Chapter 18 Amarhuk （Rook）
AMARHUK (ROOK)
This was the last place in the entire world I wanted to be.
I still couldn’t believe my master had forced me to help Izzy.
I’d been trying to stay away from her, for my own health and sanity, but here I was, by her side, facing down a psychopath.
Not that I wouldn’t have ended up here eventually.
As much as I wished to avoid her, I still couldn’t let anything happen to Izzy.
I wanted her away from me, not dead. Just because I couldn’t let myself fall for her, didn’t mean I wouldn’t help her if she needed it.
Still…
Now my life was on the line and my relationship with her out in the open. Well, not exactly how I felt, but that I’d sided with her. I’d have a huge fucking target on my back after this.
Assuming I survived.
And that was far from a given.
Our plan was sound, but what was that human realm saying? Something about no plan surviving contact with the enemy? Exactly.
Saldrea was powerful, as were each of her companions.
I knew exactly how powerful Hana was specifically.
I’d had a fling with her a couple years back.
Well, I’d thought it was a fling, but she’d gotten attached and kept dragging me back to her, dominating my mind to make me love her.
She was a truly sick little woman, and I didn’t like the way she was grinning at me now.
Luckily — if I could say anything good had come from our horrid time together— I could resist her mental domination now.
Concubi fed off lust and sex. We drained it from our partners, not enough to harm them, but enough to feed ourselves.
What most people didn’t know was that if a concubi fed off the same partner for a prolonged period, they’d start to take more than just their lust, they’d learn their partner’s powers.
From Hana, I’d eventually gleaned how to protect my mind, and I’d acquired a limited telepathy. That was how I’d been able to speak into Izzy’s mind. It was limited in that I could only connect with one person at a time, and oddly, ever since I’d connected with Izzy… I hadn’t been able to let go.
I still got stray thoughts from her from time to time… especially when they were screaming loud… like last night… twice. I hadn’t needed to know how good of an orgasm that damned seraph could give her.
I pushed those thoughts aside. They wouldn’t help me now. I needed to focus on the fight to come. It would take everything I had to win this.
“We can do this,” Izzy whispered to each of us. “Keep to the plan.”
A dominion match started with the ringing of a massive bell to one side of the field. The ringing of that same bell would also signal the end of the match; it was something loud enough that everyone should hear it.
Everyone on the pitch looked over at the troll standing by the bell with a massive hammer.
He swung.
We tensed.
The bell rang.
And dazzling light blasted to life on the far side of the field.
As much as I hated to admit it, Vyns really was our secret weapon.
No one thought a light wielder would be any good in a dominion match, but they forgot one crucial detail.
Of all the elements, light was the easiest and fastest to summon, especially for a simple dazzling effect like this.
Where our opponents would need a second or two to bring their elements to bear, Vyns didn’t.
The ladies on the far side of the pitch screamed and cursed.
Time to do our thing.
I summoned fire.
Yet even before I could get my shot off, Saldrea acted.
Apparently, she didn’t need to see to throw massive stones in Izzy’s direction.
The attack wasn’t perfect, since Izzy had been on the move.
Still, one of the massive boulders caught Izzy a glancing blow and she gave a clipped cry as she was thrown back, hitting the ground hard, and rolling.
Fuck!
No!
But Izzy recovered and caught herself before going over the stone line marking the back half of our field.
“I’m good. Go!” she shouted. The pain in her voice belied her words, but still, the rest of us had a job to do.
I usually threw small balls of fire from my hands, but our plan hinged on me being able to do more. That’s what I’d been practicing yesterday and this morning.
I blasted fire at Neyalim, a massive cone, meant to hit her, no matter where she might go.
If she dodged to one side or the other, I’d still hit her.
Her only “safe” path was through the flames.
A short jaunt through pain and she’d come out the front, relatively unharmed.
But we were all counting on that being a counterintuitive move.
And it was.
She screamed, the sound shrieking up through a couple octaves as she tried to get out of the way of the fire and couldn’t, or so I assumed. I had no way to see her. I blasted that cone of flame for as long as I could, before collapsing from the effort of the attack, my fire flickering out.
Neyalim was off the pitch entirely, completely out of the game, badly burned. A healer ran to tend to her. I had little sympathy, knowing she’d happily have drowned any of us to win this match.
I retreated. I wouldn’t be able to do that again. It had taken too much out of me, but I’d done it, I’d taken one of their team out of the fight, right at the start of the match. Miraculously we were up by one.
Izzy’s grandmother had blasted water at Hana, hoping to do what I’d done to Neyalim, but the sylph, though she’d been pushed back, managed to fly up out of the tidal wave and stay in play.
Still… our plan was working!
Saldrea screamed in fury, and the sand at our feet whipped into a frenzy.
Fuck! I shielded my eyes.
