Summoner 4 Page 17

  When we came out the other side, we were met with barren grey stone and ruins. It reminded me of a mix between Braden and Layla’s simulations. We took several tentative steps in and remained side-by-side with one another until I stopped. Vibrations raced up my legs and along my spine. The longer I stood there, the stronger it got. Something was coming.

  Gawain didn’t stop, though, and I swore. Either he really didn’t feel that, or he was simply that ignorant. I wouldn’t have put the latter past him.

  “Wait!” I yelled, and he whirled around on me, eyes furious. I should have just let him go.

  “How dare you tell me what to do!” he hollered back, then took another step.

  I was already frustrated with this situation. How could Gawain be so unbearable? I gathered myself and tried again.

  “You idiot! You can’t feel that?” I retorted.

  Gawain stopped this time. After a moment, he looked at me. His whole demeanor changed in a matter of seconds. This was the Gawain that deserved the spot on the squad, the one that knew when it was playtime, and when it was go time.

  Now, it was go time.

  “There!” he yelled, and his hands burst into flames. Maybe it was just me, or it was the lighting. I didn’t know, but there was definitely something different about his fire. It was brighter, hotter, fiercer than I recalled it being in the duel a few months ago. His stance was tighter, and there was more than a false air of confidence about him. I didn’t know what happened to Gawain after our duel, but whatever he went through, whatever training he did before his return to the Academy, it definitely paid off.

  I rushed forward and threw down two of my crystals. A speed slug emerged from one, and the other, the arachness that I’d picked up during my first mission on the squad a few months back. Her spider-like torso buzzed with static, and her body crackled with lightning. Her face, however, was a stunningly beautiful woman with golden skin and round cheeks. Brown flecks decorated her body, which was otherwise black. She shot forth, and I shielded my eyes from looking at her directly. If I did, she would petrify me.

  Gawain seemed to pick up on the same thing because he averted his gaze as well.

  “Why would you summon a monster that you can’t see?” he screamed at the ground.

  I rolled my eyes, still keeping them downcast. “You just worry about you, princess. I can handle myself.”

  Gawain made a grotesque face and turned his back to me. Good. I didn’t want to look at him, either. The ground was prettier anyway.

  I heard rather than saw the monsters breach the horizon. Their feet slammed on the ground and echoed like drums ringing in my ears. I couldn’t tell what they were, bandersnatches, perhaps, or maybe trolls, but whatever they were, they approached fast.

  I focused as much of my mana as I could. My arachness was a decent sized monster and could be tricky to manage because of her petrifying gaze, but I was more confident now than I had been some months ago. I had learned how to better control my mana, so this would be a new test for me to see how things went. It was a gamble since Miriam Sharpay was watching me from above, but I’d do my best, as I always did.

  I snuck a glance at the monsters that headed for us. As I suspected, they were mostly trolls. There were a few variants involved in the mix, but nothing that I hadn’t ever dealt with before. This would be a piece of cake, and I had a plan.

  I screamed, and the arachness screamed in unison. The Shadowscape shook as I commanded her to turn their front lines to stone. One by one, I heard the sound of the stampede dampen. The trolls behind the front lines stopped short, and it forced them to either go around the line or climb over their petrified comrades.

  I commanded the arachness to do it again, and then again until there was eventually a staggered line of petrified trolls that ascended into the sky like stairs. The idea of it was humorous, and I laughed as I scooped up my speed slug and tossed it on the back of the arachness. Her spine went rigid, and I held my arms out as I commanded her to charge the trolls that remained.

  As the arachness sprinted forward on all eight of her legs, Gawain shot fire from the palms of his hands and spun clockwise. The fire shot toward the ground, and it propelled him forward. He unleashed one hell of a battle cry as he rocketed past the arachness and torched a gathered cluster of trolls that had made it over the petrified wall.

