[Ashborn-B1] 48. The Swordmage (Patreon)

XLVIII

The Swordmage

Heels slammed on the frozen ground of the tomb. “I…hate…running!”

Raven tossed back his arm. Dark clouds rushed out and showered their trail. He caught a glimpse of the dozen drakes on their heels, but that was all he needed. A spark. Then the entire tunnel rumbled. Winds blowing back blasted the soot underneath Kayle’s umbrella and into her face. She shot him a glare, which Raven disregarded.

The echoes of the explosion faded…revealing the heavy footfalls still lumbering after them. Bronze scales and gushing fires ripped through the smog.

Raven whipped back around. “Kiran! How fucking far away are they?!”

“Around the corner!” came the return call. “Depending on your speed,” he added with a bit of a giggle.

Raven chewed down on his response. Best not cuss out their lifeline.

Before long, walls widened and flattened before evening out into a valley, where a series of plateaus layered on top of each other like steps crawled down. Pillars of ice dominated the land like a forest.

“Keep going straight,” Kiran said.

A path carved between the plateaus like a mountain pass.

Roars cascaded off the cliff walls. Flashes in the corner of his sight made Raven duck, and the bars of flame shot overhead. They ripped into a slew of pillars, melting the bases so the columns tumbled and nearly crushed the fleeing duo.

“Kiran!” Raven yelled.

“A bit further!”

The first of the drakes got in range and lunged. Its jaw barely missed the ends of Kayle’s loose hair. But with its teeth so close, there was no way for its breath to miss. Its jaw opened wide, and fires engulfed the potential heiress of the Dawnflames. A second bar fired and joined the first, the two beams forming a scissor-like shape as they melted their poor victim.

Raven didn’t turn around and kept running. Kayle may be a nuisance at the best of times, but she wasn’t without her tools. A fact the heels screeching over ice solidified. Kayle flew out of the blast, umbrella spread wide behind her. The blasts hadn’t done anything but singe strands of her hair and propel her further down the path.

Her head popped from beside her cover with a smile. “Thanks!”

Raven stifled a sigh. Like he said, annoying at the best of times.

The drakes roared their annoyance after seeing the futility of their attacks. Their fellow Dragonflight members barrelled down the path, nothing but rage and venom in their eyes, fires building in their jaws.

“Get ready,” came the whisper beside his ear.

Raven’s gaze swivelled to find what he needed to prepare for.

He felt it before he saw it.

Essence pooling somewhere over his head. Energy condensing until it was no longer formless potential…then rays of light. Beaming. Their mere presence heating his skin. The drakes whipped up and stared at the sea of daggers hovering in the sky like a god’s guillotine. Despite the glare, their edges, so sharp they cut the air, and the fumes of cool air superheating could clearly be made out.

The drakes were no slouches. They took aim and fired in tandem—

“Rainfall,” a cold, feminine voice uttered.

The blades weren’t big, each perhaps the size of a dagger. But they were numerous. Where they met resistance, knifepoints sheared through both scales and ice like they were but paper.

Drakes howled. Blood scattered. Outside of a few lethal hits, the rain of blades didn’t kill the drakes outright, neither did it injure them enough to leave them unable to fight back. But it pinned limbs to the floor and momentarily immobilised their targets.

“Fire!” someone yelled.

What happened next was something akin to a lightshow. More light constructs formed on top of the cliffs rising on each side. Spears, swords, arrows, weapons that Raven couldn’t name.

These did kill. Two or three at a time, the drakes found themselves skewered like meat on a stick.

Still, despite being ambushed, the Dragonflight put up a resistance. They blasted weapons out the sky where they could and spread out to make themselves harder targets. They retreated back up the slope, dragging the allies they could with them, but leaving at least two dozen of their own behind.

A clump of gathering energy drew Raven’s gaze to the wall opposite of him. One foot planted on a rock, a blonde girl stood at the very edge. The blue stone at the head of the bone staff in her hands rippled and pulsed like it was chuckling, giddy with finally finding a release.

