Valor and Violence

Sensation returned in stages. First came the pain, the feeling of flayed skin carpeting much of his body, that harsh sting juxtaposed with the sharp agony of deep wounds where stone and ice had pierced him. Next was the cold weight pressing down on him, grinding the raw wounds on his back into the sandy floor. After that came sound; the roar of magic and the screams of dying men, loud curses in a dangerous, feminine voice, and someone close by shouting his name.

Really close by. In his ear, actually. Ferez cracked an eye and looked around. He was face down in the dirt, something heavy pinning him to the ground. Twisting his head, and ignoring the explosion of pressure and pain behind his eyes from the motion, he peered up at Leo’s armoured form draped over him.

“You back with us, old buddy?” Leo screamed in his ear.

“Val’s tits, Leo, yes, I hear you. No need to shout.”

“Thank the fucking gods, when I saw you go down, I… They targeted you first, all six of them. It’s a miracle you’re alive.”

“I’m fine. Now will you let me up?”

Leo dutifully climbed to his feet and hooked his arms under Ferez’s armpits, hoisting him up. He held on for a few seconds, gradually letting the fire mage stand under his own strength. Despite himself, Ferez couldn’t quite stop the swaying.

The magical onslaught was continuing around them. Fire and water, stone and wind, and blackest shadow tore through Skjar raider and privateer alike, the corpses of their men carpeting the broad room. Some brave souls tried to return fire with crossbows, even some raiders had taken up arms from the fallen and shot back, but those who escaped the magic were falling to the storm of arrows raining down from above.

Ingrid danced through the chaos, hurling blades of wind back at their attackers, but every time she scythed down a hapless archer, another stepped up to fill his spot. Gods only knew how many pirates were above, patiently waiting for their turn to spit death into the room below.

Ferez tried to kick his thoughts into motion, to devise a plan to get them out of this mess, but he was overwhelmed by the pain wracking his body and the sights and sounds assaulting his addled and exhausted brain. He closed his eyes and crushed his fists into his temples, willing himself to focus, and almost succeeded when a new tinkling sound nearby broke his concentration. Opening his eyes, he turned to Leo, who stood looking sheepish as his armour cracked and flaked away from his body.

“I guess that’s it for the armour for now,” he said. “They were still going nuts when I reached you, so I shielded your body as best I could. Seems like that used the last dregs of Talent, though.”

As the helmet crumbled, Ferez realised just how badly his friend was faring. His eyes were sunken with dark purple bags underneath them. His face was drawn, pale and clammy, and a slight tremor shook his body, setting the fleshier parts to jiggling. Before he could say anything, those defeated eyes snapped toward the ceiling and widened, and Leo shouted a warning. Ferez spun and nearly pitched over from the wave of vertigo as a ball of flame careened towards him.

He grimaced. Slain by fire magic. How ignoble an end for a Pyrian High Mage. He squared his shoulders, prepared to meet his fate, when a hulking warrior leapt in front of him, swinging his mighty halberd at the onrushing magic. The stylised flame on the end of the polearm cut through the fireball, the Resonance Ore in the weapon inhaling the magic, ore veins briefly flaring through the breadth of the weapon as it locked away the energy.

“High Mage! Are you alright? Come, we must get you out of here immediately,” Asim shouted over the din.

“We can’t retreat,” Leo shouted back, wobbling over on unsteady legs. “If we lose this foothold, we won’t get it back. We succeed here or we lose the battle.”

“With all due respect, Patriarch, the battle is lost.”

Ferez looked around, the fog in his mind lending the scene an ethereal, unreal quality. Some warriors had broken and were fleeing for the docks, all thoughts of victory gone from their mind. Others tried to return fire or rallied the surrounding men, forming up and trying to advance through the storm of death. A few simply sat, numb expressions on their faces as they waited for the inevitable. Precious few had any spark left, Ingrid foremost among them as she fought back, crazed eyes alight with bloodlust, though nearby Leanne and Windshear did their part, the bodyguard firing crossbows one handed with unerring accuracy while the mighty griffon… well, he just shrieked a lot and flapped his wings, but really what else could he do?

As though sensing Ferez’s thoughts, the predator let out a scream of pain, rage and frustration and beat its wings again. Slowly, its front legs lifted off the ground, soon followed by its hindquarters. Leanne, realising what was happening, shouted encouragement and, with a victorious cry, they shot toward the roof. Moments before impact, Windshear flipped over, hooking the rim of a firing hole with its forelegs and pushing its head through. It reappeared a second later with a squirming mage in its beak. The unfortunate soul, possibly the Pyrian that had just tried to roast Ferez judging from his red hair, raised his hands to incinerate the griffon when the ceiling under its talons broke away, dropping the trio towards the ground. Windy reflexively bit down in surprise, cutting the mage in two. He righted himself with an annoyed squawk and flapped back to the ground as the mage thudded into the ground with a splat.

“Windy, you genius!” Ferez said as a course of action unfolded in his mind. He turned to Leo, careful not to move too fast this time. “Leo, you and I are going after Nezir. We need to stop him before he reaches the girl.”