  When my arachness caught up to him, she bellowed a high-pitched cry so awful that the petrified trolls began to crack and crumble. Her jointed legs stepped on and impaled the trolls through their chests and limbs as they tried to bombard her, but with my speed slug aiding her, she was quicker and by far more brutal. She tossed some aside, others she spun into a web to leave and bleed out. A cruel mistress, my arachness was, and she seemed unstoppable.

  I held my ground, determined to keep the gate guarded. Nothing was going to get out if I could help it. Not today, not on my watch. I closed my eyes to concentrate harder and felt a weird burning at my side. Based on the placement on my belt, I could feel that it had to be coming from the rhin dagger that Arwyn had given to me. I couldn’t check it now though. I had to focus. Controlling the arachness was a task, and I wasn’t about to let her turn against me.

  When I opened my eyes again, Gawain was in the midst of battle with two ice trolls that had somehow managed to escape his whirlwind of fire. Their icicle clubs, jagged and sharp, came down on him from both sides, and Gawain took hit after hit, from head to ankle, until he was finally able to get a grip on one of the clubs and melt it on contact. The troll was left with nothing but its hairy-fingered fists, and it wailed away on Gawain’s back as he did the same to the other troll’s club.

  Their fists, however, were significantly more manageable, and as soon as he had both clubs down to nothing more than an inconvenient puddle, he grasped them both by their skulls and seared their flesh straight off. They both wailed and collapsed into a heap at his feet, but in his epic fight, he’d let several other trolls pass him.

  I cursed. I had to think quick. If I summoned a third monster, my mana would drain faster than I could manage, and I’d be about as useless as ogre dung, but I needed my arachness to help keep the rest of the stampede at bay. As much as I despised him, I needed her to keep Gawain from dying. Maker only knew how unreasonably idiotic he was. He’d need the backup.

  I grumbled. The small cluster of trolls had come upon me quickly. I gritted my teeth and made the split second decision to recall the speed slug that was attached to the back of the arachness. She would move slower, but the trolls weren’t so fast that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with them without aid. I picked a crystal off of my bandolier and smashed it to the ground. As soon as the group leapt at me, I was covered in light, and my bullet bass shielded me.

  I sagged, both under the weight of the armor and the toll my draining mana was taking on me. I persevered, though, and I swung my plated fists hard at the trolls. I was slow, and only one. They were also pretty slow, but they were many, seven or eight at least. I pounded my fists into the sides of their heads and sent a few of them reeling away, but not before they were able to land a few good hits on me as well. I stumbled and was tossed back and forth between two or three of them before I finally hit the ground on my side.

  It burned. Why did it burn? As I tried to stand up, it was like time stopped. The rhin dagger on my hip pulsed, like it had a heartbeat but not just any heartbeat. Mine. I could feel my heartbeat pound against my hip as it resonated from the blade. I took the hilt in my hand and stood.

  Everything moved as it should again, and I plunged the dagger through a troll’s chest. As soon as I removed the dagger to thrust it into another unwilling victim, it turned to dust without so much as a scream or cry in agony.

  I stabbed another troll, and then another in the face, and they fell just like the first one. I swung my fist back and knocked another to the ground before it met the same fate. My breath was ragged, and I could feel my mana start to slip pretty low. We had to end this.


  I remembered the energy wave that I’d sent out using the blade before. I recalled the bullet bass and lost my armor, but if what I had in mind worked, it would be worth it. I regained a bit of mana and tried to focus what I could, what was left, and then I pushed forward as I had in the sparring session with Varleth, and a blue wave of energy flew across the ground.

  Every troll it touched instantly turned to dust, and I recalled my arachness just in case it had the same effect on her. Arwyn had said these were still experimental, so it was probably better to be safe than sorry. I didn’t want to lose a monster after all.

  The wave of power from my blade kept going, and before long it had engulfed and eliminated the last of the monster charge. After the last troll had fallen, Gawain and I stopped to try to catch our breaths, but the longer we eyed one another, the more furious I became.

  “You let the mob through, you know,” I accused.

  “You lived, didn’t you?” he retorted with a hint of disappointment.

  I seethed as Gawain marched past me towards the gate and stuck his hand out to wave Varleth and Erin in.

