Trials (Rogue Mage Anthology Book 1) Read online

  Hours after the battle began, exhausted and still only half-way across the stadium floor, Damocles called a break. Choosing an ice-free area, the neomage took a small sack from his backpack, and poured salt from it to trace a circle a few yards across. Then Phineas, Cleopatra, and Mosiah hurried in from their protective positions at its rim, and he activated a Charmed Circle amulet, the shimmering ward springing up along the salt line. Then, using another amulet, he opened a Shield with the same perimeter. If Phineas was right about the Monster-Maker merely toying with them, then the fallen seraph would probably have allowed them to rest and regain their strength unmolested, but the neomage couldn’t afford to take chances.

  While the others ate and tended to their battered bodies and equipment, Damocles settled down onto the concrete to recharge his prime and the assortment of Healing, Shield, Boost, Counter-Conjure, Vibro-Blade, and other amulets they’d burned through. He didn’t have time to perform a complicated ritual, so he cleared his mind of all external stimuli and opened it fully to his prime amulet; he’d recharge that through his Link to the creation energy power sink underneath the New Orleans Enclave, use that energy to charge the other amulets, and then top-off his prime once more.

  But nothing happened. The Link conjure in his prime was intact, but somehow he couldn’t find the power sink. With increasing desperation he tried two more times, before realizing what had been bothering him at a subconscious level for some time: His Link to the power sink, to the Enclave, had been severed since they’d emerged into the stadium. They were cut off as if they’d gone deep into an underground hellhole.

  Damocles was shaken, but didn’t want to let his champards see it. He shifted his position to put himself in contact with some steel reinforcing rods sticking out of the cracked concrete and drew energy from that exposure-limited source. It was enough to partially recharge his prime and some of the most important amulets, but unless they stopped frequently to do this again, eventually they’d be down to only their personal strength. And if need be, the mage could draw creation energy from his champards to power his conjures—if he could force himself to do it.

  The mage passed out the recharged amulets and then ordered the group to move out again. His champards grumbled, but quickly quieted down—there wasn’t any way to restore their strength to full. During the weeks coming north from New Orleans, there’d been enough members of Damocles’s assault force to permit rotating positions so that they could take turns in a protected middle spot after a tiring shift on point, in rear guard, or on night watch. He had no extra troops now, and fatigue preyed on them as hungrily as the Monster-Maker’s beasts.

  Even momentary pauses in the fight provided little relief. More than once during a lull they were startled by the threatening sound of unseen rattle-rats; the few times they did spot the little creatures, the rats scurried away from too close an approach without a fight. But even such non-threats proved tiring as the group reacted to the sound, then relaxed, and then had to force themselves back into ambush-ready battle status. And real ambushes were frequent.

  At one point, a crippling wave of nausea overcame all four of them at the same time, just before the two-pronged attack of a mixed pack of Texas longhorn dire wolves and normal-sized winged wolves. Despite their discomfort, they managed to dispatch the wolves—some of which seemed to be suffering from the nausea themselves—but the waves of sickness didn’t abate. The Counter-Conjure amulet Damocles triggered had no effect, and when Phineas cast his better-than-human senses about for an unseen menace, the best he could do was determine that something invisible was flying somewhere above them. “Shotgun spread!” Damocles ordered, and Cleopatra fired a handful of shots into the air. Unsurprisingly, the blasts didn’t hit anything, but once the fast-moving clouds of pellets were in the air, Damocles cast a Ferro-kinesis conjure and steered the pellets in a searching pattern back and forth across the enclosed space. It took only a few passes before one tiny pellet hit something, and then all the pellets veered toward that spot, tearing a suddenly-visible giant bat apart as it ceased its ultrasonic screams and fell dead to the ground. And just as abruptly, the illness that had afflicted Damocles and his champards ceased.

