Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 41: Captured

Naereni

My dagger cut deeply into the side of the water mage's abdomen, spraying blood and making her scream in fear and pain. Before she could locate me, I slipped back into the mist, letting it obscure my position and hide me from her watching eyes.

"No!" the mage screamed, no small amount of terror in her voice. Her shield of ice was tough: I could only break through it in the weaker links of her armor, but those took time and precision to target. Which was why I was strafing her constantly, jumping in when her back was turned to carve more and more cuts.

Most of the other mages had been taken down swiftly by Hofal and me, but there were a couple of stragglers that held on longer than I would've liked. After Karsien, Wade, and I met up with Hofal after destroying the warehouses, he told us about our newest member's brash rush to the distillery.

It would be nice if Karsien would've actually helped, I thought with irritation. The man had broken off from the group shortly after Hofal told us about Toren's stupid idea. I could understand Wade keeping to the sidelines: he wasn't a combat mage. But Toren should've thought this through! Rushing in alone?

Though it seemed his hunch was correct, I thought with a shiver, but not from the cold around me. I'd seen the plume of that explosion from several blocks away. The young striker had been surrounded and getting the beatdown of his life when we'd finally intervened. The implications of that were clear: the Joans were waiting for us.

The brown-haired shield waved her wand frantically, calling up another shell of ice. This time it covered her in a dome, keeping her sealed off from the rest of the battle.

I huffed in the shadows, spinning my knife in my hand. That would be irritating to break through. I could wait for the woman to collapse from her wounds, but I didn't know if there would be enough time for that.

A wall of earth erupted from nearby, rising ten feet in the air. It was covered in intricate arches and detail, making the otherwise bland slab of rock an artful brick. It rose above the mist, punching through like a spike. Then it began to shift, falling forward toward the dome of ice.

Hofal, you just saved me a lot of time, I thought wryly as the slab of earth impacted the dome. The ice shattered, blown apart by the force of a ton of stone. Not wasting the opening I was given, I funneled more mana through my crest, enhancing my speed and driving me forward. The mist was starting to dissipate; Karsien's spell had lasted longer than expected.

The water shield turned as I jumped over wayward chunks of ice and stone, weaving with my enhanced sense of balance. Her face was a mask of shock and her arms visibly shook from exhaustion. Before she could respond to my assault, however, my ice-coated fist impacted her temple, causing her to crumple where she stood.

I skidded to a halt, turning on my feet to meet Hofal's gaze. He had a few cuts over his body, but the middle-aged man looked fine. "Was that the last of them?" I asked him.

"Pretty sure it was, except for that lightning woman," the man said, fumbling in his pockets for a cigar. He really needed to break that habit. "Toren's probably gonna need our help, though."

I remembered the flash of speed and power Toren had displayed as he rushed the woman cloaked in electricity. In the brief instances I'd caught sight of his battle before they left the mist, he'd been fighting with a jaw-dropping level of precision and force. The woman had been doing all she could just to hold on.

"Are you sure about that?" I asked, letting my ice weapons dissolve. "It looked like he had everything handled. I don't think I've ever seen a mage move so fast."