Tharios sits up, searching the trees in the direction he senses the elves. “You hide like cowards. Show yourselves so I may see your faces.”
He’s met with laughter. “Nice try, halfling. Your father may be an imbecile with disgusting taste in women, but he’s powerful, and the apple clearly doesn’t fall far from the tree. On either count.”
Tharios sends air currents along the forest floor, seeing the woods with his magic rather than his eyes.
“Keep your air magic to yourself, Westaria. You’ve surrounded yourself with lesser elves and helpless humans for too long. I think you’ll find true elves to be more worthy opponents.”
“I doubt it,” Tharios mutters. “Found you.”
They hide just past the trees to the west, and he creates a whirlwind around them, twining vines with his air magic to bind them in place.
It only lasts for a few moments before his vines decay under the power of the elf with destruction magic, and he curses under his breath. His air magic still confines them, and they won’t be able to combat it, but he can’t contain them within his whirlwind indefinitely.
Well, he could. His air magic is near limitless. He’s never reached the end of it.
“Now what, halfling?” one elf yells as the ground beneath Tharios and Viala’s bed of moss starts to crumble. Tharios sets a sphere of air in motion around himself and Viala as a shield of sorts.
Before those soil wielders bury them alive.
“Tharios?” Viala whispers beside him.
“I don’t know what to do. Their destruction magic is stronger than my plant magic.”
“Can’t you incapacitate them with your life magic?”
“I took a vow when I joined the Healer’s Circle.”
“Just this once?”
He shakes his head.
Taking a deep breath, she groans before sitting up and mumbling something under her breath. She grabs his shirt as it flies by, caught up in his air currents, and slips it over her head.
“What are you doing?” he hisses.
“Putting on clothing. Unless you want me to do this without it.”
“That’s not—Viala, no. You don’t—”
She glares at him from the corner of her eye, and he stops talking.
“Is that your human pet?” one of the high borns asks. “If you mean to tempt us with her, don’t bother.”
“I’m considering sucking the air from their lungs,” Tharios growls to Viala.
“You won’t use your life magic to incapacitate them, but you’ll do that?”
“I made no vows about my air magic.”
“Well, go ahead.”
He stares at her. “I wasn’t serious.”
“Your heart is soft, Tharios. A strength and a weakness. Right now, a weakness.” She turns toward the rebels. “I fear you miscalculated, gentlemen. My binding partner may have scruples about damaging you. I assure you I do not. And I am no human.”
The ropes of blue light that shoot from her extended hands seem to terrify her as much as they do Tharios. Hopefully, she doesn’t set the whole Wildthorne Woods on fire.
But he lets her magic pass through his makeshift shield and doesn’t interfere. He’d be a fool to refuse her help now.