  An immeasurable time later, a swarm of hand-sized grasshoppers came at the invaders from all sides. Apparently the cold made them sluggish, and moving at mage speed Damocles, Cleopatra, and Phineas easily killed all their attackers before any got close enough to employ their wicked-looking mandibles. Even at mere human speed Mosiah mostly held his own, but a few managed to bite holes through his armor before he could kill them. Suddenly a barracougar pounced on Mosiah from atop a pinnacle of ice. Slapping a hand to a conjure amulet hidden in a brass buckle, Damocles shattered exposed steel and aluminum fittings protruding from the ice, creating bursts of metal fléchettes that sliced into the big cat, but not before it bit through Mosiah’s weakened armor, tearing a chunk out of his shoulder and rendering his left arm useless.

  Although the human was in the worst condition, by this time they were all seriously wounded, and the Healing amulets were long drained. The conditions were fulfilled; the situation was dire.

  Waving Phineas and Cleopatra into defensive positions around them, Damocles called out: “Mage in battle, mage in dire, seraphs, come with holy fire.”

  There was no way to predict when the mage-in-dire call would be answered. It would depend on how close the nearest seraphs were, if the seraphs were listening, if they had other—

  With a crash the ice covering three of the holes in the roof shattered, and a trio of seraphs burst into the stadium. Two had black hair that streamed backward to blend with their black wings, their dark armor reflecting silvery glints as they moved. These two sized up the situation and immediately darted toward Teratos, their long, straight swords held out before them.

  The third descended to land a little ways in front of the mortals, clearing a space among the monsters with a burst of elemental wind. He wore golden armor that almost matched his hair.

  “Yes,” Cleopatra exclaimed, fervor brightening her tired eyes. “With three seraphs we outnumber him!”

  “Alas,” the third seraph sighed. “The fallen one was a higher order than us when he enjoyed the communion of the High Host.”

  “‘A higher order’?” she asked, devoting most of her flagging energy to the almost-mechanical slaughter of a new wave of mutated animals.

  As the Ravens crossed the intervening space, a howling headwind rose up, slowing their advance. Flocks of blue-white seagulls circled over the seraphs at almost roof height and rained icicles onto them. As the ice hit the Ravens’s bodies and wings, it spread out, creating a coating that resisted their efforts to shake it off. More icicles fell and the coat of ice got thicker, heavier, stiffer, slowing the Ravens’ progress against the wind. Eventually, unbelievably, the ice covered the seraphs from head to toe and wingtip to wingtip, and they plummeted downward.

  “These minor seraphs merely carry out His will,” Teratos smirked. “I reflected His perfection back at Him every moment of time.”

  Phineas looked at Taharial quizzically. “That was the meaning of his name,” the seraph responded quietly, “when he had his name.”

  “But now I alone create, while He is nowhere to be seen!”

  The ice-bound Ravens crashed to the stadium’s concrete floor, the impact fracturing their icy straitjackets. As they shucked off the remnants of the ice, the seraphs were set upon by a pack of silent coyotes. Not stopping to deal with the canines, they returned to the sky, dragging with them a number of coyotes that had fixed their lamprey jaws on parts of the seraphs’s bodies not covered by armor, where their seraphic energies shone through. The coyotes began sucking creation energy like blood from the Ravens, who, without stopping to discuss a plan, paused in flight and blasted each other with the concentrated power of the Sun, reducing the creatures to ash while leaving the seraphs untouched. Freed, they resumed their flight towards Teratos.

  Damocles had hung bac
k when the seraph came down to face them—when this seraph came down to face them—pointedly fixing his attention on the battle in the sky and on the struggles immediately at hand. But now Damocles stepped forward to face the seraph who’d answered his summons. “Taharial. You’ve come again.”

  “You are remembered, mage of steel, as I once promised.”

  “Well, at least this time there’s something you can do. Heal us.”

  “I am yours to command,” and with a gesture golden light streamed from the seraph and healed and reinvigorated the mortals.

  “Right. Now it’s our turn. Taharial, you stay with us, give us cover from the air and take out whatever you can at range.”

  As Taharial took to the air, the voice of the seraph’s former comrade boomed across the stadium. “You follow his commands, brother? You rise to attack me? What is mage that thou are mindful of him?”

