Chapter 24: Ch.20: The Dust Bowl Part III

“Sloth Bear, Ursus folivora- an inhabitant of the Great Faeriweald's tree canopies. This is a rather elusive creature that spends most of its time napping on branches after a hearty meal. It is an omnivorous creature and has a rather docile demeanour. However, once it deems its territory under threat, it becomes a dangerous ambush predator, dropping from the trees and dispatching threats with its scythe-like climbing claws. On the ground, it can easily outpace a grown man in speed. '' from Philiarz Oonswarner’s Bestiary for Adventurers.

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Arthur was already on the move when the sounds of pained shrieks rent the air. The stryxffin had been easily pacified with the pieces of wyvern steak that Arthur kept tossing at them like bread at pigeons. They were intelligent enough to go after easy meat, and they made for a good distraction.

He'd have a narrow window, but he'd make it count. The closest bandits were a pair of [Skulker] goblins, which he'd mistaken for overly short brutes who seemed hell-bent on hunting him down through his trail.

They seemed like a good target, and they delivered. While they were a pair of cowards, he wasn't banking on having them scream bloody murder. In fact, the shortest of them was booking it out of there as though a wraith was hot on his tail.

So Arthur flew. He glided through the air, his eyes on the slowly widening gap of the bandits' shoddy perimeter. You'd have thought they'd keep the largest number of guards on that side, but only two of them were there, on those terror-bird mounts of theirs.

Arthur flew over their heads as they were momentarily distracted by the shouts deeper in the oasis. His Nightstalkers robe made him an incongruous blur against the night's cloudy sky.

The youth made it. Formations of worn volcanic pillars blitzed by as he crossed the boundary between the desert and the oasis.

It was too easy. He was almost tempted to cackle madly from a close brush with bandits―suddenly, there was sand in his mouth.

‘What in the blue?!'

Sand. Sand buffeted him like a cloud, peppering him with tiny grains of the stuff. By the time he'd realised that it wasn't a natural phenomenon, he'd already gone in too deep. It was then that his mana sense clued him to the magic in the air. A trap!

It was a ploy to make him think he had things well in hand. Maybe he'd been too overeager because his plan had gone off flawlessly despite his first mishap.

Though, after his first experience chucking sand out of the Mark I during his repairs, he'd already had the forethought to put up a barrier using his [Gust Shield]. At the expense of saving his mana, he increased the intensity of the spell, enlarging it to more than a few paces around his circumference, and the spell easily spun the sand around him.

Against his better judgement, he hoped that whoever was in control hadn't been alerted, so he dumped more power into his hoverboard and climbed up. But that was when there was a crack as an arrow flew into and breached his spell. A [ Piercing Shot]!

Time slowed as Arthur saw the arrowhead heading, unerringly, for the shortest route to his brain. The draw strength of the [Archer] and a piercing [Piercing Shot] skill was pitted against dwarven mining goggles made of obsiderite—Arthur got whiplash so strong it almost took his head off.

Only his hybridised constitution prevented him from getting a spinal injury. He did however, get away with a ringing head for his troubles as he tried to arrest his fall through the air.

A momentary lapse in his concentration interrupted his mana infusion to the hoverboard, causing the engine to sputter. He dropped back into the sandstorm. A moment was all it took for him to fall ass over the teakettle.

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Arthur blinked stars away from his eyes as he caught himself. The [Gust Shield] spell had collapsed, but the obsiderite lenses had saved his life. An impossible alloy of dwarven genius; translucent obsidian meshed with siderite had stood against an iron tipped arrow. It didn't even scratch the lenses.

Nonetheless, Arthur was not in the right place to be mulling over metallurgy and glasswork. He wasn't out of the woods yet. And as if mirroring his thoughts, a piercing whistle split the night air, and he had the forethought to bank away. An arrow screamed past where his shoulder had been.

“ Scat in a creek!” Arthur hissed, flicking his steel silk scarf over his mouth and nose to keep the sand out. “They almost had me…How? “ His own eyes couldn’t see a few paces into the sand storm. He'd barely managed to arrest his fall, but the grating sound from his hoverboard was worrying.

