Valor and Violence

The cleaning had gone faster than expected. Ingrid had returned, in much higher spirits after a helping of strong coffee, even bearing a pair of cups for the men, and done wonders to speed up the process. Using gusts of wind like a giant, invisible broom, she swept up the bodies and bits. A quick bonfire outside, and the fort was good as new!

Well, not good as new. The interior buildings were still mostly torched, and the gate was ruined, but the walls were fine.

Mostly.

The important thing was the employer had paid as promised and, after a brief stop in Ader, they were now at the entrance to one of the few mountain passes connecting Aderath to Calandor. The trio paused and looked up at the jagged walls of stone rising on either side. They were a dreary slate grey, just a few shades darker than the blanket of heavy cloud hanging in the sky above it. A few scraggly trees, completely lacking any sort of foliage, sprouted from the occasional crevasse, and somewhere deep in the ravine a corvid let out a mournful wail.

“This isn’t foreboding at all,” Leo mumbled, fidgeting with the straps holding the giant water jug to his back as entered the narrow pass. His voice echoed chaotically from the nooks and crannies scattered along the wall faces.

“Shut up, runt,” Ingrid said, an eye roll audible in the tone of her voice. “I still don’t understand why you’re even here.”

“The fact we’re old adventuring friends, rekindling the flames of excitement and good fortune, isn’t enough?”

“Absolutely not,” she replied.

“That’s probably smart,” he replied with a thoughtful nod of his head.

Ferez snorted, but truth be told, he was curious as well. Leo already had his cut from the last job, and there was no pay on the line here. It had been fun travelling again, but the water mage had his own life to get back to, so why was he following them around like a lost piglet?

“That’s not much of an answer, Leo.”

“Alright, alright. I think it’s time I was straight with you all… I really love weddings!”

“Leo!”

“Urgh, fine! I may be on the run at the moment.”

Leo stopped and whirled on his friend. “Again?”

“As I once told you, someone is almost always after you in this line of work. This isn’t a big deal, just means it’s a day ending in y.”

His nonchalant tone of voice was infuriating. Leo was a surprisingly capable smuggler. In the last few years Ferez had caught whispers he had even built a small fleet of associates. At face value, it was hard to take him seriously as a burgeoning pirate king, but behind the doughy and laissez-faire exterior, he was a shrewd businessman and a deadly combatant. Which begged the question: why was he hiding out with them?

“There’s more you aren’t telling us, Leo,” Ferez said. His gaze drifted to Leo’s hand. “How did that happen?”

Leo’s eyes followed Ferez’s, and then they widened when he realised the implication. “Oh! Oh, no, it’s not like that at all… well, actually it is, but not quite. It’s complicated.”

“Fortunately, both Ingrid and I are quite intelligent. We’ll keep up.”

“Alright, alright, just let me gather my thoughts…” he paused, gazing up at the sky, mouth hanging slightly ajar as he planned his speech. “I guess you could say it started when I expanded my business- “

Ferez interrupted him with a snort, but Leo pressed on, shooting him a dirty look. They both had firm stances on the legitimacy of each other’s professions.

“The expansion required a bit of travel. You know, outreach to new partners and the like? Said travels took me to Griffon Keep in Calandor, where I was enjoying a lovely evening of drinking and gambling with some new friends.”

“Get to the point, Leo,” Ingrid said, hurrying him up with a hand gesture. As Leo looked at the motion, he burst into laughter.

“Point! Yes! Good one, Ingrid,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye with his mangled hand. “You know that tavern game, the one where you splay your hand out on a table and stab a knife between your fingers as quickly as you can?”

“Oh no,” Ferez sighed.

“Yep! I was doing pretty well, actually. Won myself a nice little pot racing a few ne’erdowells and other such riff raff. But I was a few ales down by the time of my last round and I… slipped. Took the finger clean off at the knuckle!”

Ingrid shook her head while Ferez massaged his temples.

“Alright, so you got drunk and chopped off your own finger. How did this end up in you being on the run?”

“Well, I didn’t want to lose the pot, of course, so I stole it. They… sent someone after me. Fahroul.”

Ferez narrowed his eyes. That name sounded familiar. He turned to Ingrid and was surprised to see she was somehow paler than before.

“You know this guy?”

She nodded, her face settling back into her usual scowl as the shock wore off. She shook her head, bringing herself back to the present, then turned and strode off.

