Chapter 84: Outside
The purple-haired man moved first.
No wind-up. No declaration. He simply raised one hand and the air in front of him ignited, a compressed column of fire that traveled the distance between them in the time it took Arthur to process that it had been thrown.
Arthur dropped.
The fire passed over him close enough to char the collar of his coat and hit the tree behind him and the tree stopped being a tree. Just a stump and a column of fire climbing into the grey Creslan sky.
He came up on one knee and pushed his network outward in every direction simultaneously and the four hooded figures were already moving, closing the distance from their positions in coordinated silence, two from behind and one from each flank, the geometry of people who did not intend to give anyone room to breathe.
’Left flank,’ Vexis said. ’Closing fast.’
Arthur spun left and threw a hellshade without aiming, black shadow erupting from his fingertips and snapping across the ground toward the hooded figure on that side. It caught the man at chest and it exploded at contact.
Other hooded men looked at it with confusion. Alarmed.
Not fire. Not ice. Not any color that magic was supposed to be.
Black.
The man yanked his leg. The bind held.
Then Roz left Arthur’s shoulder.
He didn’t jump. He didn’t run. He simply was somewhere else, crossing the distance between Arthur’s shoulder and the right flank figure in a motion that Arthur’s eyes couldn’t fully resolve, and the purple fire that had been gathering at his paws for the last thirty seconds arrived all at once against the hooded man’s chest.
The sound it made was not a sound Arthur had a word for.
The figure went back fifteen meters and hit a tree and the tree cracked at the base and the man did not get up.
Everything stopped for one second.
The remaining three hooded figures stopped. The purple-haired man stopped. Even Malvric, who had not moved since giving the order, looked at the small ancient creature now standing in the frozen dirt with purple fire running along both forepaws like something that had been waiting a very long time for permission.
Roz’s red eyes moved across all of them slowly.
"Next," he said.
The purple-haired man smiled.
It was the worst possible response.
He raised both hands and the fire that came this time was not a column. It was a spread, wide and low, covering the ground between them in a rolling sheet that moved fast and left nothing behind it. Arthur threw himself right and the heat stripped across his left arm and he hit the frozen ground rolling and came up with his network screaming at him from three directions at once.
’Behind you. Two of them. Now.’
He pivoted and pushed both hands forward and the shadows erupted from his boots and spread across the ground, thin and fast, threading through every shadow the burning trees threw in every direction. The two hooded figures behind him ran into it before they saw it. The shadow caught them both at the legs and snapped tight and they went down hard, one face-first into the frozen dirt, the other getting a hand down just in time and looking up at Arthur with white showing around his eyes.
"What is that," the downed man said. Not to Arthur. To his partner.
"Black magic," the other one said.
"That’s not black—"
Arthur pulled the bind on the right one and the shadow wrenched the man sideways across the frozen ground and into the base of a tree and he stopped moving. Arthur released and reset and felt his blood thinning and didn’t stop pushing.
A bolt came from behind before he could fully turn. He felt it through the network a half second before it arrived and threw himself sideways and it clipped his shoulder and the impact spun him and he hit the ground on his bad side and the pain was immediate and total and he got up anyway.
Theodore was to his left. Arthur could feel him through the network, a familiar weight in the shadow field, the wind pressure around him building in a spiral that flattened the dead grass in a wide ring. The leaves that had been rising since the road had climbed higher now, dozens of them, dark and sharp-edged, orbiting Theodore in a tight formation at speed.
The purple-haired man pointed at Theodore.
’He’s targeting Theo—’
Arthur was already moving.
He reached Theodore in four steps on light Stima, barely a shimmer, just enough to close the distance, and grabbed his shoulder and hauled him sideways as the fire arrived. It hit the space Theodore had occupied and the ground exploded upward in a shower of frozen earth and fire and one of the burning fragments caught Theodore across the side as they went down together.
Theodore hissed through his teeth.
They hit the ground and Arthur got his feet under him and looked and Theodore was pressing his hand against his side and the hand was coming away red at the edges.
"I’m fine," Theodore said immediately.
"You’re not—"
"I’m fine." He was already pushing himself up. The wind spiral hadn’t dropped. "Stay in front of me."
Another bolt came in from the right. Arthur felt it through the network and pulled a hellshade barrier up from the ground shadow and the bolt hit it and scattered and the barrier dissolved and cost him a visible amount of blood pressure to replace.
He turned back to the field.
The purple-haired man had disengaged from Roz.
