Ch 28

Hit and Run (Part 4)

Making myself heavy as an iron hyrax and reinforcing the thick barrier of mana around me, I plunged toward the shield wall. A few spells glanced harmlessly of me before I hit the wall. Their shields buckled and the mages behind them were tossed aside, scattering like confetti. The entire line collapsed.

I twirled my mace in a wide arc, flatting several soldiers. A few were trying to close in, but the rest were stumbling back, and they were all falling over each other. The barriers reformed around me in an attempt to box me in, but before I could do anything cool to free myself, a sudden thunderclap split the air. The Alacryans fell screaming to the ground, bleeding from noses, eyes, and mouths as the spell shattered their insides.

Aya flashed past, ignoring the few men who had survived in an effort to reach Haleigh Leech, who was running again, bolting down the street at top speed. When Aya reached her, three shadow forms broke away from her and grappled Aya, pulling her out of the air and pinning her to the ground.

I made quick work of the last of the soldiers before sprinting to the elven Lance's aid. By the time I reached her, though, the shadows were gone and she was standing back up and dusting herself off.

"By the way, the target can create weird shadow copies of herself or something," I said as I ran past.

"This is taking too long!" Aya shouted, keeping pace with me easily. "We'll be overrun if we don't get out of here."

Just then, four figures appeared as if from thin air in front of us, blocking the way. At first I thought they might be retainers from the strength of their mana cores, and I slid to a stop. Aya did the same, eyeing the newcomers carefully.

No, not on the same level as Lyra Dreide or that awful creature, Uto, I realized. Still, they weren't weak.

They were strangely hard to see, like they had draped themselves in shadow. I assumed it was some kind of spell or power that helped them hide their presence.

The man in front took a step forward, and it was like he stepped into bright midday sun, or maybe more like he himself had suddenly started radiating a light of his own. He wore nothing but a pair of loose, silky black pants, showing off his athletic build. He was handsome, too, with slightly curly hair the color of red cedar.

He put his hands on his hips and grinned at me, his teeth gleaming white in the gloom. "Rose Guard, present!"

The shadow faded from the others as they stepped forward one at a time. To the bare-chested man's left, a willowy figure in scarlet battle robes pointed a long finger at me and said very softly, "Royal!"

On the right, a woman in black chainmail and oxblood red leather armor stabbed the tip of her huge two-handed sword into the road and flipped her ponytail. "Roxy."

Behind them, a large man in a black and red uniform similar to Lyra Dreide's twirled a staff casually before resting it across his shoulders. His voice was as deep as a moon ox's bellow. "Gale."

"And I'm Geir," the leader finished with a wink.

I exchanged looks with Aya. It was as much her look of bewilderment as the Rose Guards' introductions that set me off.

I laughed. Loudly. I laughed until tears streamed from my face, until I was wheezing with every breath, until I worried I might collapse right there in the street.

Maybe that's the plan, I thought through my outburst of mirth. They debilitate their opponents with uncontrollable laughter and then stab them while they're down.

Despite this thought, the four Alacryans didn't make any move to attack. They didn't look very happy, though.

Drying my tears, I shooed Aya away. "Go catch the target before she escapes. I'll stay and play with these four."

Aya nodded and shot up into the air. The Alacryan named Royal was about to cast a spell but Geir held up his hand.

"You have mocked and dishonored the Rose Guard, madam. We demand satisfaction in a trial by combat. To the death," he added dramatically.

"Yours, maybe," I snapped back, my mace already moving.

It was actually pretty impressive how quickly the four mages were able to synchronize their response. My mace slammed into the ground in front of me, shattering the road. A lightning bolt pattern of cracks spread out from the impact in the direction of my opponents, but they were ready.

The big man named Gale conjured dozens of plate-sized slabs of stone, which orbited the group, including moving under them so they could step up off the ground and avoid the collapsing cobbles.

Royal danced up onto one of the plates and rode it away from an upheaval of jagged rock before conjuring boiling, stinky water, which bubbled up out of the cracks I'd made. It hissed where it touched the stones, and after a few seconds, there was a moat around the Rose Guard.

Roxy whirled her sword and writhed like a belly dancer. A long tunnel of wind-attribute mana poured from her blade. It grew, and kept growing until it was long enough to wrap all the way around her and her friends. At one end, the head of a snake was outlined in gusting wind.

Finally, Geir floated up in the air, and then his body burst into flames. The fire shaped itself around him like a suit of armor, but it wasn't just that. Two burning wings protruded from his back and a long, whiplike tail of fire hung down behind him. Both arms were tipped with shining, fiery claws, and the flames around his head had formed into the familiar reptilian shape of a dragon.

"Oh, that's cool," I said, admiring the flaming dragon suit. "Did you choose the shape or did it come like that?"

Geir's voice took on an otherworldly, echoing quality when he spoke again. "The time for coy and playful words is past, Dicathian. Now, you face the full might...of the Rose Guard!"

The dragon's mouth breathed a wide cone of fire, which I deflected with a stone slab that rose up out of the street. When the flames stopped, I toppled the slab over to land in the acidic muck, creating a sort of bridge across the moat.

The wind-snake lunged, its jaws open wide. I was kind of curious what the thing could do, but not enough to let it strike me on purpose. Hopping forward onto the stone slab, I felt the jaws snap shut right behind me before I swung at its back, but my mace passed cleanly through and nearly plunged into the stinky moat.

Geysers of the foul water began to spray up into the air. Where the droplets landed on me, they sizzled against my mana and tried to eat through.

I took a hopping step forward and swung at Geir, but the stone plates moved to deflect the blow, and the dragon opened its mouth for another point-blank blast of fire. This time I took the attack head on, trusting my protective mana to absorb the heat as I spun, increasing the gravity of my mace to create momentum so that when another stone plate swung into a defensive position, the mace shattered it and kept going.

Geir shouted and jerked back, his wings flapping wildly behind him, and he just managed to avoid my swing. Several of the plates moved into place to guard him, but I let up on my assault, instead flying straight into the air to avoid another strike from the wind-snake.