  “Do you feel no compulsion in his presence, Corruptor?” Taharial asked, receiving only a puzzled look from the fallen seraph. “No. No, I see that you do not.”

  “You debase yourself, Hand of Purification. What does Scripture have to say about us? ‘Thou was perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty.’ But what does Scripture say about the creation of mortals? ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth’. As for the accidents,” he looked sidelong at the neomage and mules, “where is the Scriptural blessing for them? They aren’t created in His image. They’re not creations at all, for on the seventh day did not He cease from His creating?”

  The accusation hit Damocles hard. There did seem to be one reference in the Scriptures to mages: “Suffer not a witch to live.”

  Damocles silently glared at the fallen seraph, but his companions weren’t cowed.

  “What do the Scriptures say?” Phineas bellowed. “Be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain!” as he charged forward.

  Not to be outdone, Cleopatra let loose her war cry, “Thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies against whom ye fight!”, punctuating it by felling a snake-headed ox with a single swipe of her ax.

  The newly healed Mosiah joined in with, “Woe be unto you for perverting the ways of the Lord!” The animals they fought paid no attention, but those weren’t the ears the war cries were intended for.

  The excitement of the moment quickly gave way, though, to the grim slog of death, and only occasionally in the battle did “Be afraid!”, “Woe!”, and “Thus shall the Lord do!” ring out again.

  The Ravens eventually won through to Teratos, diving at him from either side, swords forward. The fallen seraph reared up, extending the blue-white wings that had been hidden behind his back. With a shimmer of light Teratos manifested dark demon iron armor, shield, and a sword half again as long as those carried by the Ravens. Springing into the air, the winged serpent whipped his coils around one of the Ravens, momentarily immobilizing him, while his over-sized human upper body engaged the second in sword-and-shield combat. The seraph steel of the Raven’s armor and weapon was stronger than the demon iron of Teratos’s manifestations, and each ringing blow was accompanied by the sizzle of the weaker iron being ablated away, but the Fallen’s devices held his opponent off long enough for him to marshal gale-force winds that blasted the Raven across the stadium.

  The other Raven was too strong to crush, but a bluish pallor spread across his armor and skin from where his body touched the serpent’s scales. Inch by inch the Raven succumbed to creeping paralysis, and once he was entirely incapacitated, Teratos loosed his serpent coils, dropping the seraph crashing to the ground—again. By which time the other Raven had recovered and begun fighting his way across the sky back to Teratos. The jumbled terrain prevented the ground-bound fighters from seeing the missing Raven until, a few minutes after he fell, he again rocketed into the air, slicing his way through a cloud of winged rattlesnakes to get to their exemplar.

  Watching the Ravens’ repeated defeats in glimpses between attacks on the ground, Mosiah asked Taharial, “Why only three seraphs? That’s not many to take on a major Dark power.”

  “It is foretold: Alongside the omega, three will suffice.”

  “What’s an omega?” the human asked, but Taharial either didn’t hear him or refused to answer.

  “I wouldn’t put much faith in prophecies, dust-of-the-earth,” Teratos thundered. “Unless you want to consider my victory inevitable. Scripture says: ‘Great beasts came up. The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings. And behold another beast, and they said thus unto it “Arise, devour much flesh.” And lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl, and dominion was given to it. And behold a fourth beast, and it had great iron teeth, it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it.’ All these and more I have created, and you are hardly the Ancient of Days to cast me from my throne.” If Taharial responded, they didn’t hear it over the fallen seraph’s laughter.

  Even with three seraphs fighting in the air, the fighting continued on much as before. The seraphic aid the invaders received was countered by a more serious effort on the part of Teratos, who now hurled more dangerous creatures and his own personal energies at Damocles, his champards, and the three seraphs. When electric eagles screeched overhead, releasing deadly blue-white lightning bolts from their beaks, the electricity changed direction in midair, attracted to Taharial’s upraised sword. The seraph gathered up the energy and hurled it at Teratos, but it couldn’t penetrate the Fallen’s Shield.