Not retreating. Repositioning. He moved laterally across the field with his hands already building something, the fire compressing between his palms into a shape that was taking too long to form, which meant it was going to be large, and Roz was tracking him and the two remaining hooded figures were moving to flank Roz and pull his attention and the whole thing was coordinated in a way that made Arthur’s stomach drop.
They’d fought bellus before.
These people had fought bellus before.
’The one on Roz’s left,’ Vexis said. ’He’s going to draw focus. The other one is the real move.’
Arthur closed the distance on the decoy figure and hit him with a compressed hellshade bolt at center mass before he completed the flanking arc. The shadow impact hit and the man’s whole upper body locked up and he went down on both knees, hands pressing to the point of contact, shaking. Arthur didn’t wait to watch him fall. He was already turning to the second figure and throwing a bind at the ground beneath his feet and the shadow snapped up around both ankles and the man went face down in the frozen dirt.
The large compression the purple-haired man had been building released.
It didn’t come at Arthur.
It came at the ground between Arthur and Roz and the explosion it made lifted both of them off their feet and the world went sideways and Arthur hit a tree with his back and the bark came away around him and he slid down it and sat in the frost and his ears were ringing and his vision was smearing at the edges.
Get up.
He got up.
His nose had started bleeding. He felt it warm on his upper lip and didn’t touch it.
Roz was already back in position, purple fire climbing higher up his forepaws than Arthur had seen it go before, the light of it throwing sharp shadows through the burning trees that Arthur fed into his network without thinking.
The purple-haired man looked at Roz across the field.
Then he looked at Arthur.
Then he smiled again and raised both hands and Arthur felt the network scream from directly behind him.
He spun.
The hooded man he’d put into the tree was back up.
Back up and already mid-motion and the shard of compressed magic that left his palm was small and fast and it crossed the distance between them before Arthur could pull a bind and it went past Arthur entirely and hit Theodore in the abdomen.
Theodore folded.
Both hands went to his stomach. The wind dropped all at once. Every leaf fell out of orbit and hit the frozen ground without a sound.
He looked down at his hands.
Then he looked at Arthur.
"Vex." His voice came out wrong. Too high. Too thin. Something in it that hadn’t been there in any of the fights at the academy or the training grounds or anywhere that had walls and instructors and rules about what was allowed to happen. "Vex I— something’s— I can’t—"
Arthur was already moving.
"Vex!!" The panic cracked through fully, nothing held back, a seventeen year old boy in a forest outside a kingdom boundary with both hands pressed to his stomach and blood coming between his fingers faster than it had any right to. "Please— help— please—"
Arthur caught him before his knees hit the ground.
Roz came off the field and hit the hooded man with enough purple fire to throw him thirty meters into the tree line.
Arthur got both arms around Theodore and lowered him and Theodore grabbed Arthur’s coat with both bloody hands and held on.
"I don’t want to die." Barely above a whisper. "I don’t— Vex I don’t want to die out here—"
"You’re not dying." Arthur pressed his hand hard against Theodore’s side. "Look at me. Theodore. Look at me right now."
Theodore looked at him. His face had gone the color of old paper. His eyes were too wide and too wet and his hands wouldn’t stop shaking against Arthur’s coat.
"I’m sorry." Theodore’s voice broke on it. "I’m sorry I couldn’t— the wind wasn’t fast enough I’m sorry I’m sorry—"
"Stop." Arthur pulled him up. "Stop. You’re okay. We’re leaving right now."
"There’s a lot of blood." Theodore looked down at his hands. Back up at Arthur. Down again like he couldn’t stop. "Vex there’s so much blood—"
"Don’t look at it." Arthur got his arm over his shoulder and took his weight. "Look forward. Just forward. We’re moving."
A bolt hit the tree directly above them and bark rained down across both their backs and Theodore flinched so hard his whole body shook.
"Move," Roz said from somewhere behind them. His voice had no inflection. "Now."
The road back to the kingdom was gone.
Arthur knew before he looked. His network told him. The two figures who’d been positioned on the road had moved forward during the fight, closing the route back to the gate while everyone else was occupied. Standard. Obvious in retrospect.
The funnel had always been the point.
Forest. The only direction without bodies in it.
He turned them into the trees and pushed.
Theodore moved with him, one arm over Arthur’s shoulder, the other still pressed to his stomach, his feet finding the ground on reflex more than intention. His breathing had already changed. Shallower. Faster.
Roz landed on Arthur’s free shoulder.
"Three following," he said. "Including the purple-haired one."
