Battle Mage: Winter's Edge (67 page)

Chapter 36- Eye of the Hurricane

The crowd cheered as the final two wizards took their places for the final match. With the Heights being chosen as the final venue, the surrounding walls and castle heights became filled with screaming fans. Magnus had a large following as the last defending wizard from Southwall, but Annalicia’s beauty and different casting style had many followers cheering for the woman from Malaiy as well.

The air erupted with powerful wind and fire spells as the two began their duel.

Defenses were tested on both sides quickly. Gusts of wind and spears hammered firewalls and mage shields, while Magnus came back with an impressive array of fire spells. As Sebastian had predicted, however, the wind wizard was able to tame his initial barrage of fireballs and streams easily with her defensive whirling wind defense, but the mage sensed that it was a simple feint by the fire wizard.

Annalicia smiled at the ineffectiveness of the fire attacks, and retaliated with a dragon that was drawn out a bucket of water from behind her using a combination wind and water spell. Appearing much like a creature of water, the wind forming the dragon assaulted Magnus full force, but the man was ready. Mage shields cut the magic near the source. Depleted of the water and magic driving the wind, the dragon disintegrated spraying the fire shields with a mere drizzle.

“Mage cylinder,” the fire wizard commanded an unknown spell. Sebastian watched in surprise as a dozen blue tubes appeared around the circle of the wind wizard.

Annalicia had no idea of what to do or what the purpose of the blue cylinders would be. That curiosity nearly cost the wizard as she could not decide how to deal with the constructs or if she needed to deal with them, though their appearance implied danger. Before the silver haired beauty could decide, the large tubes drove themselves into the defensive wind wall. With the winds swirling around them, the tubes began to spin with the vortex.

Giggling at the sight, Annalicia looked at the maneuver as a colossal blunder on the fire wizard’s part.

“Fire wall,” an immense wall of fire sprung up outside of the wind wall. Sebastian knew that it was a more impressive show of power than he could ever have hoped to accomplish without help from Bairh’loore. The crowd gasped at the speed and scope of the wizard’s newest spell. No other wizard had ever accomplished so much and only the battle mage had demonstrated any spells close to this, but as they watched the firewall seemed to be growing thinner.

Realizing that the wind wall must have been siphoning away the fire’s strength, Sebastian also realized that this was Magnus’s plan. At first the fire thinned slightly, but the flow gathered momentum and it was at the fire wizard’s desire when the fire seemed to implode inward driving towards the vortex within.

“Firewall,” the fire wizard caused another circle of flames to appear almost exactly where the first had just been. With the rapid flow from the first wall, the second joined the rush and a third wall appeared as the second thinned in the rush.

Over the roar of wind and flame, Sebastian thought that he heard a scream.

Using the command ‘Battle Cry’, the mage cried out, “Stop the match!” Running from the stands, Sebastian wished that he had Bairh’loore to command. He feared for the girl inside the flaming vortex and understood what Magnus had been about with his firewalls and the cylinders before them. With the
strength of the wind to pull the mass of fire, the cylinders had channeled the flame inside the defense. If they didn’t stop the duel immediately, he feared that Annalicia would wind up roasted even with the protection of the wizards around her.

Magnus looked over to see the mage running before returning his eyes on the devastating magic that he had wrought. He wasn’t sure that he could stop the process even if he had tried. Reaching for the flame, the fire wizard tried to shut it down, but it had gained a life of its own within the winds of the other wizard.

Shutting down the cylinders was the best that he could hope to do, but the vortex continued to rage and everyone could see that the fires had intensified inside. The vortex wasn’t moving to strike out at Magnus as it had in other matches and remained within the circle. Sebastian thought that he could see a figure on the ground even through the fire.

In desperation, the mage felt a rush of power as he panicked. “Flood!” he called out and felt the stones sending their power into him. The earth and air seemed to give him a sudden rush of strength filling him to the point that he wished to burst and just as quickly he released their energy as a powerful spell.

Water from the Ponds and the lake of the Royal Gardens seemed to leap from the ground below the Heights. A combination of two deluges rose up to strike the vortex and the fire caught within.

“Mage cylinder!” Magnus ordered just as the waters closed in on the defensive wall cutting into the winds once more.

As the flood of water struck the wind, the vortex began to collapse, but before it could be struck the water made it inside the defensive wall putting out the fire. When the wind dispersed, the water ran from the wall. The girl lay still as death sending Magnus and the wizards meant to protect her running to her side.

Healers kept nearby for emergencies rushed from the tower to help the fallen wizard, as everyone could see that she still didn’t move.

In the commotion, another girl screamed and ran to another who had fallen. Yara raced with the rest of Sebastian’s friends. With the release of power, the mage had collapsed as his spell ran its course.

The repetition of thunder sounded in Sebastian’s head. He tried to raise his hands to cover his ears, but he wasn’t sure that they listened. Beyond the ache in his head, the mage could feel nothing.

He thought to open his eyes, but they didn’t want to listen. His ears heard nothing over the thunder and there was only darkness. An eternity passed and still Sebastian remained sealed inside the crushing darkness.

Lightning struck and thunder erupted out of order from the repetitious rumbles. Stars flared and were gone. A strange scent made its way into his consciousness and it was awful. He wondered what had died and brought him this new hell. Another strike of lightning made him think that he felt his cheek and it hurt.

Flutters of light seemed to diminish the thunder and released the throbbing in his head that was the rush of blood drumming inside. A flash of Yara’s face and a blue sky behind her made it into his mind. Moments later the flutters ended and the man could see once more.

The beautiful blond healer was there with tears in her eyes. She was crying and he felt her power within him. Had he been hurt? He couldn’t remember a thing.

