Questing Sucks! Book II (65 page)

Unfortunately, the way he screamed on his way down alerted everyone nearby to what she’d done. Kellar, Patrick, Shina, the other three executioners, Ammecia, and quite a few of the High-Mages turned their heads in her direction.

Damn!

With all eyes on her, and faced with making a split-second decision, she chose the only option that made any sense. “Kellar!” she yelled. “Fight!”

The boy grinned. Clearly, he didn’t need to be told twice. At the same time as Cah’lia’s yell, there was a secondary yell from one of the High-Mages, who ordered the executioners to “snap out of it” and kick the platforms out from beneath the feet of Patrick, Orellia, and Shina—which they did.

Horrified, Cah’lia reached out to Shina, who made a horrible choking sound as she dropped down and dangled midair with the noose around her neck. She wrapped her fingers around her own throat and struggled to breathe, her legs kicking frantically as she choked to death.

For just a moment, Cah’lia feared the worst for her. But then Kellar shouted something in a language she didn’t know, and the area above the girl’s head brightened as a gathering of flames in the exact shape of a sword appeared from out of nowhere and cut through the rope before flickering out of existence. Shina fell a few more feet and landed on her knees, gasping for breath but very much alive.

At the same time, Patrick and Orellia were also freed from their nooses, and now they too were panting, having been saved in much the same way. But for all their trouble, it didn’t look like Cah’lia’s plan had worked out for her. Now, all twelve High-Mages, along with Duncan himself, had ceased focusing on the robed men and instead pinned their sights on Cah’lia and the others.

“Kill them
now
!” he demanded. “We may have problems. Deal with them quickly while I work on finding this mage.” With those few words, he returned to the business of decapitating the robed men who even now continued to climb onto the stage.

“Oh, I am
so
ready for this,” Kellar said. With a dark, almost frightening gleam of amusement in his eyes, two balls of flame burst into existence and hovered mere inches above each of his upturned palms.

Cah’lia gritted her teeth. She looked first at the twelve High-Mages and then at Kellar and the others, who were now all on their feet, their backs straight, and a good deal of fight in their eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried. I really tried.”

“Sorry?” Kellar asked. He laughed. “You’ve got
nothing
to be sorry for. This is great!”

“Great? How can you possibly say this is great?”

“Because I’d rather die fighting than be hanged,” he said. “This is
so
much better.”

Patrick nodded. “I agree. This is much, much better. I only wish I had a sword.”

“You do now.”

Kellar whirled around so fast that the executioner behind and off to his right did not even have time to shout in surprise. Throwing both of his hands forward, the two fireballs whipped through the air and struck the executioner in his chest, lifting the man off his feet and flinging him backwards and off the stage; the sword he had only just removed from his sheath fell out of his hands and landed with a clack against the wooden stage.

“Thank you,” Patrick said, hurrying over to it. As he bent down to retrieve the weapon, one of the two executioners still on the stage moved towards him with the clear intention of stabbing him in the back. Cah’lia opened her mouth to call out to him in warning, but she stopped herself, realizing it would not be necessary. Within an instant, Patrick straightened his back, spun around, and raised his newly acquired blade to parry. He followed through with a forward thrust that took the man in his chest, killing him instantly.

“Idiot,” he said. Then he ran over to Cah’lia, once more rejoining her side. “Stay still for just a moment. I’ll get you out of those shackles.”

“Patrick, don’t. It’s not your average chain.”

“And
I’m
not your average swordsman, my dear Cah’lia.” Patrick proved his words to be true, as with two quick, painless strikes of his blade, he freed Cah’lia of all the magical chains that had bound her. They disappeared before even hitting the stage.

“What are you doing?” Duncan shouted at the High-Mages. He was still occupied decapitating one robed man after the next as they crept their way onto the stage. “Why are you all just standing there? Kill them! Now!”

“Sorry,” one of the High-Mages said from behind Cah’lia. “We’ll deal with
her
first.”