That short interruption of his concentration had allowed sand to get into his engine. Another thing had already been added to the worry pile. Now he had to worry about a mage, an archer or a mage-archer, and bandits at his back.

Arthur gunned the hoverboard, patchwork repairs be damned. He needed to get out of the sandstorm and back into the sky, but that would mean turning his back on whoever had shot at him. So he went forwards, throwing up another [Gust Shield] then layered another twister whose gusts ranged in the opposite direction.

His skill with the spell left much to be desired, and he cursed not having tested it against projectiles. At tier 3, he had maybe three more casts of the spell if he wanted to keep some offensive power in reserve. Generating mana at a thaum a parquartz was fast, above average even, but the shield spell was mana-hungry.

No sooner had he put them up than he felt the arrows tear past the first counter-clockwise [Gust Shield].

They came fast and hard, but the boundary between moving twisters of air and the pressure differential was more than enough to make kindling of them. They made it a few paces inside before the spell shield snapped them into two.

Lightning crackled between the counter-spinning [Gust Shield], an unforeseen occurrence. The sensation of holding two tier 3 matrices was more like a juggling act . Though his mind had been caught up in dual casting, he could nudge the lightning with [Fulgur Mastery].

Nonetheless, there was a brief lull when Arthur knew they were probing him. Sooner or later, they were going to up their ante. He didn't have the luxury of letting them; not when he could hear the hollering of the other bandits even above the storm of sand.

Arthur wasn't going to let them do that. Feeling for his internal pool, he grimaced, sensing it just below half and falling . He was going to have to endure another bout of hangovers from mana abuse. He knew what they felt like from before he entered the desert. He was content to have to suffer now if he wanted to survive later.

Feeling out the sparking energy between the two gust shields, he willed them to disperse outwards.

‘Scat!’ he grunted. Using [Fulgur Mastery] like that was akin to peeling a cheap sticker from the bottom of a plastic cup and hoping it wouldn’t stick. [Fulgur Mastery] had no discrete matrix, just a cat’s cradle of spell anchoring points that he had to wrangle around. But finally, he imbued the intent he wanted.

Lightning lashed out from the twisting maelstrom of his Gust Shields like electric current from a tesla coil. He didn’t even have to know where to aim for his assailant.

Lightning struck sand, and the resulting encounter caused pillars of petrified silica to rise like anthills at the speed of light. It burned holes through the moving curtain of the spell, and then a thunderclap of air displacing enlarged the holes.

Just as soon as the gaps appeared, more of the sand moved in to cover it. Wherever his enemies were, they were very good at concealing their own magic, and Arthur realised that he was shining like a beacon.

And that’s how the arrows had gotten to him; the sand was like an extension of the mage’s perception. If only [Aer Mastery] could let him take control of the nearby air. However, that would have been too easy. It just didn’t work that way. The less concrete the elemental form of the affinity, the harder they were to tame.

He had to get out, and right—

Another arrow came whistling out of the sand. This time, there was no need to be told the futility of trying to put up a shield. Mana seemed to warp around the incoming projectile—a black blur with a purple glow. A magebane arrowhead, a witchkiller.

Arthur did the only thing he could; he pirouetted his hoverboard in the way of the shot. With a crack, the arrow impacted, bursting into purple sparks that ate away at his shield spells like acid eating metal.

They just seemed to decay as if being eaten around the point of contact. He dropped them, fearing what would happen. Meanwhile, the knockback rattled through his bones, jarred his knees and almost made him bite off his tongue. The engine stalled; the conduits had been killed.

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At the cost of mobility, the hoverboard had saved his life. Fortunately, he’d barely gone far from the ground when the arrow hit and so bunched up his legs, rolling as he met the sand.

Then he scrambled to pick up the hoverboard, using one of the leather straps that secured his foot as an ernames. For now, the hoverboard would serve as a shield—the Ironwood had proved resilient against the arrow. He drew out his dagger to use as a short sword and kept his spells ready.

