Fallen Magician (The Magician Rebellion) (25 page)

When half of the advanced guard was defeated, the doors to the domain opened up a crack and the remaining Kenzai tried to retreat, but the magicians’ fire was unrelenting in the guardsmen’s destruction.

Tomlin laughed, “They are opening the gates! Now is our chance!” he kicked his horse into a run in all the excitement.

Alia chased after him, “Tomlin, stick to the plan!” She drove her mount at a break neck speed until she was able to cut him off. “Follow my lead,” she said sternly. The look in her eyes let him know that no tomfoolery or brash heroics would be tolerated.

“
Yes, my lady,” he said sufficiently cowed, “I lost my head.”

Seeing an easy target, several archers took aim at the master and her apprentice releasing a string of arrows at them, but a wave of Alia’s hand created a shield large enough to protect both magicians and their mounts. The pair fell back to their front lines out of bow range at a leisurely pace.

Riona was almost finished with her next spell when they returned to the front line. She had been drawing a complicated summoning sigil on the dirt road used to summon an elemental creature. While magicians surrounding the city from all sides were forcing the city’s jailers to spread their forces thin. Alia’s frontal assault was about to make a big push through their front door and the Kenzai would have to choose to either keep defending from all sides and allow Alia’s main force to enter Ilipse or rally against her group and allow the domain’s walls to be destroyed.

The necromancer looked to Alia, who nodded. Riona’s staff hit the sigil and she filled it with her magic. The ground rumbled and from the earth sprang stony hands like those of a man. Those hands reached out to the edges of the sigil and pulled the rest of the creature out; first revealing a stone head, then its equally rocky torso. The earth elemental was as tall as a man even without legs.

“
Break the doors down,” Riona told the earth elemental indicating the large double doors that only minutes before the last of the Kenzai advance party had retreated behind, “and kill any guards inside that you find.” The elemental rumbled off to fulfill its appointed task. Almost as an afterthought, Riona shouted, “but spare any citizens that you come across!” She noted a surprised look from Alia. “It heard me,” she offered in a tone that was somewhere between apologetic and defensive.

“
Will it obey?” Elementals were known to have some difficulty telling a friend from a foe in the heat of battle.

“
As best it can,” Riona conceded and that was the end of the discussion.

The elemental did as it was commanded and supplied a flurry of well-placed punches and haymakers. Each swing of its rock arms hit with the force of a battering ram in quick succession that caused the double doors to groan under the strain.

Boiling oil was poured on the creature and then it was lit on fire, but the earth elemental barely noticed as each blow caused the door to splinter until finally shattering inward. The destruction of the main doors revealed a reception area large enough to fit multiple wagons in followed by a second pair of double doors.

Inside the waiting area were nearly a dozen Kenzai fighters whose weapons glowed brightly in the earth elemental’s presence. It swung about as it tried to squash the warriors. Massive hands killed and injured Kenzai as they did battle, but watching the fight unfold worried Riona.

“
We need to help out the elemental,” she told Alia.

Alia agreed, but failed to get Riona’s meaning, “Yes, it has stopped focusing on the doors.”

“
More than that,” added the necromancer, “Their swords are no threat, but the Kenzai are draining its magic energy and once it’s energy is used up it will be dispelled.”

Alia called for a charge to defend the elemental. It was earlier than she wanted, but there was little that could be done about that. Her frontal force would be somewhat exposed, but getting through that door was critical and it was unclear whether Riona had the energy to summon another elemental so soon after the first one.

They had to keep the pressure on the Kenzai. Alia threw fireballs with one hand as she steered her horse into the reception area. She was followed closely behind by Tomlin, Riona, and a dozen other magicians all wielding whatever magic they could muster. Tomlin placed one guard under a blinding enchantment. Riona used black tendrils to siphon energy from another Kenzai who was trying to do the same to her creating an uneasy back and forth of great energies passing between them.

The magicians would have been trapped in a killing ground had they been normal humans, but Alia’s squads spent months training together for a conflict such as this one. They fought as if they were each a smaller part of a larger body, each magician performing his or her own task in compliment to one another. Some kept shields in place protecting themselves and their allies from the archers that were hidden above them as others dealt with the more immediate threats. Two of the magicians battered the blinds that hid archers with fire and wind until they were decimated and those inside were dead.

“
Keep hitting the door!” Riona ordered the elemental and it complied leaving the guardsmen to the magicians.

The final gate heaved with each mighty strike and soon began to buckle, lacking the reinforcements of the outer gate it soon broke into fragments so that much of it lied in ruin and the rest swung uselessly on its hinges. Seeing the way ahead of them was open, the magicians finished off the guards in the waiting area in short order.

Before them stood a city that looked like any other except the citizens that lived inside it were magic users. This place would have been considered an ideal by many within the Collective if not for the guards preventing anyone from leaving and the lack of magic being caused by the unseemly rune carvings that dotted the streets and buildings. The streets were bare as those that lived in Ilipse hid in their homes against the sounds of fighting that they must have been hearing on all fronts. They did not know they were being rescued. How could they without contact to the outside world?

“
Secure this area! Have the elemental destroy the runes around us as we go and we will begin evacuating the city,” ordered Alia, “and hurry! I can already feel the effects of this place beginning to drain my magic already.” The feeling was faint, but it was there. From this point on those of the Collective in the city would need to be careful about how much magic they used.