“
No…you won’t
,” a voice whispered. Cah’lia felt a rush of excitement at the sound of it. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It was as loud as it was quiet, and as near as it was distant.

The High-Mages surrounding the five of them seemed to pick up on this as well, and they darted their heads around as if searching for the source of it. Then there was a thud that came from somewhere behind Cah’lia—what sounded like a pair of feet landing atop the stage not far from where the executioners had been standing.

A moment later, she heard a choking, gurgling sound. Cah’lia spun around and looked behind her to see a blade poking out through the chest of the High-Mage who’d just been speaking. Blood poured out of his open mouth, and he reached out a hand to the High-Mage across from him. Then he stumbled forward a bit before dropping to his knees and falling onto his face. And standing there behind him was the Champion.

His catlike eyes were darker than Cah’lia remembered and held a far more sinister look as well. He licked the blood clean off his blade, which he must have stolen somewhere along the way over here, as Duncan had broken the one he’d brought with him to Magia. Oddly, the smaller blade with its golden hilt seemed out of place in his large, coarse hands.

“
I…am here
,” he whispered.

Without saying another word, he spun around full circle while raising his blade, and with a clean, spinning slice, he lobbed off the head of another High-Mage who had the misfortune of being too close to him. The man likely died without any idea of what had even happened to him.

“These mages are powerful,” the Champion whispered. “But they do not…know how to fight.”

He just killed two of them…by himself!

Whatever hesitance there’d been before this moment vanished from the ten remaining High-Mages, including Ammecia, as all of them began chanting what Cah’lia assumed to be spells. They also spread out around the stage, slowly surrounding them from all sides.

Cah’lia felt someone’s hand wrapping around her wrist. “Come on,” Kellar said. She stumbled off-balance somewhat as he dragged her over to where Shina, Orellia, and the Champion were huddled together in their own little corner of the stage. Not willing to leave Patrick behind, she grabbed his hand so that, awkwardly, she pulled him along while Kellar dragged her.

“You two, stay down,” Orellia said, speaking to her and Patrick. “Let us deal with this problem.”

Cah’lia nodded, and then together with Patrick, the two of them crouched low to the floor while the Champion, Orellia, Kellar, and Shina joined the High-Mages in their chanting, presumably readying spells of their own. For the next few seconds, there was a relative quiet. The only sounds were the mumbles of chanting voices and the occasional nervous murmur from the people in the crowd, who for some reason had decided to stick around despite the inherent danger they might face.

Another moment or so passed, and Cah’lia became ever more anxious while she listened to the hum of fourteen voices, each whispering their own combination of strange words. It was surreal in a way. This was certainly not the kind of fight she was accustomed to taking part in, and it made her feel powerless. Her life was now in the hands of others, and there was nothing she could do to change the outcome of whatever came next.

“Shina,” Orellia said, pausing a moment in her chanting. Her tone was surprisingly calm given that she’d just been hanging from a scaffold with a noose around her neck.

“I got it,” Shina said with equal calmness. “Here they come.”

All at once, a burst of light, sound, and heat assaulted Cah’lia’s senses as the world around her became awash with fire, lightning, and multicolored beams of light that the High-Mages launched at the six of them from every side. They came in fast, and Cah’lia raised her arms to protect her face and vital organs.

The first thing to reach them was a fist-sized ball of fire, one that’d clearly been aimed at Cah’lia. A moment before it struck her, she heard a faint buzzing sound—a zap of sorts. Then a transparent, wave-like field of blue-colored energy the size and shape of a sheet of paper popped into existence in front of her eyes where it would’ve hit. The fireball slammed into it and vanished upon collision; immediately afterwards, so did the bluish thing that had stopped it. But it reappeared less than a second later near the side of Patrick’s head, stopping a pinkish beam that would have struck the prince unaware. Like before, it too vanished, only to reappear for the third time right as a similarly colored beam of light met its end near Kellar’s belly.