The retreating drakes struggled to go faster.

Light warped. Twisted. The trembling blue stone was lost in the building radiance.

Completely floored by what he was seeing, Raven identified the woman.

[Swordmage - lvl. 16]

Raven’s eyes widened. ‘Lvl. 16?! Has she been cutting her way through the Tomb?’

There was no doubt in his mind that this was Judith Vire. Yet the stories he’d heard of her failed to match with the woman entirely. Because, whatever the dull look on her face was, it wasn’t the shame of a dethroned heir.

The shadow hanging over Judith’s face deepened, cloaking any leftover emotion.

The drake heading the retreat glared up in defiance. Yet there was nothing it could do against the impending doom.

Before the girl fired, a man wearing glasses sauntred up to her side and whispered something. Judith listened with half an ear, keeping her eyes ahead. She lowered her staff after a moment passed, and warping light died down.

The drakes didn’t hesitate to flee, and soon, the sole sounds in the valley were the pained cries of the abandoned, and the ragged breathing of two escapees.

Judith glanced down, took in Raven and Kayle, then shouted: “Ashe isn’t with you?”

“Long story!” Raven called back.

“Then you’d better get up here quick.”

Their seat at the edge of the cliff gave them vantage on the path below them, where hundreds of bisected pieces of bronze drake meat littered. Raven met the eyes of a decapitated skull. They still moved in their sockets.

A shiver passed through him. Being a conscious, bodiless head…it wasn’t a fate he’d wish on his worst enemy.

He turned away and sipped from the mug Kayle had offered him. He would’ve refused—the girl had a way of turning the smallest gestures into debts—but it would’ve been rude not to drink given his company at the table. At least the drink of spirit herbs helped him rejuvenate his lost essence.

Judith drew from her own drink. “I see. Unfortunate that we had to miss each other.”

“Are you worried for her?” Tirion said.

It’d been a surprise to find the man known as The Dagger amongst Judith’s party. What surprised Raven more was that he hadn’t assumed command of the delegation of more than a hundred disciples.

‘I thought his faction was trying to upset Caelia’s dominance.’ If so, showing he could lead a contingent this large through the Tomb should be on his priority list. And while Judith was technically of a higher status and had showed a significant increase in combat prowess, Tirion was her senior in both age and strength.

Raven glanced at Kayle, whose face was painted in the simile of a smile. Had they read the situation wrong?

Judith shook her head. “Ashe will be fine. If anything, it’s us we should worry about.”

Well, their locators weren’t moving strangely, so they should still be alive.

“What should we be worried about?” Kayle asked.

“Caelia,” Tirion said, tone flat. “Not a single disciple, even from the other clans, has sighted her yet.”

“Her locator?” Raven said.

While their parties had shared locators with one another, the locators were stronger and more easily discernible if you were actual party members. Caelia should be in Judith’s party.

“Inactive,” Judith said. “But not destroyed.”

Raven’s brow furrowed. The locators had an off function. However, there was no reason for anyone to turn their locator off. Why would want to make it harder for others to find you? The whole point of their plan was to gather as fast as possible.

“We’re as clueless as you are,” Tirion sighed. “My guess is that something is interfering with her beacon.”

…Well, there was nothing they could do about it now, he supposed.

He turned an eye to the rest of the army. The disciples were using their break to refuel. Around twenty or so cloaked in red robes with sun-motives were clumped together.

Raven turned back to the table. “Do you have a target in mind? We still need to make contact with the Shrine of the Dove.”

“We’re headed north,” Judith said. “There are clusters of our allies on the way to our shrine.”

North was back in the direction they’d fled from.

“The Dragonflight will be clogging the passages by now,” Kayle said over the rim of her cup.

“I hope so.” Judith said. Her staff, which was leaning against the side of the table, trembled.

Raven exhaled. Soft. That’s what they called Judith in closed circles, which was simultaneously her selling point and flaw. Some in her clan thought that quality made her easy to follow as she’d not be prone to discarding her own. Others claimed it’d make her a sympathetic and weak ruler unable to make tough decisions. Even others thought it made her an easy target for manipulation.