“You’re fucked, Leo. But good luck with that.”

“Wait! You can’t just abandon me!” he called after her, his voice taking on a terrified whine that was completely unbecoming of a man, and yet not that surprising coming from Leo. As much as Ferez was tempted to leave the man to his fate, they had a shared history. Pit, Leo had saved all of their lives before. Surely, they could help him with a solitary thug.

“Ingrid,” he called, “come on. It can’t be that big of an issue. The three of us can deal with anything, right? Let’s just find this guy, kill him, and then Leo can be on his way and, importantly,” he said, shooting a glare at Leo, “get out of our hair.”

Ingrid kept walking, calling back over her shoulder, “Every single college has a bounty on that man. The oldest bounty is twenty-six years old. No one has come close to claiming it, and believe me, many have tried. Leo, I’d say I’m sorry, except I’m not. But basically, you’re already dead. Fahroul finding and killing you is just a formality.”

“Now wait just a- “ Ferez said, before realising it wouldn’t be any use. Ingrid was as stubborn as they came with things like this. Also, if she didn’t want to fight this man, that was as damning an indictment of Leo’s chances as anything could be. With a sigh, he turned to Leo.

“I’m sorry, Leo. If even Ingrid fears this guy- “

“I never said I was scared, Ferez! Watch your tongue!” she called back.

“Then I’m not sure what we can do. Maybe your best hope is to return to The Six? You were kicked out for failing classes. Nothing unforgivable. Maybe they will take you back?”

“That pit of worms?” Leo spat, “I’d rather die on my feet than crawl back to them!”

An unknown voice echoed off the ravine walls. “In that case, I have good news, Leonardo.”

A dozen paces in front of Ingrid, a man stepped out from behind an outcrop. He was an Aderathian, tall, thin, and pale, resembling a skeleton dressed in a ragged traveller’s cloak. The rest of his clothes were well worn too, he looked like the beggars they had passed in the streets of Ader.

Wait. He was a beggar from the streets of Ader!

Ferez had noticed him during Ingrid’s shopping spree. Though physically he looked much like the others, sunken cheeks below protruding cheekbones, a long, beaked nose and a mess of knotted black hair, his eyes had drawn the mage’s attention. They were the same now as back then.

Pale blue, as was common among his people, but behind them blazed an intensity that was difficult to put into words. The transient’s gaze met Ferez’s only briefly, but the fire mage felt as though his entire soul had been laid bare before the enigmatic figure. He stood, transfixed, until the man looked away.

“Come with me, Leo, and we can see about you dying on your feet. You two,” he said, waving a dismissive hand at Ingrid and Ferez. “I have no interest in. You may leave.”

“Don’t listen to him!” Leo shouted. “He’s lying, trying to get us to split up. He’ll come back for you as soon as he’s done with me!”

“No, he won’t,” Ingrid cut in. “He’s a psychopath, but he’s also a professional. We aren’t his mark, he’ll leave us be… If we let him.”

Ferez glanced at her. She was squared up to Fahroul, but looking back over her shoulder at Ferez. As he stared, she arched an eyebrow. She was waiting for his cue.

Ferez looked from her, to Leo, to the hitman, and sighed.

“Leo, you are an incredible pain in my arse,” he muttered. “Ahem, Fahroul, is it?” he called. The hitman nodded, his eyes once again boring into Ferez’s soul. “The imbecile is with us. And while I would love nothing more than to collect the bounties on your head, we have pressing matters to attend to. So I will be generous, and permit you to leave.”

Ferez finished by planting his hands on his hips and a smile on his face. Fahroul’s expression remained stony.

“You seem to misunderstand the dynamics here, fire mage. You were not in a position to extend any courtesies. I was.” He cleared his throat, then said, loud enough for his voice to reverberate through the chasm, “kill the fire mage. Leave the water mage alive and capable of speaking. I will deal with the wind mage.”

He wasn’t alone!

Ferez threw up a wall of flame as arrows rained down on them from hidden firing positions along the cliff faces. He sculpted the flame with sweeping motions, safely cocooning himself and Leo within a raging tornado.

“Leo, did you see their positions?” Ferez asked as he peered through the fire, trying to spot Ingrid. He caught glimpses of her, engaged in a fierce battle with Fahroul. “We need to deal with the riff raff quickly and get to Ingrid.”

