CALEN

  "Em's over there with the— oh holy shit. They need help." Calen forgot the danger he was apparently in for trying to help Mirri retrieve her potion.

  The Venatrix had just grabbed Emma by the scruff and tossed her half a dozen feet away from a descending sword.

  The other behemoth, the one who had just leapt down the cliff without any wings of their own to make the strike in the first place, snarled in apparent frustration. The warlord's scales were deep gray, and in addition to the comically over-thick sword, was wearing a necklace that looked suspiciously like it was made of mismatched teeth.

  The attacker abused Mahira's distraction to lunge again, and ate a fireball that threw both of them apart with a clap. Not literally, Calen got to watch the stones sewn into their torso armor sip at the mana and partially break whatever spell structure the Venatrix was using.

  Hopefully a fireball down the throat would actually be enough to kill them, because Mahira had left her spear embedded in the cliffside, pinning the dead hydra's skull to the stone, and was fighting with only her shield in hand.

  Emma stumbled to her feet, looking small for once as the titans beside her clashed again.

  The sky lit up with heat lightning, and stayed lit up for just a few fractions of a second too long.

  Calen dropped the mana out of his head, and his legs were no longer dragging as they carried him away from the hurt and panicky priestess who had just finished saving his life. He knew her perception of his speed hadn't changed, but it still made him feel better to be further away.

  Apparently personal space rules were enforced at bladepoint on Avarea. Or maybe it was a local custom in Tenashki.

  Mirri mumbled something behind Calen, and he accidentally over-surged mana to his head trying to go back to listening.

  The mistake bought him the time to see what she had been warning him about. Or more accurately, feel.

  Hairs on his right arm stood up in a wave first, the odd, staticky prickling rolling down his elbow to wash over the rest of his body. The survivors clinging to his scalp did the same before the sensation washed down the back of his neck, so Calen looked up as he turned.

  Then he truly saw the danger, a suffusive violet glow emanating from underneath a silk awning on the clifftop.

  When the light overlapped, concentrating to a singular point, Calen realized who it was being aimed at.

  One of his heels scraped painfully against the bare stone beneath his feet as he scrambled back into cover just in time for the destruction to pass him by. Flecks of shattered gravel pelted him, and he could have sworn Mirri shrieked.

  Calen stayed on his back as he shuffled away from the danger, only turning around to avoid crawling over Mirri's legs where she had sprawled.

  "Scout ahead." The dragonborn hissed at him. Her injured wing was crackling and straightening in a way that couldn't have been anything but painful. "I'll follow when— when I can."

  She seemed to be eyeing the forest of stones even more hesitantly than the open field the archer was watching.

  Calen nodded, not trusting his voice to hold as he realized they were still in danger. The clifftop descent had just been the start of their escape, and he was being assigned scouting duty.

  What Mirri thought he would do about whatever danger he encountered was beyond him, but asking for her knife when she was the one who knew how to fight seemed like a bad idea. Or a shortcut to being stabbed, if he was being honest with himself.

  The crazed look in her eyes when she had first scrambled away had taken a moment to fade even after she saw his face.

  Nothing had come bounding out of the maze to try eating them yet, so that was a good sign. And a solid improvement on previous emergencies. He would just have to remember how to get back to this spot, and run fast if he met a monster among the stone forest in the bottleneck of the pass.

  Em and the Venatrix were on their own, until he and Mirri circled far enough across the pass to be out of the archer's range.

  Picking up the pace proved hazardous, both to Calen's balance and to his bare feet, wherever the stone below hadn't been sufficiently weathered. Long stretches of smooth, rain-slick stone would be suddenly broken up by sharp rises, forcing him to vary his pace. Mirri's potion was at least correcting the errors for him, even if slicing one of his feet open on bladelike protrusions of shattered rock was just as painful the ninth time as the first.

  The additional challenge of remembering where he was in the unfamiliar terrain proved to have a simple solution: Just keep the rest of the pass to his right, and stay one or two layers inside the spires of rock to avoid being seen. It resulted in a simple pattern of movement, left around one rock formation, right around the next.

  Tracking the faded scorch marks and strange dimpled patterns on the pillars seemed fruitless for now, but Calen did file the idea away for later. Something about the way they were distributed was making his brain itch, even if they weren't neatly lined up like writing or obviously connected to one another. Most of the markings were either at eye level, or within arm's reach, so they had likely been made by humans. Or at least, people.