'I am still trapped,' he thought, running towards where his skill told him North was. Behind him, the jeers of bandits rung in the night, bloodthirsty and indignant. Ahead, sand, like fog, obscured everything howling and peppering his goggles. Some of it was getting into his robe.

Arthur wondered how the mage could keep up their spells for so long, but the fact that the arrows stopped homing on him was a relief at least.

His mana well was recovering but he wouldn't be committing to another one of those shield spells. Not when he was dreading a fight in close quarters with the intention of killing. Arthur grimaced at the thought of getting blood on his hands—it left a sour taste in his mouth.

‘Why did they stop?’ Arthur thought. He was searching for something, some kind of clue for the spell’s direction. Unfortunately, he hadn't read about domain spells, else he would have known what to look for. Time was running out and soon the rest of the bandits would be on him.

‘Scat in a creek! Can’t see where they are—’ Then Arthur moved out of the way of the blade before Danger Sense even screamed. The ring of metal sundered the air as the youth interposed his dagger in the way. The sound of metal screeching grated on his ears as sparks flew. His hand shook from the blow, but it held back the scimitar that slid all the way to the quillon .

The assailant’s eyes went wide with surprise at the sturdiness of Arthur’s short weapon, Overkill was truly—Overkill. Arthur had the forethought to dunk some of his mana into it, and the two men watched as the dagger glowed a searing yellow and ate through scimitar as though it was butter. The other party tried to twist the scimitar to capitalise on both their surprise but Arthur had already recovered.

The dagger disappeared, spirited into [Inventory Chest]. His adversary faltered, having used too much force to yank back. Arthur stepped in, fouling their retreat and bashed them in the face with the hoverboard.

Their head snapped back with a painful grunt as they staggered, clutching at their sch'magh covered face. They dropped their weapon where all but the curved blade remained.

And that is when Arthur struck a low blow between the assailant's legs. A scream tore itself from their lips as they keeled over with their hands between their groin. Arthur winced on their behalf, but what was done was done. While his adversary lay passed out, he was already running.

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Arthur's fight with the first assailant proved that there were two of them, as the spell hadn't faded from the air three parquartz after the encounter. The [Archer] was down and all that was left was dealing with the [Mage]. While the mage controlled the flow of battle, the archer had been going in for the kill. But the archer was down and out for a while.

Now that he had the headspace to think of it, he could have used a [Spark Bolt] to paralyse them and knock them out. It could have ended easier that way. Nonetheless, it became clear that he'd been in the thick of things and had only acted on the first thought that came to mind. It seemed he had some ways to go before he developed a sense for battle.

Arthur decided that he'd use [Spark] to tase the mage. Non-lethally if he could help it. On the other hand, the [Mage] hadn’t made their move yet, which made it harder to ferret out their position.

'Just how big is the range of this spell?' Arthur thought. Then he facepalmed for not thinking of it sooner and activated his [Draconic Sight]. A slight mental prompt and his vision swam with the colours of the aether.

Smoky amethyst mana overlaid over the sand as tendrils of mana rose from the ground. No matter how enchanting it was, the world of motes and wisps was disconcerting. He questioned if that was how mantis shrimp saw the world in 16 colours instead of a human's three. Then he found the mage.

Their aura was subdued, clinging so close to their skin and crawling on the sand like a blanket, as though they were one with the earth. They might as well have been broadcasting their position with their magic to Arthur’s [Draconic Sight]

Having found found his attacker, the question was how to make their move. From their short altercation, he’d already known that each of his movements was felt to the mage, so he had to hit fast before they so much as twitched. The only limiting factor was that the range of the non-lethal [Spark] was only 1.5 metra. He whipped his dagger out and braced his hoverboard like a shield as he advanced.

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Sahra's and Tashir's job had been going well. All they had to do was to stall their quarry so the rest of the bandits could get to them. She used her magic [Dust Storm], to stall them, while her brother used his archery to harry or, if need be, incapacitate them. There was no killing.

