Valor and Violence

“It’s alright, child. We’re here to help you,” Ferez said, crouching down at the cell bars. “We’re going to get you out.”

“You’re sick, you know that?” the girl replied, folding her arms over her chest and glaring.

Ferez frowned down at her, confused. “I’m sorry?”

“Trying to give a slave girl hope so you can dash it? Is this what you do in your free time, pirate?”

Ferez looked down at his sodden clothes, realisation dawning on him.

“Oh! Oh, no, we aren’t pirates. We just disguised ourselves as pirates to sneak in here. We’ve come a long way to rescue you.”

“Please. I wasn’t born yesterday, you insufferable fool. Now either leave, or come in here so I can kill you.”

Leo laughed. “I like this girl. Although hearing one so young talk like this is unnerving.”

She turned her baleful glare on the water mage. “I’ll tear your throat out too if you like. Although, looking at you, it might take a few bites to chew through your fat rolls.”

“Alright, I don’t like her so much now.”

“Look, we aren’t here to hurt you,” Ferez said, interrupting the exchange. “We can’t get you out right now, but trust me. We will be back for you, and soon.”

“Uh, huh. I’ll believe it when it happens. You know,” she said, her eyes suddenly taking on a sly, shifty quality. “Words are empty, but food might earn a little trust.”

Ferez cursed under his breath. He was such a fool, he hadn’t even thought to bring food for the poor girl. Honestly, how had that not occurred to him? He was still mentally lambasting himself when Leo reached into a pouch at his belt and pulled out a parcel of oiled paper.

“Sorry, little one. It might have gotten a bit wet on the way in, but it should still be edible.”

He held the parcel out, his hand reaching through the bars. The girl eyed him warily for a few seconds, before darting forward to snatch the parcel. With prize in hand, she skittered to the back of the cell and crouched, glaring back at the mages. Once satisfied there had been no trick and she was safe, she tore apart the wrapping with desperate ferocity and then stood, dumbfounded, staring at the prize in her hand. It was a slice of bread slathered with butter, and a small pouch of nuts.

“That held up better than I expected,” Leo muttered, sounding pleased. “That paper did its job well.”

The girl’s eyes slid from the food to the water mage, with slightly less hatred than before. She squatted against the wall and shovelled the food into her mouth so fast Ferez was worried she would choke. She collapsed into a coughing fit as she finished, her eyes watering as her stomach rebelled against the sudden influx of food.

“Water,” she croaked out.

That was something Ferez could help with. He unhooked his canteen and held it out to her. She darted forward and snatched it again, but when she retreated this time, she stopped just outside of arm’s reach instead of the opposite side of the cell. The look of bliss on her face as she guzzled the water both warmed Ferez’s heart, and broke it. That this small girl had been denied the basic necessities for life… these pirates would suffer for their inhumanity.

“It’s… clean,” she said when she finished, holding the canteen above her mouth, letting every last drop fall.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Leo said. He waved his hand and a small globe of water floated out of the canteen’s opening. She stared at it with wide eyes, then turned her gaze back onto Leo.

“You’re a mage?”

“We both are. That’s why we came to get you. You’re a mage too.”

The girl scowled and retreated a step, her eyes slipping to the straw matted floor.

“I don’t think so. I’m nobody.”

Ferez grasped the bars of her cell and pressed his face up against it. The girl glanced up, a flicker of fear dancing through her eyes before the familiar defiance dug its heels in once again.

“You are wrong,” he said. “You are somebody. Somebody powerful. One day, the world will dance in the palm of your hand. In fear or awe of your strength, I cannot say. But I can promise you; they. Will. Dance.”

Her mouth set in a firm line, and she raised her chin.

“Then you had better help me get out of here.”

He grunted in approval. She was bowed, but still unbroken. From this limited interaction, he doubted the pirate’s could defeat her spirit no matter what they did.

“What is your name, child?” he asked.

She opened her mouth to speak, but an unfamiliar voice interrupted her.

“Cargo does not have a name.”

Ferez and Leo whirled to see a stranger striding down the hall towards them. He was powerfully built despite his age, his long shaggy hair almost solid grey aside from a few strands of faded brown. A bushy beard with the same colouring obscured most of his face, with a heavily lined pair of dark brown eyes staring back at them. His attire was simple, an uncoloured linen shirt and loose brown pants in the style of Emrinth, but despite this, he exuded an overwhelming air of authority.

“I have to admit, High Mage Ahud, staging an infiltration with just the two of you? This is bold, even by your standards. I suppose I should be grateful for your foolhardiness, though. It will save me a lot of effort.”

