Chapter
Eleven
Braiden’s heartraced as he sprinted toward the closest dust devil. He barely made it several feet before he stumbled over a rock, only just catching himself before he took a spill onto the ruined ground. How was he supposed to coordinate a rescue of the othergoats when he couldn’t even coordinate his own two feet?
Oh, gods. Maybe they shouldn’t have gone on their own after all. But what did Warren and Bones, people who lived in underground civilizations, know about how to handle othergoats?
And how could Elyssandra — an actual elven princess — help in this situation? At least Craghammer would have been able to carry one, maybe even two of these goats under his arms or over his shoulders, provided anyone would be able to actually touch the things without burning their hands.
Braiden chose the quickest solution that came to mind — oddly enough, something he’d considered for the possibility of fighting fire elementals in the Weathervale dungeon, similar to what he’d used against the infernal messenger in the form of a brass cube.
Wouldn’t a heavy weave of fabric, like a thick blanket, be enough to smother one of these dust devils? He couldn’t even ascertain whether these spinning columns of air were actual miniature elementals or simply manifestations of elemental essence sent by this strange and still unseen attacker.
Forcing the magic out through his fingers, Braiden conjured his fabric — warp against weft — launching a blanket to cover the closest dust devil. It was as thick a weave of conjured yarn as Braiden could muster, something good enough to make an extremely heavy blanket, a weighted one meant for swaddling and calming the nerves.
The blanket fell upon the dust devil, which offered no resistance, the tiny tornado immediately dissipating as soon as it was trapped between fabric and earth. Braiden pumped his fist. Finally, something was going his way.
He scanned the valley for the other dust devils still spinning and spitting out their nuisance sprays of jagged debris and dirt. The othergoats were still panicked, but at least now they seemed to be viewing Braiden with less suspicion. Well and good. He still needed to make an effort to keep his distance, just in case one of them exploded again.
As he rushed toward the next dust devil, he finally noted that one among the goats wasn’t nearly as panicked as the others. In fact, it looked completely unconcerned by all the chaos. It fixed Braiden with a pair of eyes like shards of onyx. Unblinking, unmoving. A shiver ran down his spine.
But the sensation vanished as another explosion shattered the air and rattled his teeth. Gods, he needed to finish this before more of these poor creatures went off. How many times could they explode before they burnt themselves out?
Another enormous sheet of fabric erupted from his hands, and once again, the dust devil vanished beneath the conjured weight. He shook his fingers, already feeling a strangesoreness in his hands, the familiar stinging sickness of magical overexertion.
He groaned as he bent over, dragging his conjured blanket with him to the next dust devil, huffing and puffing the entire way. Better sore muscles than burning himself out and falling unconscious right here on the battlefield.
Far above him, Augustin didn’t seem to be faring much better, still yelping each time a powerful gust blew him off course. The winds came with a telltale howl and high-pitched whistle, their source shifting constantly along the ridge. Multiple elementals, perhaps, or one moving too quickly to track.
But only one dust devil remained. With a final heaving grunt, he hurled his blanket over the elemental spout, shouting triumphantly when it too disappeared under the weight of the conjured fabric.
Only problem was that the othergoats were still running about willy-nilly. They seemed to be calming, though, gathering into a herd. Now that the dust devils were gone, they were gravitating toward that same statue-still othergoat.
Very creepy, that thing with its unblinking eyes, but at least the goats were huddled together. Safety in numbers, right?
And then horror struck Braiden’s heart. All it would take was another strong gust of wind to knock these goats over like a game of lawn bowls. And when the goats bounced and slammed into each other, over a dozen of them with such force —
Furious wind rushed down from the ridge, exactly as Braiden had feared. He threw his arms out, meaning to conjure another sheet of cloth. But what was he thinking? The very hubris of him to believe he could create something as big as a sail, something to swallow up this enormous gale still barreling toward the clustered goats.
He fell to his knees, wincing at the attempt to manifest such a grand and impossible conjuration. He had no way to cast a spell that big when there wasn’t much left in his reservoir.
The wind shredded at his hair and clothing as it rushed past. Braiden turned his head to follow its invisible passage, watching in open-eyed terror as the frontmost goats slammed backward.
He covered his ears. Three, five, seven goats bumped into each other, triggering a cacophonous chain of explosions. The crater from before was nothing compared to the gouge in the earth left by this series of blasts. The air thickened with dirt, grass, and bits of black wool falling all across the valley.
Braiden coughed as he backed away from the great brown cloud. Bloody elemental. Good enough to cause all this chaos, but nowhere near polite enough to blow the noxious cloud away.
He retreated, coughing harder, clearing his lungs, only slightly relieved when he heard the resumed bleating of goats from within the crater. Only there were fewer voices this time. Had some collapsed out of exhaustion — or worse?
Somewhere up on the ridge, between the bleating of the surviving goats and Augustin’s angered shouts, Braiden was sure he heard chortling laughter, what he imagined an air elemental’s malicious glee might sound like.
Augustin had told him time and again that elementals could not experience emotion, could not adhere to a moral or ethical compass. Then how come this thing seemed so malevolent, taking delight in destruction?
Right on cue, grass, leaves, and dirt at Braiden’s feet swirled anew as a fresh batch of dust devils rose from the valley floor. He clenched his teeth and balled his fists. No. Not this again. And at least a dozen of them this time.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted up at Augustin.
“Join me on the ground! It’s too dangerous up there, and I have an idea.”
