Shadows in the Smoke - 35 - Testing a Chartered Mage

  “The Empire boasts of their Archmages, privileged individuals who epitomise the inequality and inefficiency of their government. They claim that the Republic has had nothing like them, since the overthrow of King Tobin. Let them make their threats. If they are foolish enough to follow through on them, they will find that, just because we do not subscribe to their need for hierarchy and titles, does not mean our Arcanists cannot match their best.”

  The Struggle for Freedom by Bjarne Midthun

  =====

  As the necromancer chanted, Ester’s mind raced. He was slowl; he was flaring Weiryd: he was no Mage. But he had a ridiculously strong Schema. Even then, surely it couldn’t take many more hits. She was surrounded by undead too. Were they just the slow-walking ones or might there be stronger ones among them?

  She didn’t have time to vacillate; she needed to act.

  “Sansios’ai’daabru xamraich’fa jel’gofear tambrghvel.” The words spilled out of her lips. Master Tabasi always said to keep spells fast and simple, but she needed something more. Dirt shot from the ground, compressed and blasted towards the necromancer.

  Ester didn’t wait to see what happened. She was already running towards him. Magic roared through her mind. Runes, power, energy, all hers to shape. One of the undead got its bearings, turned to face her and broke into a sprint.

  She gestured, no words needed, and razor-sharp air bisected it before she looked back to the biggest threat.

  The necromancer kept chanting, ignoring the ball of dirt she’d sent at him. With a thump, it hit his Schema. His chant didn’t even falter. Then it exploded. White-hot fire engulfed him, briefly eclipsing the green glow of the Weiryd.

  Whatever spell he’d been building vanished in the conflagration. Ester’s lips stretched into a savage grin. Who even needed disjunction?

  “Saig gan cuvlug.” She sent a fireball spiralling towards him, not even pausing in her run. She needed to get closer if this was going to work. The undead’s severed hand was still clutched to her ankle, but she didn’t allow herself to worry about that.

  “Dachaid!” Even over the roaring flames, Ester could hear the strain in the necromancer’s voice. “Sahach’ai’saraich do’aelt saig’fa.”

  Her spell vanished, as did the fire around him. He was hurt though; his Schema must finally have failed. His skin was horribly burnt, red in places, black in others. Through the green light of the Weiryd she could see smoke coming off him. She’d really hurt him! She was going to do more than that though.

  Ester’s Schema exploded into light around her as something hit it from the side, hard enough to send her tumbling to the ground with a painful crash.

  She had a fraction of a second to regain her bearings and then whatever it was recovered from the impact with her Schema and leaped on her. She didn’t have the chance to see it properly. Just brief flashes of sensation. A weight on her. Oozing decay. Sharp claws scrabbling at her, cutting into her skin. Jaws snapping near her face.

  “Daabru gan!” The thing practically imploded under the force of her magic as it blasted away from her.

  With energy pounding through her veins, Ester barely even noticed the scratches the creature had left in her arms. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, ignoring the cold ground under her body and searching for threats, or maybe targets. More undead were closing in and the Weiryd was flaring around the necromancer again.

  Another glance at the necromancer. She was close enough now; she had to be. She just needed to survive long enough to cast. It would be fine. It had to be. Her Schema was still working and he was slow.

  “Tamfael gan saig’ai’rewair’fa xànjarvel rewair’ban ai’kelgan.” The words of power streamed through Ester’s lips, iron willpower helping her to force reality to match her desire.

  Pain stabbed at the back of her head as she forced magic into shape and, with another explosion of light, whatever the necromancer had been doing slammed into her Schema, crawling over it for a fraction of a second before both Schema and spell broke. Then, it was her turn.

  Ester’s spell came together, bright enough that she had to screw her eyes shut. There was no flare of Weiryd with it. She was a Chartered Mage, not a half-trained amateur.

  Fire exploded out from her in an expanding ring. Within the roiling flames, razor-sharp edges churned. The first undead to be hit by it simply vanished, burnt and diced at the same time.