The man extended a hand out towards them and Ferez dove aside out of instinct. Just as well, as a stone spear erupted from the wall, missing him by the barest of margins. He rolled to his feet and hurled a Flash Bomb, only for a wall of earth to rise in front of the stranger. The magic missile struck the barrier with explosive force, the blowback almost knocking Ferez off his feet. The only sign of damage to the wall was a circular soot mark where it struck.

“Who the Pit is this arsehole?” he asked.

“Vargo Nezir,” the man replied as the wall collapsed, melding back into the tunnel.

“Also known,” Leo said, clutching a bleeding wound on his side, “as the Crimson Blade.”

*

The Crimson Blade, the most feared pirate in the world, was a mage?

“This is… not ideal,” Ferez said.

Talk about an understatement. They were backed into the end of the tunnel, their escape path cut off by Nezir. And they were underground, meaning they were surrounded by the raw material an earth mage like him needed to fight.

“How bad is your injury?” Ferez asked Leo.

“Just a flesh wound. I’ll be fine for a few minutes at least.”

“Can we beat him down here?”

Leo paused, seizing up their opponent.

“I don’t know. Our little prodigy is stopping me from sensing the strength of his magic. Given he’s here by himself and he’s already tagged me once, I don’t like our chances, though.”

Ferez glanced at Nezir. He watched them patiently, the corner of his mouth quirked up in a small smile. He seemed unsettlingly confident.

“Alright, we’ll blow past him, then sprint for the docks. We’ll steal a boat and get out of here. Sound feasible?”

“Not really,” Leo said with a dry chuckle. “But I don’t see any other options.”

“That’s the spirit. I go left, you go right. Keep the pressure up, we might not breach his defences but if we can lock him down, we might be able to slip past.”

“On your count, Ferez.”

“Alright, on three… threetwoonego!”

The instinct from their long history of fighting together kicked in and Leo didn’t skip a beat, moving at the same time as Ferez as they charged Nezir. The pirate was caught unprepared. Ferez threw another Flash Bomb as he closed the gap, while Leo whipped a long tendril of water at the earth mage. The way the light glinted along its edge betrayed the presence of a thousand tiny, razor sharp blades of ice embedded in the whip.

Nezir raised another wall to block Ferez’s Flash Bomb, but left himself exposed to Leo. He twisted out of the way, but not fast enough to avoid the whip raking across the top of his head. Blood sprayed the wall as the serrated water rope tore open the pirate’s scalp, and he roared in rage, thrusting a hand at Leo. Another spear erupted at the water mage’s feet, but he pre-empted it, dodging to the side as it shot past. With the pirate’s attention diverted, Ferez redoubled his pace, closing the gap to his opponent in a few powerful bounds. He grasped the top of the wall and vaulted over, a savage grin on his face as Nezir turned, his mouth dropping open in horror as he realised…

He was too slow.

As Ferez’s legs sailed over the earthen construct, he flooded his right foot with Talent, the lower leg erupting in red hot flame as he swung it at the pirate’s head, the force from his leap driving the flaming appendage at his target with a terrible finality.

Nezir threw his hands up to block the blow. As though that would do anything. Ferez’s flames would melt through his arms, and then his head, like a plain’s fire roaring through the Emrinthian grasses. He would drain the steel bars from the girl’s cell and return to Ingrid, triumphant.

His foot slammed into Nezir’s forearm and stopped. He barely had to register the thought ‘that’s not right’, before a hand encased in stone wrapped around his ankle. The earth mage spun, moving with Ferez’s momentum and slammed him into the wall. Ferez felt every bone in his body crunch as the compacted earth gave a little under the impact. The grip on his ankle released, and he slid to the ground, insensate aside from the faint awareness of dust from the mage shaped indentation in the wall trickling down on him.

“Ferez! Hold on!” Leo shouted, charging at Nezir. He swung his rope, but it grated harmlessly against the suit of stone armour covering the earth mage. Letting out a sharp hiss, he collapsed the whip, reforming it into dozens of ice spikes. He launched them at his foe, the air whistling as the projectiles tore through at an incredible speed, only to shatter as they struck their target.

Leo swore and Nezir leapt forward, manipulating his stone cage to turn himself into a living missile as he slammed a fist into Leo’s gut. Leo hung in the air, bent around Nezir’s fist for the briefest moment, before the laws of physics stopped slacking off and rocketed him into the wall. He, too, fell to the ground, groaning with a hand clutched to his gut.

“No!” Ferez screamed. A blow that hard would rupture organs and split bone. Leo was still drawing breath, but he was already dead.

Anger and grief blossomed throughout Ferez’s body, the raw emotion filling his magical reservoirs, forcing the latent energies out into his body, overwhelming his body’s instinctive reflex to stop his magic being expended completely. His meat protested under the strain of such a brutal magical saturation, and he knew he risked eviscerating himself with the wild energies, but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was making Nezir pay.

