He checked the team. They nodded their readiness and he moved in, every footstep fraught with the potential of a protesting floorboard. He felt naked outside the protection of the ColdRoom yet energised by the connection with the mana spectrum. The crack of the first spell behind him told him he was not alone.
It was a curious mix of feelings. He'd grown accustomed to the aura of security the ColdRooms provided but always lurking was the pain of being shut off from the spectrum. This way round, he had the comfort of mana at his command. All he had to cope with was the dread that accompanied it. Death a mere touch away.
Suarav came to his right shoulder as they entered the library. Sharyr's augmented eyes picked out objects and edges in sharp, monochromatic relief. It showed him Suarav's face, lined with concentration, beaded in sweat despite the chill of the air. He felt a surge of respect for the man. Nominally, he and the other soldier
were spotters. In reality, they were there to sacrifice themselves to save the mages should the need arise.
The grand three-floored building was silent but for the ruffling of loose pages. Light was edging through the stained-glass windows leaving deep shadow untouched under stairwells and recesses.
Sharyr kept to the centre of the carpeted path, the team bunched behind him. Their eyes would be everywhere. Left and right past every aisle of shelves, up into the arches and upper floors, ahead into the heart of the library and down lest they kick a stray book or put boot to bare wood.
He could feel the tension soaring. Suarav repeatedly tightened and relaxed his sword grip. Sharyr had to fight hard to keep the ForceCone construct steady. The breeze outside threw unsettling eddies into the library, like the downwash of wings. Sharyr drew in a deep breath and moved further in.
The signs of die demons' search were everywhere. Bookcases had been moved, glass fronts smashed. Parchments, volumes and tied scrolls were heaped in piles on shelves, stacked on the floor or scattered into corners. The damage was worse than at first sight. Ripped pages sat in drifts on lower shelves. Ancient texts were torn, spines broken. The knowledge of ages discarded. Whatever it was they were looking for, the demons had gone about their work methodically.
Sharyr felt his heart fall. This organised demolition was going to make their job all the harder and they couldn't afford to be in here a moment longer than absolutely necessary. Looking about him, he wondered if they'd find anything useful at all.
At the base of the grand staircase that swept left up to the next floor, he took them from the central path and underneath the marble steps. The demonology section was just ahead. It was the first of three they'd identified. Sharyr checked them all again, saw the strained but determined faces. Outside, spells cracked and echoed in the quiet of early morning. Distantly, a demon screamed.
He turned back and there they were. Floating gently down from the upper floors. He wasn't sure how many. Ten at a quick count. He backed up under the stairwell. Suarav just in front of him, the others behind, all wanting to feel a wall at their backs. The demons were stark grey against the deeper background, shining slighdy.
They were all of one strain. Long faces containing huge oval eyes. Tiny mouths but rimmed with fangs. Distended skulls. Delicate feathery wings and long slender arms at the end of which spidery fingers writhed.
'Keep calm,' said Sharyr. 'Keep your concentration.' He had lost his ForceCone construct and was desperately trying to reform the shape. 'Don't show them fear. We can take them.'
'You heard him,' growled Suarav. 'They've got to get past me first.'
He stepped square in front of the mage team, indicating the conscript do the same. The man didn't move but for the quaking of his body. A whimper escaped his mouth.
'Stand aside, Captain,' said Sharyr.
'They will not take you before me.'
'You're standing in the line of our spells.'
'Just tell me when to duck.'
The demons watched the exchange intently. Sharyr, who hadn't taken his eyes from them, felt as if he were being examined. Studied. He became aware that he could hear the whirring of their wings at the edge of his consciousness.
'We don't want to have to cast,' he said.
'The damage to the library would be considerable,' replied one of the demons immediately, voice soft and seductive.
The conscript muttered again.
'Strength,' snapped Suarav. 'They don't know what to do.'
The demons spread slightly, moving to cut off any escape back towards the main doors. There was a gap to the back of the library. It had been left quite deliberately. No escape there.
'They're going to get us,' said the conscript.
'No they aren't, not if we stick together,' said Suarav. 'Keep your blade out front.'
'Won't do any good. Just one touch.'
Sharyr felt the soldier tense to run. They had little time. 'Mages, what do you have? Speak quickly.'
'Orbs.'
'Orbs.'
'Ice.'
In concert, the demons opened their arms and glided in. 'Your souls will replenish us.'
'No!' The young soldier broke left and ran, colliding with one of the archivists and sprinting away into the shadows.
'Structure down.'
'Reform!' snapped Sharyr.
'Get back here!' roared Suarav.
'Forget him and duck,' said Sharyr. Suarav dropped to his haunches. 'Orbs now.'
It was a single focused FlameOrb and it struck the centre of the pack. The glare was painful, the effect brutal and instant.. The tight globe of flame singed wings and burned coarse hair. It ate demon flesh. Smoke roiled. The scream was terrible. Sharyr followed it with his ForceCone. He directed it at the left side of the group. Unprepared, the demons were flicked away, twigs in the gale. He drove them up and back, flattening their bodies against the marble balustrade opposite. He wouldn't kill them but it represented space and time.
'Ice, right!'
Hardly had he uttered the command than the spell washed out, sucking and tearing at demon bodies, driving freezing air through their mana protection. Gouging, flaying.
'Now run, left. Find that idiot and get searching. We've still got a job to do. I'll hold these here.'
His men obeyed without question, scattering into the back of the library. 'And be careful of what's down there!'
Sharyr took stock. He held four struggling demons in check. The others were dead or dying. The IceWind blast had covered shelves, texts and tables over a ten-yard area with a thick coating of frost. That wasn't what worried him. It was the fire taking hold where the Orbed demon lay. And as the first scream of pure terror rang out from the back of the library, he turned to warn them that time was running out even faster than they had first thought.
The four surviving mages flew in at a frightening pace. Left and right, spotter soldiers called out the locations of demons now turning their attentions to the Xeteskians in front of the tower complex. Focused Orbs scattered out in a wide arc. In the thinning mist,
demons howled and the noise grew as more and more ignored their airborne quarry. And in the centre of the mage defence, deep blue ForceCones and IceWind kept open the slimmest corridor.
'Let's be moving back slowly!'
Chandyr's voice towered over the slowly rising panic. They had to get this just right or they'd lose more mages saving Dordovans than if they'd all stayed inside and let their erstwhile enemies die. Dystran eyed the sky again. Vuldaroq was at their head, the other three now in close attendance. They had abandoned any thoughts of evading the mass of demons closing around them and were flying headlong and head-first straight at the doors of the complex. The timing was going to be tight.
'FlameWall preparation now,' he barked to the mage at his side.
Both men formulated the rigid, single-sided structure into which was built the mechanism that caused the flames to decay slowly, lt was a static spell. They could cast and forget. Right now that was more than merely a blessing.