  “Do’aelt!” The necromancer’s desperate attempt at disjunction clawed at Ester’s spell, but she held it together and his magic slid off hers. He didn’t have time to shout a second spell before he was engulfed.

  Ester forced herself to fuel the spell for as long as she could, pushing it out until the pain in her head was unbearable.

  When she released it, with a gasp of relief, the circle of blackened ground, burnt and churned up by slashing blades of fire extended almost thirty feet in every direction around her.

  The necromancer was… Ester felt her gorge rising at the sight and quickly looked away. He wasn’t going to be testing himself against a Chartered Mage again. It was lucky her idea had worked, she felt bone-weary after that spell. She shouldn’t have held it for so long and she didn’t think she could do it again, but it had won her the fight. Maybe not the battle though.

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  Her eyes were drawn towards Arcanist-Captain Loga just in time to see him throw the vampire, the necromancer had called it Silas, yards away and spin to smash his fist straight through another creature's jaw in a shower of blood.

  Undead were all around him, but it gave him a brief moment of respite. He pointed his hand out, shouted something and one of them erupted into flame. His casting was slow and there were a lot of undead moving in on him, she needed to help him.

  Ester wasn’t going to just lie there and wait for things to resolve themselves. She couldn’t.

  With a deep breath, she pushed herself up and onto her feet. It hurt, but she made herself ignore the pain from the bruises and scratches of the undead’s attacks.

  Her head was swimming by the time she straightened up to see Loga incinerate another of the undead, just as Silas streaked forward. He cast again, but it was sloppy; the runes and magic were diffuse and unfocused. Silas blasted straight through the half-formed spell and slammed into Loga.

  Against a normal man, that would have been the end. The vampire’s speed and strength were unnatural, as fast as any Battle Mage. Loga somehow pivoted, moving almost as quickly, and the vampire’s fist only scraped his side. Even at that distance, Ester could tell it had hurt though. The other undead were closing in too.

  She started forward. She could help him. She just needed to focus.

  Ester forced her mind into shape. Her head was pounding, everything felt a bit sluggish. She’d overstrained herself with her last spell, but she couldn’t allow herself any weakness. Not if she wanted Loga to survive.

  “Sa-” The spike of pain in her head forced her mouth shut, mid-word. It was tempting to turn around and just run for the fort. The liche was too powerful for her and the Republicans wanted her to be safe. It wasn’t her job to save a soldier who probably hated her from the undead.

  That wasn’t who she wanted to be though. She wouldn’t leave the worst criminals to die at the hands of the undead and being a stupid Republican was nothing compared to that.

  When Silas came at him again, Ester could see Loga was reacting more slowly. They exchanged a flurry of blows, still almost too fast for the eye to see. When the vampire sprang back again, the Arcanist was clutching at his side and starting to flare Weiryd. The eerie green light around him mixing with the darker green of necromantic magic.

  Ester forced everything but magic from her mind. The world would bend to her will. There was no other possibility.

  The eight precepts of magic flickered through her thoughts. Magic was all around her. Faint residues of her spells. Loga’s enhancement. Flashes of real power in the distance where Lindholm was fighting the liche. The grim green of necromancy around the undead.

  “Where I will, the world bends.” Ester muttered the fifth precept out loud as she forced her thoughts back into the shape she needed to cast.

  Silas hit Loga hard enough that Ester heard the impact. The Republican slammed into the ground and lay there stunned for long enough for two of the other undead to leap onto him, clawing with unnatural speed. His scream tore through the air as a spell left Ester’s lips.

  “X?kera gan.” The two creatures were sent flying from Loga.

  Ester didn’t have time to think about his condition. The other undead had turned their empty gazes towards her and were already advancing. Worse, Silas looked away from the Arcanist and met Ester’s gaze with its own. She had a fraction of a second to see its face stretch into a grin, revealing far too many sharp teeth and then it was coming straight at her.

