Chapter 2-57

Exhausted and aching, I sagged against the cold metal of the chamber wall. My spirit was in terrible shape. Mana exhausted, my old anima was next to falling apart, and now even my newly forged anima was scarred. If I wasn’t careful, I could easily tear myself apart, or become corrupted.

But across the room from me, Myta still led the fighters of our company against the Pure monks. The monolith was huge, an imposing great block of stone on the outside. But I knew that the ruin was configured differently inside, and was even larger. There was no telling how many Pure we might be facing, and I couldn’t afford to sit idle.

I was in no shape to use my sorcery, but I had another skill that I’d been practicing. One that only required my will and attention, I closed my eyes and opened my mind, letting the knowledge of my court wash over me.

I was no strategist, I was barely familiar with basic tactics, but Myta had been trained by Tarun, one of the best commanders I had known. She had the knowledge, but was too focused on her own fight to spare her attention for others. I scanned the battle, finding who was having the easiest fights, and who was hardest pressed. My initial instinct was to help those who were performing poorly, to try and save them from danger, but Myta’s instincts warned me away from that.

Instead, I skimmed a little extra mana from each of our fire aspect wielders. And funneled that mana to Fetu. He was one of our strongest fire sorcerers short of Myta herself, and had already dispatched the Pure monk he had been facing. Left without an opponent of his own, empowered by a fresh surge of energy, he was able to cut down two other pure monks in short order, saving two of our most badly pressed combatants.

That shift happened in only the first second that I opened my mind. The battle was brutal, and chaotic, and I began shuffling mana about like an experienced gambler shuffling cards. Here, I briefly shifted Kari’s strength to Jito, long enough for him to land a decisive blow. There, I nudged a soldier whose name I didn’t remember offhand, he fell to his knees so the man behind him could plant a blade in his opponent’s face

Minor bursts of power, or moments of inspiration that allowed half a dozen fights to turn in an instant.

When those fights turned, the company moved to support one another, and the confused melee became a bloody rout.

Myta’s opponent was the last to fall, a lithe woman who looked as though she’d lost half her face to a bear. She’d entered some kind of battle fugue, and didn’t even realize the fight was over until her arms and legs stopped working, her tendons cut and her torso pierced by numerous blades at once.

My flame looked at me, the need to pursue our retreating enemy burning in her eyes. We were tired, but the rest of the company were still riding high from the battle. I nodded grimly, and she was offf like a shot, our other warrriors trailing behind.

Myta charged forward, seeking any groupings of the pure. She avoided heading to the central courtyard, following my memories through the branching lattice of interior hallways that skirted around that space. She found a few groups, clearly stragglers who were still struggling to respond to our attack. As I’d predicted, the monks were using the courtyard as their mustering point.

My flame struck down what enemies she did find, and I shifted all the mana to her that the company could afford. Jito led the rest of our fighters to siege the courtyard, cutting off access as quickly as possible. There were fortunately only two ways to access that open space from the halls, and the entrances were narrow enough to bottle up. This, we had known, would always be our second point of pain. We could confine the Pure here, at least temporarily, but we would be setting ourselves up for ambush if we tried to enter the area.

Already I could feel our enemies gathering up their mana, ready to unleash their destructive sorcery if we tried to enter. Obviously we could try to starve them out, having just intercepted their latest resupply. But did we have that much time to waste? We had no idea how much support these monks had within Metic, who might come looking for them, or when.

No, we needed to eliminate these monks as quickly as possible. We needed to hunt their allies, support our own, and attempt to aid their captives.

I watched through the eyes of my companions as they discovered the captive shifters. Many of my company were sick at the sight of the starved and tortured men and women, but I was relieved. They were weak, and traumatized, but their mana wasn’t nearly as corrupt as I’d feared. Many of these warriors could likely still be saved.

Clearing the monolith entirely would take a great deal of time, time we didn’t have. Myta made one full circuit of the floor we were on, and then joined the larger group of fighters, ready to **** the courtyard.

“Shifters, stay in the rear until we reach the enemy.” Myta spoke with firm confidence, and Siobhan nodded in agreement. Even Saoirse accepted the command without complaint. They could all feel the wrathful pressure of killing intent that waited beyond the heavy metal doors.