“Agreed, but I’ve got no idea. Those walls are like honeycomb. I doubt they’ll risk staying in the same spot after letting off an arrow, and I can’t scour the entire cliff face with ice.”

Ferez frowned, listening to the crackle of arrows bursting from the heat of his shield. “I can though. Have you got enough water in that jug to shield us from one side?”

“If I stretch it out enough, and you stay close, sure… Maybe.”

“Leo!”

“Alright! Yes! I’ll make it work.”

“Good, on my count.”

As Ferez counted down, he dug into his Talent pool and marshalled his power. He was above average in terms of overall capacity, and over the years he had learned a degree of control few other battlemages could hope to achieve. But what he was about to attempt was the opposite of controlled. And it would be very, very Talent intensive.

As he shouted for Leo to form the shield, he sucked the tornado towards himself and dumped Talent into it, stoking the raging fire into a vast, roaring beast. He grit his teeth as it threatened to spiral out of control, but by a hair’s breadth, he held on. With a desperate shout, he swept it across the ravine wall in front of him. Hungry fire scoured every nook and cranny, surging down the tunnels, running through the rock and rupturing the porous stone with its intense heat. Unable to see into the crevasses, he wasn’t sure of his success.

Until the burning forms of men started lurching from their perches, hurling themselves to their deaths, their screams sucked away by the roaring flames.

He gave an involuntary shudder. It was horrific. He was no stranger to killing, but as he watched one form shuffle to a ledge and the sweet release of death, he remembered Leo’s harsh words from years ago.

How ‘burned to death’ was a horrible way to die.

He drew his fire back to him with great effort, dumping even more Talent into it to increase the temperature. He was running on empty now, darkness creeping into the edges of his vision as a hollow feeling settled in his stomach, but he kept coaxing the flame, directing it to the other wall. Leo’s shield exploded, the magically enhanced molecular bonds snapping apart under the bombardment of heat from the inferno flying past, but it didn’t matter. The last few arrows ignited in mid-air before they even reach the pair, burning away to nothing as the wall of fire scoured the remaining sniper perches. There were no jumpers this time. Their deaths were instantaneous. Ferez sank to his knees and fought to control his breathing, a faint smile on his lips. That had been better. Much cleaner.

He became dimly aware of someone shouting nearby. He turned his head to see Leo stamping his feet and waving his arms.

“Ferez! On your feet! Ingrid is in trouble!”

Ferez felt like a bucket of icy water had been dumped over his head. Adrenaline surged through his body, driving back the dark in his sight, and he lurched to his feet. He still felt befuddled, but his love was in trouble.

I can pass out later, he thought as he ran towards the sounds of battle.

The pass was a cratered mess. Shards of granite protruded from the walls and floor, monoliths that had stood for millennia sundered by the magical power unleashed by the combatants. Ingrid was flying through the fractured landscape, trading blows with a darting shadow. The booms from their clashes echoed through the tight space, the ground protesting and deforming from mere proximity.

“Ferez! You have any Talent left?” Leo called as he ran beside his companion, already wheezing despite the short distance.

“Uh…” Ferez searched inside himself and found only the yawning pit from before. “I’m afraid not, you?”

“Most of it, but I don’t know what I’m going to do against that!” he said, inclining his head towards the shadow. Ferez didn’t slow his pace, there wasn’t time to hesitate, but he needed to come up with a plan and fast. He focussed on the shadow.

Fahroul was an Umbral mage, and one of exceptional ability at that. Most Umbral mages, despite their fearsome reputation, had little in their offensive repertoire beyond the dreaded Entropy Stream. Some of their more accomplished members, however, could perform a Shadow Step, almost instantly travelling from one location to another.

This man was on another level altogether, able to remain in his Shadow Form, allowing him to move even faster than Ingrid while lashing out with blows of pure entropic energy. Unless they could disrupt that form, or drain his Talent pool, they couldn’t even hurt the dark mage.

Ferez skidded to a halt and looked around. Ingrid was powerful, but even she was on the back foot. Leo was a dangerous man in his own right, but nowhere near the level of these two in a straight fight, and as long as Fahroul had his Shadow Form, Ferez’s sword was completely useless. They needed to buy some time, to hatch a strategy, or escape.

He found what he was looking for when he looked up. About twenty metres above them, an enormous stone slab jutted out perpendicular from the ravine wall. Maybe five or six metres long, and half as wide at the base, it would suit his purposes nicely.

