Mage guardian 1, p.8
Mage Guardian 1, page 8
But the start of the ceremony was supposed to be his signal to throw the blood. Without the ceremony having started, she couldn’t know he’d already thrown it, and every minute she risked being found out.
The clinking of armored footsteps closed in from behind him. The Adept stepped away to let her Guardian in. A shadow fell across the platform at Rune’s feet—the shadow of a drawn knife.
Rune did the only thing he could think of—which was thinking.
He thought with all of his might.
“NARCISSA!” his mind roared. “DO IT NOW!”
No response. Narcissa couldn’t hear him through the bond.
The shadow with the knife moved. He heaved against his bindings with all of his might—
And the wood tore as the world turned to glass.
Fractals-pages-and-ecstasy, magic seared through him, into his arms, his legs, his muscles, nerves, and bones. The Guardian’s knife cut through empty air as Rune splintered his wooden bindings and staggered into the railing.
Impossible. He shouldn’t have been able to do that. Not through solid wood—
His muscles bulged.
Not visibly, but he felt it, an intense strength in his limbs. It flooded him, twirling manically with the euphoria of Narcissa’s magic. She’d triggered it, somehow, she’d given him strength.
She chose Controller magic, he thought. With an Amplifier subclass. She’s controlling me, building onto my strength. Trees bless you, you gorgeous girl!
With a bellow, with his body thrumming with power, he ducked under another strike, then in a sweeping kick brought the Guardian crashing onto his back. Spinning with the same momentum, he rose and buried a fist into the side of the Adept’s face. She went down cold, but not before she shifted the wood beneath his feet, raising it up, up, up—
As she fell unconscious, her magic stopped, but the leaping platform had launched both Rune and the tripped Guardian out into the open air. Rune flailed for a handhold, but the small bit of railing he managed to grab shattered into splinters under his fearsome grip.
And so Rune plummeted, air whistling past his ears, the sun passing behind a cloud in the heavens. He tried to twist, so he could see the net coming, but it hit him in the back, and he flailed as it caved under him, ropes snapping apart under his weight—under the weight of the muscles Narcissa had given him.
The ropes barely slowed him, but they slowed him just enough. Ground slammed into him, reverberating his bones and jostling his innards like a kick. Though shaken, he lived. The Guardian wasn’t so lucky. He crunched and what was left didn’t stand up.
“You were supposed to make a weapon,” he thought at Narcissa, dazed.
“I did make a weapon,” Narcissa said, like a whisper through his mind. “You are my weapon, Rune. You.”
Breathing hard, he looked up at the sacred site all around him. Covenant units were closing in from every direction. Too many to count, too many to fight.
“Get out of here,” he said as he brandished his knife. “I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”
Chapter 9
Rune had taken on two men at the same time before. One unlucky night, he’d taken down three.
But he’d never taken on a dozen at once. Much less a dozen Guardians.
Twelve men, give or take, bore down on Rune like a wave—if waves had weapons. Some paces behind the mass of swords and pikes, a dozen Adepts trotted after their Guardians, waiting for their chance to cast magic into the melee. So really, the odds were more like twenty-four to one.
It gave hopeless a whole new meaning.
Rune shifted his stance, his muscles tense with Narcissa’s magic. He could try running, but even with his amplified strength, he doubted he could do more than play leapfrog with his attackers. As for escaping entirely, well, he had fallen directly into the sacred site of the Tree of Life, which was surrounded on all sides by walls built of magically grown cedar. The wood was bare of bark, however, and too smooth to be climbed without tools.
Running was a no go. This was the end of the line for him.
At least Narcissa will escape.
That thought buoyed him as he met the Guardian at the head of the pack, ducking to throw himself at the man’s midsection and narrowly missing his pike. The man grunted from the impact, which might have killed him if he hadn’t been wearing his Covenant-issue armor.
I’m still strong, at least. I can fight like a bear, and take a few enemies with me.