Raven’s gaze narrowed. That soft undertone…

‘…I’m not seeing it.’

Almost as if on cue, Kiran appeared some distance away from their table, bowing over his arm.

Kayle motioned him over. “Good news, I hope. I’ve done enough running for today.”

“Good and bad,” the shadowfoot said. “The drakes are returning to the chamber where we split from Ashe and Rin.”

It’d been a concern whether or not they’d wait for reinforcements and try attacking again.

“The bad news?” Raven said.

“The scorn are blocking the passages as we speak.”

And so the ‘clusters’ on their way may not be allies at all.

“Then we’d better hurry.” Judith stood and signalled a large man carrying a claymore.

“Lady!“ he saluted. Only then did Raven recognise the man for Garen. His helmet left not an inch of his face visible.

“We’re marching,” Judith said. “Rally our men.”

Another salute, and the vassal was off.

She turned to regard Raven and Kayle. “Sorry, but you’ll have to decide quick if you and your clan are going to follow us.”

Raven pushed himself out of his seat. “Don’t worry. We had no intention of going our separate way. We’re stronger together.”

Judith nodded and strode off, followed by Tirion.

Kayle took the time to collect her tableware. “She’s quite different from what I expected.”

“Must be the Tomb,” Raven said. Or whatever they fed her during her time in the castle. He glanced down the cliff, where the dismembered still squirmed. “It changes people. If not physically, then in spirit.”

“All the more reason to get out of here as soon as possible.” Storing the last of her wares and the table, Kayle unfolded her umbrella. From the shade, she stared at their clan members. “We’ll need more if we want to challenge the Dove shrine, though.”

“Indeed.” They weren’t certain how difficult the shrine would be, but the Vermilion Dawn herself had failed to clear it when she’d entered six hundred years ago.

Fishing his locator out, Raven palmed the object and turned north. Many of the strongest signals were on the other side, where Ashe and Rin would be if they’d made it. It’d be up to them to gather the bulk of their allies.

‘She didn’t seem like she enjoyed leading.’ Despite gaining enough favour to challenge all her peers in the clan openly, Ashe was fine following Kayle and his lead when it came down to it. She also wasn’t one to put her desires above that of her allies—like in the case of Erri. Had Raven been placed in the same position, he would’ve eliminated the heiress of the Dragonflight regardless of the cost to the Dawnflames. Especially if he could consume her corpse afterwards.

He put away his locator. No. Ashe wasn’t a leader. She lacked the training, understanding of their political landscape, and conviction. But more often than not, strength was all that was required to knead a discordant bunch into a cohesive unit for a while.

His lips pulled into a line. On one end, he hoped she pulled through—retrieving the Vermilion’s heritage was their first priority. Doing so would do wonders for their clan. And given Ashe’s disinterest in anything but her own inheritance, he could ‘steal’ most of the limelight in the aftermath of their success. But on the other hand…he couldn’t help but hope he’d be the sole person to complete the shrine.

That’d put him in a prime position to take over control.

“Men are so predictable.”

He turned to the source of the voice.

Kayle watched the disciples all around her rush to their feet with an easy smile. Her near-orange hair twirled despite the lack of a breeze.

“Are we, now?” he said.

She angled her umbrella and looked over her shoulder. “You always covet that which must not be.”

In the dim lighting of the Tomb, her cape was almost an extension of her slender back. Her dress fanned out around her lower body but was just compact enough to allow a hint at what was hidden underneath.

Raven didn’t miss the many glances the disciples, including that of their clan, cast her way despite their haste. The way she smit each of them with that pearly white smile of hers, hooked and and dragged them in, already skewing who they’d align themselves with should push come to shove.

And what was there to worry about? Kayle was a healer. A pearl in need of protection that couldn’t hurt anyone on its own. They were safe with her.

Raven’s gaze narrowed. Ashe should be the least of his worries.

The Tomb was far from the only thing that would lead him to this death.