Torch-soot stains the hallway’s crumbling walls. We have to climb over stretches where bricks and debris have fallen from the ceiling.
The mystic runs like the wind, nocked bow held out in front, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. After some distance I see two hoplites lying dead on the floor with arrows sticking out of the scant parts of their bodies that aren’t covered in armor. Jaruna must have killed them on his way to the dungeon.
Just ahead of us is a huge pile of debris lit by a shaft of orange light that streams in from an equally huge hole in the ceiling. I smell clean air from outside, along with a sharp ozone tinge.
Jaruna skids to a stop.
Then the hallway explodes with blue-white glare. A lightning bolt from the ceiling hole. Rock fragments and dust shoot up from the floor and rain down on the hallway. The sound of thunder reverberating is so loud that it drowns out the sound of my thoughts, a vicious pulse that blows out the candle inside my head.
Somehow I get body language from Jaruna to stay back and shield my eyes. From one knee, the mystic composes himself and launches an arrow up through the hole. The unseen sorcerer above answers with another explosion of lightning.
I am terrified my other eardrum is going to burst and I’ll become permanently deaf. All of the hair on my body is sticking straight up, the deflected static of the blast a million tiny stabs.
Kiddu is holding a hoplite’s shield and yelling at me.
“WHAT?” I yell back.
She thrusts the shield into my hands. I heft it. It’s heavy, but not as heavy as it looks.
The two of us form a little phalanx of our own, crouching down behind our shields. Ayan lingers behind us. I peek above the rim, keeping an eye on Jaruna—
“Suryastra!”
I remember the incantation and duck behind my shield as it becomes a bulwark of shadow against a torrent of white light.
Another lightning bolt blasts down in response but it’s well off its mark.
The white light is soon taken over by a violet glow.
“Yushastra!”
And with that, the mystic vanishes, warping up through the ceiling hole and into the orange sky.
The lightning stops. The choking dust begins to settle.
Through the hole in the ceiling I see dueling lights in the air. Violet arcs from Jaruna’s warp-arrows. Slashing forks of blue-white lightning.
“So what are we supposed to do now?” says Kiddu.
“Stay here,” says Ayan. “My brother will return.”
Coughing from all the dust, I try to keep an eye on the ceiling hole, hoping to get a glimpse of the battle above.
Then a shadow blocks the hole.
An armored figure descends. Slowly. Unnaturally drifting down as if the air were water. He lands with a clank, red cape fluttering around him. On his head is a horned helmet with three glowing gems, red and green on the horns and blue in the forehead. In his hands he holds a long wooden staff.
“Drop the shields and lay down on the ground.”
The imperial sorcerer points the end of his staff at me. An array of gems are set in the gnarled tip, glowing the same blue-white as the gem in the center of his helmet.
“Now.”
“Hey,” says Kiddu. “What’s that behind you?”
The sorcerer doesn’t look.
Instead, a thin tongue of lightning erupts from the tip of his staff. It explodes into Kiddu’s shield, shatters the pearlstone plating, and sends her flying backwards.
“NO!” I shout.
“You think this is a fucking game?” says the sorcerer. “Drop the shield, now!”
I drop it. The shield clatters hollowly.
“Lay down! On the ground!”
I obey with no hesitation. The floor is hot and jagged with debris.
“Native bitch! You too—or I melt your pretty face.”
I hear Ayan wordlessly lay down behind me.
The sorcerer stalks towards us. From the ground all I can see are his legs and sandals. Pearlstone-plated greaves sheathe his calves up to the knees, each one inset with a black gemstone that seems to absorb light.
“Kiddu!” I say. “Are you okay? Kiddu?”
“Quiet.”
I strain to look up at his face, dark black and shadowed beneath his helmet. I want to call out again to Kiddu.
And if she’s dead—I want this man to suffer and die.
Violet light slashes down from above and with a whirl of blue fabric Jaruna appears, somersaulting straight into the sorcerer’s knees.
The sorcerer goes down. His staff goes spinning across the floor. It stops right in front of my face.
I grab the weapon and pull myself up to my feet.
Jaruna is already on his knees, arrow nocked. He is too slow. The sorcerer wheels around, grabs the bow, wrenches it out of the mystic’s hands, tosses it aside. The arrow releases obliquely and thwips right past my face.
Now both mystic and sorcerer grapple on their knees. Jaruna is younger and probably 100 pounds lighter, dressed in a cloth robe and a turban. The sorcerer is clad in pearlstone gauntlets, greaves, breastplate, and helmet. He cracks Jaruna across the face with the back of his gauntlet and the mystic sails backwards.
I look at the staff in my hands. It’s almost as tall as I am.
“Gil!” says Ayan. “Do something!”
Her voice jolts me out of a stupor. At the same moment, the sorcerer turns around and looks at me.
I heft the staff like a club and swing it as hard as I can at the sorcerer’s head.
The wood clacks impressively against the pearlstone helmet and bounces away vibrating.
The sorcerer, unfazed, grabs the staff and pulls hard.
I hold on to the thing for dear life and so I’m pulled too and I collide into the sorcerer’s armored back.
Ahead of us Jaruna scrambles across the floor towards his bow. But now the sorcerer has both his hands on the staff. He jabs me with his elbow and angles the staff’s tip towards Jaruna.
Light pulses from the gemstones on his helmet. Tingling static along the staff. The tip starts to glow—
I jump up and then press all my weight down on my end of the staff, seesawing the front end upwards.
Lightning explodes—and hits the ceiling instead of Jaruna. Dust and stone shards shower down on everyone. No helmet pads my eardrums from the thunderclap’s assault.
The sorcerer elbows me again, this time square in the mouth. My head whiplashes. Teeth cut into my lip. I let the staff go and collapse.
The gems on the helmet and staff light up again.
Then a spray of blood mists my cheek. The sorcerer falls face-first, twitching and gasping grotesquely. A flint-tipped arrow juts out from the back of his neck, just below his still-glowing helmet.
I wipe the spray of blood from my face. Some of the blood is mine. My mouth is bleeding bad.
The sorcerer’s crumpled figure twitches once more and becomes still. Blood pools below his face, the same color as his scarlet cape. The light from the gems on his helmet and staff fades and dies away.