Chapter 41: 41. Winged Doom

Excerpt from General Yrkzhext’s “Peace By Force.”

“On the battlefield, nothing matters more than knowledge. The unknown foe is a terrible foe, for his plans cannot be foreseen and his capabilities cannot be planned for. If you can avoid it, never face a foe that you don’t know—if instead the foe knows you, consider offering your surrender.”

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The dark shadow of the beast-man hung in the air for a moment, framed in the silvery light as he leapt up. He dived towards Yenna like a bird of prey, and even her mental acceleration could barely keep up with his speed. Fear rippled through her, manifesting as dark lightning that arced from her outstretched hand. The bolt struck the beast-man directly in the chest, causing him to abort its dive—though it didn’t seem to cause any lasting damage. The burnt flesh left behind where the bolt impacted was raw and red for a moment before the skin knit itself back together with little more than a scorch mark.

Yenna suddenly realised how small the space was. Tirk was fortunately behind her, but there was barely any room to dodge, let alone escape. The beast-man held his wicked claws out to either side, and with his wings outstretched he blocked off any path back to the ramp. Yenna didn’t like her chances of fighting her way through him either, especially while keeping Tirk safe. As she strained at the last few moments of her mental acceleration, Yenna could feel her heart pounding in her chest as though it was planning an escape of its own.

The lack of wound on the beast-man’s broad, powerful chest singularly ruled out defeating him by sheer magical force. She was no war-mage, and her opponent was clearly no stranger to fighting—in a battle of strength, Yenna could not possibly hope to prevail. Thinking back to his appearance in the manor, the beast-man had also thrown dark red flames—the mage couldn’t be sure if it was some beast’s ability that he was using, but she had a sinking feeling that the beast-man was a spellcaster as well.

With a sweep of her arm, Yenna sent out a fierce gust of wind that pushed the beast-man back a step. Loose star charts and astronomical instruments flew across the room, the heavier objects smacking into the tower’s thick glass dome with a series of muffled thuds. The beast-man quickly adapted, instinctively turning his wings into the wind to stabilise himself. For every step Yenna forced him back, the beast-man’s wicked talons took two steps forward. Feeling desperate, the mage let out another blast of air directly into the beast-man’s chest, concentrating her all on the whipping green magic that strained to hold her foe at bay.

There was an immediate problem with her strategy, beside the fact that it was barely prolonging the inevitable. The stillness of the surrounding area meant that Yenna’s local supply of manipulatable magic was worryingly finite. It wasn’t unheard of for powerful spells to deplete the area of magic on their own, and much more powerful spells often required their own dedicated supply¹, but a spell like this wind blast would normally be able to operate nearly indefinitely—so long as Yenna could concentrate on it, that was.

Running out of magic right now would be her doom. While the beast-man was apparently a spellcaster after some fashion, it didn’t seem like he had any qualms with fighting hand to hand. Her mind strained as she split off part of her focus to work out a plan, keeping a metaphorical eye on the local supply of magic as she did. Her plan was risky—better if I needn’t use it. If I can avoid it with words…

“W-Wait, stop!” Yenna called out, her weak voice mostly drowned out by the raging winds. “Please, s-s-step back, o-or I’ll…!”

The beast-man didn’t so much as hesitate, its beaked face unreadable. Yenna gulped—I was hoping that would work…

Still, it hadn’t left her without recourse. There was barely enough magic left in this side of the room to continue the spell at all, Yenna’s Joyous wind fading to a pathetic, useless gust. Her heart pounded as her back legs tensed. Yenna tore a hand away from her spell, grabbing Tirk by the collar as she prepared to make a break for it.

The beast-man saw what she was doing and moved to intercept—spreading its wings and claws wide again to block off any path of escape. Gritting her teeth, Yenna waited for her moment. Timing needs to be perfect! If I can get out of here and meet up with Narasanha, I’ll be safe…!