A loud crash came from somewhere off in the distance and it was followed by another crash and another as Ilipse’s walls began to collapse like a line of dominoes. In the distance dust flew up on all sides.

Alia smiled, knowing that victory would soon be at hand. Soon the entirety of the Collective would be within the domain, rescuing citizens and routing the Kenzai that had played prison guard for far too long.

“
Citizens of Ilipse, hear me!” Alia shouted loudly. Her voice was amplified by magic so that it echoed throughout the domain. “My name is Alia Necros and I am your friend. I am a magician just like you. Those with me are called the Collective and they, too, are magicians that hope for a better way of living, for freedom from unjust imprisonment as all of you have suffered. We have come to free you. You need not fear the Kenzai any longer fore we will protect you. We will teach you the ways of magic if you wish to learn them. We are your brothers and sisters. Exit the city however you may and we will lead you to safety.”

A half-minute passed and there was no response from the magicians that lived in the domain. In those brief seconds Alia feared the worst. She feared that her words had fallen on deaf ears; that the people of Ilipse had no desire to be free. She would not take these people against their will if they truly wished to stay, but what would that mean for the Collective?

Then an old man’s shiny head poked out of a window. A woman came out of her home followed by another swaddling a baby. A family with two older children further down the street did the same. Soon there were many eyes on the enchantress. For a moment, she felt happiness amidst the pandemonium. Something deep inside told her that she was doing what she was meant to do.

The boom of Tomlin’s hand-cannon broke Alia from her revelry reminding her of the danger that still surrounded them. More Kenzai were coming from their left and Alia began to prepare a sleep spell.

Riona’s earth elemental was the key to their victory and it did not disappoint. In order to get a foothold within Ilipse the magicians needed to destroy enough runes so that they could continue to cast spells. Elementalists could also mar the runes, but it was far more difficult and the earth elemental could simply pass through the runes and destroy them. That also meant that the summoned creature’s own magic that kept it tethered to this world would dissipate more quickly, but there was no helping that.

Alia’s sleep spell affected six of the guards that had been charging her, causing them to fall in mid-run and tripping up others that were behind them. In their confusion, the Kenzai were easy pickings for a trio of elementalists that threw balls of fire at the guardsmen. Alia noted with a mixture of pride and depression that these were some of Byrn’s best students. They did their master proud.

Soon the Collective controlled the area before the front gate and Alia called for an evacuation of the citizens that wished to join them. They would be led out of the domain a safe distance that would be protected by more Collective magicians as the fighting in Ilipse raged on. When they had about thirty domain magicians in tow Alia ordered half of her force to the staging area while she took Riona, Tomlin, and a few others deeper into the city.

The Kenzai were scattered and all but beaten when Alia decided to lead her remaining team forward. Her group had done exceptionally well against the Kenzai that they faced, but there was no guarantee that the other, smaller teams had fared so well and she was desperate to ensure that as many of the Collective made it out alive as possible.

A warrior dressed in plate armor and carrying a pair of heavy looking maces suddenly appeared before Alia and her team as they rounded a corner into a park filled with stone benches laid out in a large circle. More than a dozen Kenzai ready for battle flanked him. At first, Alia thought the man was Kellen and hoped that fortune would have it that Byrn was somehow in this domain, but fate was not so kind and although this man was likely a master of the Kenzai Order, he was not Kellen. Without saying a word, the warrior held his maces before him in an “X” that spewed forth a brilliant blue fire.

Alia erected a shield and Riona’s elemental stood before its master defensively as the wave of blue fire washed over them, but the others were not so lucky and screamed in agony at the flames that washed over them. Then as quickly as it came, the flames were gone and the Collective magicians that had been burning appeared unharmed.

Alia asked Tomlin, “How do you feel?”

Tomlin looked at his hand as if he was seeing it for the first time. “I feel strange. Not bad or injured, but just… out of sorts.”

The earth elemental began to crumble before their eyes. The creature rested its weight on its hands as clumps of dirt and rocks fell from its body making a cloud of dust all around it. Its head fell off like the hard, lifeless stone that it was and the rest of its body quickly did the same so that only a mound of dirt that was as high up as Riona’s knees lay before her.

One of Byrn’s old pupils pointed his staff at the group of Kenzai and was marveled as absolutely nothing happened. He tried again, using greater concentration and reciting an incantation meant to help his focus, but the results were equally unremarkable. “Our magic is gone,” the young man sounded astonished.

Riona held her staff defensively. “Can you still fight?” she asked Alia.

The enchantress felt the flow of magic still around her. It was not as strong as it had been moments ago, but it was still there. She nodded to Riona. She could still fight, but doubt crept at the edges of her mind. Only the two masters had retained any magic and they stood against three squads of Kenzai warriors led by a master.

“
Tomlin, get the others out of here. Take them to the safe zone and we will meet you there soon.”

The bard moved to obey Alia instinctively, and then stopped. To one of the others, he said, “Go on without me. I’m not leaving.”

“
Tomlin, that was an order!” Alia shoved him hard towards the fleeing magicians.

Riona summoned a trio of spooks and sent them after the Kenzai. “We all need to flee while we can.”

Half of the guardsmen fought against the spooks as best they could and their leader, who looked to be moving a bit slowly after releasing his blue fire, was forced to engage the apparitions to protect his men. The other half came after the magicians and a plan began to form in Alia’s mind. She held her hands up in surrender and tossed her staff so that it landed at her feet.