People are coming out into the training grounds, still fighting. Guards loyal to Selene are swinging blades at members of the resistance. One of Alaric’s fighters throws a knife at a guard. Magic bursts around them all, sand flying through the air in a stinging storm, one of the nobles throwing flames.
Selene takes advantage of my moment of distraction, sending magic up, not at me, but at the walls above. Her destructive power strikes the granite of Ironhold’s walls, and with a rumble, sections of those walls start to come down. I’m forced to dodge as huge slabs of granite slam into the ground, each one sending up sprays of sand as it lands. I see a resistance member crushed by one of the slabs, a noble on Selene’s side buried under a wash of smaller stones.
I leap back with my weapon held ready, but that just means that Selene can grab it, her magic flaring again. Purple force spreads up and down the weapon, taking it apart, disintegrating it so that it turns to something like ash in my hands. I drop it before that power can spread to me, leaping back from Selene’s next grab, keeping my distance as she stands.
“You can’t beat me, Lyra.”
“I can take away one thing from you,” I insist. I reach out with magic the way I did before, but this time I’m not trying to push fear into people. This time, I’m reaching deeper. I start to unpick Selene’s control over those in the fortress, try to use their emotions and their deepest instincts to overcome her psychomancy.
I can feel it starting to unravel now, elements of it coming apart like the frayed threads on the edge of a dress. My magic is pulsing from me now, and even now, some of the figures fighting in the courtyard are standing there, looking confused or throwing down their weapons. If I survive, I’ll be able to sap support from Selene’s side.
IfI survive.
“I’ll destroy you,” Selene snarls, obviously deciding that killing me is the best way to regain her control over the people there in Ironhold. She lashes out at me with her blade and her magic, forcing me to give ground again and again.
I can’t fight her here, like this, without a weapon. I need to find another way to do this. I need another weapon, one that isn’t some blunted practice thing. I need to draw Selene away from the rest of the fight, too, because I don’t want her powers killing members of the resistance, or even the unfortunate figures brought to her side through mind magic.
Thankfully, I know Ironhold. I spent time here training and fighting, being hurt, growing stronger. Iknowwhere I can find a weapon I can use.
“If you want to kill me, come and get me,” I say, still dancing away from Selene’s attacks.
I run into Ironhold once again, and Selene follows me, magic blazing around her.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Violence rages through Ironhold as I rush through it. People fight in every corridor, in open spaces, in rooms. Magic flashes on every side of me, so that I must dodge bursts of acid and deadly cold as well as Selene’s deadly bursts of power.
I don’t even know who’s throwing it all. Both the resistance and Selene’s followers have magic, so that the conflict is as much a battle between different elemental forces as it is about the clash of steel on steel. I’m forced to leap over questing vines that try to grab my ankles, then spin away as a whole section of wall bursts outwards.
I take turning after turning through the fortress, but it isn’t at random. I head down into the depths of Ironhold, following a route I’ve been along before. Selene follows behind me, moving at an almost sedate pace now, as if certain that she has me trapped.
“There’s nowhere you can run, Lyra,” she says, her magic bursting on the wall near me. “I’ve learned this fortress as well as you have.”
I hope not, because that would let her know exactly where I’m heading. I reach a knot of fighting in a great hallway, where Alaric and some of his people are taking on a group of magical practitioners mixed in with Selene’s guards. Alaric is spinning through the fight, his illusions in full flow so that it seems he’s everywhere at once, opponents forced to parry illusory swords while a real one seems to come out of nowhere.
I dart past him, to the solid door of what was once Ironhold’s armory. I stand before it, and when Selene throws another blast of power my way, I dodge at the last second to let it slam into the door behind me.
Half of the door is blown away in that blast, leaving me more than enough of a gap to clamber through. I hurry into the armory beyond, ignoring most of the stands of elegant but impractical armor, the racks of swords, the shields.
Instead, I snatch up a trident and net, the tools with which I fought in the colosseum for so long, and with which I trained to exhaustion here in the fortress. I turn back towards the door, and even as I do so, Selene blasts the rest of it out of her way, standing framed in the doorway with her blade in her hand. She smiles as she sees the weapons I hold.
“Ah, so you’ve reverted to what you know. Being a pathetic, captive little thing waiting for her betters to decide to put her down.”
“Try,” I snap at her.
Selene goes to one of the racks of swords, taking up a longer, curved blade in place of the short sword she had before. It’s the weapon she’s been using in the colosseum, so clearly she wants to be comfortable too.
She comes forward quickly then, using blasts of magic as a distraction. I duck behind a shelf of shields, thrust with my trident to keep her at bay, then whip my net around, threatening to entangle her.
“Still not strong enough or fast enough,” she says, lashing out at me with her sword. She opens a fresh wound on my arm, almost making me drop my trident.
Selene is right. I need more power, more speed, more strength. I draw more from the animals outside Ironhold, pushing myself to the limit. I hope against hope that I can do this without either changing myself permanently or harming them.
I keep spinning away from Selene, keep moving. That’s the first rule of fighting with the combination of weapons I was trained to use. My weapons were never meant for me to stand and trade blows with an opponent, but instead to stalk them atlonger range, tricking and taunting them until I find an opening. The trainers who first gave me these weapons to work with did so in the hope it would draw out my first fight a little before my opponent inevitably killed me. But I survived, just as I intend to survive here.
Selene keeps coming for me, and I sweep my trident around, catching her sword in its tines. We stand there struggling as I try to wrench the weapon from Selene’s hand, and she raises her other, clearly planning to kill me with magic while I’m caught up in that more physical battle. Fear fills me at the thought of the magic that’s growing in her hand even now.
But I don’t just have one weapon either. I swing my net around, wrapping it around Selene, pinning her arms to her sides even as I pull my trident back and swing it low to trip her. For a second, just a second, she lies there tangled in my net on the floor of the armory.