  More than once the attackers got tantalizingly close to Teratos; close enough to throw hand grenades and mage metal knives and to fire close-range rifle bullets that, unfortunately, bounced off his Shield just as the long-range attacks had. But then they’d be dragged back by the grasping tongues of titanic frogs or pushed back by oversized armored bull-dozers.

  Bursting out of a dark tornado that had temporarily held him, Taharial himself taunted the fallen seraph. “You only delay the inevitable, Corruptor. We will win through to you. As it is written, ‘Over My faithful servants thou hast no power’.”

  “Faithful, my brother? There is not a mortal born without sin. And where there is sin, ‘I shall come upon them from before them and from behind them and from their right hands and from their left hands, and Thou wilt not find most of them faithful unto Thee’.” And as if to punctuate his point, acid-dripping centi-cattle attacked from all sides on the ground, while Teratos directed concussive thunderclaps at the flying seraphs from his perch on his ice throne.

  The Monster-Maker’s supply of mutated creatures seemed endless, his own personal power effectively limitless, and the battle almost hopeless.

  “We can’t fight him with swords or guns, Taharial, and we’re wasting time trying to fight him with words.” Damocles interrupted. “I need power!”

  “It would not be wise, mage-lord.”

  “I don’t care about wise, Taharial. I can destroy them now, but I need more power. Get down here and give me the power!”

  Taharial alighted on the concrete a few yards from the neomage and turned his face upwards, silently calling the Ravens down from their aerial fight. Rage distorted their angelic faces, but they took their positions on the ground, forming a triangle with Damocles at the apex, the Ravens facing stiffly inwards. Taharial, standing in the middle of the formation, spoke to those outside of it: “Mage champards, you must protect your mastrend from the onslaught of Darkness on all sides while we work. He must not be disturbed.”

  Dropping his combat stance, Damocles stood straight and still facing the oncoming demon horde, one hand clutching the prime amulet on its chain around his neck, the other holding his sword’s tip pointed at the serpent perched above his sea of minions. Creation energy poured from the Ravens, fierce beams of brilliant sky-blue and blinding sun-yellow streaked with the other colors of the rainbow blazing from their hearts, striking Taharial’s outstretched wings and being absorbed by them. The Seraph of Chast
ity took the energy, calmed it, and fed it in a steady silver-wrapped stream into the prime-amulet chain around the battle mage’s neck.

  Ravens radiated the powers of Air and Sun, but like all seraphs they had within them energy from every element. At first Damocles cast conjures he knew well, using the Ravens’ minor stores of Metal creation energy to sharpen and strengthen his own Metal mage attacks: spears of sharpened steel girders, coils of writhing copper wires, and crumpled wreckage cannonballs he hurled against Teratos. But as he gained confidence, he drew on their other energies to deal with threats to himself and his band.

  Teratos raised a flock of foul pigeons that rained burning droppings from the sky, but Damocles pulled Air from the wings of the Ravens and battered the birds against the far corners of the stadium roof.

  A cloud of acid gnats descended around Damocles’s head, but he pulled Sunlight from the faces of the Ravens and vaporized the tiny monsters.

  Cleopatra called out from her position behind and to the side of him, and glancing away from the fight before him, the battle mage saw his champard fall under a gout of acid spat by a phalanx of towering garden slugs. Damocles drew the water elements from the Ravens, throwing clouds of stinging Sea salt onto the sensitive skin of the slugs, and using a localized rain of clean River water to wash the caustic sputum off the half-breed. Then energy from the elements of Earth and Stone to heal Cleopatra and his other champards and give them the endurance and strength to continue fighting their defensive battle.

  When the ground beneath the neomage’s feet trembled and cracked and great stone-chewing worms burst forth, Damocles drew more Earth and Stone magic from the Ravens and collapsed their underground burrows, crushing the worms’ vulnerable bodies under tons of dirt and concrete.

  He used Air to blast galloping scorpi-horses with lightning. And still more Stone energy to pin honking multi-colored geese to the ground under their many-times-multiplied weight before they could even reveal what threat they posed to the attackers.