Chapter 13 #2
Vergis flung a heavy bag out ahead of him, then loped up the last few rungs more gracefully than I ever could have. He looked like an athlete or something. I was pretty sure mages were supposed to be a whole lot more sedentary.
“I—you scared me. Why’d you have to bring me to the woods? It’s creepy out here.”
“I’m not even dignifying that with an answer.” He tossed me one of three duffel bags he was carrying, and it was heavy. “You carry the ammo. Now come on. Five hundred meters to the river.”
I lifted the bag. “I don’t know how far that is.”
“It’s how far a grizzly can run in thirty seconds. You maybe wanna try moving like you have a bear on your heels?”
“Just lead the way so we can get back to our guys, okay? I really don’t want to be here unless it’s a naughty Red Riding Hood reenactment.”
I seriously needed to stop speaking, and the brain’s quality control unit needed to be fired and replaced by capable braincells, stat.
“You know, if furries are your thing, go for it. Just don’t tell me about it.”
Vergis navigated the forest ahead of me, fast and barely making a sound as he moved.
I did my best to keep up. He kept looking over his shoulder to make sure I didn’t get attacked by a tree.
I was starting to sweat, and neither of us was having a great time, but I didn’t want people to get shot.
Other than the cola ash people maybe. But truth be told, I just wanted them to leave us alone.
At last, I heard the river over my panting. Vergis stopped on the shore to grab me. He was carrying two bags, both clearly heavier than mine, and it didn’t seem to bother him at all. He had muscles, magic, and a nice set of horns. How had he ever been jealous of me?
He pulled his knife out. “We’ll hop back slower.
I want to pull some sacrificial power into my knife.
” The blade caught the dappled light. “If the situation gets too fucked up, we’re going to hightail it out of Esaka, and since you have exactly nothing to contribute to a fight but screams, you’ll follow my lead and do as I say. Are we very clear on that, princess?”
“The others—”
“Will do stupid things if it looks like we’re in trouble. Especially Inkiri. You move with me. If we can, we’re not going to stay in the circle, because the Koa Esher might try to use that against us.”
“Move with you, right.” Nothing was right. This wasn’t what married life was supposed to be like at all.
“When I tell you, you wish for clear skies. Now move.”
And with that, I was unceremoniously dragged into the river. It didn’t seem that deep, so at least I wasn’t in immediate danger of drowning. Getting all wet still wasn’t any fun though, and I shivered, the strap of the duffel slicing into my shoulder.
“One more thing, princess.” Vergis pulled out a set of earplugs and held them out to me. “Just so I don’t get told off for not protecting your hearing.”
I nodded. I remembered the ringing noise of him firing his gun that once, and I was definitely liking the idea of earplugs. I put them in right away.
Vergis unsheathed his knife. The water was up to about the middle of my thighs and maybe to his knees. “Wish for clear skies, now.”
“Clear skies,” I managed to say through chattering teeth.
The noise of underbrush being crushed by something big and a roar made me look to the other shore even as heat and brightness sizzled all around me.
“B-b-bear!” The magic was warming me up, but the water was still cold, and so the chattering teeth continued, although the bear might’ve had something to do with that.
“It’s fine. This isn’t a Shakespeare play,” Vergis said.
The bear roared. It was flicking huge.
“C-c-can we move?”
“I said I need to make sure my knife has enough sacrificial power to hop us back if needed. It’s just a bear.”
Had he ever even read an effing Shakespeare play? “It’s l-l-looking at us.”
“Well, kinda. It’s looking at you.”
“What?” He was right though. The bear’s bottom lip was sort of hanging, and I could see its teeth. It growled, then it stepped into the river, black eyes on me.
“Seriously. This is a thing with you, isn’t it? You’re a fucking trouble magnet, and for some stupid reason, I get stuck with you when most of the trouble finds you.” He pulled me closer, and I nearly dropped the duffel. “You know I’m not Mary Poppins, right? Brace.”
Brace? What the fudge did he mean by brace? I squeezed my eyes shut.
To my great misfortune and the misfortune of the bear who might have been a grizzly, I found out just what exactly brace meant. Wait for shit to hit, basically.
The heat intensified, and the light brightened until I had to close my eyes.
We shifted through the veils. The water went away and the smell of the place changed. The sound of fighting broke out, punctuated by a single gunshot. And then, a mighty roar.
“Move.” Vergis dragged me along before I even had my eyes open.
I stumbled after him while keeping a death grip on the bag. The bear roared. This really was turning into a Shakespeare play.
The outer wall was to our right, the lower, inner wall to our left, and white-clad combatants had their backs to us. They hadn’t realized there was a bear yet. The beast roared a third time.
Which was when it hit me that the bear was not supposed to be here.
“Brace!” Vergis spun, grabbed me, and tossed me over the lower inner wall to our left into a prickly bush, not that I had any time at all to brace or complain. “Stay down,” he said after vaulting over the wall in the kind of gravity-defying move that left me envious.
He crouched next to where I was trying to disentangle myself from the bush and pulled one of his bags open. The bear kept on roaring, and someone screamed as if they’d been pursued by it and forcibly exited, permanently. It was not the kind of sound I ever wanted to hear again.
I saw Vergis’s sharp grin. “Sounds like a Koa Esher making new friends.” He did something clicky with a rifle or shotgun thingy. “Princess, you’re not throwing any loaded guns ever, got it? It would probably be the only time you ended up killing anyone, and with my luck, it might be me. Fellisse!”
Vergis dashed forward. I didn’t see him toss the rifle or whatever it was.
I was distracted by more roaring in response to screaming, which then led to more roaring and…
sort of wet tearing noises. I was not going to get up from behind this bush and look at what was happening.
Not ever. I was embracing the most prominent role of my career to date: significant shrubbery.
