Fight or Flight

Chapter 28

Enola

"Of course."

The rider bond wove around us both, connecting us together... and then magic began to flood into me.

Just like with every time before, the magedebt began devouring the magic. I felt it as a year's worth of my own magic passed through me and vanished into nothingness. Then five years. Ten... Twenty...

I suddenly had the horrible thought that maybe even Simon's magic might not be enough. That I had just been cursed somehow to never have magic again. That the magedebt would swallow all of his magic and leave me just as unable to help Cess. I felt my blood running cold as thirty years worth of magic vanished.

Thirty five...

The magedebt ended.

For the first time in thirty years, I had the feeling of magic remaining steady inside of me. My dulled mage senses began to pick up on the world around me once more as magic filled me again. I felt the faint power in the crystals worked into my saddle. The energy of the human healer. Cess' magic, and Cess' pain. Even the twisted naga magic of the weapon buried inside him.

Magic was still rushing into me.

After thirty years without any magic at all, I now had access to as much magic as I would build up over two years. Six years. Eight. More and more magic flowed over the bond, giving me more than enough to cast any spell I could think of. Multiple spells, all at once, again and again.

Ten years.

The weapon had encouraged infections to take root in Cess' wound. I could sense that now, with my mage senses beginning to work properly. It was either a subtle enough spell that Cess had missed it when he had examined the dagger I had been stabbed with, or it was something extra that had been added to this one. I had to stop that first – otherwise any attempt to remove the dagger would just lead to greater problems.

A tiny drop from the flood of magic now filling me was all it took to craft the spell. I directed it to Cess, 'slapping' it against his wound just as I would a bandage, and the black markings across his scales seemed to shiver in response. His wound was still bleeding, but I could feel the infections dying away now. That was one problem solved.

Twelve years.

I started to stand and looked back at Simon. "Go bring the healer and the knights back. Let them know that I am stopping the infection and working on the pain. I will heal whatever injuries they cause, but that weapon needs to come out."

Even though I turned to look back at Cess, I could still sense Simon. I knew that he nodded before he started walking towards the entrance of the tent. I could feel some concern from him – both for Cess and myself – but there was also a sense of worry for himself, along with a sense of relief. He had made the decision to be a rider and was glad to be rid of the Wellspring magic, but he also had a faint worry about what that might mean for his future. And... hope? There was a faint hope about what this meant for his future, too. But he was ignoring those things for the moment and focusing on helping me. Helping Cess.

The rider bond was going to take some getting used to. But... that was a problem for later.

I placed one hand on Cess' side and concentrated on my mage sense. The paralysis spell and the pain spells both burned against me, as if I was holding my hand against a rock that had been heated by the sun all day. Other sensations of lesser warmth were somewhere beyond those spells – the now-dormant spell that drove the dagger deeper into its victim, and the spell that sent stolen magic off somewhere else – but those weren't important right now, and I ignored them. I had more than enough magic to end the paralysis and pain spells... but even as I thought that, I felt another spell tug at my senses. The magic-draining spell – the dagger was able to reach my magic now that I was casting a spell on Cess, and it was trying to siphon my magic away. Trying to use it to power the other spells.