As he and the first man crashed to the ground, Rune seized the moment to steal the man’s spear with his free hand; in the other, he was still holding the knife he’d borrowed from Lenore, and he threw this at the next Guardian bearing down on him. The blade burrowed into the flesh between helmet and chest plate. What sort of idiot didn’t wear mail there?
One whose Adept is a healer, he thought a moment later, as the man pulled his hands from his bloody neck to reveal smooth, stained skin.
Undeterred, Rune went for another man’s head with his spear. A skull cracked red.
As the man toppled, others took his place.
Rune backpedaled to avoid being encircled. If they got him flanked, there’d be a blade in his back within seconds. His best shot was keeping them at bay with the—
The spear, it seemed, had other ideas. It crumbled to ash in his hands. An Adept again.
Tree be damned, he cursed as the Guardians pressed again.
Rune weaved sideways to avoid two thrusts aimed at his kidneys, then drew all the strength his supernatural legs had to give and leapt. Ground dented. Above, beyond any spear’s reach, he flew over a line of angry swords.
A man moved to intercept him. Twisting in air, Rune swatted the blade and landed foot-first on the Guardian’s helmet with all of his magically enhanced mass. No crunch this time, but the man went down and wouldn’t get up anytime soon. Unless he has a healer as well, Rune thought wryly. He grabbed the man’s blade, then stabbed into the unprotected backside of his knee to give the healer, if he had one, some extra work.
The man’s piercing scream changed the pace of the others, pausing them for a moment of hesitation.
Then, frenzied rage.
Three dove at Rune simultaneously. A fourth lunged upward to cut off any jump attempts. The blades snipped at his hair and clothes, but found no purchase in flesh. However, the armored boots that followed, did. They had the force to break bones. They should have, but in his beefed-up muscles, Rune felt only the dull ache of bruises.
Rune spun his blade into a man’s neck, while the kickers regained their footing. Blood sprayed, another scream.
Inches away from piercing another throat, Rune’s blade twisted and hissed. Tree be damned, again? An Adept had turned his blade into a snake, forcing Rune to toss it. Of course they could affect metal just like they did wood.
From there, the battle devolved into a fever dream. Blades and fists and armored boots nicked away at him. Knuckles and knees driven by supernaturally enhanced muscles answered in kind, smacking weapons away and burrowing deep into unprotected bits. He must have downed some of them—he hoped he had—but whenever he did, another Guardian popped up.
Then, the ground turned to sand. The air thickened into purple fog. The toxic fog burned his eyes, and even the tiniest sip of it danced inside his lungs like a fiery rebellion. An inhumanly fast punch clipped his chin, and if not for old reflexes, it would have dropped him.
Rune staggered. Magic, too much magic. If this goes on, I’m screwed.
But the Guardians were coughing too, and getting stuck on the same sand as he was.
They’re no better than bar brawlers, he realized. They don’t know how to work together. They’re all just fighting their own fight.
He’d expected better of government-trained Guardians, but then again, each of them probably wanted Rune’s bounty to himself. All the better to upgrade their Adept’s magic, and upgrade their own status along with her.
As the fog eddied and swirled, Rune tensed his legs, and leapt over it. Without their Guardians, the Adepts were defenseless.
Unfortunately, they were smart enough not to cluster together. At the zenith of his leap, he searched for his first target among the scattered female figures near the roots of the Tree.
But another shape caught his eye. Clad in white and gray to match the Tree, with a hood hanging loosely over a face of brown skin. The shape skulked among the sacred nest of white roots, camouflaged by its clothing, and by Rune himself. Every Covenant unit was facing away from the figure, distracted by the bloody spectacle of Rune.
Rune landed just as the figure settled behind a large root, aimed a crossbow, and fired. Rune cursed. He’d have no chance to dodge.
The bolt whistled past him.
A Guardian cried out. Another bolt followed the first, and the scream turned into a dying gurgle. Rune seized the opening, bounding toward an unprotected Adept and throwing a punch.