The staccato of more gunfire cut through all the screaming. It was loud even with the earplugs. Vergis fired some rounds from his own gun, gestured, then prepped another long gun from the bag, and tossed that as well.
All of this happened in a few seconds and with fluid movements, and Vergis just being relaxed while he did all of this was so at odds with the situation as a whole.
There was more roaring, from farther away, and more guns being fired. I cowered behind the bush and covered my ears.
The gunshots grew fewer, and then they stopped. Vergis shook me by the shoulder, and pulled me up, and—
“Inkiri!”
He was right there, a rifle in his hand but not aimed at anything. He turned when I shouted his name, and his tight expression relaxed into a smile, which was not a huge relief since he had a long gash on his cheek. It was oozing red.
I slid the duffel off my shoulder and ran toward him. It was probably another romance movie moment, one lover loping to the other, except here, Inkiri was bleeding and holding a gun, so it wasn’t all that romantic. That dampened the moment, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to hold him.
I hugged Inkiri, and he closed one arm around me.
I touched his unharmed cheek. “You’re hurt! You’re bleeding.”
He huffed. “One of the fighters got lucky.” He bent his head to smile at me. “You are a light in the darkness, sweet thing.”
Vergis ran past us and loped up to the wall. “Don’t mind me. Need to sacrifice that bear.”
“What did you do with that effing bear?” I asked. I also took a closer look around, but not too close. I’d seen the aftermath of monster attacks back on Earth one too many times. There was blood, torn limbs, torn-open bodies. I didn’t need to see any more than that.
Inkiri let go of me and went to pick up a sword—his sword—which he then proceeded to do the flashy flourish thing with before sheathing it one-handed. He was still holding the gun in the other.
“Why did you bring a bear, Vergis?” Inkiri reached for my wrist, and when he was holding me, I never wanted him to let go again.
“That bear did not like the Koa Esher,” Fellisse said.
He was coming up from behind us, his rifle slung over his shoulder.
He headed for our hiding spot behind the bushes, pulled out the bags we’d dropped there, and picked them up as if they were filled with feathers.
Behind him, black-clad Raikengana followed, their weapons out.
I saw the bright glimmer of magic, and when Inkiri led me up the stairs of the inner wall, Vergis was kneeling in the circle we’d arrived in, his hand on the center stone.
The vines that grew here and had been almost invisible against the gray of the outer wall were dappled with red now. I looked away.
The magic dimmed, and he stood. “Your mate is a trouble magnet. I never ran into a bear at the cache before, but as soon as I bring him along, boom, bear. I decided to make trouble useful, so I brought the bear. I was hoping the Koa Esher had never seen one and would pee their pants.”
“You and the peeing,” I mumbled.
Fellisse came up the stairs behind us and grumbled, “What if we’d been at the circle like we agreed? The beast would’ve torn into us.”
Vergis shrugged. “I had a feeling you might be late. Plus, I used magic to brand a carbon copy of the ko circle on its back so I could straight up sacrifice it. I’ve never done that before, but it seems to have worked just fine.” He tapped the circle with his foot. “I’m just that good.”
“You had a feeling?” Fellisse crossed his arms, the bags easily dangling. “I’m not sure even a nice café au lait would help me with your…feelings.”
Inkiri clicked, but stopped to pull me against his side. “That wasn’t all of them, and we still haven’t found Lissir and Nokim.”
“Well, shit.” Vergis looked at me. “I have an idea. Princess, come over here.”
“Whenever you say you have an idea, I end up not liking it,” I said, and Inkiri clicked at me some more. It was soothing.
Vergis rolled his eyes. “I have an idea to help us find Lissir and Nokim.”
My jaw tensed, but I walked right over to Vergis. Back into his magic circle of slaughter.
He pulled out his knife, but instead of doing magic with it, he went to the lower wall and reached for a branch from one of the flowering bushes. He sliced it clean off.
“Hold this.” He handed me the branch with the purple flowers on it. “Stand here.” He moved me, not into the circle, but to one of the seven points on its perimeter.
He held out his hand and made a grabby motion, so I put my hand in his.
I felt the heat and tingling I was beginning to recognize as magic, and from where our hands touched, a red orb emerged; just a floaty light, like a will-o’-the-wisp.
Inkiri gasped. “That can’t be.”
Fellisse inhaled sharply. “So you saw that too. I was thinking it might’ve been the lack of café au lait.”
I followed their wide-eyed stares and looked to the branch in my hand. The purple blossoms had mostly faded to ash and gone on the wind. When I opened my hand, the rest of it scattered like the flowers had never been.
Vergis nodded. “Thought so.” He pointed. “We follow the red orb.” He headed back to the bush and quickly cut off more branches, then hopped back up and shoved them at me. “And you, princess, carry these.” He headed for the stairs.
Baffled, I looked at the cuttings in my arms. “What did I just do?”
Vergis didn’t respond, instead saying something to the other bagua, the other Raikengana who’d been fighting alongside Inkiri and Fellisse.
Inkiri put a hand on the small of my back in a brief caress before he took my wrist again. “You used the branch as a sacrifice.”
“I’m guessing that’s unusual.” I wanted to ask about that, but the red orb moved. Finding Lissir and Nokim was more important than my weird magic. I clutched the branches like the lead actress might a bouquet of flowers given to her by the fans. “Come on.”
It was just following a glowy red ball that floated ahead of us—something I could actually do, for once—so I led Inkiri this time around. Not for long though, because he stepped ahead of me and made sure to keep me behind him.
But even the brief moment had given me a taste of running into possible danger. It was probably unwise and unhealthy. I was going to blame the adrenaline for making me do it in the first place. Also Vergis’s stupid bear. That bagu was going to make me pee sooner or later, I just knew it.