“Leo, how long to drop that slab?”

Leo followed the outstretched finger, squinting against the glare refracting through the clouds. When he spotted the stone, his face split into a grin.

“Give me a minute to get it ready, then hold him under it for about fifteen seconds.”

“Done, get to work. Ingrid!”

He received the barest flicker of a glare before she turned back to her battle.

“Ingrid!” he tried again.

“What!” she screamed back. “I’m a little fucking busy here!”

“I can see that, darling, but you might want to listen, anyway! Bring him back towards me!”

“What? Why? You haven’t got a drop of Talent left in you, you git. What are you going to do? Stab him?”

Ferez tried not to bristle as he replied. “DuBois’ downfall!”

It was a risk. It wasn’t like they had decided on code names for tactical manoeuvres beforehand. He just hoped she would remember how they killed that crazy bastard at the dig site all those years ago and figure out what he meant. She clapped her hands together, a shockwave sending the shadow tumbling into a nest of broken granite as she scanned the ravine for Leo. When she spotted him, riding a board of ice up the rock face towards the slab, she nodded, then gave Ferez a brief glance and a wink before turning back to Fahroul.

Standing there, resolute fists clenched by her side, sweat beading and running down the crevasses between muscle fibres in her arms and back, her long, shocking white braid whipping in the air like an army’s standard, Ferez fell in love with her all over again. There was no one in this world more beautiful or formidable than Ingrid Luftfaust.

Fahroul recovered and launched at her, crashing against a shell of wind, the percussive blast from the collision fracturing the stone beneath them. Ingrid grunted, holding the wind shield, and with a gesture blindsided the shadow with a blade of air. It cut the shadow in half, but it reformed, then darted to her flank and struck again. It attacked, over and over, unleashing magic that would have torn a lesser mage apart in seconds, but Ingrid endured. Until a sliver of black shadow pierced the shell.

She cried out in pain and rage as it flicked against her shoulder, gouging a furrow in the flesh. Another errant strand broke through, this time lancing through her belly. She fell to a knee, both hands in front of her, fighting to maintain her defences, all thought of offense gone.

Ferez charged, ignoring the voice of reason in his head telling him there was nothing he could do without his magic.

Useless was not an option. Ingrid needed him.

He covered the distance to the shadow in seconds, running up the side of a slanted slab and diving off the top, his sword held high above him. As he fell, he swung the blade down, letting his weight drive the steel through the shadow. Not that it was needed. As the metal bit into the approximation of Fahroul’s head, it barely slowed, cleaving the shadow in two from crown to crotch.

The shadow stopped, and slowly turned to face him. From within the darkness, Ferez could discern two balefires of icy blue. And then it held a hand towards him.

“Shit.”

He dove aside as a lance of shadow pierced the rock behind him, and rolled to his feet, launching himself again at the shadow. It held up a hand and Ferez sliced through it, amazed and relieved to find it bought him a split second as the limb reformed. He grinned as he reversed the motion of the blade, swinging it through the shadow’s neck, then brought it back again through its torso. He kept hacking and slashing, feeling the sweat run down his brow and the muscles in his arm protest at the frenzied speed of his attacks, but to stop for even a moment would mean instant death.

Hurry up, Ingrid!

He slashed, and missed as the shadow darted behind him, faster than he could track.

“Enough,” Fahroul’s voice rumbled, as though being heard from somewhere very far away. “This lunacy ends now.”

Ferez glanced over his shoulder at the cloud of shadow emanating from Fahroul, sinister black tendrils lancing out above him and to the sides. When the net snapped closed, he was dead.

A fist, wreathed in wind, crashed against the side of Fahroul’s head, the dark orb exploding as the web fell apart.

“Oh, thank Val’Pyria. You timed that well,” he said. “Come on!”

He seized Ingrid by the hand and ran, dragging her towards the trap. A roar of rage behind them announced Fahroul’s head had knitted back together. Ingrid half turned, throwing up another shell as lances of black smoke crashed against it, deflecting around them into the ravine walls.

“Leo better be ready! I’m almost out of Talent and this bastard isn’t even slowing down!”

Ferez kept his mouth shut, just kept running, but panic was creeping into his mind. Fahroul was a monster. He had never even heard of a mage with this much Talent. If he wasn’t living the debacle himself, he would have never believed it possible. This plan had better work.

