It was daytime, so Borl couldn’t clearly see the light of the torches, but the smell of the smoke had become powerful when he spotted movement between the pine trees below. There wasn’t much underbrush this high up the mountain, and, against the wide stretches of exposed, rocky ground, it was easy to make out the lone figure scrabbling eastward.
He wasn’t brandishing a torch, and he certainly appeared to be fleeing, but Borl had never been the most trusting fellow. He paused to hover in the air, still some distance away, and drew a directional amplification talisman. Since magicians constantly generated magical energy, they also emitted it at a low level, which meant that theoretically you could identify a magician by using the same type of detection talismans used on sensors. In practice, things were much more complicated. For Borl, the current complication was that he couldn’t be sure whether the traces of energy his amplification talisman picked up came from the running man or from the aftermath of the mysterious magical event. Even though the energy level increased marginally as the figure stumbled in his direction, that wasn’t any guarantee. Magical traces could fluctuate along with wind currents and other environmental factors.
But the man was moving jerkily—seemingly injured—and the dry landers with their torches were close… “Blaze it, blaze it,” Borl mumbled and swooped down between the trees.
The man stopped when he first noticed Borl and then sped up.
Borl struggled not to fumble his landing, but he failed and hit the ground somewhat harder than he would’ve liked, jarring his knees. The process left him just a tad cross.
The young man—for the fleeing man was indeed young… weedy and sweaty and scraped up—slowed down as he reached Borl, gasping for air. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said between heaving breaths. “I thought I was going to die. The wind—” He made a weak gesture with his hand that meant nothing to Borl. “And then… and when I woke up—”
“Are you injured?” Borl interrupted. He used his no-nonsense voice. The boy was almost certainly someone’s disciple—too young to be a Master’s Assistant—and, in Borl’s experience, disciples bumbled about uselessly in crises unless someone kept them firmly on track.
“I was definitely going to die,” the boy panted instead of answering properly, and then his already large eyes grew into great, circular moons. “Am I still going to die? Are we going to die? My windstick broke, and my legs…”
Borl squinted down to assess, but the boy’s legs were covered by his tattered robes. He did seem to be standing a bit oddly, though, and Borl would just have to assume he was hurt, and evidently unable to fly without a windstick. Blaze it all! Borl hadn’t had to think about magic or tactics in years, and now the world had come collecting with a vengeance, demanding everything all at once. At his peak, he could have controlled his own flight spells and a set for the useless disciple simultaneously, but he was far from his peak now, and he would likely get them both killed if he tried.
The smoke was close.
“Keep moving,” he snapped, tugging the boy into motion. “Move, move.”
The boy obeyed without resistance, and Borl fell into a fast walk behind him, trying to think. They were too slow like this; the dry landers would catch up soon. Perhaps that wouldn’t be the end of the world. Borl wasn’t sure how many there were, but it was entirely possible he could hold his own. He had never been the best battle mage, but he remembered how to throw up a shield and summon whirlwinds and so such as long as he was given the space to do so. The problem was, with just two of them, it was also very possible that the dry landers would just surround them and wait until Borl ran out of energy to maintain the shield, and then they could pick them off with a few well-aimed arrows like so many sitting ducks. Borl didn’t know how the dry landers’ battle tactics had evolved over the past five years, but they’d used to be quite fond of arrows.
There was another option, though also not ideal. Borl snatched a stubby pine branch off the ground as they passed and directed his magical energy to carve symbols into the bark. He couldn’t control two, independent sets of flight spells, but he could create a crude imitation of a windstick so that hopefully he wouldn’t have to.
“Do you still have enough energy to use a windstick?” he demanded of the stumbling disciple, continuing to carve the talisman symbols.
The boy glanced back and seemed to realize what he was doing. “I don’t know,” he said. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll try.”
“You had best succeed,” Borl told him, which probably wasn’t helpful, but Borl was also a bit stressed; he deserved some slack. Still, he tried to even out his voice before adding, “I’ll channel you energy.”
Unfortunately, he needed more time to finish the windstick. He had the basic talismans there, but he hadn’t added the abstraction layers yet, and these additional layers were virtually the only reason using a windstick was easier than flying without one since they allowed the user to interact with a reduced set of talismans.
Borl needed time, and a bit of room to think. He’d never had to make a windstick before, and he certainly hadn’t memorized all the talismans that went into the abstraction layers. Then again, it was starting to become the pattern of the day that he’d just have to wing things and hope for the best.
He could hear the dry landers now, hear their boots echoing off the rocky slopes, hear one of their dogs yipping.
“This way,” a man yelled in the slow, flat accent of the Dry Lands. It bounced off the rocks and the trees and reverberated towards them, too close. They wouldn’t even need sensors at this point; surely the dogs could follow the scent, and soon they’d be in view.
It was hard to carve smooth lines and think and move at the same time. His last few talismans were worthy of a first-year disciple, and, if they got any less accurate, they wouldn’t work properly. Borl stopped.
“Keep going,” he snapped at the disciple when the boy slowed down as well. “I’ll catch up once I finish this blasted stick.”
“But—”
“No,” Borl cut him off. “Go.”
The disciple dallied another moment before limping off. Borl could feel his giant eyes glancing back, but he ignored the prickle and sat down to focus entirely on the windstick. His master persona had always been good for managing disciples; they tended to obey instinctually.
Channeling raw magical energy was also instinctual, natural in a way that using talismans and spells was not, so Borl hadn’t gotten out-of-practice. However, this method was also crude. Uncontrolled by spells, magical energy tended to be rather destructive; the only reason it was working for Borl now was because gouging out symbols was already destructive in nature. As long as he controlled the amount and directed it appropriately (so as not to set the branch on fire or smash it to pieces), using raw energy worked… okay.
“There!” someone called from far too close, and Borl glanced up to find that he could see the dry landers, their torches and dogs emerging from between the trees. They were still downslope and to the west, far enough that they were only clearly distinguishable when they moved, but much too close! Borl needed time!
He tried to refocus on his stick. He had one more layer of abstraction to go, but it was difficult to keep the stream of energy steady when his heart was pounding. It had been safe for so long, and it clearly didn’t like the new arrangement, slamming itself into Borl’s ribcage as if trying to escape its doomed vessel.
Blaze it all! Borl paused his gouging to trace out a shield talisman and threw it up. He was surprised they hadn’t already started firing arrows. In his long past experience, dry landers liked to shoot from a distance.
With the shield in place, it was marginally easier to concentrate on his task. He was really doing a slapdash job, picking somewhat arbitrary talismans and hoping that they’d function in vaguely the intended manner. If the disciple didn’t die, trying to fly this thing would be an excellent learning experience, a real accomplishment for him to brag about with his disciple friends.
The dogs were all barking now that they’d spotted him, and one of them pulled free of its handler and bounded up the slope. Borl’s heart worked faster, undermining his efforts to stay calm and finish the job.
The dog, a sharp-nosed, tan thing, was approaching at alarming speed. Borl could see its teeth, could smell its dogginess.
He only had three more symbols to carve... Maybe. If he was doing this right at all.
The dog bonked into the shield with a thunk and wobbled backwards, temporarily stunned. Even knowing the shield was there, Borl had flinched, and the final symbol was too wobbly. As the dog spun in a shaky circle, he thickened the line hurriedly so that at least the overall shape would be right.
When he glanced up again, the group of dry landers was only a hundred feet away. There were at least fifty of them, all dressed in the odd, two-piece style of their land, the disturbingly bland colors they seemed to prefer, and half of them had torches.
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