Selection (Book 2 of P.O.E. chronicles)

Chapter 15 Decisions

Before I could react, the enemy had started attacking. Snapping out of my trance I mentally slapped myself; I needed to concentrate and focus on the most important thing at hand – which is keeping everyone and myself alive. Tom had creating a ring of fire around us, immediately causing the two men in black to back away. In front of us Steven had his strange armour back on and managed to get Kailey, Emily and Jeremy behind him. Luckily for us we managed to gather up pretty close to each other.

Conjuring up the strongest mind wall I could I blasted it towards the four guys trying to attack the trio and successfully pushed them away for a few tens of meters. The force knocked them clean off the ground and I was surprised at its effect. Usually it’s not as powerful as this.

“Come here!” I shouted, frantically gesturing for them to join us inside the ring of fire. For a gut wrenching three seconds I watched them galloped across the small space between us and made it into the fire ring, I was relieved that Tom had let them in; there were a good chance he would just leave them out.

Steven nodded appreciatively in our direction before ramming into three of the attackers, effectively crashing them.

Looking around I saw we were surrounded by a good seven of the enemy. They outnumbered us from the beginning; although I thought there were more of them than this. I looked at Jeremy, hoping he would get my message; Emily and Kailey were a bit useless here, since there was no plant around us due to the fire and the emotion control thing wasn’t too much of a help at the moment.

“Ga-Gwen.” Tom shouted, gesturing with his head to the left, letting me know that I was meant to deal with those coming in from that way. Giving one last glance at Jeremy, who seemed to be under some kind of a panic attack alongside Kailey and unlikely to offer me any help. Emily was surprisingly calm about this and stood in a fighting stance. Not that it was going to be much use.

I pulled my blades out, thankful that I didn’t just dropped them on the ground next to the Legres. I left two over the fire, letting them grew hot whilst I aimed the other two at the two trying to jumped through the fire wall.

To my dismay, they seemed to be wearing some kind of body armour underneath the flimsy looking black clothings. Smoke was starting to build up around us as the grass was burnt out and the fire began to burn the soil. The smoke sting my eyes and the smell was awful; however the wind was blowing away from us so they were getting a worst deal.

Using my mind sensing skill, I took this to my advantage and aimed at the assassin’s eyes whilst he was coughing. The blade slashed him right in the right eye ball and he let out a shrill scream and dropping to the ground. I should have driven the knife right through his eye but I couldn’t bring myself to do something so gruesome.

“Gwen! Now isn’t the time to be soft.” Emily sighed next to me; how the heck did she see what I did? She gave me a glare before turning to Kailey and Jeremy and started scolding them.

Feeling slighted I turned back around to see the man that I cut on the right eye getting back up. Blood was gushing out from his wound as he held tight to it. His comrades didn’t seem too bothered by it, and that’s when I saw the darts they were holding.

“Watch out!” I screamed, throwing up a mind wall just in time to block out those darts. Jeremy’s face whitened as he picked one that had managed to squeeze through my mind wall by shear force. I realised quickly that my mind wall was breaking down slowly. The darts were poisonous.

“Can you cure this?” Kailey asked, the two of them appeared to be functional now, if not slightly shaken. Tom was still throwing fire balls at the attackers from the other side who thankfully didn’t appeared to have poisonous darts to throw. His face was the colour of milk and I knew he wouldn’t be able to hold it and attack people for long.