Aimilia opened her mouth, ready to begin barking orders when one of them started running toward them. “Marcella!”
Marcella rushed out ahead of Aimilia and embraced the young girl, who immediately collapsed into sobs. Soon enough the other children were piling on top of her, all trying to reach Marcella. Marcella ran a hand over the first girl’s head and murmured, “I am here. It will be well. Do not be afraid.”
Aimilia cleared her throat, the stinging in her shoulder and blistering skin urging her to press forward. “Novices, focus. You all want to be commanders, don’t you? Then listen and obey my orders. Follow the vitae ropes attached to me and Pax Marcella. You will not deviate; you will not lollygag. You will follow it until you reach the top where you will be pulled out. Is that clear?”
The novices released Marcella, snapping to attention. “Yes, Commander!”
Marcella gestured for them to go. “On now, you will be out soon.”
Aimilia and Marcella pressed on. Aimilia murmured, just to have something in the air that wasn’t dirt, “I didn’t realize how much they’d warmed up to you.”
“Some,” Marcella nodded. “I am fond as well.”
When they came across the next pair, the young boy who was stuck beneath a pile of rubble his friend had not been able to free him from sobbed into Marcella’s curls the second she and Aimilia had freed him. She held him and ran her hand over his back while his friend murmured to Aimilia that he was a no-name mage. The sympathy Aimilia had felt for the boy was twisted as she regarded him anew. He’d been a no-name mage trying to get on the command track? He was a fool.
Runai born to Solitus parents didn’t make it onto the command track, much less survive it.
But she supposed this was a traumatizing enough experience and for a boy who only knew the Academy as home and had no family, someone like Marcella was as close as he would ever get.
Marcella finally managed to calm him down enough that Aimilia could give her orders, but the young boy was reluctant to let Marcella go. It took far longer than she would have liked, but finally they sent the two boys on their way.
Aimilia muttered as they crawled through a narrow tunnel, trying not to bite her tongue off as her burnt arm scraped the ground, “You have more patience than I do.”
“He is good. Some just need patience. I have it, but often it is not received.”
“You must have spent a lot of time with your clan’s children then, growing up.”
“No. After my parents, Hypatia was the only one interested in me. I was familiar, but it was not the same. It was lonely.”
“Then I guess you’re just a natural with children.”
Marcella hummed in response. “I hope to be.”
They had eighteen left to find.
The two of them appeared just in time to rescue three novices from two chimeras and once the chimeras were dead, sent the novices on their way.
Aimilia was losing steam quickly, but the bleeding on her shoulder had stopped, at least for now. Every movement risked causing it to start again.
Marcella was growing exhausted as well. She’d never been a particularly powerful mage, but after Nikias had her tortured her strength had never fully returned. Some of it had been an act, some of it had been true. But neither woman was going to give up until they’d found all the novices. Dead or alive.
So far, alive.
When they reached the next cluster, after finding one novice alone, they had a massive problem, and the reason why thenovices were so far below. Of the five, one had a broken arm, another a twisted ankle, another bleeding from the side, and one was completely unconscious. Alive, but knocked out. The novices had been trying to bring their unconscious companion with them, but with only one in decent health, they hadn’t gotten far.
Aimilia justified healing the girl with the wounded side, just enough to stop the bleeding so she could assist the one with a twisted ankle. It brought Aimilia to a dangerously low level of vitae, but it was worth it.
But what would they do with the unconscious girl?
Aimilia pushed herself to her feet and caught Marcella’s gaze, forcing the clan mage to pull away from the novices clinging to her.
She whispered, “One of us is going to have to help them.”
Marcella’s eyes landed on Aimilia’s arm and shoulder. “You cannot carry.”
Aimilia nodded grimly.
“So you mean, I will have to turn back.”