When they cleared the trap, Ferez stopped and spun, brandishing his sword in front of him. Fahroul was in his normal form once again, striding towards them, his face twisted into a snarl.

“You could have made this easy. Now you both have to die!”

“The only one dying today is you, Fahroul! You won’t live to rue the day you crossed paths with Adept Ferez Abdul Ahud, premier battlemage of the Pyrisian College!” Ferez shouted back, his voice breaking a little at the end as terror grabbed his vocal cords in a vice. Hopefully, the shadow mage didn’t notice.

Fahroul shook his head. “You’re an absolute fool. All you needed to do was hand over Leonardo, and- “ he trailed off, as he realised the water mage was gone. He looked around, then up, eyes going wide as tonnes of solid grey stone plummeted towards him.

“Tiiiimmmmbbbbbeeeeerrrr!” Leo shouted from somewhere above. Fahroul had barely enough time to reflexively throw his hands above his head in a futile gesture before the lump of granite landed on him with a deafening crack. Shards broke off and ricocheted around the ravine and Ferez swept Ingrid up in a hug, trying to shield her body with his own. He winced as a sliver of rock pierced his back, just above his hip.

Hopefully that didn’t hit anything critical, he thought to himself as his robes turned warm and damp from the blood. Ingrid shoved him away as the dust settled, face set in a scowl.

“What did I say about being insultingly protective?” she snapped, glaring at him. He stared back, a smug smile on his face.

“Keep doing it. It drives me wild with lust?”

Her hand lashed out, grabbing him by the chin, her nails digging into the cheeks on either side of his face. Then she pulled him towards her and kissed him hungrily.

“You’re not wrong. Even so, stop it,” she said when she finally pulled away.

Leo chuckled as his ice board slowly lowered beside them. “Now, isn’t that sweet? Happy endings all around, I’d say! Although, Ferez, you need to work on your nicknames. Just stating your full name and tagging ‘premier battlemage’ onto the back end isn’t very original. What happened to calling yourself the Red Death? That was awesome!”

“Eh, I’m trying to inculcate a degree of humility. Plus, Ingrid kept saying it in bed, then laughing. It was very emasculating.”

“Damn Ingrid. That’s cold,” Leo said with a disapproving frown, though the twinkle of laughter danced in his eyes.

“I am as I have always been,” Ingrid said, a rare smile on her face, “and I make no apologies for- “

Her eyes widened as a lance of black smoke pierced her chest. She looked at Ferez for a moment, and crumpled.

“No!” Ferez screamed as Leo swore and reformed his board into a shield, blocking more tendrils snaking out from the granite slab. The rock rumbled, and then cracked, falling apart to reveal Fahroul in his Shadow Form once more. The bastard was chuckling, a heavy, distorted sound like a swarm of insects.

“Excellent attempt! You are the worthiest I have faced in quite some time. But she was the strongest among you,” he said, gesturing to where Ingrid lay. Her face was bloodless, her breathing rapid and shallow. “You have no Talent left with which to fight,” he continued, pointing at Ferez. “And you? You are prey.” He finished, smiling at Leo, exposing jagged, yellowed teeth.

“What’s the plan?” Leo whispered to Ferez, eyes fixed on the contract killer.

Ferez had no idea. He struggled to piece his thoughts together.

The Shadow Form was the biggest issue-

Ingrid!

His reserves of Talent must be-

Ingrid!

They need to escape-

Ingrid!!!

Whenever he tried to focus on the battle, his eyes and thoughts were drawn inexorably back to Ingrid’s limp form.

Gods damnit, Ferez. She needs you to get your shit together!

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Their problem right now was that Shadow Form, as long as Fahroul had access to it, they couldn’t even hurt him.

“We need to drain his Talent. We won’t have a hope until we can fight him in his normal form. And we need to do it quickly, Ingrid needs a healer.”

“Great idea in theory, but how do we put that into practice?”

Ferez snarled. “Extreme aggression. Every time we disrupt his form, he needs to expend Talent to reform it. Slice him apart with ice. I’ll get in close and try whittle away at him with the sword.”

“That’s suicide! Bringing a blade to a mage fight? You’ve gone mad!”

“I see little other choice. You ready?”

Leo sighed and bumped his fist against Ferez’s shoulder. “Ready.”