Izzy shouted through the storm of sand, “Keep on the move, Saldrea knows where we are!”
I flung out my wings and launched myself into the air. Yesterday, Izzy had been practicing feeling through the ground. I guessed Saldrea could do the same thing. She didn’t need her eyes to know where we were.
But Izzy and her grandmother didn’t have wings, stuck on the ground.
Unable to see anything I heard shouts and cries all over the field.
“Fuck!” came a distinctly male voice. “I can’t concentrate, light’s down!” Vyns shouted. I wanted to blame him, but I couldn’t. This sand was infuriating.
The sand abated, but it still took me a moment to blink my eyes open.
When I did, two things happened at once.
Izzy’s grandmother — hidden as the nymph Tala — blasted Hana again.
And she would have knocked the sylph out of the game…
if the other thing hadn’t happened. Golana and Saldrea teamed up on the nymph.
Two massive waves of earth converged on the woman, pushing and crushing her at the same time.
She was shoved behind the line, but not off the pitch, and when the earth subsided, the woman was a crumpled, mangled mess.
Blazes!
And the worst part was, no healer would come to her aid. The healers could only tend to those who’d been pushed off the field entirely.
“No!” Izzy cried.
And with Hana no longer under assault, and Vyns still recovering from that sand — which, now that I could see better, seemed to have been focused on him — Hana finally got in the game, blasting air at us. And she was one of the most powerful sylphim on campus.
Her raging tempest howled around us. My wings caught the gale and nearly blew me away entirely. I flashed my wings away to minimize my exposure to the attack. But now I was falling. Though Hana’s wind meant I travelled more horizontally than vertically.
Vyns, however, had been completely unprepared for the assault, wings fully extended. He was blown back, tumbling over the rough ground, to the back of the pitch, behind the line. A wall of earth rose and stopped him before he was taken completely off the field.
Izzy.
I would have been taken out by the attack as well… if Izzy hadn’t caught me. I don’t know how she did it, how she knew where I was, or how she managed to grab my arm as I flew by, but she did.
Izzy had blocked the wind attack with a wall of stone, and she pulled me down into that stillness with her.
“Thanks,” I muttered as we huddled close behind that wall.
Blazing Fires! She was too close. I caught her scent of cinnamon and apples and my body responded viscerally, instantly on high alert… for sex, not danger. I didn’t know how she could affect me so damned easily. One sniff, and I was gone.
I gritted my teeth. Now really wasn’t the time for thoughts of ravishing Izzy. Yet, with her so close it was hard not to think about it.
“You good?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. I needed to be anywhere but here, so near to her I couldn’t think straight.
“Then get ready. There’s still three of them out there and we’re down to two. We can’t stay here or Saldrea and Golana will crush us.”
“Now!” Izzy hissed, and we both darted in different directions.
Vyns had recovered and, since he wasn’t off the field entirely, he could still fight. Blinding light covered the other side of the field once more.
Hana gasped, her winds dying down.
Izzy summoned water as I summoned fire.
We’d worked out last night that water was the only element which would be effective against Hana.
Fire she could blow away and snuff out with her wind, big earth attacks wouldn’t reach her if she was flying and she would blow away any small stones thrown at her.
That meant blasting her with water was the only option.
Izzy took up where her grandmother had left off and blasted Hana with a massive gout of water.
Meanwhile, I threw fire at Saldrea and Golana.
Izzy’s water attack, though not as forceful as her grandmother’s, hit true, pushing Hana behind the line and knocking her out of the sky, gasping for air and sputtering out water.
My fire did little to Golana and Saldrea, who blocked with quickly erected shields of earth. Then they both attacked with earth as I took to the air again, safe in the skies now that Hana was taking a second to recover. Or at least, I thought I was safe…
A column of earth rose up and seized my foot.
Fuck.
The grasping earth flung me back to the ground, hard, stunning me.
Then two crushing waves of earth converged on me. They pushed me behind the line while crushing my body. Bones snapped, blood burst forth. I remained conscious only due to my power with spirit.
And as the earth receded and I lay broken on the ground, Izzy cried out, reaching for me, even as she dodged more earth attacks.
She was the only member of our team still counting on the field. Vyns and I could fight — if I could manage to even get up and do anything more than bleed — but if Izzy was knocked behind the line we’d lose. And she was facing two very strong earth wielders, one of whom wanted her dead.
And technically Hana was still in this fight and could blast wind again once she’d recovered. Luckily, she was blinded by Vyns’ light… but the other two, Saldrea and Golana, could feel through the earth, so Vyns’ distraction would have little effect on them, now that they were expecting it.
And as much as I wanted Izzy to win this fight, the longer she stayed in, the greater the chance I’d bleed out and die from my wounds. A selfish shame filled me as I wished for Izzy to lose quickly… so a healer could tend to me once the game was done.
That was my last thought before I blacked out.