Sam Bowring - Destiny's Rift

A moment later, from the top of the cobblestone tower, a molten beam shone forth and moved over the plain towards them, cooking the ground that it touched. Bolts shot towards the source of the beam, but a great white ward had sprung up from many lightfists working together. The beam ripped through groups of shadow mages and their defences, rending limbs from scorched bodies. It continued to sweep across their front lines, precise and deadly and directed.

‘Come, Roma,’ Losara said.

He strode towards the beam, placed himself deliberately in its path, and put up a shadow ward around himself. As the beam found him, the pressure on his defence was great.

‘Lend me your might,’ he told Roma, and opened a conduit in himself for his servant to channel through. He felt Roma send power into him and knew that, had the man still wanted to, now would be the perfect opportunity for betrayal. Already inside Losara’s defences, it would be a simple matter for the Magus Supreme to divert energy to explode his heart, rip him apart, or bring about one of a dozen other deaths.

I trust you , thought Losara.

I know whom I serve , came Roma’s thought, and strangely it gave Losara strength just as the borrowed magic did.

I can take more , Losara sent. It could be dangerous for a single mage to channel too much power from others, hence the standard groups of four amongst his force’s ranks – but Losara was no ordinary mage.

‘Aid the Dreamer!’ Roma called, and others nearby obeyed.

With great focus, Losara pressed back upon the beam, creating a shadowy one of his own. Filaments of light splintered away at the focal point where the two beams met. He started making progress, for his opponent was not as strong as he, and he could still handle more aid from his underlings.

Surrender , he sent to Methodrex, and I promise you will not die this night.

Do you suppose I believe such lies? came the reply, though there was a tinge of desperation to it.

The golden rod would have been slippery in his hands, had its heat not steamed away sweat even as it formed. Methodrex gritted his teeth as the pressure from Losara grew, as shadow pushed along the white-hot line that sprang from the rod.

He possesses no such artifact , thought Methodrex, yet still I cannot stand against him.

Suddenly the rod cracked in his hands, piercing his palms with incandescent splinters. The light beam lost all rigidity and fell away, ribbon-like. The eclipsing beam of shadow tore into the tower and quietly exploded into a dark cloud, surrounding the ward, cutting off all view beyond it. Methodrex tried to add to the defence, but his strength was all but depleted. The large combined ward collapsed into individual ones, each quickly constricted by the encroaching darkness. Soon Methodrex could not even make them out as anything more than dim flares in the void.

A snake-like tendril pierced the bubble of his own meagre defence, and it burst instantly. Shadow power collapsed in on him, rippling through him as he went soaring from the balcony to land in the Academy courtyard, his troubles over.

Losara lowered his hand, dropping the beam.

‘A great many lights have been put out,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Roma.

On the walls defences were still visible, but they were fewer and less collected.

‘The rest we want alive.’

Roma nodded. ‘Prepare your sleep spells!’ he commanded the shadow mages.

Bolts stopped crackling and conjured wraiths were abandoned, halting in the air as if their strings had been cut, to float away as mist. Mages channelled, building their power and waiting for the word. A few fireballs landed amongst them, but at this moment defence was not a priority.

‘Help me once again, my friend,’ said Losara, and Roma poured more power into him. Losara worked his hands, moulding a great spell. Soon it was as strong as he could make it.

‘RELEASE!’ he cried. Along the line, each group of mages sent forth the same casting. A blanketing wave of sleep spells went out to cover the fort, invisibly but wholly. Wards on the walls flickered under the barrage; others pulsed and faded more slowly. Perhaps the light mages remaining could have defended against a few of the spells, but with so many at once …soon only the lights of fires remained.

‘Advance!’ called Roma, and hundreds of shadow mages bore down upon the silent fort.

Bel awoke with a start, yet there was nothing there to spook him. Just tense , he supposed, as their present situation came stealing back into his sleep-deprived mind.

‘Go back to sleep,’ he told Jaya, whom he had woken with his jolting.

‘Do you think I can?’ she moaned, blinking in the morning light that came in spots through the forest roof.

For days they had been on the run, and Bel felt he had entered a strange state whereby he worked hard in order to make no progress at all. Back east the sky was hazy, but the spires of smoke had finally begun to disperse. He could only imagine the skeleton of a wood that lay behind them.

They had joined a thinner stretch of trees that ran along the mountains heading west, where the fire had blessedly not reached. Perhaps they were more at risk here, however, should the dragon find them, for the wood was only a league wide at most. It was wetter, though, full of streams and moisture in the air. Fat ferns and damp undergrowth surely would not burn as readily as dry tinder, even in the dragon’s magical flame, and the canopy was thicker too.

Sometimes a day passed without sight of Olakanzar, but there were never two before he was back, circling overhead, still searching. They had seen him land more than once, smashing his way into the trees somewhere behind them. Bel thought he was tracking them in a more directed fashion than before. Clearly, burning the forest had not worked. There was little comfort in that.

He knew a dragon’s eyesight was perhaps the best of any, so what was to stop Olakanzar from perching somewhere high in the mountains, and simply watching and waiting for them to emerge?

Nothing.

It galled him no end that he could not stand and fight. What was the point of being a great warrior if the only option was to flee? Anyone could do that! He wondered if he was being a coward, if he’d become too reliant on the path, the pattern, the dance, whatever the blazes it was. Before Drel Forest he had not even been aware of the phenomenon, yet he had still won fights, hadn’t he? Yes – mock battles and archery contests, bar-room brawls in which he had never truly been afraid. Perhaps he had to reach a certain threshold to initiate the right reaction? That was worrying in itself – maybe one day he would be killed by something he did not fear until it was too late, something that did not fire his blood until that blood was leaking out of him. He thought of his old Troop Leader Munpo, who had defeated him simply because Bel had underestimated him.

‘Thinking in circles,’ he muttered, ‘accomplishes nothing but making you dizzy.’

He was answered only by soft snores – it seemed that despite herself Jaya had managed to drift back to sleep. He was glad of that, at least. They all needed rest.

Carefully he freed himself from her and moved some distance away, taking his pack with him. He was not surprised that, upon retrieving the magic sundart, it gave him a chirp, for he’d ignored it the past few days. Fahren had said it only held one message at a time, and he wondered when this one had arrived. Last time he had ‘spoken’ to Fahren, they had been on their way to Shebazaruka’s lair.

When he was sure he wouldn’t wake anyone by activating the bird, he did so.