In an ugly crunch, the woman’s nose, jaw, and cheek bent under his fist. A flash of guilt stabbed him. Rune wasn’t used to the sort of power he was fighting with. But the feeling faded a beat later.
Well, if she wants to take my life, he thought, then I have every right to try taking hers.
Bolstered by cold determination, Rune spun to face the next enemy as several Guardians wobbled out of the mist and ran to aid their mages. He’d barely made it two steps before another Adept turned the sand under his feet into flowing quicksand. He jumped with all his might, but even that stone-splitting strength couldn’t compensate for liquified footing. He made it out, but barely.
Troublesome. He’d have to outrun that particular magic.
Rune glanced at the Tree, but the shadowy figure had turned tail to run, a black canvas bag bouncing on their hip. Whoever it was had helped him, for some reason, but they’d only fired two shots.
In the split second he watched, a single green leaf fluttered out of the person’s bag.
The Tree of Life. That’s a leaf from the Tree-of-fucking-Life!
They stole it, they’re some kind of thief—
Ah… Thinking fast, he bolted after the fleeing figure. She must have snuck in. And if she snuck in, then she must have a plan to sneak out.
With his monstrous new muscle mass, Rune closed the gap fast, pulling up beside the fleeing figure as it made for the wall.
“So this is why you helped us,” Rune said to Lenore.
She whipped her hooded head around. “What the barren hells are you doing? You’re blowing my cover!”
Behind Rune, all the remaining Guardians and Adepts were chasing after him, which meant they could see Lenore. He had outed her.
She wasn’t fast enough. Rune scooped her up and sprinted for the wall.
Lenore eeped in surprise, her hood flying back to release her black braid. She scrambled to pull it back over her face again.
Behind them, one of the Adepts had beefed up their own Guardian, and the man was quickly gaining on Rune. For his part, Rune felt his own energy draining. He sensed that Narcissa’s magic had been sustaining his transformation, but that she was reaching her limits, wherever she was.
With a grunt of effort, Rune skidded to a halt at the smooth wall of the site. “Every thief keeps a grappling hook,” he grated out. “Right?”
“Let me down, you impossible oaf!”
He set her down. “Answer me—”
“Of course I have a barking hook! Now back off!”
He stepped away, counting seconds as Lenore pulled out her crossbow and fixed it with a hook from her satchel. The hook was attached to a length of rope, and as soon as she fired it, the rope slithered up into the sky. The hook anchored onto a railing.
That won’t last, he knew, not with that Adept who controls wood. If that woman woke up, and started warping that railing....
The bulked-up Guardian charging them roared, and Rune acted, seizing Lenore and swinging her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She cursed at him, mostly to urge him to hurry up. He started rappelling up on the fading dregs of his super-strength.
The entire wall shuddered a moment later, as the giant of a Guardian rammed into the spot where they’d been.
“Cut the rope, damn it!” Rune shouted. His strength was fading fast, to the point he might even be back to his own normal mass.
Thankfully, that mass was still somewhat impressive. Some tension went out of the rope, followed by a bellow, as Lenore sliced through. The giant Guardian dropped before he could even start climbing.
Now gasping for air, Rune surmounted the railing, set Lenore on her feet, and bent over to breathe in huge gulps of air while steadying himself. His body was sore, exhausted. Magic leaving him was like hitting the end of a hundred-and-twenty-hour workweek spent planting rosebuds in gravel.
“Well, don’t just stand there!” Lenore shouted. “Get me out of here! It’s your fault that—oh no—”
He looked up into her eyes, then followed her wide gaze. Two viewing platforms down the ring, at the top of a set of stairs, he saw what Lenore was seeing.
Narcissa, trying to fight off a Guardian, and losing.
No. No. I told you to run!
At Narcissa’s feet was an Adept, probably another wood mage. The woman was holding one hand to her head. Narcissa must have clubbed her with something, to keep her from upending the grappling hook.
And it had cost her.
“Lenore,” he said, “I need to borrow that cross—”
A twang sounded behind his head, and a bolt sliced across the sky and implanted cleanly in the Guardian’s face.