Fire erupted around his body and he surged at the earth mage as a ball of pissed off sentient flame. The pirate turned and swung an armoured fist and Ferez met it with his own. A boom reverberated through the hallway as the unstoppable force of Ferez’s rage crashed against the strength of the earth itself. At first nothing happened, the white-hot flame washing harmlessly over Nezir’s suit, but then, beneath his fist, Ferez felt the armour crack. He shrieked, an indescribable sound of grief and fury, and poured even more power into his onslaught. His efforts were rewarded as a chip of stone broke away, spinning off and embedding deep into the wall that was quickly turning blackened and fractured from the hellish heat.

Ferez grinned a manic smile, even as he felt the magic in his body running dry. A terrific weariness settled into his feet, followed by an icy sensation as his very life force drained out of him completely. He didn’t have long left to end this.

“You. Will. Die!” Ferez screamed, and with a final desperate effort, feeding off the emotions burning in his chest and behind his eyes, he focussed the fire engulfing him into a single point between them, crushing it smaller and smaller and smaller. And then it exploded.

He was barely conscious, but still diverted the worst of the forces around his body. Even so, he hurtled back into the wall, smashing into the indent he had left earlier. Nezir, however, had no such ability to draw upon. He was slammed into the opposite wall with such force that he lodged into it, his feet suspended a foot above the ground. His head slumped forward, lolling insensate against his chest.

Ferez smiled weakly as he dropped, first to his knees, then face first into the floor. He had nothing left, his Talent was exhausted, and soon his body would deteriorate and crumble away. But he had avenged Leo. At least with Nezir dead, Ingrid could finish the task. She was harsh, some might say cruel, some might even go so far as to say she was an insane, sadistic bitch. But deep down, Ferez knew she would take good care of the slave girl.

Just before his nose crunched into the dirt, something soft and a little spongy caught him by the chest, hauling him upright.

“Stay with me, you old goat,” Leo said. Ferez forced his flickering eyelids open and gazed in wonder at his friend. His face was ashen and sweat beaded his brow, but he was still alive.

“How?” the fire mage croaked.

Leo smiled and lifted the hem of his shirt. A lattice of ice covered his belly in a pattern resembling chainmail links.

“Got it set in the nick of time. I dare say that would have done me in otherwise. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

“The girl..”

“I think we might have to make a return trip, bud.”

Ferez looked up at his friend and followed his gaze to where Nezir was lodged in the wall. Slowly, the armoured head rose, the mage’s eyes visible through the visor slit glaring at the intruders.

“You can’t be serious,” Ferez said, his eyelids fluttering as he fought to stay awake.

Nezir clenched a fist, and with a grunt, tore the arm out of the wall. He followed suit with the other, then braced his hands against the tunnel and pushed. He strained, letting out a bellow as he struggled, until, with the loud cracking of stone, he burst free. The earth mage landed heavily, dropping to a knee, his chest heaving with exertion.

“Leo, can you finish him?” Ferez asked, feeling his senses perk up as an adrenal dump flooded his system.

“I might have been able to, if I hadn’t just dumped a load of my Talent into your body to stop you from dying.”

Oh, so not an adrenal dump then.

“Thanks, but now I think we both might die instead.”

“And who’s fault is that? Honestly, who willingly blows out their limit reflex?”

“I thought he had killed you! I was emotional!”

“You’re an idiot, and don’t even pretend part of that display wasn’t for the sheer drama of it.”

“I did not.”

“Did too. You wrapped yourself in fire and punched him. What the Pit was that going to achieve when he’s literally coated in magically reinforced stone?”

“I didn’t have many… options,” Ferez said, trailing off. But he did, didn’t he? If he had been thinking clearer he might have finished this fight already. He cast his senses inwards, exploring how much Talent Leo had infused into him, as Nezir slowly stood up and stalked towards them.

“You fought well. As I would have expected from a High Mage and the Patriarch. But this fortress will be your tomb,” he said, planting one foot laboriously in front of the other. He was wounded, or running out of Talent himself. They had a chance.

“Leo, how much more Talent can you give me?”

“Oh, let me see, about three-fifths of fuck all. Why?”

“I can kill him. I just need a bit more.”

Leo sighed, and Ferez felt more magic flood his system. He snatched it and funnelled the energy into his arm.

“I’ll also need you to buy me a few seconds,” he said as the magic began to pool in his index finger.

“Gods. Want the shirt off my back too?” Leo asked. “I just gave you all the power I have left, what do you want me to do? Punch him?”

Ferez arched an eyebrow in response.

“Bloody Pit. Here we go, I guess.”