The four vital Source casting points were now bristling with Pact soldiers. The Xenai were painfully aware of the loss and as she ran with her team to return to the Pact army, Shara could feel the hunt for her. Whenever any Xenai got a glimpse of her, she could sense the ice pick of alarm jabbing through it and spreading out from it throughout the rest of their army. Taeri sensed it, too, keeping a firm hold on her waist as they dodged through trees and troops, heading back to their own lines.
Shara glanced behind them for the others, for James, when Taeri gave her a soft push, “We can’t wait.”
She kept moving. The lightly worn trail they had taken up to the ledges was impossible to pick out while they ran, but she trusted Taeri’s guiding pushes and kept following the way he directed her to go. They left behind the immediate skirmishes of the paths around the ravine and entered an area thicker in underbrush. The battle sounds still rose to her left, but over the battle, she could hear their own movements through the woods and the incredible stillness to their right, as if all other living things had fled.
“Do you know where we are?”
“Roughly. We oughta be able to circle back soon and be close to our vantage points for you—behind our troops.”
She nodded, her lungs burning from the exchange. She marveled at how easily Taeri seemed to move and talk, as if he did this all the time. He gave her a gentle push to the left, and they veered back toward the sound of the battle.
After several more minutes of travel through the woods, the path appeared again, and the trees thinned to nearly nothing. Taeri leaped past her, motioning for her to stay behind him as he checked out where they were. She followed him closely. He crossed the path and walked out on the outcropping of rocks, peering down. He looked back and nodded to her. She stepped out and looked down. They had come out a little early, but were still behind their lines, but barely. They stood twenty feet above the men below, a dozen feet back from the very front where the two armies met.
She instantly spied James’ distinctive shield in the fray below. He was harder to make out, but the white triangular shape popped into view, smeared with black and red, before vanishing again. She pointed it out to Taeri as the sense of being hunted washed over her again. He grabbed her arm and tugged slightly, indicating they needed to be farther back. She looked around; the path was clear and no Xenai could sneak up on them here.
As she turned to tell Taeri they should stay a moment to help the front, Taeri let go of her arm and rushed to the forward edge of the rocks. She followed his gaze to find what he was watching. Past the rocky walls of the ravine where they stood and where the side paths met the gaps in the cliff face, the floor of the ravine was filled with Xenai. The thick sprawl of the Xenai was growing darker and, somehow, taller. Shara realized that the Xenai were rushing toward the Pact army with such force that they were climbing over each other in order to move forward. As the wall of Xenai grew closer, they could see that the Xenai were was so close together that when they ran over each other, they were creating waves of Xenai—crashing and tumbling toward the Pact army. When that hit, the front lines would be devastated. They would wipe the entire Pact army out.
Shara planted her feet. She touched the shimmering blue stone on her amulet. Taeri’s own amulet carried the less powerful orange moonstone in it: they needed all the help they could get for this. She grabbed Taeri’s hand, placing it on her amulet. She formed the image in her mind and heard Taeri chanting a support spell beside her, turning himself into a conduit for her to use. Using her Intuition, she felt out for the rocks that had fallen from the source points she had attacked and any other loose rocks in the ravine. She found everything she could and she pulled with all the force in her mind. With her Intuition, she watched them fly towards her army and felt the resistance when the stones collided with Xenai, splattering them. At least, she hoped they were all Xenai. The rocks drew close to the Pact lines, but before they hit her men, she Mooncast on them, ripping them apart into dust and redirecting the momentum of the rocks up into the air.
The stone dust billowed out and upward, accumulating into a wall made of red cloud. Still, it wasn’t enough. She needed more rocks and she needed them quickly. The charge of Xenai was almost to her men.
She extended the spell to pull more rocks from the cliff walls, hurtling them toward her wall, where they burst and joined the dust. The front portion of the Xenai charge burst through the cloud. The shouts, wails and sounds of men dying amplified below. Shara took in a trembling breath. She couldn’t get distracted, now.