As the assailant stepped within a single pace of Yenna, the mage grabbed at the air and pulled hard. The beast-man’s glowing green eyes widened with realisation as a gale-force wind slammed into the back of his legs, sending his talons sliding forward and tilting his entire body back. Yenna had used all the accumulated magic stuck on the other end of the room like a battery, forcing it to knock the man to the ground—but it would all be for naught if she were standing there too, as the man looked set to collide with her.

Yenna leapt. The mage could feel every tense, coiled muscle in her lower body release at once, springing her up and over the wave of violent wind that crashed across the floor. She yanked Tirk into her grasp, holding him close to her chest as her hooves skimmed the top of the collapsing beast-man’s head. It felt to Yenna as though she was stuck in mid-air, entirely vulnerable to a retaliatory strike—still, her calculations had been correct and the angle of her jump was true. The man’s muscular frame was simply too heavy to correct itself after being tilted so suddenly and powerfully off balance.

Then, hooves on the ground, Yenna ran. She bolted with all the speed a kesh could muster in a panic, straight for the spiral ramp—nearly running directly into Narasanha halfway down. Without a word, the bodyguard slipped neatly to one side to allow Yenna to continue fleeing, the mage making a break for the doorway. Behind her, pounding footsteps on the upper level heralded a pursuit.

Sparing a glance upwards, Yenna watched as Narasanha stabbed upwards with a shortsword, causing the beast-man to abort an attempt to leap directly down to ground level—but only for a moment. As Narasanha pulled her arm back and went to swing with a handaxe, the monster lifted a vicious claw and unleashed a puff of black smoke. The dark cloud lingered for a fraction of a second before exploding into deep red flame, blowing a hole clean through part of the ramp as it forced Narasanha to tuck and roll.

“Make for the square!” The bodyguard gave a shout, followed by the sound of clashing steel. Yenna didn’t dare take another peek—she kept running. At some point she shoved Tirk onto her back, the boy reluctantly coming out of Yenna’s grip to instead cling for dear life onto the bag strapped across her lower body. With Tirk back there, Yenna could be sure that any attack that would harm him would have to go through her defenses first—she really couldn’t think of anywhere safer, though it wasn’t by a wide margin.

Narasanha wasn’t far behind. Even as Yenna’s hooves clattered onto the stones of the town square, she could hear the muffled sounds of combat approaching. Behind her, the bodyguard made a fighting retreat. The beast-man was quick to parry blows with his talons or block blunt strikes with his arms, but Narasanha was faster—and had an extra set of arms, to boot. Still, for every tiny opening Narasanha made, the beast-man swung in with a vicious, implacable set of punches, kicks and talon-swipes that left scratches across the woman’s arms.

It was clear to Yenna that Narasanha was fighting a losing battle. The bodyguard was an impressive force, but the beast-man wasn’t going to lose to swords and maces. Some manner of enchantment caused their assailant’s wounds to close up near instantly, and he hadn’t shown signs of slowing down at all. Nearly as fast as Narasanha and likely stronger, Yenna would have to even the odds.

But what can I do? A blast of lightning or wind would just as likely hit her ally, to say nothing of its lack of effect. After a brief moment of consideration, Yenna decided to attempt to bind him. There was no force of regeneration known to her that was powerful enough to deal with the downsides of being entirely immobilised, but whatever fetters she employed had to be powerful—lest the beast-man snap himself free by force of arm or magic.

“Try and keep him still!” Yenna called out. 

Narasanha gave a somewhat incredulous grunt, making the mage realise what a ridiculous statement that was, but did her best to keep the beast-man corralled in one place. The bodyguard leapt about like a dancer, her arms swinging with practiced coordination to create a nightmare zone of pain around her. Grateful for the powerful warrior’s assistance, Yenna focused on the spell.

The spell Yenna had in mind was not a unique creation or alteration of a basic spell—it even had a name, though it was rather generic. Arcane Fetters was a fairly common spell with a variety of useful alterations, though its most frequent use was in a lab environment, securing volatile or unstable objects to permit the performance of slower or more delicate spells. The mage created the fetters in her mind as she watched the beast-man swing flesh-rending talons mere inches from Narasanha’s body.