Arthur pushed his network forward into the tree cover and felt the shadow field spread through the canopy in fragments.
Thinner here. The trees broke the natural shadow lines into pieces. But enough. Enough to navigate by and enough to feel what was coming.
He picked the route with the densest cover and moved.
A bolt hit the ground ten meters behind them and the explosion scattered frozen dirt across his back and Theodore made a sound that wasn’t words.
"Keep moving," Arthur said. "Don’t stop."
"I’m trying—"
"Keep moving brat!" Roz was on Arthur’s shoulder now.
Another bolt. Closer. The shockwave of it pushed them both forward a step and Arthur’s shoulder hit a tree and he bounced off and kept his feet by a margin he couldn’t measure.
They weren’t slowing down.
He could feel them through the network, three heat signatures moving through the trees behind them, not losing ground, the purple-haired man’s aetheric output so dense it registered in the shadow field like a second light source. Every few seconds something ignited behind them and the new fire threw new shadows and Arthur fed them into the network and used them and the cost of doing that while carrying Theodore while running on legs that were starting to go numb below the knee showed up immediately as a fresh run of blood from his nose.
He didn’t stop.
Cael didn’t know where they were.
The thought arrived without drama. Cael had gone to the princess with direction but not location. He knew Arthur and Theodore had followed a carriage. He did not know they’d gone through the northern gate. He did not know they were in a forest outside the kingdom boundary with three pursuers and Theodore bleeding through both hands.
Help was not coming.
Not soon.
’Twenty meters,’ Vexis said. ’The fast one is gaining.’
"I know."
’Fifteen.’
He couldn’t fight and carry Theodore. Not properly. Not with his forearms going numb and his network demanding blood he didn’t have clean supply lines for anymore.
Four seconds. Maybe three.
He made the decision.
"Hold onto me," he said to Theodore.
Theodore tightened his grip on Arthur’s coat.
Arthur stopped, turned, and pushed every fragment of hellshade his fingertips could still produce into a single concentrated point and fired it directly into the shadow of the pursuing figure at ground level.
The shadow erupted upward from the ground like something that had been buried there.
The figure hit it at full sprint. The bind caught both legs and the upper body’s momentum carried forward while the lower body stopped completely and the sound of the impact carried through the trees and the figure went down and did not immediately rise.
Arthur turned back and ran.
His legs were numb to the knee.
Another bolt came in from the left and hit a tree beside them and the explosion of it threw burning fragments across the path and one of them caught Arthur’s forearm and he felt the heat distantly through the numbness and kept going.
Theodore stumbled.
Arthur caught him. Adjusted. Kept moving.
"Vex." Theodore’s voice had gone very small. "I— I can’t feel my hands."
Arthur swallowed.
"Keep moving, Theo. Keep moving!"
Theodore kept his feet moving.
A bolt hit directly behind them, close enough that the shockwave lifted Arthur’s coat, and Theodore made a sound that was almost a sob and caught himself and didn’t stop walking.
’The purple-haired one,’ Vexis said. His voice had stripped down to pure information. ’He’s not running. He’s walking. He knows you can’t go far.’
That bastard!
Arthur’s vision smeared at the edges. He blinked it clear.
The network held.
He was not going to drop the network.
He was not going to stop running.
A bolt hit the ground ahead of them this time. Not behind. Ahead. Cutting off the path, the fire spreading low across the forest floor and blocking the route forward with a wall of burning undergrowth.
Arthur felt the network and turned them hard left without slowing and a bolt came from the right immediately, like it had been waiting for exactly that turn, and it clipped his free shoulder and spun him and he staggered and caught Theodore’s weight before they both went down and kept moving kept moving kept moving.
His nose was running freely now. He could feel it dripping from his chin when he moved.
His forearms were completely gone. He felt his hands only because he could see them.
The network held.
’Left,’ Vexis said. ’Gap in the trees. Dense cover forty meters in.’
Arthur turned left.
Behind them the purple-haired man walked through the burning forest and his fire lit the trees on both sides as he moved and he was not hurrying because he didn’t need to and that sound, the steady unhurried footsteps of someone certain of the outcome, was the most terrifying sound Arthur had heard since waking up in this world.
He ran toward the gap in the trees.
Theodore’s weight shifted on his shoulder and Arthur gripped him tighter and Theodore’s hand found Arthur’s coat again and held.
"Vex." Just a breath now. Barely voiced. "Don’t— please." Theodore grimaced. "Don’t let me die."
Arthur gritted his teeth.
"I won’t," he said.
"Never"
He ran.
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