  “You were too busy showing off your little fireballs that you couldn’t see that your teammate was in danger!” I yelled.

  “We aren’t teammates,” he insisted with a sneer and a roll of his eyes.

  Varleth and Erin came through the gate and joined us in the Shadowscape. Varleth looked me up and down and opened his mouth, presumably to ask what happened, but I held out my hand.

  “Don’t. It’s taken care of. Just got find the catalyst so we can get this over with,” I snapped. I hadn’t meant to, at least, not at Varleth, but he seemed to understand there was a fair amount of bad blood there, so he didn’t question it.

  “Are you sure?” Erin sang and pointed in Gawain’s direction.

  “What are you on about, you fake little parlor trick?” Gawain gaped, offended, but Erin simply smiled.

  Varleth and I followed her finger, and we swore simultaneously. “Shit!”

  Gawain stared at the three of us, then laughed hysterically.

  “Right! Let’s all point at me, because I’m clearly the outcast, the misfit here,” he went off.

  “Oh, for Maker’s sake, look behind you, dumbass!” I hissed.

  I didn’t know whether or not it with the tone of my voice or the look on our faces that finally got him to do as he was told, but when he did, he swore as well.

  “What the hell is that thing?” he asked, and his tone was serious again.

  Varleth and I looked to one another and frowned. We recognized that iron giant anywhere. This one was a little larger and red in color, but there was no mistaking what species it was.

  “That, Gawain, is a baroquer,” Varleth snarled condescendingly, “and it may very well be the last thing you see.”

  Chapter 13

  Gawain gritted his teeth and looked back at the baroquer that continued its march toward us. Flames licked the armor that comprised its otherwise hollow body. The sword it carried at its side dragged along the ground and made crevasses in the otherwise flat surface. With each heavy step, the vibrations rattled our feet.

  “I’ll take care of it.” Gawain straightened himself and ignited his palms again. Part of me wanted to watch him get wrecked, but the other, more sensible part of me groaned and tipped my head back.

  “I know you’re an idiot, but don’t tell me you’re just that dumb.” I rolled my eyes.

  Gawain whirled, and suddenly, he was in my face. “What did you say to me, yokel?”

  “It’s a fire variant, you dimwit!” I snapped again. “You can’t fight fire with fire.”

  Gawain growled. He knew I was right.

  “Then what do you propose we do?” he asked in a sickeningly sweet tone.

  I shoved Gawain aside and paced. I didn’t have the time to think of anything solid, but we had to come up with something fast. There was little cover to speak of, and my mana was still trying to recover from using the power of my dagger on top of keeping my arachness under my control.

  “The two of you need to find the catalyst.” I looked to Varleth, and he shook his head.

  “It isn’t that I don’t trust you, but given our current situation and what we know about fighting baroquers, you can’t do it with just the two of you,” he argued.

  He was right, of course. The first time I had help from Nia and Arwyn while Varleth and Orenn sought the catalyst, and it was hard enough with the three of us. Taking down a potentially stronger variant of the same monster was going to be a challenge in and of itself, and the fact that I had to work with Gawain, whose magic was more or less ineffective against it, was stacking more and more odds against me.

  “Okay, okay,” I muttered and clapped my hands together. “A banisher, a summoner, a useless fire elementalist, and a mimic.” My eyes caught Varleth’s new sword from our match yesterday. “You did bring it.”

  Varleth crossed his arms. “Of course I did,” he replied, as though it should have been obvious he would. I guess it should have.

  I then looked to Gawain, then back to Varleth. I didn’t know what to do with Gawain. He’d be more useful not being there at all then just existing while we did something about the baroquer, but I had to figure something out fast. Though the baroquer was slow, it was still coming, as inevitable as death himself.

  “Can you do anything that isn’t fire based?” I asked him.

  “Of course I can! What kind of mage do you take me for?” he scoffed, and he flashed his hip to reveal what looked like a type of handgun holstered to a strap at his side.