The initial component was a ‘wrap’, a flexible sheath of unaligned force that would envelop the target. The flexibility of the wrap made Arcane Fetters useful on any target, as it would match the target’s shape before solidifying. Then once the wrap was in place, the ‘tethers’ could be deployed—anchors of magic placed into solid objects nearby that would pull on corresponding parts of the wrap to ensure immobility. In short, it functioned like a net that secured itself to the ground.

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Holding the spell in her hands, Yenna wheeled around the fight to get the beast between herself and Narasanha. The monster, evidently aware of what Yenna was doing, did his best to keep Yenna from getting behind him—though this came at the cost of taking more damage from Narasanha. Yenna watched as the beast let through blows to his arms and legs, though he expertly parried or dodged attacks that aimed at his head or torso. The beast was still regenerating from blows made to those parts, but it made Yenna wonder what he was protecting—Questions to be answered later! First, the Fetters.

Narasanha gave a huge swing with both of her left arms and faded backwards, prompting the beast to unleash a massive straight-armed thrust with his talons. For a moment, Yenna’s eyes locked with the bodyguard’s stern gaze—Narasanha had convinced him to overextend at no small risk to herself, so Yenna could get her spell off. She did so eagerly—it was as simple as holding her hands up and releasing the held magic.

The enchantment fired into action. A motive component forced the invisible bundle of programmed magic forward, the wrap enveloping the beast in an instant. Then, from several key points, tethers hit the ground and the entire spell went solid. For a moment the beast-man stumbled, then froze in place entirely as the magic in the air itself solidified around him. Yenna could feel him straining against it with impossible strength, but for once the stillness had helped—this still world liked it when the beast-man stopped moving, and fought back against his struggles.

Narasanha approached the bound beast with her weapons at the ready, though she did not strike.

“How many more of you are there? Who sent you?” Her voice was quiet, but the hatchet she held at the beast’s throat more than outlined her threat.

The beast didn’t make a sound—it hadn’t made a sound this entire time, and that worried Yenna. There had been no threats or demands, no calls for surrender—just unrestrained bloodlust. Even now it was still straining against the fetters, muscles rippling within the solid sheath of force. Of course, the Arcane Fetters spell was a named and commonly used spell because of how efficient it was—breaking out with pure muscle once it had solidified was not a simple thing.

“Speak, or I rip out your throat!” Narasanha hooked the bottom of her hatchet into the side of the beast-man’s muscular neck, her face twisting with anger.

Suddenly, the man began to mutter. Narasanha leaned in to listen to the softly spoken words, but alarm bells tingled up and down Yenna’s spine. Behind her, Tirk had begun to quiver and whimper.

“Get back!” Yenna shouted, springing away from the fettered beast. Narasanha’s eyes widened and she did exactly that, leaping backwards at a phenomenal speed. Despite the warning, it was too little too late. With a strained whisper, the beast-man finished the spell he had been muttering under his breath. Yenna could sense the magic before it came into being, the Arcane Fetters as well as all magic within arm’s reach of the man being absorbed into something within the beast-man’s torso. Then, he exploded into motion.

Flying towards Narasanha with a flame-wreathed set of talons, the beast-man crashed into the bodyguard. Narasanha had raised her weapons to block in the moments of warning she had, but it proved ineffective—the talons were not aimed for her. Instead, the points of the beast’s claws dug into an invisible mass of magic just above the bodyguard’s head, tearing apart the spell that linked Yenna’s temporal protection to Narasanha. In an instant, the bodyguard was once more subjected to stillness, leaving Yenna and Tirk alone with the monster.

The beast-man’s eyes turned and locked with Yenna’s, sending a wave of terror down her spine. Her legs quivered as she took a faltering step backwards, instinct screaming for her to retreat. Adrenaline flooded her system, and it took every modicum of willpower to not turn away from her opponent. If I turn my back, I’m dead! I can’t outrun him, there’s nowhere to go. He’s got the strength of a giant and is capable of magic besides—is this it? Will I–

A tight grip around her waist reminded Yenna that this wasn’t just her life at stake. Tirk’s hands dug into the fabric of her robes, and the nub of his horn prodded uncomfortably into her back, but it was a potent reminder that awakened another kind of instinct within her—the desire to protect her charge.

