Chapter 60
Ian watched helplessly as Gareth held the beads out over Frederich again.
Remaining still in the hands of his captors, he searched his father’s face, hoping that Frederich truly was unconscious. That he had not heard Ian choose the lives of strangers over that of his own father.
Frederich moaned. The sound was weak, but it was easy to hear in the otherwise silent room.
A streak of lightning connected his chest to the beads, and his breath caught.
Ian’s own breath was stuck in his throat.
A bowstring twanged.
And an arrow sliced through the air, striking Gareth’s neck in the volatile space between his chest plate and helmet. It was the perfect shot.
Gareth staggered backward, the beads slipping from his grasp.
Ian twisted around in his captors’ grip to see Robin standing on the balcony behind him, her bow in hand, another arrow nocked and ready.
She could shoot again! The harmony magic had worked.
Her eyes were on Ian. Her next shot would be to shoot him free.
Ulli, Aden, and Erich stepped forward on either side of her, and several men and women from the Majis army appeared at spaced intervals along the railing around the entirety of the room. Alert and ready to engage, they looked down at the scene before them, their open hands in front of them.
Ulli had found a door.
Responding to this new threat, six of Gareth’s beast-men guards peeled away from the dais. They walked past Ian and calmly across the length of the great hall toward the stairway that would lead them up to the balcony level. They moved slowly, appearing unconcerned that they were outnumbered.
As they walked, however, Ulli, Aden, and Erich leapt over the balcony railing together, swinging for a moment before they dropped to the ground right in front of the main entrance.
Realizing what they were about to do, the beast-men picked up their pace.
Ulli and Erich ran to one side of the large double doors, and Aden to the other. They lifted the heavy beam that kept the doors locked into place.
From above, the Majis released discs of shimmering air at the running beast-men. The harmony magic seemed to slice around them, shocking them and irritating them. But it was not enough to stop them.
Just as they were about to reach the main entrance, Aden hefted the beam aside. The double doors burst open, and the Iseldis guard poured through, swords raised.
The other four of Gareth’s guards stepped forward. The man who held Ian’s right arm dropped it, moving away to join the larger fight. It seemed they were more concerned now, with the larger numbers they were up against.
Ian tried to take advantage of the moment as soon as the man released his right arm, but the guard who still held his left arm immediately captured Ian’s right shoulder with his other hand. The beast-man was now at Ian’s back, holding both of his upper arms.
Throughout this entire time, Robin kept her bow trained on Ian, waiting for an opportunity to help him get free.
The efficiency and presence of mind of these current chaos-enhanced beast-men was far superior to the more feral ones Ian had been expecting based on Robin’s description of what they had found in the monastery.
Despite the multiple things that had happened in short succession, the beast-man that still held Ian captive had remained aware of Robin and the threat of her bow.
Ian’s captor turned his body slightly, dragging Ian in front of him to shield himself from Robin’s next arrow.
The beast-man, however, was nearly a head taller than Ian, so Robin should not need much to get a clear shot.
She just needed a distraction.
Ian quickly thought of a plan—and a backup plan—to give Robin the space she needed to shoot him free.
After catching Robin’s eye for the briefest second across the far room, he dropped his head and went limp in the man’s grip.
This exposed a good portion of the man’s upper body.
But, as Ian expected, the beast had also anticipated this and quickly retaliated by lifting Ian clear off the ground to physically fill the space he had just vacated.
Fortunately, Robin had not released her arrow, as it would have hit Ian instead.
So Ian deployed the backup plan. He struggled for a moment, kicking his feet in the air to regain as much balance as he could from the unyielding grip that held him floating in place.
The man’s strength was impressive. He held Ian’s swinging weight with ease.
With another quick glance at Robin, Ian summoned all his strength.
He swung his hips and legs backward to gain momentum, then used his stomach muscles to pull them forward, bringing his knees to his chest. Rolled up like a child, he had made himself as small as possible, leaving the beast-man’s lower body now exposed.
Robin took her shot.
The beast-man staggered.
Ian released his legs, looking down to see that Robin’s arrow had hit the beast’s knee.
The man attempted to retain his hold on Ian, but Ian now had an advantage. He kicked the beast’s injured knee and the man went down, dropping Ian to stop his own fall.
Ian tumbled to the ground, rolling away to both stop his fall and get as much distance as possible.
Then he stood to assess this new battle.
The combined castle forces had surrounded several of Gareth’s guards.
The large beast-men appeared to be easily sweeping through their attackers, sending men careening to the floor.
The Majis were attempting to support them from above, sending down shimmers of harmony magic that seemed to irritate the chaos beasts.
Aden and Erich circled them, dashing in for short, hurried skirmishes looking for a weakness in their opponents.
Trusting his brothers, the castle guard, and the Majis to find a way to defeat the beasts, Ian turned his attention back to the dais. Back to his father.
But Gareth stood over Frederich once again.
Ian bounded up the steps, shocked to see that Gareth was still alive after taking an arrow to the throat. The arrow lay on the ground, discarded. Blood seeped from Gareth’s neck, dripping both over and under his armor.
He was holding the glass beads over Frederich once again, soaking up the older man’s pain as chaos magic.
Drawing the sword at his waist, Ian ran the final few steps across the dais and kicked Gareth away from his father.
Gareth fell back, surprised by the attack. He landed on his side.
Before he could recover, Ian held his sword over the man’s neck. “You will die for your crimes.” He adjusted his weight, preparing to drive the sword in and hoping that it would be able to finish what the arrow had somehow failed to do.
Gareth had no fear in his sickly yellow eyes as he looked back up at Ian.
“You cannot kill me.” He opened his mouth wide, baring his teeth as he practically snarled at Ian.
This close to Gareth’s face, Ian could see small, pointed tips on the man’s front teeth, almost like fangs.
He also saw the black centers of Gareth’s eyes grow suddenly large.
Horrified but determined, Ian drove his sword forward. Then, several things happened at once.
He was instantly shrouded in a darkness so dense that he thought he might have been blinded, but his eyes were still open.
And his sword, pushing forward to drive into Gareth’s neck, was met with nothing. Instead, Ian toppled forward, carried by the force he had put into the blow.
The tip of his sword did hit the floor of the dais, and Ian felt it scrape against the wood as he himself fell on top of the pommel he was holding. He staggered to the side as it dug into his stomach.
He released his grip on the sword and crawled on his hands and knees toward the side of the dais, feeling carefully with his hands.
He could still hear the battle happening on the other side of the room. No noises or shouts alerted him that anyone was aware something was wrong.
So Ian surmised that he was inside a cloud of darkness, like what Rigelt had created that day in the forest when they’d been running from Gareth’s assassins. He just needed to find his way out of the darkness without tumbling off the dais.
Using his hands, he felt along the floor of the dais until he found the edge of it. He swung his feet down. With his feet on the floor of the familiar room, he felt comfortable walking forward for several steps until his vision began to clear.
It was as he expected—a cloud of darkness surrounded the dais.
Gareth was nowhere to be seen.
Ian looked up at the balcony, but the Majis were already working to dispel the darkness. They sent out a shimmer of harmony magic across the room. The cloud cleared, revealing Frederich still lying on his back on the dais, his chest rising and falling.
Gareth, not surprisingly, had once again disappeared.