“Api kartus,” Tythonnia said, barely thinking. The thumbs of her outstretched hands touched, and a jet of flame engulfed the creature advancing on them. She didn’t even realize she had any magic left. Ladonna spun around in surprise then nodded in appreciation.
“We have to leave now!” Ladonna said. She began pulling Tythonnia out of the circle.
“Not without the others,” Tythonnia said, tugging herself free from Ladonna’s grip.
“I don’t care about the others,” Ladonna replied. She was about to say something else, but a terrific explosion almost knocked them off their feet.
Berthal and Dumas were fighting.
Staff rang against sword, neither of them giving an inch. Spell slammed into counterspell, obliterating one another in showers of sparks and fire. As Berthal and Dumas struggled, each one a master of their craft, Hundor and Mariyah kept the creatures at bay and away from their leader. Tythonnia broke from Ladonna’s grip and joined her friends. They couldn’t help Berthal fight; they had their hands full with the blight shades.
Berthal twirled his staff around, striking out with the hardened bottom, but Dumas parried the blow. She couldn’t match force with force, but she was skilled enough to deflect his best efforts.
Each collision of wood and steel produced a flicker of sparks as each arcane weapon tried to defeat the other. Dumas deflected another staff thrust and spun away, her hand on her metal tome, her mouth moving. Her sword arm shot out, unleashing a clash of bright hues that threatened to overtake Berthal. Instead he slammed his staff into the ground, sending out a wild distortion wave that broke the back of the incoming spell.
Before Dumas could unleash another spell, however, Berthal rushed forward to close the gap. He barely deflected two rapid strokes, but a third one nicked him on the arm. He backed away, but as Dumas tried to press the advantage, Berthal leveled the staff at her. A fire sphere appeared between the two dragon heads and shot out like an arrow. Dumas raised her arm to shield her face. The ball of fire struck her and exploded. Streams of flame curved around her body. She caught some of its heat, her clothing combusted along her arm, but otherwise was unhurt.
And so they continued sparring, trading cut for cut, injury for injury.
Tythonnia struggled to remember and cast her remaining spells, but Mariyah seemed harder hit. She fumbled her incantations and dropped reagents through leaden fingers. Hundor fared best as he motioned across the gap between them and the gate that disgorged more undead; a wall of flames broke free of the ground, sending sheets of fire upward. Tythonnia suspected their relative skills in magic dictated who had gotten hit the hardest and who survived the curse the best. As it was, she was scraping bottom, her spells nearly depleted or useless. Hundor still had learned magic and Wyldling ways to spare.
Thankfully, Ladonna was with them, adding her spells to the mix. If she’d hoped for a quick escape with Tythonnia, that was no longer an option. The creatures were attacking steadily-uncoordinated but steady. Ladonna, however, was ready for the worst. Her spells punished the creatures for their advance, destroying any that skirted around the wall of flames. From her fingers flew a ray of sickly green light that overtook two creatures. They collapsed to the ground and struggled to rise.
“Sihir anak!” Tythonnia said, unleashing what she suspected was the last of her useful spells. Her illusions had proven ineffective against the undead. She dispatched four missiles of light that darted around one another as they peppered one of the monsters. It fell back, wounded but still eager for the fight. With a flick of his head, Hundor sent the wounded creature into the cascading wall of flames. It shrieked as the heat ignited it; Hundor sent it flying into two more undead, igniting their parchment-like skin as well.
Tythonnia glanced at Berthal. The fight with Dumas obviously had taxed him, but he didn’t show any sign of surrendering. Both Berthal and his opponent moved fluidly from parry to stroke to spell as though it was all one beautifully choreographed move.
Hundor had other ideas, however. With the fire wall extended around them, he turned his attention on the preoccupied Dumas. His hands flew into deft motion, his movements graceful and precise as he grabbed the spell’s reagent from the battle pouch on his wrist. The spell was just materializing on his lips when he staggered back.
The crossbow bolt had appeared out of nowhere; it pierced Hundor’s chest. He cried out in pain and gripped the wound around the shaft with one hand, as though to stop the red spot that raced outward. With the other hand, however, he motioned toward a large man.
It was the other hunter, Tythonnia realized. He was taking aim again with his crossbow.
“Kendala,” Hundor groaned. Nothing seemed to happen until the hunter unleashed another bolt. It struck something in midair and broke. The hunter appeared unhappy and quickly reached for one of his pouches. Tythonnia did the same, both of them racing to unleash their spells.
Her illusions had little chance of entrancing the undead, but they still worked against the living.
Berthal and Dumas paid no attention to the others. Berthal spun the staff above his head, shifting it from one hand to the other. As he did, sparks rained from the staff’s tip down around them both, striking and sparking off Dumas’s face and arms. She yelped in pain and, for the first time, stumbled back. Berthal pressed his advantage. He attacked like a man possessed, battering his staff against her blade as she held it up to protect herself. He forced her to her knee and seemed poised to win.
That was when the large hunter brought something out from his pouch, a piece of metal. Tythonnia couldn’t hear what he said, but to her horror he hurled it at Berthal who froze suddenly, unable to move as the spell held him. Tythonnia could see his wide-eyed panic, his arms over his head, exposing his chest and stomach to Dumas.
Tythonnia tried to redirect her illusion spell to save Berthal somehow, but in her panic, it slipped from its mooring and dissolved in her own mind. In that moment, Dumas lunged forward with her thin blade and pierced Berthal through his stomach. She smiled with bloody teeth, a hellfire grin married with the mad delight in her eyes.
The large hunter screamed, and out of the corner of her eye, Tythonnia saw fire engulf him. The hunter had Ladonna’s full attention. And Dumas had Tythonnia’s.
Berthal had collapsed to his knees, with Dumas standing over him. He cradled his stomach as though the world itself might spill out. He looked up helplessly at the hunter. She stabbed him again and again through the stomach. Tythonnia screamed her hate and, rushing forward, caught Dumas in the back with her dagger; she plunged it in deep, twisting the knife with all her strength.
The huntress threw her head back, slamming it into Tythonnia’s forehead. She staggered from the blow, her head blossoming with pain-filled light. She could barely focus. She had a vague sense of Berthal lying on the ground, of Dumas driven to one knee, of the other hunter screaming and twisting in agony as fire engulfed his entire body, of Mariyah cradling a dying Hundor, of Ladonna standing alone and unleashing spells in a frenzy trying to keep the undead at bay. There seemed to be a lot of them, circling around.
“We have to leave!” Ladonna shouted; Tythonnia had the distant impression her words was directed at her. “Dark Nuitari, it’s too late!”
Tythonnia felt the tug on her clothing and hair, that sense of an impending shift in gravity … toward the iris. The undead wailed again; they turned and screamed at the gate that pulled at them and encouraged them to come home then turned back again to stare hungrily at Tythonnia and the others.