Fate’s Pawn

Weird grey forms came pouring out of the woods. They were only about three or four feet tall, but they were covered in taut muscle. Their heads were wider than their shoulders and their mouths, bristling with teeth, stretched from ear to ear. They chattered as they came, shrieking in voices that were at once guttural and chirruping.

They charged, and the children fled. Raziel saw Dominic and Miyo moving forward against the crowd and couldn't help but stop to watch them as they passed. Once he was clear of the students, Dominic let out a whistle like a cracking whip and gremlins screamed as unseen force snapped against them, throwing back the front lines.

Miyo strode towards the mass of gremlins and spoke a single strident word. Raziel felt the rush of magic flowing past him like a cold wind coming to her call just before the world turned to fire. Light and a rush of hot wind crashed over Raziel like the tide as the crimson explosion turned gremlins to charred, smoking gobbets. He ran to escape the putrid hail.

The guards were moving to stand between the students and the oncoming tide. The students were crowding up against the enormous tree in the center of the glade like scared kittens running to their mother. While they cowered behind the guards, Raziel turned back to watch the fight the moment he was past them.

Dominic and Miyo did battle, and it was like nothing Raziel had ever seen. Dominic sang, Miyo spoke, and Raziel felt waves crashing over his magical senses. Each note of Dominic's song wrought hammers that rippled the air like heat haze and smashed gremlins to the ground like broken toys. Miyo stood still as a statue, confident as an island in a river, and spoke. Each word birthed fire that rent the air like thunder and left corpses that glowed with dying embers.

But there were hundreds of gremlins. They kept coming and, while they couldn't get near either of them, neither Dominic nor Miyo killed them quickly enough to stem the tide. They swarmed up the hill towards the tree, and while students behind Raziel screamed, the guards stood firm.

"Steady," Francis said, and though his voice wavered a little, he took a wide stance, threw his arms forward, and Raziel felt power rumble beneath him.

"I know," said Geoffrey his voice tight with annoyance. He brought his own hands up, and the feeling of power in Raziel's mind became a tremor he felt in his feet. The gremlins came charging up the hill in a mad rush, some still burning or with limbs broken from the blasts below. Francis and Geoffrey were no kinder to them than Dominic or Miyo had been.

The earth rippled like a sheet and spat out stones, sharp as knives. The stones were angled upward to avoid hitting Miyo or Dominic. They ripped holes in the legs of the first rank of gremlins and kept going through the chests of the second and the heads of the third. Some didn't stop till they were stuck a foot deep in the trees beyond.

Somehow one lone gremlin made it through the barrage of death. It wasn't unscathed. One arm hung limply at its side, a ragged hole in its shoulder oozing black blood where its white bone wasn't showing. Raziel was the closest of the students, and it came for him. Raziel took a couple involuntary steps back, no idea what to do. The thing leapt in the air, mouth open wide, teeth gleaming.

Hoeru came from around Raziel in a blur and hit the gremlin like a shark taking a seal. His jaws snapped shut around the creature's neck. As his feet touched the ground his whole body twisted violently, releasing the gremlin. It landed with an audible snap of bones. Hoeru finished it with an equally vicious stomp. Then he spat black blood with a disgusted look on his face.

"Blegh. Tastes like rotten eggs," he said.

Raziel could only let out a short, relieved laugh. The stampede of monsters was dividing around Miyo and Dominic, warned by the piles of broken, burnt bodies. Even so, only a few of them came charging up the hill after the initial wave. Geoffrey and Francis were easily able to pick them off. The gremlins were mostly running around the huge tree rather than coming after the students. Confused, Raziel turned to ask Miles, but Miles wasn't looking at the gremlins. He was looking deeper into the trees.

"What's that?" he asked, his quiet, dull voice somehow more full of terror than if he'd been screaming. Raziel and Hoeru both looked and saw trees falling. Something was smashing its way through the forest, pushing down old pines and oaks like they were reeds. The noise from Miyo and Dominic's assault was covering the sound of the thing's approach and Geoffrey and Francis' attempts to warn them.

Raziel initially thought the thing that came galloomping out of forest was an impossibly huge bear, twenty feet tall at the shoulder and at least ten feet wide. The thing was brown, furry, and had four legs that ended with long, curved, black claws. It had no snout, just a huge, round, furry forehead with a pair of bulging eyes and a hint of a nose haphazardly thrown in for decoration. Its mouth was big enough to fit a cart in. As it came to the clearing, it rose momentarily to its hind legs and roared out a challenge like a volcanic eruption. Raziel had a confused impression of its oddly oblong body that tapered to an pointy lump where a tail had probably been meant to go, and then it was back on the ground and charging.