  Local graffiti aside, time was hard to track with random amounts of mana accidentally surging through Calen's head and stretching his perception of time every time a violet flash or the crack of a fireball caused him to strain his ears. None of his efforts gave him any clues as to how Emma was doing, but at least there was no new monster lurking in the shadows between the stones.

  Yet.

  The incidents were fewer and further between by the time he lost sight of the far cliff, and chose to creep closer to the edge of the pillars for a better look. Calen was careful to pull his head back when he caught sight of the silk awning staked by the cliff-edge, not eager to repeat his earlier brush with death.

  Seeing the Venatrix and the Warlord dancing near the midpoint of the pass did not make him feel better about Emma's chances, but the silver-clad shieldbearer seemed to be circling something, sticking to defending a singular spot from twisting assaults and the occasional rain of sling-stones.

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  One such swarm was scattered by the midair detonation of a fireball, followed immediately by a screech that left Calen worried for his eardrums when the twisted slab of metal the Warlord was using as a sword struck the Venatrix's shield, sending the fighters flying apart to begin their dance again.

  He finally caught sight of a disheveled looking Emma, standing up to be just barely visible over the varied terrain, before she sprinted off, eating up tiny amounts of space compared to the massive figures maneuvering around her.

  Calen only had a few moments to be absolutely flabbergasted at the speed of the duel near the center of the pass before more immediate concerns claimed his attention.

  Specifically, a heavy, gauntleted hand landing on his shoulder.

  "Relax boy, you're safe now." Calen heard as he squirmed and began to turn, the words oddly stretched.

  With indiscriminate amounts of mana surging through his head, his perception of time was actually slow enough to feel the prickles from his ears dancing up along under his scalp, plucking through ideas and stringing together a coherent meaning from the unfamiliar syllables.

  He still didn't quite believe the speaker, until he continued his forced turn and saw another half-dozen men armored in bronze scattered through the space behind him.

  "Why in the nine hells do the Bessos louts have you scouting ahead without any armor or casting implement? Those aren't even proper mage's—"

  The speaker behind the steel visor stopped, releasing Calen's shoulder and leaning back as their eyes met.

  "You're not the Bessos squire." The man's eyes were locked to Calen's forehead.

  Calen pulled his hood back, swallowed his nervousness, and nodded.

  "Calen. I don't know what a Bessos is," He started, introducing himself and pointing a thumb over his shoulder. "And my sister needs hel—"

  Violet flashed behind him, and he flinched to a stop midsentence, turning to look.

  The Venatrix was still standing. Still fighting.

  He couldn't see Emma.

  Sariel was still standing too, judging by the laser carving pieces off the cliff and the slingers who had pushed too close to the edge.

  The duel in the valley seemed to be circling something out of his sight, the combatants hidden up the waist by a rise.

  Someone guffawed behind him, the sound stretched and slow while a buzzing built in Calen's head.

  "Your daddy must have been quite the dragon rider in his day if your sister's a Venatrix," A second voice started behind him, higher up than the first. "She'll be fine out there, Sanctum's fighters are some of—"

  Mahira bent down to scruff Emma again, and the second man behind Calen cut off when she was tossed through the air, out of the Warlord's range again.

  "She's the little one," Calen pointed at her tumbling form before it disappeared again, resolving never to let Emma hear him repeat that, no matter how true it was when she was trapped between titans and being thrown around like a toy. He barely got away with calling her his 'medium sister' as it was. "The one without scales."

  He forced himself to speak slowly and clearly, despite the knot of worry in his stomach. The warlord was throwing up chips of rock and clods of dirt with every missed strike at the ground, and the Venatrix's shield screamed every time she bothered to block.

  Any one of those swings could tear Emma in half if the oversized sword actually caught her, and Calen was stuck here playing twenty questions, because a dozen more people with armor and weapons and matching blue heraldry sewn into their uniforms might tip the balance.

  It was certainly going to do more than just him and Mirri sneaking around the back of the fight.

  "You're not a foreigner, you're an Arrival." The man in steel contemplated.

  "Kind of seems like both apply. We've had a rough twelve hours."

  That got him a polite chuckle or two.

  Calen glanced around at the decidedly lackadaisical knot of men, at least four of whom were stroking braided beards while they leaned against the rocks.

  Maybe he hadn't been clear enough the first time, or magic had trouble with incomplete sentences.

  "Not to rush things, but are you guys just here to watch, or trying to figure out how to help?" he tried again.

