Radiance - The Alight Archives Book #1

76. Cracks in the Ice

Standing where she was, charged with intense magical energy and equipped with a shard of golden light in her fist, Kliff hadn't expected when, suddenly, Elaine's eyes abruptly reverted to their regular hue, and the girl collapsed to her knees, fainting onto the ground. At that moment, Kliff lost himself to time as he lay where he was, consumed by his deep concern for Elaine

Clutching a tight fist on the grass, scraping soil into his palms, he fought against himself to stand, although the tiredness consuming his arms and legs refused to allow him such a plain courtesy. I must have misheard. It can't be! Grunting, Kliff managed to position himself so that he may glare at the motionless warlock looking up at the skies through dead eyes. If he'd just been the one to say it...there could still be hope that...that she wasn't...Kliff cursed loudly in his mind. Dammit! How can Elaine by the Alight?!

Kliff tentatively attempted to move his legs once more, and to his surprise, he felt a response as his right leg kicked out behind him. Despite the stinging sensation in his arms, Kliff persevered, slowly pushing himself inch by inch off the ground. He heaved heavily as clumps of grassy dirt fell from the end of his nose. Straining against the building, painful pressure as he prepared to rise into a crouch, without warning, something heavy landed on top of him, forcefully shoving him back into the earth.

A startled gasp left his lungs as someone placed their hand on the nape of his neck and drove their knee hardly into his spine. Struggling helplessly on the ground, he felt utterly defeated, but to his astonishment, his assailant had left his arms unrestricted. Without hesitation, he thrashed about wildly, frantically scrabbling at the earth in a desperate attempt to break free. His captor wasn't at all impressed and, with a swift motion, jammed the tip of the dagger into the ground mere inches from Kliff's eyes, the reflection of his own shocked expression on its polished, flat surface.

"You little bastard. Thought you could get away with it, did you?" With effort, Kliff leaned his head to the side so that one of his eyes could gaze up at the person keeping him pinned. He was a scrawny, dark-skinned man with furious eyes, bared teeth, and a scar running over his bottom lip. Kliff didn't recognize him, not in the slightest.

Around him, Kliff's ears heard the advancing footsteps of multiple other men. They surrounded him in a circle, each looking down at him with a scowl as equally as vicious as the man keeping him hostage or with evil snickers curving their lips. Dammit! Kliff cursed himself. I must have been so focused on Elaine that I hadn't sensed them coming! I'm a fool!

They were all serpents, as even from where Kliff was restrained to the eye level of a man's boot, he managed to locate the snake-head emblem on several of the men, either imprinted on an exposed sweaty shoulder or leg or poking out from underneath their clothing. Most of them carried a standard dagger or short sword, but Kliff immediately found it interesting that only a fraction of the thirteen men were mages. This could play to his advantage...assuming he could muster the strength to shove the bloody sulmo off of his back.

Then, of course, there was always the option of rereleasing his Ember. These moronic thugs would never see it coming. However, as Kliff closed his eyes and embraced the Ember's heat, a curse echoed in his ears, and he rested the side of his face into the grass. Even if he did have the energy to summon its wrath, there was very little he could do to control it, especially not in his overly fatigued state.

Dammit! If I just had my wand! When last he'd seen the crimson-colored wand, it was resting not far from where he had landed; he suspected one of the serpents had already snatched it for themselves. Separating a mage from his wand was a high priority, even for this idiotic lot. And then, there was Elaine, resting lifelessly on the ground, her head slanted toward him although her hair was blanketing her eyes. Two serpents—a spindly fellow with curly, orange hair and a shorter yet much older ruffian with a ruffled beard spiking out of his squarish face—were standing over her, one of them crouching down to pick Elaine's wand out of her hand. The girl stirred, her brows pinching together in discomfort.