Be that as it may, they were caught off guard this time. Overconfident, her twin brother had only carried a few arrows in his quiver because he seldom missed his targets. But it was more like he couldn't bring himself to use cheap arrows—but they'd fallen on hard times. But by the Sands! That brother of hers was stubborn. She prayed to Ustrina for victory for what was to come.

However, nothing would have prepared them for going after a mage . Either Torpeth, one of their acquaintances, failed to mention that or the mage had obfuscated their aura.

Sahra could see why the bald bandit might have missed it. His aura had been muddled by some sort of obsfuscation artefact. It made her shiver when he entered her domain’s area of effect; she could scant believe it. Even her twin brother had been shaken, almost wavering. But Tashir steeled himself and took up his bow. It was going to be their last job, then they would have enough gold to move on.

Perhaps the spirits of the Sands were on their side. Whoever was pitted against them was not an adept in the ways of combat . On the other hand, the twins had seen war; it was only because of circumstances that they threw their lot in with the bandits. They were refugees. They had nothing, and naturally they were desperate.

Tashir’s first shot had gotten the mage on the backfoot from the get go. And he had shot to kill. That wasn't part of the plan! Sahra knew that he was just looking out for them because the other person might not hold any reservations about killing in self defence.

Instead of a shot through the eye, there was a distinctly metallic sound. Sahra felt, rather than saw the mage go careening into the air for the impact. ‘ What in the Sands!? The [Sand Mage] thought.

Sahra had detected the mage several paces off the ground and yet, the way he was using the magic of air was not the way she’d expected. He had a relic that helped him fly, if they could get it before the bandits got their hands on it—

That was what surprised her more than what her twin felt, unsettled that a kill shot to the brain had been rebuffed. But Tashir did not falter. Sharing her connection to the sand through a rare skill called [Twin Soul], he capitalised on the mage’s disadvantage, sending five more arrows in quick succession.

Perhaps feeling her anxiety, he became more aggressive and committed to his attacks, [Piercing Shot], [ Splitting Shot]! She heard him activate the skills despite his dwindling quiver. But all of them broke on the mage's shield! Then he retaliated.

Were it not for their constant movement, they would’ve been scorched where they stood. Lightning came cracking out of their own curtain of sand, burning holes through her spell. Sahra watched pillars like termite mounds grow as she blinked. She almost tripped but her dear brother caught her just in time and they kept running.

The mage was flinging their spells indiscriminately. She felt part of her domain waver, as the sand was turned into glass. Glass! If she could just level up she could be a glass mage too but she’d hit a bottleneck at level 20. The hair at the back of her neck rose and her skin began to prickle as charge began to build up within her spell.

Tashir was fed up; he got one of his aces; a magebane arrow head. The black pointed shard of ore from where null-steel and svartine steel was mined was one of their few valuables. It cost an arm and a leg just to get one and for a good reason. Back home, it was a witch killer. Magic seemed to recoil from the arrowhead and the sensation through her Mana Sense made her skin crawl.

Everything hinged on that one moment. Tashir made the shot, a perfect shot of all he’d ever done. It was supposed to go through the navel, where a mage’s pool of power was rumoured to be. Tashir didn't miss but the mage did the unthinkable. He put his relic in the way of the arrow. The artefact died as the mage dropped into the ground.

Then Tashir disappeared before she could even stop him; her twin was frustrated. She tried to run after him but she couldn't catch up. She was not athletic like him. She hoped that, against her better judgement, her impulsive brother would come out unharmed.

Sahra waited with bated breath for something to happen; her brother’s death or worse—if he died, half of her would die with him. She prayed to the Enchantress of Flame that he would survive.

What came through the link after several heartbeats though, was agony the likes of which she’d never felt before. He was being tortured! Sahra went white as a sheet, she couldn't move, transfixed where she stood. Then he came, feline eyes blazing gold as if they could peer through her soul. She quailed under that predatory gaze.

 

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