Ferez charged, sword low by his side, not wasting time with pleasantries or bravado. Fahroul leapt to meet him, crossing the ground between them in an instant and lashing out with a shadowy fist. Ferez ducked under the blow, just, a patch on his scalp instantly balding as the Umbral energies destroyed his hair. He sliced up and through the offending arm, then cut through the other as it surged towards his face. Seizing the opening, he followed up with a blow through the top of the shadow mage’s head. He twisted the blade, shadows haemorrhaging from the wound like blood, before they suddenly writhed as though alive and shot towards him.

He danced back, the tip of his sword sketching a desperate pattern through the air, slicing the tips apart before they could make contact. With no Talent left to reinforce his skin, any touch from those shadows would be deadly. Fahroul, sensing the advantage, pressed forward, more tendrils erupting from his chest and lashing towards Ferez, before a razor sharp pendulum of ice fell from the sky and cut through them. The broad blade instantly shattered into dozens of shards, and dove through the shadow, turning as soon as they had exited the body and plunging back in like a swarm of pissed off starlings. Ferez turned and nodded at Leo, but stopped when he saw the sheen of sweat already on the mage’s face.

“That fucking Umbral magic,” he grunted. “It’s making it hard to keep the ice together!”

Right! The Umbral magic! Ferez glanced down at his blade. It was pitted and tarnished already. The Shadow Form didn’t have the raw destructive force of an Entropic Stream, but entropy was entropy. The mundane blade wouldn’t last more than a couple of minutes.

Hopefully the battle with Ingrid had drained the bastard of enough Talent that they wouldn’t need that long. Hopefully.

The battle raged on, Ferez darting in whenever Leo needed a moment to marshal his ice, then retreating when Fahroul’s offense became overwhelming. It wasn’t a sustainable strategy. Ferez was tiring, physically, and Leo was struggling to maintain his missiles for more than a few seconds at a time. Fahroul just had too much Talent.

Their luck gave out when Ferez overextended on a swing. He cursed and threw himself aside, but not before a tendril glanced over the shoulder of his sword arm. Without any Talent to protect him, excruciating pain lanced through the joint and his sword slipped from limp fingers. He hit the ground and skidded, his intended roll derailed by the fact his arm was now partially detached from his torso.

Leo shouted something and redoubled his attack, a swarm of ice homing in on Fahroul, but a web of shadow engulfed them, instantly evaporating the ice into its constituent molecules. With the projectiles dealt with, the shade swung a vast tendril that struck Leo square in the chest, catapulting the hefty mage into the ravine wall. He groaned and stirred weakly where he landed.

Ferez looked up to find Fahroul standing over him, still in his Shadow Form, the features of his face completely obscured except those evil blue eyes. The hitman nodded at him, once, an acknowledgement of his brave resistance, and slowly reached a hand towards his face. In the sky behind him, a flock of eagles wheeled in the sky, their raucous calls filling the narrow confines of the mountain pass.

Sorry to disappoint, my feathery friends, Ferez thought bitterly. There won’t be anything left to eat when this is through.

The eagles dove towards them anyway, and as they neared the ravine floor, Ferez realised they were much, much bigger than eagles, roughly the size of an adult brown bear. They also appeared to have four legs; the front two taloned like a bird, the others clawed like the lions of his homeland. Heavily armoured Calandorian soldiers with lances rode on the beasts’ backs.

Griffon Riders!

A bolas spun out of the sky, narrowly missing Fahroul and skidding across the ravine floor. The Umbral mage looked up, scowling at the elite unit wheeling above his head. Another bolas flew towards him and he shot a stream of smoke at it, only to see it sucked into the spinning projectile like water going down a drain. He swore and ducked, the lethal weapon passing just over his head before he burst into smoke, the black cloud fleeing up the ravine wall and into the honeycomb passages.

Ferez fought the urge to laugh as relief flooded his body. He had no idea how it had happened, but they were saved!

His relief turned to ice in his veins as a griffon landed in front of him, the apex predator regarding him with jerky movements of its head, its viciously curved beak clacking in anticipation of a meal.

“Easy there, Windshear. At least let me talk to him first,” the man on its back said.

The beast gave a disgruntled trill, but backed away a pace before lowering itself on its haunches, allowing the soldier to dismount. As his boots hit the ground, the business end of another bolas dropped beside them, the heavy weights dangling from the soldier’s hand. He stalked towards Ferez and crouched in front of him, regarding him dispassionately as he took in the mage’s wounds.

“Looks like you’re having a pretty shit day, mate.”