One after the next, the blue energy reappeared to neutralize the various magic sent their way. It didn’t matter where or from what angle they came in: above, from the sides, behind, and in front. Each time, the blue, wavy energy would materialize to shield her and the others from anything harmful the High-Mages sent hurtling towards them.

“Good work, Shina,” Orellia said. It only then occurred to Cah’lia that Orellia, the Champion, Kellar, and Shina had all finished their chanting and were now motionless while the High-Mages bombarded them from all sides.

“What do we do now?” Cah’lia asked.

Orellia looked at her. “Nothing for the moment. We wait for our chance to counterattack.” Returning her eyes to Shina, she said, “Do not let this barrier fall in the meantime.”

Shina was no longer crying. Now, she looked bolder and livelier despite her red, puffy eyes. She stood with her back straight and her hands resting at her sides. She nodded at Orellia, panting heavily from the strain of whatever she was doing to protect the six of them. A lock of her black hair fell in front of her face, and for just a moment, she looked several years older. It was the determination she exuded: the confidence that stood in stark contrast to the way she’d begged and pleaded for her life only minutes before.

“I won’t let you down, Mistress Orellia.”

Orellia placed her palm on the girl’s shoulder. “I know that you won’t.”

Shina inhaled, then wiped her forehead. “It feels like they’re holding back.”

“They aren’t. They’re just reckless and firing blindly at us. If I had to guess, I’d say none of them but Ammecia and possibly the ugly one have been taught how to fight.”

“How come?” Kellar asked. “Why haven’t they been taught like me and Shina?”

“Because you and Shina are sensors. You’re specially trained to apprehend mages.”

“So other mages receive different training?”

“Completely different. You can now see that for yourself, can’t you?”

Kellar nodded. “It’s just hard to believe these are really High-Mages.”

Shina also nodded, and a bead of sweat dripped down her hair, over her eyes, and then evaporated with a spark and a hiss before reaching her cheek. “I agree with Kellar.”

“Surprised, Shina?”

“Y-yeah,” Shina said, panting. “I’m…I’m actually holding out against ten High-Mages at once.”

“Eight,” Orellia said. “Ammecia and the short ugly one aren’t firing on us.”

“Even still…eight High-Mages. They’re not even taking down my barrier.”

“That is because they don’t know how,” Orellia said. “There is so much more to magic than using it as a weapon. Very few are taught what you two have been.”

Shina closed her eyes and gripped her hands into fists as the High-Mages assaulted them with an even greater intensity. Beams of light tore across the stage and into the barrier, assailing them with a constant, rapid-fire barrage of magic. Some even flew off course and missed their intended targets, such as a pink beam that overshot them and instead slammed into a section of the barricades. The result was a loud, echoing pop that made several of the citizens watching from behind jump and in some cases fall over backwards; mere seconds later, a door-sized section of the barricades sizzled, smoked, and soon melted away into a puddle of liquid, bubbling iron.

As magic from the High-Mages came in faster and faster, speeding towards them from every possible direction, the blue, wave-like fields of energy lacked the time needed between intervals to disappear and reappear, eventually causing them all to remain visible at once so that it appeared to wrap around them as one solid object as opposed to small rectangular sheets. This created something of a dome-shape, and now Cah’lia realized that, all this time, they’d been enclosed within it, the six of them surrounded by this field of magic that shielded them from all harm.

In a way, it reminded her of a snow globe, but instead of glass, there was only the transparent blue energy that dimmed in places but did not outright fade as it continually fended off projectile after projectile, becoming brighter and more solid wherever one pinged against it.

After nearly a minute of constant bombardment, the barrage of magic at last came to an end. Eight of the ten High-Mages were now breathing just as heavily as Shina was, while Ammecia and the short, ugly High-Mage stole glimpses at one another from the corner of their eyes. In the background, Cah’lia could just make out the sound of Duncan muttering to himself while he dealt with the robed figures that crept their way towards him. Regardless of how many of them he “killed,” they continued to appear from within the crowd, each of them dying long before they could reach the base of the steps leading up to the stage.