Ezra had nothing to say, just went back to looking out the window, which was a lesson in frustration. He wasn’t going to see anything with his physical eyes.
Ezra shut his eyes, pushing out distractions like the wind and the sound of the vehicle crunching over the snowy landscape. He opened his other sight, his inner vision, and the world opened around him.
Blue.
Everything was blue. Icy cobalt and deep cerulean, the colors of living energies and magics muted beneath the artifact’s influence over the weather and the entire region’s ambient magic fields. It was nearly blinding, and a twinge of pain began behind his eyes. He fought through it, and slowly turned his head, looking as best as he could around them.
The trees held the faintest glimmers of light in their cores, still alive, the species hardy enough to handle the extreme off-season snowpocalypse, but most of the tender summer growthwas dead. He could see none of the tiny flares of light that usually meant animal life—everything was mere shadows, like rocks and decaying matter, and death magics gathered in deep pools of purple, like the richest of Burgundy wines, the death magics released by dying animal and plant life mixing with the overcast blue from the artifact and storm. From what he could tell, the smaller animals weren’t lucky enough to escape the storm’s radius, and perished quickly. The larger animals were likely fairing far better, able to escape or endure the unnatural storm.
“Stop!” Ezra called out, grabbing the seat in front of him. He was certain he saw something a few yards out in the trees.
“This is near the spot I lost my officer,” Grendel said, voice distant as Ezra focused his attention out into the woods.
He kept his eyes shut, not wanting visual input to cloud his inner vision, and scrambled to release the harness holding him in the seat. Hands helped, brushing his aside, and no one asked what he was doing, all three MERS officers having experience with practitioners. He was freed, and he tugged the hood up on his jacket and pulled down the snow goggles before he struggled with the door.
“Redmayne, wait!” Grendel shouted, the rest of her words lost to the roar of the storm as he got the door open. Snow fell into the susvee, and he gritted his teeth as he shoved a booted foot out into the snowdrift.
He opened his eyes once, just to make sure he wasn’t going to impale himself on a tree, and leapt into the snow.
It came up to his shoulders, and he snorted out a laugh as snow got in his mouth and a bit fell down the collar of the jacket, cold on his skin.
“What’s the plan?” Sergeant Owens called down to him, leaning out of the still open door. He sounded both concerned and amused.
“Watch your head!” Ezra shouted back, and once Sergeant Owens ducked back inside, he called to the fire that sang in his blood. It always came without issue, the fire. It was pretty much the same for all fire mages across the ranks—it was harder to hold it back than to summon it forth.
Control was second nature after fifteen years of training, and he coiled the fire around him like a ribbon dancer, starting at his feet and swirling up his body, consuming the snow. His affinity kept him from getting scalded, but the earth at his feet wasn’t so lucky, water boiling around his waterproof boots before it turned to steam.
Steam rose, blinding him, and he shut his eyes again, looking for the source of the intense death magics he saw out in the trees. It hadn’t moved and appeared to be stationary.
Opening his eyes, he kept a small connection to his inner sight open and focused on the immediate area. He lifted his arms, just enough to push out at the snow that threatened to topple into the cleared area he was making, and he turned, widening the range of the fire ribbons as they cut through the snowbank.
Water ran down in sheets as snow melted, and he spun the fire faster, evaporating the melted snow quicker than it could collect in puddles at his feet. Eventually the snow receded enough that he could pause his efforts, and the doors to the susvee behind him opened carefully. The susvee was still atop the snow at head height, and Ezra made sure not to melt the snow holding the susvee up, not wanting to cause it to fall. He made a slope to the susvee at a gradual angle, so they could climb back inside once they were done.
The storm still raged overhead, but he summoned a shield that flashed to life ten feet overhead and fell around him in a half-sphere of translucent energy, rivers of fiery oranges and blood red twisting over the surface. He adapted it around theside of the vehicle, and his three companions climbed down the sloped snow to the cleared earth beside him.
“Impressive, Redmayne,” Grendel said begrudgingly, eyeing the storm raging above them with distrust. “Is the shield going to aggravate things?”
“Storm’s being fueled by some odd combination of elemental and death magic—my shields aren’t even going to make a ruffle in the chaos around us,” Ezra stated as Brown and Owens reached into the susvee and both pulled out weapons. Brown carried a rifle almost as tall as Ezra and slung it over his shoulder with a thick black strap and Owens came out with a smaller but no less lethal assault rifle. Grendel wore her sidearm on her hip. Even bundled up in heavy winter gear they were an impressive and intimidating sight. Ezra was unarmed, but not really—he could do far more damage than any gun, and a lot quicker too. He wasn’t a combat mage, but he could handle defending himself and others from an aggressive human. He hoped, at least.
“Simmons is a mundane?” Ezra asked, making sure, confused by the weapons. He could have misremembered or not noticed to begin with—all of them were armed for one human, an academic no less, which left him a bit flustered.
“The weather might be frightful, but bears won’t give a fuck about some snow,” Brown said, loudly enough to be heard over the wind screaming above their heads.
Ezra squinted at Brown, brain stalling out for a second.
“Oh.Bears. Like actual bears, not the leather kind in bars back home,” Ezra said when it finally clicked that the sergeant was worried about a real, actual animal big enough to eat them and that didn’t have magic behind it. Just fangs and claws.
Ezra wished his mouth had a filter when Grendel glared at him hot enough to melt some snow of her own. Owens nodded and held his rifle like he was just waiting for a wild animal toleap out of the woods and chomp on his leg. Thankfully, the icy temps held back Ezra’s flush of embarrassment.
Brown laughed and gestured for Ezra to get moving. Ezra reminded himself he was a professional and did scary things all the time, even went alone into caves and tombs and condemned buildings full of nasty creatures and dead things, and that literal, giant man-eating bears were really the least of their current worries.
He focused on using his shield as a make-shift blow torch, cutting a path through the tall drifts toward the mysterious whirlpool of death magics calling to him through the trees.
CHAPTER FIVE
EZRA
Being a human blow torch was kind of fun. He poured energy into his shield, keeping the translucent surface piping hot, and he changed the shape of it to cut through and push the snow to the side, like a plow on the front of a train. The MERS officers stayed behind him, keeping an eye on their flanks and the rear. What snow didn’t get melted was pushed out and fell away to either side of their group as they continued forward.