I focused again, drawing up the presence of my court. The members of our company smiled in understanding and relief, while Siobhan and her fighters fidgeted with something like awe on their faces. Well, the shifters were heard to read in their bulky, feline forms but their mana spoke of surprise and wonder.

Every second the hateful wave of mana in the courtyard built. With no time to waste, Myta pushed the door open, and our fighters rushed in. Lances of solar fire, searing with heat, and the desire to render flesh to ash, hit the presence I commanded. These rays of light warped and twisted as they met my influence, disappearing into the vortex of power I shaped. I understood my court and domain far better now, and so I was able to siphon away the energy far more efficiently than I could have before.

A volley of Pure fury disappeared into my waiting maw. Siphoned to Tharsis until the spirit was fit to burst, and then stored for me in the Radiant Sea. I filtered and pulled out what I could, feeding a fraction of the mana back to Myta, and our other fire aspect wielders. It wasn’t a great deal of mana, but in a conflict like this every iota of power could make a difference.

Seeing how ineffective their volley had been, the monks instead withdrew and focused their presences. There were perhaps thirty Pure on the field, and they were all relatively fresh, while we were bloodied, and Myta was tired from our infiltration. While I trusted in our fighters, and our plan, I steeled myself for heavy losses among our company.

I released my hold on our group’s mana before the clash, reaching out farther instead. The ground of the courtyard erupted in sudden fury, dirt exploding upward into compacted stone spikes, and then shattering into wind-driven shrapnel. The explosion was a bit behind and off to one side of the monk’s formation, and so not as many of them were injured or killed as I’d hoped, but the shock disrupted their defense as our forces clashed.

Knowing what was coming, our fighters were prepared for the noise and confusion. They took full advantage of the shock and awe, as Hati’s team emerged from the tunnel entrance, a hatch near the middle of the courtyard. Her heavy fighters slammed into the Pure’s back line, as Myta struck the front, and Denu’s scouts fanned out around the area. Within the first thirty seconds of battle, Hati and Myta had met, splitting the Pure forces in half.

From that point forward, bloody chaos reigned. Ket, who had also emerged from the tunnels, drifted like a sanguine phantom among the Pure, stealing away the lives of the injured and afraid. Hati sought out the strongest of our enemies, laughing with bloodlust as her powerful blows launched her opponents bodily out of position. Myta followed the pattern she had shown me, racing to quickly end every conflict that was already in our favor, turning our inertia into an unstoppable wave.

Though the battle was heavily in our favor now, we didn’t reap their lives without cost. Jito and Kari focused their efforts on maintaining our ****’s cohesion, and defending those who fell. I tried to use my vasra’s own spirits to stabilize any injuries where I could, but wasn’t always successful. One of Hati’s squad perished when he stepped in to take a blow that would have landed on a shifter’s spine. Fetu was gutted, his belly split by an axe. I had to use his mana to cauterize the wound, and wasn’t sure if he would live.

The strongest of the monks, their leader I was sure, rallied the last remaining members of their ****. They broke out together toward the second exit from the courtyard, the one that we only had a few fighters guarding. Hati had shaped a thick layer of compacted earth over the blade of her glaive, infusing it with extra weight and durability, transforming her weapon into a long-handled maul. With a brutal swipe, she destroyed the knee of one of the runners before they could use their superior speed to escape.

Jito and Kari took out a second runner, their coordination nearly perfect even without my guidance. Jito swept at the monk’s ankles, forcing him to leap over the strike. That left him unable to dodge when Kari’s blade met his face, cleaving away half of his skull. Her glaive had been sweeping through her strike even before the monk jumped.

Alone, the leader of our enemies crashed into the door. His strength overpowered our guards there, who stumbled into the courtyard as the door was dragged open despite their best efforts. Their resistance was enough to slow, but not stop, the elite monk, and no other members of our company were close.

I snarled in frustration as I saw our final opponent about to escape. He would undoubtedly act against the captured shifters somehow, or try to alert his allies of our presence and actions. But salvation came in the form of two clawed paws emerging from the shadowed hall, raking across the monk’s face.