Chapter 39 - Not Exactly Stealthy

Where there’s one sentry, there’s more. And as we made our way to the outboard of the stage, we encountered another pair. These ones had swords and crossbows. A quick reading told me they were the only ones we had to worry about. I was about to distract them by flicking the three of knaves past, but Annalisa tugged my sleeve. I ducked back behind cover.

“Give me the dragon juice!”

I winced. “It’s the three of dragons, Annalisa”

“Whatever.”

Sighing, I called the three of dragons into my hand and began to siphon my stamina and focus into Annalisa. She put her hands out in front of her, concentrating, and split the air with a portal.

Before I could ask what she was doing, she thrust her hand through it, and wrenched it back, along with the very-surprised face of one of the sentries.”

“Sneak attack!” she shouted. I watched, wide-eyed and slack jawed as she belted him across the jaw and let his unconscious body slump back. I heard the thrum of a crossbow discharging and the slap of a bolt into wood.

“I can’t believe that worked!” she said. “See? I can be stealthy!”

I didn’t have time to retort as the other Mayazian bellowed in rage and called out. “Where are you?” he demanded. I winced. Like I said, not exactly stealthy. I cut off the dragon siphon before Annalisa could open a rift for him to shoot us through. Annalisa tried to advance, but I pulled her down. “He’s got a crossbow!” I said.

“Well he can’t shoot both of us!” she hissed. “Just shield me.”

“I don’t think it will stop a bolt,” I said, “and I don’t want either of us getting shot!”

“Well what’s your idea?”

Instead, I pulled out the three of knaves and the two of Towers. I stacked them together, charged them with my will, and flicked them around the corner. The reinforced shadow clone popped out of the card, and I was rewarded with the sound of the second sentry’s crossbow discharging.

“Now!” I said, rounding the corner with Annalisa close behind. The Mayaz had started to reload, but dropped his crossbow when he saw us, and pulled out his pair of swords. I hesitated for a moment when I saw the adventurer’s guild badge on his lapel—along with his broad, hulking form. A shark adventurer? Not what I expected. In the gloom, both his skin and his badge had a dull-grey sheen. He was at least true-iron, rank 4, in which case we were in for a hell of a fight, or it was soft steel, rank 5, in which case we were both dead. Either way we were committed.

I fanned the cards out around me, calling back the ones I’d used to draw his shot. The bolt clattered to the ground from where it had lodged half-way through the clone’s head. I was right, the stone skin wouldn’t have been enough. Annalisa went right while I circled to the left. The Mayaz adventurer grinned a mouth full of sharp teeth and pressed in.

“Well well, bounties just be falling in my lap today,” he said, cracking his neck and flexing his wide shoulders.

One of his swords took on the green sheen of an enchantment, and I barely called out to Annalisa in time.

“Anna, down!”

We both hit the deck as a green splash arced over our heads. Where it hit, it sizzled and started to eat away. The damn sword had an acid spell woven in!

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He didn’t waste the opening. The shark darted forward and put a boot into Annalisa’s midsection that lifted her entirely off the ground and sent her cartwheeling. I coated my knife with the two of knaves and jammed it into his back, but the enchantment melted away when his jacket split to reveal a shirt of scales underneath. The tip of the Mayazian knife scratched across the armor, and the adventurer grunted. I retreated, narrowly avoiding his counter slash. His eyes tracked the stolen knife and narrowed.

Uh-oh.

He roared, and the green sword flashed again. This time the swing came on a diagonal arc, from his right calf to his left shoulder, and the acid caught the edge of my robes and the toe of my boot as I threw myself out of its path. Some of it splashed on the gantry above, and one of the support columns. He and I both froze, looking at the acid eating into the column. If it collapsed, it would spill a ton of wood, nails, and spectators onto all three of us.

“Right,” he said, “No more of that!”

“You think?” I asked. The acrid stench of the acid burned at my throat and eyes. I held a sleeve over my mouth and drew the three of knaves. I flicked the card to the side, where a shadowy version of myself sprouted from it.

The Mayaz adventurer advanced on me. “Ain’t fallin’ for that twice,” the shark growled, just as Annalisa burst through the shadow and hit him with a right cross. His vicious kick would have broken half the ribs of an average person, but Annalisa was strengthened by stone, and she was also one of the toughest fighters I’ve met when it came to fighting through pain.

The adventurer reeled. She followed with a slip to the right, sinking her left hand into his gut, then another right, a hook this time, in as much time as it takes to blink. He managed to get his arm up to block the last blow before it put him to sleep and slashed his sword at her. She called a portal of obsidian to intercept it, but the sudden switch to defense threw off her rhythm and all of a sudden, she was on the back foot. It really wasn’t fair that such a big guy could move so fast.

I moved in, swinging my cards out like a whip and infusing the whole deck with the two of knaves. But even while pressing the attack against Annalisa, the shark was able to flick his other sword at my attack and send cards flying in every direction. I called them back, thinking furiously. We were hopelessly outmatched, even with the swordsman handicapped by threat of being crushed. It was only a matter of time before the Mayazian skewered both of us.

Annalisa had reinforced her forearms with a layer of obsidian drawn from the plane, but the brittle defense chipped off with each strike, leaving more of her flesh exposed. I had a crazy idea, but it relied on Annalisa, and she needed space in order to execute it. I launched myself again, angling my dagger for his unprotected neck this time, but he must have heard me coming, because he shifted his weight back, and his elbow slammed me in the gut. I tumbled back, gasping, cards flying in all directions. He’d nailed me right in the solar plexus, and I couldn’t speak—couldn’t breath.

Luckily, I didn’t need to speak to communicate with Annalisa, now. I just hope this works, I thought. I called two cards to my hands: the three of dragons and the four of knaves. I activated the four first, willing a series of mental images to Annalisa. Then, I sent what strength I could still muster into the three of dragons.

For a moment, I feared it didn’t work. But Annalisa thrust both her hands out, and a tear opened underneath the charging shark’s feet. He hit the portal and fell through. His shocked face looked up, and he lost his grip on one of the swords as he slipped completely through. Unfortunately, the non-magical one. Never lucky.

Annalisa staggered, reeling from the effort of passing a person entirely through a tunnel. She looked as exhausted as I felt. But she ran over and hauled me to my feet. “Darcent, I did a person! I tunneled a whole person!” she shrieked. Then stopped, as though something had just occurred to her. “Since when can you use deviltongue?”

I just gasped and gagged in reply and pointed toward the ladder the sentries had been guarding. We didn’t have much time.

The Mayaz adventurer wasn’t dead—far from it. In fact, he likely wasn’t even hurt. It took a great deal of effort and will to send something as powerful as a soul through a portal—even if, as I suspected in the Mayazian’s cases, the soul had been corrupted in some way. Annalisa couldn’t tunnel far in the best of times, despite the practice she’d been freezing the Mop n’ Bucket with. But I’d thought long and hard on how best to apply her talents, and the thing about floors is that they’re rarely more than a hand’s span thick. The Mayazian sentry had been tunneled about three inches straight down.

Originally, I’d planned to use that trick on a wall to get into someplace to steal or spy. But this worked too. But saving our lives seemed a prudent application. We couldn’t take the swordsman in a fair fight, so I’d had Annalisa remove him from it. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t take him long to find the trapdoor we’d come up through, along with the corpse of the sentry whose knife I’d stolen. We had to move.

“There” I rasped, pointing at the ladder up. I collected my cards and soldiered on.