  That got a reaction.

  A dozen of them, actually. They ranged from straightened spines, to hands adjusting belts and the angle of weapon hafts, to—

  "We would love to, but this is the border."

  A shiny steel helmet gave away very little through the visor slit, even the tone of the man's voice artificially neutral as it echoed. The rustling forest of mutters calmed at the words, but none of the dirty looks went away.

  No one else had any reply for Calen. Apparently wearing steel put you in charge on Avarea.

  An open-palmed gesture drew Calen's attention back the way he had come, towards the base of the cliff behind the Warlord, to something he had missed.

  Another half-dozen or so human figures, picking their way along the rocks behind the Warlord. The knights from the tower.

  They, also, did not look enthused at the idea of helping the Venatrix. None of them even had a weapon drawn.

  "Our responsibility here is making sure those men get out safely," Shiny continued as a brass disk dug into Calen's palm. "Being caught in the open while the Warden is on the warpath against other forces would be... counterproductive to our mandate."

  The buzzing in his ears intensified, rendering the knight's dramatic pause before his last word an endless-seeming hell. But something about the word 'Warden' tweaked at Calen's brain for a moment, so he bit off whatever scathing reply was about to fall out of his mouth and get him into trouble.

  "Mirri," He realized aloud instead. "Could Mirri give you permission to help? She's the Warden's daughter, right?"

  That caused trouble anyway.

  Judging by the way the entire pack of metal-clad soldiers flinched towards their weapons, Calen had a feeling they weren't on the best of terms with the priestess.

  Previously, there had been a bit of a casual air to the way some of the men stood watch. Now, every third man's chin was tilted skywards, as if they expected her to come flapping over the stone pillars around them, and the level gazes were hawkishly focused on the open spaces at ground level.

  Even if the weapons were sheathed, no one was empty handed by the time he finished his suggestion.

  "The Firebrand is here? Now?"

  Shiny was carefully extracting a brass disk from one of his belt pouches as he drew Calen's attention. The object could have been the twin to the metal in his pocket, except for the thin gray bead embedded in the center, where Calen's only had a scorch mark and a hexagonal hole.

  The one in Shiny's hand slipped neatly into a slot in the oddly-oversized steel bracer on the knight's forearm, flush with the end of a line of copper filigree Calen had previously taken for decorative flair.

  "Is that what you guys call her?" Calen asked, stalling for time.

  No one had pointed anything at him yet, but suddenly becoming the person a dozen armed men were most interested in was doing interesting things to his pulse even though his perception of time should have been twisted. Everything except the thudding heartbeat in his ears was acting as he had come to expect, including the straining electrical ringing that was starting to drown out quieter sounds.

  "Yes. If you know where she is, and she's willing to be cooperative, we would have the leverage to reunite you with your sister."

  Shiny held up a hand to forestall the protests the man beside him was about to make, and barely seemed to be addressing Calen as he continued. The crowd of soldiers was hanging on his every word, the few open-faced helmets showing a mix of consternation and understanding.

  "We can certainly accomplish that, provided the Venatrix doesn't fail before we can finish negotiating. Permission to cross the pass and deal with the north would be easy to secure, if we had the Firebrand."

  The big man's head tilted oddly, his chin hanging just a little lower than before as he finished considering the words and nodded.

  The steel-clad knight who still hadn't given Calen a name to call him was retrieving some sort of wax-coated cartridge from his belt, sliding it neatly down a tube built into the same overly thick bracer where he had slotted the brass—

  A hint of sulfur reached Calen's nose, almost drowned below the earthy scent of the rain and the distinct smell of unwashed human, and he understood.

  The man was loading a firearm, a holdout weapon built into the armor itself. A shotgun, if Calen had to guess. Nothing else would have made sense, given how short the barrel was, with a complete lack of gunsights.

  Violet light flashed again behind Calen as the ringing in his ears reached a crescendo. The sound ended with a snap, dumping his perceptions back to real speed.

  Shiny was still talking, but the words came faster now, and his gaze never left Calen.

  "Now. Tell me where she is, and we'll get started before we run out of time."

  gunpowder-like substances come from second-century Taoist alchemists, who were pursuing the recipe for eternal life and material transmutation. Eighth century texts warn against certain combinations of materials named "huoyao", meaning fire medicine. They warn of how a specific mixture of sulfur, arsenic, and saltpeter created burns on the hands and face of an alchemist, and the destruction of a house by burning.