“High Mage!” Asim protested, but Ferez cut him off with a hand.

“I don’t want to hear it. You are to marshal our forces and take the stairwell, then push up and clear the floor above us. I need those pirates dead or gone before we come back with the slaves.”

Asim opened his mouth to reply, but stopped and spun, swinging his halberd in a broad arc through a lance of shadow scything towards them. He levelled his weapon at the offending mage and loosed a stream of fire. The cackling Umbrian ducked away from the lip of the hole, but the archers flanking him weren’t so lucky, their flaming bodies tumbling into the room as they flailed and screamed. The bodyguard turned back to Ferez.

“As I was about to say, that is not possible, sir. Look around. We have lost almost half our forces in a matter of seconds. We can’t push through with them above.”

Ferez smiled and marshalled his Talent, feeding it into his hands. He brought them together in front of him and started pouring magic into a nascent Flash Bomb. It grew bigger, burning brighter, the sudden outpouring of energy cutting through the ambient Talent filling the room, and every mage in attendance suddenly noticed what he was doing.

Ingrid looked at him askance for a half second before her face split into a grin. She darted to him, her blades weaving a protective barrier alongside Asim’s halberd as they shielded the high mage from the immediate onslaught of every one of Nezir’s surviving battlemages. The brown robes above redoubled their efforts, desperate to break through the wall of Resonance weaponry before Ferez could finish his preparations.

But this wall had no gaps. Feeling safe despite the death around him, Ferez searched the ceiling, gauging the distance between holes and figuring out where was thinnest. Weakest. Vulnerable.

An arrow darted toward him as he found his target, but a wall of ice rose to block the projectile bare inches from his face. He gave Leo a thankful nod, then turned his eyes skyward once more.

“Drop the shield.”

Leo dutifully dissolved the construct, and as it fell away, Ferez launched his missile. The roiling orb rocketed through the air and into the roof. It detonated in a thunderous blast of heat and light; the explosion knocking Ferez, and everyone else, to the floor as a wave of pressure slammed into them. The ceiling buckled and ruptured towards the invisible sky above, debris and bodies held in stasis for a long second before gravity gained the upper hand again and everything came crashing down. Men screamed and Windshear screeched before the mighty boom of the rubble’s impact drowned everything out in a burst of choking dust.

And then it was still, the silence broken only by a few dying whimpers and coughs. And then Ingrid announced her presence.

“Nowhere to hide now, cowards! I bring you death!” she shouted, sprinting up a mound of jagged stone and launching herself into the air, a powerful wind current slinging her up, blades first, into a pirate tentatively peering over the lip of the gaping hole. She disappeared from sight onto the second floor, though arcs of blood and body parts gave away her presence as she worked her way around its edge. Windshear followed suit a second later with Leanne still firmly ensconced on his back. She brandished a long, jagged tipped spear while the beast brandished… Skjar raiders? Ferez frowned when he recognised Reichblut hanging from one of the hybrid’s legs along with three of his hauskarls. Whooping and jeering as they soared through the air, they too disappeared, briefly, before the predator swooped back across the hole, Reichblut laughing like a maniac as he cleaved a pirate’s head from his body.

“Asim, now!” Ferez shouted, turning to his guardsman only to find the giant already charging toward the stairwell, a motley amalgam of marines and raiders in tow and baying for blood. The few remaining pirate archers dropped their bows and turned to flee, but in their haste to escape, they clogged the doorway. The bloodthirsty warriors in pursuit fell upon them with terrible fury, hacking their foes to pieces as they carved a path forward.

Ferez let out a sigh. His legs buckled and he nearly fell when a brawny arm wrapped around his chest, hauling him back up. The battle was still a long way from won, but maybe, just maybe, he had given them a chance. Gods, but it had taken it out of him, though. He had never forged a Flash Bomb that powerful in his life, and after the strain of the battle so far, he felt emptied of both power and vitality. His eyelids fluttered and closed.

“Good show, old chap. But it’s too early for the victory nap just yet. We’ve got a Blade to break,” Leo said, taking a step after their raging warriors, half supporting, half dragging Ferez.

The high mage’s eyes snapped back open. Leo was right. Ferez was shattered, but so was Nezir. The allied forces were more than decimated, but they had their foothold and the high ground. Both sides were bloodied beyond recognition and still locked in their death throes. Winning this day was no longer about magic, or strength, or tactical brilliance. The day would be carried by those with a stubborn refusal to die, and extreme bloody mindedness.

He pushed away from Leo and took a deep breath, quashing the pain from his injuries and snarling at his sluggish limbs to obey. He glanced down at his robes; they were so tattered and torn they barely covered anything anymore and its haphazard flapping over his tortured skin was irking him. Grasping a bunch of cloth by his shoulder, he ripped it away, tearing off the ruined raiments of a high mage and dropping them to the ground at his feet. With his chest and teeth thusly bared, he strode towards the final confrontation.