"Eggbeast! Run!" Francis screamed. Raziel had time to think What a stupid name, but couldn't seem to get his feet to move as the monster came barreling at him. Dominic and Miyo threw shots at its face, but it shrugged off the explosive magics like irritating flies and kept coming. Raziel felt a shove and stumbled before he could see what happened to them. Students were scattering in every direction, shrieking in terror like the gremlins before them. A hand wrapped around his own pulled him to his feet. Keira was dragging him away with Miles a few feet ahead. Roland was running behind them.

"Hoeru! Where's Hoeru?!" Raziel heard himself shouting. The changeling was nowhere to be seen.

Francis and Geoffrey stood their ground as long as they could, hurling stones that bounced off the eggbeast's face, only seeming to anger it. Raziel and the others ran headlong into the forest. There were panicked screams from behind them, around them, and the constant booms of spells going off. Bushes scraped at Raziel's face, hands, legs, but he didn't stop until Keira came to a sudden halt. Roland and Miles stopped just behind him. A pack of gremlins had been hiding in a clearing and was staring at them.

The gremlins stepped cautiously towards them. Miles' nerves, already shot, broke, and he ran deeper into the forest. Keira joined Miles' mad dash and Raziel went after her. Roland came behind them and the gremlins followed after.

They ran till their hearts pounded in their ears and their breath came in great burning gasps. The gremlins' squawking shrieks at their backs gave them fuel to run, but it couldn't last forever. Something, a root or a rock, caught Raziel's foot, and he went sprawling. He rolled to his back, and his vision was filled with an open maw and snapping teeth. With a scream he threw his hands up, caught the thing by its scrawny neck. But if it wanted to breathe, it wanted to taste Raziel's face more. It leaned into him, snapping like it was trying to chew away the distance between them.

A boot the size of his head caught the gremlin in the teeth and tore it out of Raziel's grasp. The gremlin flew backward, crashed into a tree, and lay still. Roland hauled Raziel up, but gremlins had already encircled them.

"Back to back," Roland said, turning around. Raziel could see two of the monsters. One was eyeing the one laying still on the ground with a distinctly misshapen jaw. The other was watching Raziel with unblinking, focused hunger.

"You got a plan?" Raziel said, his heart hammering his chest like it wanted to push its way out and take its chances on its own.

"Don't get eaten."

Raziel bared his teeth and laughed. The monsters walked a slow steady circuit around them. There were only three. He guessed they probably didn't want to mess with Roland, even two on one, or they would've just charged. Raziel thought he could probably take one of them, but if two of them came at him he was sure he'd walk away missing a few chunks of flesh at the very best. So it was a stalemate.

The focus Raziel held—trying to keep eyes on everything at once, keeping ready for them to try rushing—it wasn't unlike the focus he held when he used magic. The adrenaline racing through his veins only sharpened that focus. He extended his senses outward, thinking it might give him a moment more warning.

The gremlins felt disgusting. They were every bit as ugly and hateful inside as they were on the outside. Touching them with his mind was the mental equivalent of licking a slug. But he could feel the rising tension in them like a pressure against his throat, feel the hunger and need to feed that drove them like something clawing at his belly. He was sure he'd feel the moment it overflowed and forced them to ignore their caution.

The three gremlins continued circling, seemingly unaware that Raziel was in their heads. He watched, willing them to get on with it. He wanted them to attack. He wanted the horrible tension of the moment to snap like a guitar string and be over. His own magic was building inside him as well, swelling and threatening to burst. But something was shifting in the forest's magic around them, and the gremlins felt it too.

The wave of magic swept over them, and Raziel felt his entire body go cold like someone had ripped all the heat from the air. An explosion sent an icepick of pain through his ears, and the wind nearly pushed Raziel off his feet. The gremlins were knocked off-balance, and Raziel saw his moment. He threw himself stumbling forward. The gremlin snarled at him, lips curling from ugly yellowed teeth.

Time seemed to freeze for a moment, and Raziel wondered if any of his friends had felt those teeth. At that thought, energy surged through him and time lurched forward. Raziel screamed, and his arm felt like it caught fire as he drove his fist at the gremlin. He heard a crack as he smashed into its nose and its face crunched inward. It flew back, and Raziel fell to his knees, teeth clenched against a scream as white hot pain pulsed up his arm.

He forced himself to look up, knowing there could be other gremlins coming for him, but nothing was there. Roland had thrown one into the branches of a tree where it hung like the world's ugliest fruit. Hadn't there been three?