“Bas, you’re awake!” Katya’s voice cried out and he spied his sister with tears rolling down her cheeks.

Other voices cried out his name and others seemed to be telling others that he lived.

“What happened?” his voice asked sounding distant and disconnected from his head.

“You stupid, stupid man!” Yara yelled at him and he could still feel her magic throughout his body. This was no touch tying them together in joy, it was a spell of desperation designed to save. “I told you that you weren’t up to a duel so you go and cast a spell like that? A full wizard would have passed out trying that spell, you idiot!”

“What spell?” he asked trying to remember. Apparently he had done something stupid… again. Unable to move yet, the mage was at her mercy.

Blinking through the tears, the healer tried be calm as she realized that he was probably still in shock, “You called all the water up from both courtyards to strike Annalicia’s wind wall.”

“Why would I do that?”

Yara let out a cry of exasperation. “I can’t believe you don’t remember! She was on fire and trapped inside her defense wall. You were the first to realize that she was unconscious inside while the spells continued to run uncontrolled all around her. If you and Magnus hadn’t worked to destroy her barrier and put out the fire, she would probably be dead right now.”

Memory began to return and with it Sebastian could also feel his body again, but quickly wished that he couldn’t. The pain of a thousand cramping muscles, starvation in his stomach and his head ready to burst threatened to knock him back to unconscious. If not for the wizard’s magic, he probably would have.

“Drink this carefully, Sebastian,” a familiar voice ordered and he felt liquid touching his lips from a bottle’s top. His eyes found Darius kneeling beside him holding a new canister to his lips. He remembered this awful taste, but couldn’t remember when he had tasted such a drink, and then he realized that it must have been the liquid that Yara had told him about from yesterday’s collapse.

Several minutes later, Yara sat back and took a second flask from Darius. Making a face at the taste, the healer took her medicine to restore the energy she had spent on the fallen mage.

“Is Annalicia all right?” Sebastian finally asked with the drink consumed. The thunder was beginning to subside and the aches and pains seemed to be going out one by one as the liquid flowed through him distributing the magical energy contained within the drink.

“Your foolish stunt saved her. She’s already awake and almost completely unharmed,” Darius answered and Sebastian knew that he had worried over his granddaughter, but he had stayed to help Yara with him. “Her breathing had stopped since the fire had burned away all the air inside the vortex. It’s an amazing thought to think that she could be surrounded by so much air and still suffocate. The fire had caught her off guard and by the time she tried to speak a spell to save herself, the air was gone that was needed to say it.

“I owe you her life, Falcon Trillon,” the wizard spoke soberly. This was a man that had lived to see many deaths, but Sebastian could tell that each life was still very precious to him. An immortal perhaps, but he was not jaded to those around him.

Sebastian felt the strength to sit up finally. Pulling his legs into a cross, the mage returned the sentiment to Darius saying, “Well, it looks like I owe you another one for saving my life again too, I guess.” He tried to laugh but his head hurt too much and told him a sarcastic laugh wasn’t worth the pain.

“Well, I think once you are well, perhaps we can talk about favors. For now, let’s just make sure that you are well. That was an amazing amount of power that you held, even if only for a moment. With no staff or other grounding device to help you, I am surprised that you didn’t just burn up in front of us really.”

At Yara’s gasp, the silver haired man winced realizing the bluntness of such an observation. “That flow seemed like something beyond just a flow from the ground. Do you have any idea how you did that?”

Wanting to shake his head, the mage avoided the ache there and simply answered, “No idea. It felt different from the other pulls on power that I’ve tried. Maybe my panic to save a friend just pushed me to do something reckless?”

With a chuckle and a shake of his head, Darius replied, “Well, I think Anna is lucky that you consider her a friend. I am sure that once she is up to it, that she will want to come thank you for saving her life, but for now I do it for her.”

Sebastian’s mind wandered from those surrounding him as he tried to tackle the new question posed. How had he managed such a reckless maneuver without just burning out like a snuffed flame? His eyes glanced to Yara, who still watched over him, but only kept connected with a trace of her magic. The spell was one they used to feel closer to one another, but it had nothing to do with actual healing.

The sight of the healer brought back an old conversation. “Perhaps a side benefit of being able to heal is that when I use my power to save, it is the balance to the chaos of fighting?”

Yara frowned and Collin, who had been listening to it all asked in frustration, “What does that have to do with anything? I know you just came close to dying, so maybe your brain is just too addled to explain things, but that makes no sense.”

Shaking his head, which he had been right to avoid until now as stars appeared behind his eyes threatening unconsciousness from a new flood of pain, Sebastian tried to explain, “A healer has to risk losing their ability to heal if they turn to using destruction magic. When it was mentioned to me, I thought that I had never had a problem with using my other magic because I could heal and such.

“In spells like the flood, I think there is something to the intent of the spell. With my dueling, I don’t try to kill. I mostly just immobilize or drive a wizard from his circle. Even when I have knocked people out from using lightning, it was a safe way to win without truly hurting them.”

“But what does that have to do with this surge in power?” Collin questioned impatiently. Now that his friend appeared out of the woods, the earth wizard’s worry was beginning to make him terse.

“To save Annalicia, I accidentally pulled power from the stone of the wall, the earth and even the air, I think. I didn’t burst from containing all that power, but not because I was quick to use it. I didn’t die because I was using all the destructive potential to save. When I heal, I can harm as well as long as there is some balance. I can use chaos and destructive magic and balance it as I save someone.

“Holding the balance between the two, made me stronger and the magic safer to use… I think anyway,” he finished with a self deprecating smile.