The cloud finally stood a dozen feet thick and forty feet high. The top curved away from the Pact troops and toward the Xenai army. She closed her eyes and focused. The wall snapped back into solid rock, shrinking down to half the thickness and height, but blocking the passage from the rest of the charging Xenai. Hundreds of Xenai passing through the barrier of dust during the snap were squished, leaving half their bodies behind the wall and half in front of it.
With nowhere else to go, the waves of Xenai flowed into the openings onto the path below where she stood. The thick stream of Xenai was already visible on the path fifty feet below their vantage point, their only available heading was straight up the path to where she stood. She felt their focus switch to her as they pieced together what she had done. The swarm of Xenai surged toward her.
Shit!
Taeri dropped his hand from her amulet, immediately grabbing her hand and running. Her mind flew through her options while they ran—using the trees, creating a fire, destroying the path with a Mooncast—but everything would slow her down to cast more than it would slow the Xenai down, so she let Taeri drag her up the path. She could feel the Xenai and how much they were gaining. They had to jump the ravine.
She jerked Taeri’s hand to the left and headed to the ledge. He followed. She didn’t have the strength to ferry them both across the ravine to the other side, but she might be able to give them a soft landing into the middle of their own troops below, putting them safely behind the wall she had created. She wrapped her hand around his waist and he wrapped both his hands under her arms and they let themselves tip off the side as she conjured up a breeze. A single Xenai grabbed for them as they fell, missing her leg by inches before it tumbled off the edge behind them. She pulled on the rocks on each side of the ravine, slowing their fall and pushing her and Taeri into the center of the ravine as they fell. She closed her eyes, pushing as hard as she could on the rocks below.
She sensed the single unlucky Xenai plummet past them, but they were still hurtling toward the ground.
I have to do more!
She felt Taeri let go with one of his arms and then felt his hand on her amulet. Their bodies jerked around from his sudden movement.
“Use me!”
She reached out again and pushed as hard as she could. Using Taeri, the rocks around them and the air, she might manage. But multi-element casting was unpredictable. She focused, imagining three strands in her mind, one for each cast. The first thread pulled from Taeri, the second pushed them away from the ground, the third created a circular wind current, pushing up from the ground into them and then circling around again. She had to keep the casts separated or they would die.
They slowed down a little more.
She let go of Taeri and waved her hands in the air, managing each imaginary string in her mind. Pulling on this one and then another as each cast got weaker when she lost focus on it.
Taeri yelped and crumpled as they hit the ground. Shara hit a soldier behind her as she felt her legs collapse, which bounced her into Taeri, knocking him onto his back before she fell ontop of him.
The surrounding men in the ravine were retreating. Shara laid still, waiting for a gap in the movement of the troops that would give her space to jump up. Finally, the only men left retreating from the front were the slow moving injured, allowing her to scramble to her feet. She grabbed Taeri’s hand and helped him up. He yelped again as he put weight on his left leg. “Pretty sure it’s broke.”
“Damn. Sorry, Taeri, I tried.”
“Well, we ain’t dead, so you didn’t fail us, yet.”
She slid her shoulder under his arm, and they followed the rest of the men. Their progress was slow. By the time they made it all the way back to the medics, they were told that the battle was over and the Xenai had retreated.
“How’d that happen? Whole herd of those fuckers were coming over the hill when the girl tried to kill me.” Taeri asked the boy, shooting a barbed look and then a wink at Shara before wincing when the boy started tight wrapping his broken leg into a splint.
“They tried to flank us, but when the General saw that wall go up, he expected that. He put men on the pass over this side and bottlenecked them hard. A few at a time would poke their heads in and then lose them.”
Taeri laughed, “Just like I taught ‘im.”
The boy looked at Taeri, confused. Shara patted his shoulder, “I’m going to see if I can find the rest of the team.”
“Go see if that boy lived, sweet.”