Whatever that looked like in the dark.
The courtyard beneath my feet rocked and rolled as an Earth Mage pushed their power into the soil.
With a growl, I responded in kind, stretched my hand out and commanded the earth to calm.
Blessedly, it listened, but I was unsure how long that would last.
“Find Fay and Rohak. Tell Rohak that we need to evacuate,” I commanded, spinning to see the steel glint of determination in my wife’s eyes.
Ellowyn nodded mutely, kissing me swiftly before disappearing into the dark.
Fuck this,I thought, before releasing a stream of fire into the sky, turning it into vapor as it crested overhead. It cast an eerie glow below and elongated the shadows disproportionately, but at least we could see.
Everywhere I looked, our people lay dead or dying.
Men and women. The old and the young. All caught completely unaware while in the throes of celebration.
Godsdammit.
I stepped around corpse after corpse, bending to check quickly for signs of life on each before moving onward. Some had burn marks and skin that bubbled and melted. Others clearly choked on nothing as the air was quite literally stolen from their lungs.
In the dozens of bodies I’d checked, not one was alive. Of course, Lord d’Leocopus was nowhere to be found.
A slithering feeling coiled in my gut at the lack of Lishahl’s leader. Something about his disappearance felt . . . wrong to me.
Was he the rat? Were Razia’s words coming true—was Solace here for my wife?
My blood ran cold at the thought.
The lord’s son, Praetor, lay amongst the dead in the first row, his flame-red hair burnt to his scalp.
Fresh screams rent through the air, the unmistakable sound of Talamh’s roar sounding soon after. I pushed away from Praetor’s corpse, jogging toward the sounds of battle as I pulled Fire and Air into my palms.
A snarl and the unmistakable feeling of magic drew my attention to the right as I neared the last place I heard Talamh. Without thinking, I launched a massive fireball from my right hand before coaxing it forward at impossible speeds with Air from my left. The feeling of magic died instantly as my attacker succumbed to my magic.
Curious and more than a little enraged, I approached the area where I loosed my fire. The grass still crackled and spat small flames. Nothing remained of my adversary but a pile of ash, and I inwardly cursed my inability to leave some form of evidence.
I have to know who is attacking.
“This way!” Talamh sounded, his voice much closer than it was a few minutes prior. “North, out of the city!”
“Talamh!” I called, my voice cracking through the night. Magical attacks lit up the darkness in a swath of colors, briefly illuminating our people as they fell over each other in their haste to escape certain death.
“Torin,” Talamh shouted back, a wall of dirt exploding behind me just in time to take the impact of an incoming ice spear. Soil rained down on my head as I jumped out of the way, sprinting the last few yards to where the towering Mage stood.
“Help me,” he added with a grunt.
I quickly spun around, panting from both adrenaline and exertion, and reinforced his wall with my own Earth Magic. The pieces that were crumbling from the onslaught of attacks slowly knitted back together, the depth and width of the structure muffling the noisesbeyond.
“Make it hard for them to get over,” I called as my magic wound into the barrier, spikes erupting from the topmost part of the wall.
“Step back!” Talamh called. My feet obeyed automatically, and I watched in awe as the ground fell away to reveal pits full of wooden spears at the base of the wall.
Talamh released his power with an audible grunt. “Can you pull the fire from the sky?”
I nodded as I focused on the magic hovering like a thin haze in the air above and pulled as hard as possible, sucking the essence into my well until it felt fit to burst.
Immediately, we were plunged into darkness, the night seeming more oppressive than before.