Yenna’s opponent turned and began to step towards her slowly, arms outstretched as before. Part of her wondered why he was approaching so slowly, though she had an idea. A war-mage would have all manner of defenses ready to fend off anyone brazen enough to charge her, and the beast-man didn’t seem to be quite sure if Yenna was so prepared. A slow approach afforded him time to inspect her defenses fully, to deal with any traps or tricks as they came up—once he was within a certain range, the beast-man would certainly leap forward and tear her apart. Yenna guessed she had several seconds to come up with a solution before he did exactly that.

Her first instinct was to attempt another binding. The Arcane Fetters had locked him in place, but he had a spell to remove it—to say nothing of the fact that it would take her too long to cast it. If she had a more efficient way of casting… Ah, of course!

Yenna concentrated on the arcane symbols that made up the Fetters spell, and imposed her Certainty upon them. With a dramatic gesture, the mage flicked her hand out and threw a lump of yellow-brown magic right at the beast-man’s chest. Ready for her, he raised a glowing talon to knock it aside—only for the glob of colour to stick to him like mud. It spread up his arm and solidified into a substance that looked like clay. Spikes of the clay-stuff shot out and anchored themselves in the ground, and Yenna was able to back off while the beast struggled with the expanding dirt.

With his free talon, the beast-man traced a complex spell—Yenna immediately recognised it as an advanced counterspell. The mage had a sudden realisation at that—she could now drag this fight into a battlefield she was far more capable of, and engage in a duel of counter-magic.

Immediately the fight became a rather static thing to an observer, though any mage would bear witness to a complex dance of magical mechanics at play as the two engaged in a battle of wits. Yenna’s opening move was similar to her attack on the water elemental’s fog spell, projecting a randomised field of magic right through the man’s forming spell. The beast-man replied by weaving a field of stability—leaning on the stillness of the realm, he was able to deny Yenna’s chaotic field and continue forming his counterspell.

With a frown, the mage opted for a more direct approach. Sending out a tether of magic, Yenna wrote disruptive runes directly into the forming spell circle, causing fundamental breakdowns of several layers of the spell itself. Her opponent adapted—instead of writing around it, or abandoning his spell entirely, the beast-man adopted the new symbols directly into his own counterspell, indirectly empowering it. The muddy clay had spread across half of his torso, and started to creep up his neck—the murmuring of spell-phrases growing in volume as the beast attempted to stop the mud from choking him out.

Taking inspiration, Yenna went for a tried-and-true silencing. Silence was another standard spell that forced the air to cancel out the vibrations of sound, ruining vocal spell components. The mystic murmuring from the beast stopped, but his waving claw did not—talon wreathed in dark flame, he reached up and slashed the tether of magic that was powering Yenna’s Silence spell, sound flowing once more.

Yenna hadn’t expected to be so sorely pressed so quickly. The beast-man was adept at multi-tasking, and though her attempts had slowed his spell they had not stopped him. Even if her Certainty-empowered Fetters covered him, once the spell was cut off it would become nothing but regular earth—the beast-man would easily be able to shake it off. The mage decided that, if she couldn’t stop him from tearing apart the spell, she should double down.

The process of countering her spell would leave the beast-man occupied for a few seconds longer, even if Yenna stopped trying to prevent him from doing so. Enough time to breathe and focus. Though her body was practically shaking with fear, there was a little voice in the back of her head, academic and eager—What a good time to test out some theories, hey?

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¹ - At least within Aulpre in Yenna’s time period, the air is heavy with magic. Mental strain and concentration are the true resources of the mage, though it wasn’t unheard of for particularly violent battles to render an area magically ‘dry’. However, certain spells far exceed the amount present in any given locale. Given the volatile nature of some of the higher order spells, one can’t simply wait for the area to replenish its magical resources—instead, Aulprean arcane mages opted to crystallise magic over long periods of time, using these like batteries to fuel more power-hungry spells.

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