were able to rescue a few more Seraphs, and they soon fell into an established pattern. With some reluctance, he found himself assuming the role of a control mage - casting nothing but Fiery Shackles to bind the enemy in place - while the Seraph warriors took advantage of the enemies’ temporary plight. It was a winning, if rather inglorious combo, but by the time the sounds of battle finally began to quell Jasper had cast more spells in a shorter space than he had ever done before - and his head was paying the price. Stars danced across his vision, and pain pulsed through his temple with every breath he took as the group finally came to a stop. And here I thought I finally had enough essence.
After a few minutes of searching without finding any more of the strange withered beings, the group finally began to relax. A few, too exhausted to keep moving, dropped to the ground where they stood, while others raised their voices and cried out into the darkness, calling out for their missing comrades. One of them, the young woman who had caught in form, began picking through the mounds of corpses that surrounded them, her face filled with the fear of whom she might find amongst the dead.
Jasper ignored the others and slowly trudged his way up a small mound that stood nearby, one of the few points of elevation on the mostly flat plans. Though his head throbbed with essence deprivation with every step he took, the pain was not so great that he was unaware that danger that might still threaten them. He had no idea where the creatures had come from, and until he knew, he refused to believe the threat had gone away.
Did the cult track us down somehow? Jasper was skeptical that the attack could be just a coincidence, but at the same time, he remembered Annatta’s concerns about leaving the safety of the royal highways. Was it just a random attack? A pang of guilt gripped his heart. I should’ve tried harder to convince Abnu…with a shake of his head, he cut off that line of thought. There was no value to be had in recriminations, at least not now.
Reaching the summit of his little mound, Jasper, the smoke cleared just enough to allow him to see the wide, vast plains that stretched on every side. The night had been a dark one, bereft of moon and stars, but the darkness was rapidly swallowed up by the billowing pillars of fire and smoke that raced in every direction - the fire had gotten completely out of control. He saw no more signs of their attackers, but his breath caught in his lungs as he saw on the horizon a small cluster of lights that was quickly being encroached by the raging fire. Crap. A town.
“Jasper!” A voice called to him from below, and he turned to see a dark form slowly clambering up the hill. The voice was raspy and out of breath, but judging from the almost singular lack of horns on her head, he recognized her immediately and relief flooded through his veins. “Tsia - thank heavens! Are you okay?”
The form paused and descended into a fit of coughing before replying. “Yeah. Give me a hand up, won’t you?”
He scrambled part way down the mound, picking his way carefully through a few dozen crunchy, charcoal corpses before reaching her side. As he descended, the smoke grew heavier, until it was so thick that his eyes wept and his breath came hard and labored. Jasper suddenly had a new worry. Would be pretty pathetic to survive the attack and end up dying of smoke inhalation.
His voice was that of a man who’d smoked a pack a day for thirty years as he took his place beside her. “Have you seen the others?”
She coughed so hard she spit up blood before managing a response. “No,” she croaked. “I don’t know what happened to them, but it doesn’t matter. If we don’t put this fire out, we’re all going to die.”
“I can cast Spectral Wings on us.” Without thinking, Jasper reached for his essence - the essence he didn’t have - and fell silent as his head felt like it had cracked in two. Tsia just shook her head. “And what about the others? Can you cast it twenty times?”
Jasper knew she was right. “There’s a town over there too,” he admitted, pointing to the cluster of lights on the horizon. “Any chance you can summon up a storm,” he asked, half-jokingly. Jasper didn’t really expect her to say yes - she wasn’t exactly Thor, god of thunder - but to his surprise, Tsia nodded her head.
“Actually, yes. We’re not that far from the Lake yet. With your help, I think I might just be able to whip up a big enough windstorm to carry along some water.”
“I’m basically out of essence,” he began to explain, but she cut him off.
“I’ve got plenty of essence. What I need is a little something else.”
Jasper understood what she meant then. Soul magic. It was an option Jasper preferred not to use, but he was even less interested in dying to smoke. Talk about an embarrassing way to die. “What do I do?”
She held out her hand, and he took it. “Just funnel the energy to me - I'll handle the winds.”