One of the bushes nearby suddenly shook violently. Raziel struggled to his feet as Roland stepped past him, putting himself between Raziel and whatever was in the bush. There was a crack like a tree branch snapping. A moment later the last gremlin fell out of the bush, its head wobbling bonelessly on its neck. Hoeru stepped out of the bushes a moment later, and Raziel almost fell over in relief.

"What was that noise?" Roland asked. Hoeru shrugged, moving to Raziel. He lifted Raziel's arm to inspect it and winced. Raziel didn't want to look, and when he did, he wished he hadn't. His knuckles were shredded and his whole hand was turning redish purple and beginning to swell.

"It's broken," Hoeru said.

"We need to move," Roland answered.

"But he's hurt."

"We need to find Miles and Keira. They could be hurt, too," Roland said.

Hoeru growled, but Raziel got to his feet with a wince.

"It's okay. I'll be fine. Roland's right." Hoeru stared at him, indecision twisting his face. Raziel pushed down the pain and met Hoeru's eyes. The others might be hurt, and there wasn't time to worry about something like a broken hand. Hoeru gritted his teeth and turned away.

"Follow me. I can smell them," Hoeru said, and moved into the trees in the direction the explosion had come from. They didn't have to go very far.

Keira lay in the center of a crater. It went a foot down into the ground, still-smoking, blackened earth dug up in furrows around her. She was unconscious but was otherwise unmarked, like she'd just fallen asleep there. It took Raziel a few moments to notice the burnt bits of what had been gremlins laying in glistening piles and splattered against the trees.

"What did she do?" Raziel breathed.

"Where's Miles?" Roland asked, a note of worry in his voice.

"Here," Hoeru said, coming out of the woods carrying Miles. He was awake but disoriented. His face was red, like he'd been sunburned, except for an off-center line over his eyes where he must've brought his arm up.

"Why did Keira explode?" he asked, slurring his words a bit.

"I don't know. We need to get back to everyone else," Hoeru said, looking back towards the clearing where the sounds of battle still raged. Roland nodded and stepped into the crater to get Keira. Miles shook his head and fear came back into his eyes, a sure sign that he was thinking again.

"Wait," Raziel said as a thought struck him.

"What?" Hoeru asked.

"We can't waste this chance. We're never going to have a distraction this good again. Let's go."

All of them turned to stare at him like he'd grown a second head.

"What?"

"That's a terrible idea," Miles said.

"We can't just leave." Hoeru said at the same time.

"No," Roland said.

Raziel clenched his jaw. The pain in his hand was no longer excruciating, somehow. It barely even distracted him, it was fading so quickly. He didn't know why and it didn't matter to him. Someone would explain later. Right now, he had to find a way to convince them to go. Or at least just Hoeru.

"Look, after something like this, they're going to have a lot more guards around. Getting away is going to be harder than ever. I'm not letting this chance go. You three can come if you want."

Raziel knew Hoeru wouldn't let him go out into the woods on his own. He didn't want to use that against his friend, but he wasn't lying. Things were going to change for Dominic's classes after today. Hoeru looked like he'd bitten into something sour, and Raziel knew he had him.

"He's right," the changeling said. Miles looked desperately from Raziel to Hoeru, fear on his face like they'd gone suddenly insane and it was contagious.

"What about Keira? We can't just leave her here," Miles asked, the high pitched fear in his voice making it clear that it wasn't really Keira he was concerned about.

"Bring her with us," Raziel said.

"What? She needs help!" Miles almost shouted.

"You don't know that! You're just afraid," Raziel actually shouted back. Miles shrank back like he'd been slapped. Hoeru bit his lip like he wanted to intervene but didn't know how.

"No," Roland said, the calm word cutting through the rising tension. "We aren't going. This isn't the time."

"There'll never be another time!" Raziel growled.

"You don't know that," Roland answered, and Raziel rocked back a step at his own words thrown in his face. He searched for something to say, something that could convince Roland. But the other boy's face might as well have been granite.

"Fine. Take Keira back to the group. Take Miles with you while you're at it." Raziel turned away from the clearing and the rising sounds of magical battle. Before he'd gone more than a couple steps he felt a hand clamp down around his bicep. Roland was grabbing him, shaking his head.

"Let. Go," Raziel said, feeling the anger rising in him. He couldn't, wouldn't hurt Roland. But he couldn't and wouldn't let Roland stop him either.

"Guys..." Miles said.

"Not now, Miles," Raziel said, not taking his eyes off Roland.

"Guys we need to move."

"I'm not going... anywhere..." Raziel started. But then he heard it too. Hoeru caught on at the same time, looking up sharply. Confusion crossed Roland's face. All four of them turned to look and saw a brown furry hill running away from the clearing and and coming straight for them.

"Oh. Crap," someone said.

"Run!" Roland roared and they did.