Sun's Heart

Chapter 11 - The Attack

Wil's runelock glowed with strain as he continuously pulled magic through it. He grit his teeth and struggled to focus himself.

The glow was irritating, like a candle hung just out of sight between his eyebrows. It grew neither stronger nor weaker as he carefully weaved magic at the same rate it flowed to him. What enemies managed to get through his fiery net were struck down without pause. The young hunters he was assisting made a ring around him where their sasuri whirled and their bows picked hellravens out of the sky.

"Hold on," Gale yelled to the young boy clinging to her leg. Perhaps not the best advice, given how she'd need both legs. She held a hunter's curved knife in one hand with awkward uncertainty. It was something, at least.

She timed the rotation of the hellravens wheeling. They swooped, though few could get past Wil's ever-shifting net. He watched her from the corner of his eye. The hunters had his back, but they were wearing out. There couldn't be many more tribesmen in the tents. He'd seen nothing of Dain for some time. The other boy had to be nearly done sweeping the camp.

He focused his mind and measured his breathing.

"Now!" she shouted. Nearly tripping over the child's stumbling legs, she sprinted toward the others.

Wil breathed in. He gestured sharply upward in time for the spell to snap out of her way, then back down behind her.

I've got to stop doing that. Clenching the fist he'd gestured with, he returned his attention to the ring of hunters within the boundaries of his spell.

The hellravens weren't the only shadowbeasts attacking. A large dog-like creature, made of darkness molded into life and prowling out of reach of the sasuri, leapt through the line when two of the hunters became preoccupied with a cluster of hellravens. Embers burned low where its eyes should have been. Its mouth hung open, teeth flashing as black as its body, and swiftly dodged a hunter's swing. His magic bunched behind his control, ready to lash out with a reflexive spell, but he pulled part of the net between himself and it. Inches from tearing his throat out, the shadowbeast burst into flame from the inside. It crumbled at his feet, kicking a soft cloud into the air.

Wil repaired the torn thread of Fire in the intricate net, grimaced as his magic quivered. Screaming shook the air around him, cackles from the strange dog-beasts chilled his blood, and soot scarred the dust tumbling about with each step.

He risked a glance behind him at the center of the chaos. Haburnah was seated with her eyes closed and legs crossed, the children huddled around her in fear. Selias was with them, his weapons sheathed, and he scanned the sky for something. His arms were crossed.

Surrounding the group of untrained men and women and children was a barrier, invisible but for the ripples of liquid light extending from every point of contact the shadowbeasts made. The dog-things skirted the edge, daring occasionally to stop and stare at them before dancing away, and the hellravens rammed themselves into the barrier.

It was futile, of course, since the shadowbeasts that made contact with it exploded into a cloud of soot. It didn't stop them from trying, however.

Slowly, the bubble's reach expanded toward the surrounding clusters of warriors fighting to buy the priestess time. It wove around them, avoiding contact like oil sloughing from water. The cloud of swirling hellravens began to rise as the low-flying creatures brushed the stretching barrier. Selias kept his eyes trained above them, watching the hellravens gather and swirl in a mass of darkness deeper than night. Their blood-red beaks snapped around hellish outcries, but they couldn't do anything.