  My curiosity got the better of me, and I concealed an excited little smile beneath my cloak. “What do you have there?”

  “It’s a gun,” he replied plainly as he removed it from the leather holster. It looked like a standard military weapon, but it was shiny, silver, and decorated in red and gold accents.

  “We can see that, genius.” I rolled my eyes. “I meant what makes it special?”

  Gawain smirked, and as much as I hated to admit it, I was giddy to see what it could do. He placed his left hand over the barrel of the gun and uttered a spell that I didn’t know, but it sounded familiar like I had heard Nia use something like it in the past. When he removed his hand, the gun began to glow, and a glowing purple and red ring began to spin around it.

  “It uses magic to best determine how to take down an enemy, and its properties are able to change based on its findings,” he explained.

  “So…?” I trailed off when I expected more, but I should have known that Gawain would give me as little information about it as possible.

  Gawain rolled his eyes. “So, no, I’m not completely powerless.”

  I nodded and crossed my arms. Well, okay then.

  “I need you and Varleth to distract it,” I stated simply. “I don’t care what you do, but don’t use your fire, and don’t kill each other.”

  “I don’t have to listen to you.” Gawain sniffed and pranced by me. He twirled the gun around with his finger, and I had a mild fear that his idiocy would set it off. At least I wouldn’t have to explain what happened if he accidentally shot himself or one of us. Everyone could already see how much of an ass he was.

  “Let him go, summoner.” Varleth sighed. “I promise not to kill him, but if he puts himself in danger, don’t expect me to save him.”

  I scratched the back of my head and shrugged. Fair enough.

  “What about me?” Erin squeaked as she rocked back and forth on her heels, and there was something that left me strangely allured by the way she was able to smile like danger wasn’t slowly marching towards her.

  I thought for a moment and paced. Erin was a mimic, able to copy magic from other mages. Her usefulness would depend entirely on whose magic she had now.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose as I stopped in front of her. “I hate to ask you this, but who was the last person you kissed?”

  Erin sampled magic from whoever she last shared a kiss with.
It was a little awkward to ask her to divulge that kind of information, but it was pertinent for the Magicae Nito to be successful.

  She thought about it a moment, then grinned. “Oh yeah! That cute water girl in second year!”

  “Why didn’t you say so earlier?” My eyes widened for a couple of reasons. For one, Erin would likely be the most useful person in this fiery scenario. As for the other reason, she made a habit of kissing other girls. My memory flashed to my night of passion with Layla and Nia some months ago, and I smiled off-handedly. That knowledge coupled with Erin’s eagerness to kiss me after we’d made our escape from the suspended airship outside of Bathi Highlands had all sorts of ideas that I’d like to entertain later running through my mind.

  I didn’t have time to think about that though. Mission first, Erin’s track record second.

  “Maybe I just wanted you to ask me who I’d kissed?” she winked at me.

  “Probably not the best time to be flirting,” Varleth groaned.

  “It’s always a good time to be flirting,” Erin scoffed. “Especially with Gryff.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Varleth motioned to the baroquer that was still making its advance. I thought it was strange that it hadn’t attacked or made any kind of violent gesture outside of being a creep. Then again, if my experience in Bathi Highlands taught me anything, it was that I shouldn’t be surprised by monsters acting strangely anymore. The whole ordeal with that angel monster and the sacrificial pyrewyrm had been enough to instill that lesson in me.

  “It’s slow, but that hollow armor is heavy. One punch and you’ll be history.” I took a deep breath and motioned for Varleth and Erin to follow me as I started for the baroquer.

  “You’re so knowledgeable,” Varleth joked.

  I chuckled a little as I rolled my eyes and Varleth smirked, but nothing more. We knew it was time to focus.

  “Gawain is going to do what Gawain wants to. I know we aren’t his biggest fans, but we should make sure we don’t have to add another death to the toll this year.” I cast a side glance at Varleth, whose smirk remained, but I knew he wouldn’t actually let something happen to a teammate, especially if that teammate’s life was on the line.