  Fear gibbered deep inside Ester, telling her to run, scrabbling at her iron-hard will. She ignored it as easily as she ignored the scratches and bruises on her. Silas was fast, faster than anyone she’d seen other than Lindholm. It was probably tough too, or it couldn’t have hurt Loga while he was using combat magic. It was coming right at her.

  “Spèittan gewaaj’fa.” Ester snapped the words and a shimmering barrier appeared between them, just about visible even for those without the Talent. Her next spell hovered at the back of her mind.

  Silas didn’t even pause. It just leaped over the barrier, at least ten feet in the air. Coming for Ester, as straight as an arrow.

  She released the barrier spell as she spoke. “Os’ellende saig’ai’baagath.” A bar of fire shot out from her, drawing a blindingly bright line directly into and through Silas.

  Ester released the spell almost as soon as it had formed, before the pain in the back of her head could get any worse, but it was enough. Silas hit the ground with a thump, a hole the size of her head punched straight through its chest.

  “Saig.” She smiled thinly as she set the vampire’s body on fire, just in case. Fast, but predictable. Now for the rest.

  There were still far too many of them. As far as Ester was concerned, one was too many. She glanced around them. Some shambled slowly towards her, others had broken into runs and a few were heading back for Loga. He was just barely propping himself up on his elbows. He was probably out of the fight. it was down to her.

  Her mind raced. Individual spells would be too slow and she didn’t think she had it in her to hit all of them at once, not after her fight with the necromancer. But… an idea came to her.

  “Saig.” She burnt the closest undead to a crisp with a word. She needed a moment to get the spell together. Then it was just a matter of control. Master Tabasi might not have known much about fights, but he was obsessed with proper control.

  “Gr?nn nvatn ai’diwaien ai’saig vlidsich jel’ai’saarde yellaich’ai’selibad.” Ester focused her will on the clouds above her, sending her magic into them. She felt the strain as bands of magic spread through the clouds, complex arrays of runes dancing around them. Then it came together.

  With a deafening crack, a bolt of lightning speared down from the sky and into the nearest undead.

  A moment of silence and then another bolt slammed down.

  The spell held in the sky, twisting through clouds under Ester’s rigid control. She made the conditions for lightning and then just held them in place, nudging the bolts down rather than burning through her energy reserves by forcing a storm of strikes.

  Another moment, another bolt.

  Like a metronome, the cracks of lightning blasted rhythmically through the air. Each time it struck, another one of the undead was obliterated, a blackened corpse, sometimes falling to the ground, other times left standing like an unholy monument.

  Ester’s eyes flicked from undead to undead, blasting them away one by one.

  It must have been less than 30 seconds before they were all dead and she could release her spell, but it felt like longer. Her headache was getting worse and she couldn’t help gasping with relief as the strain on her mind faded away. That had been easier than trying to hit them all at once or casting tens of spells, but it didn’t mean it had been easy. It would have been easy to disrupt too, if any of the undead had actually been able to use disjunction. Just the type of magic Master Tabasi liked, perfect control and precision, but maybe not entirely practical. As it was, they were all dead now, truly dead, and she wasn’t.

  Ester gave her head a shake. Great Spirits, she needed to focus. She was still stuck out in no-man’s land, far from safety and there was Arcanist-Captain Loga to think about.

  The man was still on the ground, looking around himself wildly. Some of those lightning strikes might have been a little close to him, although she was sure she hadn’t done him any actual damage. Better that than allowing the undead to reach him again.

  Ester shook her head again. She needed to stop standing there thinking and get moving. She forced her legs into motion, half staggering, half jogging over to the downed Republican. She’d make sure he was alright and then decide what to do.

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  Dramatis personae:

  Ester Mazar - Chartered Mage, did I pass the test?

  Edvin Loga - Arcanist-Captain, perhaps I shouldn't have been so full of myself.

  Necromancer - filthy witch, for fuck's sake Ester, not feeling as clever as he did at the start of the fight.

  Silas - vampire, oops.