Rune turned.
Lenore lowered the crossbow. “What? He was on my list.” She shrugged. “Besides, I like her. She’s got spunk.”
Your list? What list? Oh, never mind. Rune turned his thoughts back to Narcissa, who had staggered into the railing and was staring at the bleeding mess that had once been a Guardian, her pretty face drawn in an expression of shock.
She wasn’t used to gore and death—not yet, anyway. He had to snap her out of it.
“NARCISSA!” he thought, with what he imagined to be all his mental might, “I AM SAFE NOW. YOU NEED TO RUN.”
Her gaze spun to meet his, eyes wild, her black-inked ringlets tossed by the wind. The clouds moved angrily behind her, a thunderstorm brewing. She looked like a tempest, like some sort of goddess, representative of innocence lost.
Then she nodded, turned, and fled. Slow and struggling with her steps, she looked as exhausted as he felt. Despite it, she had the wits to stick with the original plan, in which they both headed back to the Gilded Lotus via different avenues.
He scanned the path ahead of her for any further Guardians and saw none. There were plenty of remaining crowds to get lost in, however. Many of the locals had been watching the entire fight, some of them even hooting and hollering, but now that Rune had his attention turned toward them, they were starting to realize that he was a violent criminal who had just gone toe-to-toe with a small army of Covenants. He might be dangerous.
Rune leaned on that assumption by tilting his head back and belting out his best battle cry.
People screamed and people ran.
Pandemonium ensued.
Well, that did the trick, he thought. In the confusion, Narcissa should get away clean.
“Now what?” Lenore said. “There will be other wood mages. And the guards below will be on their way.”
He scanned the sea of fleeing onlookers for that telltale pink shape. Miraculously, the Sex Machine was still visible. It was moving away from the melee now. Someone had hired it.
“Follow me.”
He darted after the crowd, which only made it scream and flee faster. People were so terrified of him—of the strange outlaw Guardian who had just survived a dozen of his fully-trained peers—that they parted like a school of fish before a shark. Thank the Tree for that, because he was too exhausted to fight off a crowd if they turned on him.
He reached the Sex Machine after it turned a corner, out of sight of any Guardians that might be chasing them. Good. It made them less likely to suspect that Rune was hiding inside it.
So he thrust open the side door and hauled out the occupants, even while the carriage was still moving.
The nobleman inside cried out, “Hey! How dare you—” before he hit the ground in a flutter of coattails and curses.
“Run,” Rune growled.
The nobleman paled, gained his feet, and scampered off faster than any nobleman he’d ever seen. He didn’t even ask for a refund or threaten to file a complaint. Rune took it as a compliment. I must really be terrifying.
The carriage had stopped by this point, and the driver leaned off one side of the bench to check on what was happening. “Hey, what—oh, it’s you again,” she said, and for the first time, Rune got a good look at her. He was almost angry to see that she was beautiful. He was surrounded by too many pretty women as it was.
Her eyes, a severe, mossy hazel, looked him over. She had an elegant face, the kind that Rune normally expected to see at the top of the stairs in a ballroom, and everything about her screamed neat and tidy. Not a hair nor thread out of place, which was honestly impressive, given she wore at least three layers of clothing, all different shades of pink. Her tailor had done things with lace that would have made a dollmaker jealous.
The cuteness of her outfit clashed with her refined and stoic expression like oil and water. She dressed like a woman who bred fluffy kittens for a living, but she looked like a woman who could spot an errant dust mote at ten paces and order a maid executed for it. Her lips thinned as if they were used to frowning. Her bronze-brown ponytail drifted over one shoulder.
No Guardian, though, he noted. Mog must have gotten bored and gone back to whoring.
“You,” she said evenly, “need to leave. I don’t want any of the trouble that’s—”
“Eighteen Valor,” he said. “I’ll pay you eighteen Valor. To get me back to the Gilded Lotus. That’s all.”
