CHAPTER MTB5 PROLOGUE (4)

The Dragons had emerged to take part in the battle, and they rode down their foes like flaming chariots. The birds were in chaos, their formations having lost all cohesion. Some rushed the new enemy while others fled, and their scattered attention was certainly a boon for the city’s beleaguered defenders.

The emergency shelter the students had fled to was underground, and its nearest entrance was inside the academy’s chapel. Nokomi flew around the outside of the crafting school, stopped to lie down in a shadow between fallen sections of the academy’s western wall, and refreshed her invisibility. The birds chasing after her flew out of the school a second later, releasing a chorus of screeches and scattering to search for her. One fluttered within a few feet of Nokomi, but its eyes passed over her hiding spot as easily as the rest of the terrain. The birds soon took to the sky and began circling, having lost her trail.

Nokomi flew low and moved across the courtyard into the shadow of the academy’s main building, then followed it north until she had eyes on the chapel. It was nestled in the middle of a bounty of gardens, made for both beauty and sustenance. The colorful vegetation gave Nokomi plenty of cover as she moved beneath the shade of fruit trees and vine-wrapped arbors.

The gardens were mostly untouched aside from the errant bird corpse tangled in a tree’s branches, but the chapel itself had seen some abuse. Part of the ceiling had collapsed, although Nokomi couldn’t tell what had caused the damage from where she hid.

Nokomi paused at the sound of a distant explosion, and a quick glance south showed her a rising mushroom cloud, glowing with golden light and ascending up high enough to boil the clouds. She waited for the walls to crumble and for death to sweep over the entire city until she recognized that no apocalyptic pressure wave would follow. The sound she’d heard had been much too faint for something of that size, but the distant noise was apparently all the fury the eruption would bring with it.

Nokomi released the breath she’d been holding and returned her attention to the chapel, trying her best not to think about what was happening outside the city. After a quick survey, she kept moving forward, finding no obvious avians ready to swoop down upon her. She ignored the front door and phased in through a wall, still invisible to the common observer.

The interior was a mess of recent battle. A hundred or more slain birds crowded the room, killed in a half dozen different ways. Beneath the piles of mangled, scorched, and sliced avians were a pair of Littan Delvers in academy instructor uniforms, both with their heads removed.

Nokomi went past the dead with a silent prayer for the fallen, gripping tightly to the hope that their sacrifice meant her charge was safe within. Nokomi flew around the Godqueen’s statue and found a wide stairwell down just behind it. It was normally hidden beneath rugs and reinforced storm doors but was left thrown open. Blood trailed down into its depths.

Nokomi heard screeches coming from farther in, and she floated cautiously down the stairs. The stairwell ended in a tunnel lit by glowstones, the artificial light robbing the hall of any shade or shadow. At the far end was a sealed door and a pair of avian monsters assaulting it. Mana weaves flared and died as the creatures struck, the metal beginning to give way.

Nokomi glided down the hall, her movements absolutely silent. Once she was within forty feet, she wove a spell and smashed the birds down into the ground with an unseen force. She followed it with two precise flicks of her kusarigama, launching the blade of the chain weapon into the left bird, then shifted her stance as she pulled the blade back towards her, sending the heavy weight on the chain’s other end towards the bird on her right. Helpless as they were, both were easily killed.

Nokomi approached the door and felt for anyone within, but its weaves were still intact enough to block her senses. A quick test with her phasing showed that it was also blocked, as it should be. She studied the mana flows for a moment, finding that the barricade used a common enough Imperial seal. Nokomi had no countermagic spells to speak of, but she had plenty of experience picking locks and breaking wards. A quick application of Mystical Magic to her blade allowed her to cut through two critical junctions in the weave, disabling the failing remnants of the door’s reinforcements.

The moment the weaves lost power, the doors exploded outward. Nokomi was caught by surprise, and the force of the strike sent her tumbling back. She lost control of her flight and ended up on the ground, stunned. Pain flared along her left arm as something cut her through to the bone. She regained her senses to see a massive blue avian on top of her, its vibrant feathers a wall of blades. She was barely able to move aside as its beak descended fast enough to crack the stone beneath her.

The jagged edges of its beak still caught her shoulder, leaving her left arm ruined in two places. The bird pressed the edge of its beak down into her as it pulled back, carving into her like a saw blade. Nokomi failed to suppress a scream of pain and reflexively tried to teleport out of the creature’s grapple, but its body glowed as the spell was negated.

The bird screeched and raked its claws along her right side, aiming to disable Nokomi’s good arm, but she managed to stop the strike with the chain wrapped around the limb. The hit numbed her arm and she still took a few lacerations from the avian’s feathers, then the creature struck with its beak again. Nokomi barely managed to swing the weight of her kusarigama in time to knock its blow off course. The force of the hit sent the bird thumping into the wall beside them, but in the narrow confines of the hallway, it failed to create much space between them. The bird quickly recovered, cutting deep gashes along Nokomi’s left thigh with its feathers as it flailed.

Nokomi rolled and reversed the grapple, wrapping her chain around the creature’s body as she went. It was stronger than she was, but technique gave her the advantage. Nokomi maneuvered until she was on its back, chain around the monster’s throat. She roared in rage and pain as she reared up with everything she had, driving her knee into the bird’s spine as its feathers threatened to cut her open. The chain dug into her right arm until it ached fiercely as she pulled, but Nokomi kept going until she heard the snap of bone, then still continued pulling until the beast was limp and her strength had fled.

She collapsed backward, heaving deep breaths from the adrenaline rush. She looked down at her left side, seeing blood pouring freely from her shoulder, forearm, and leg. Her stomach wasn’t much better. The wounds barely hurt anymore, and that thought let Nokomi know she was likely in shock. She numbly pulled a coagulant tincture from her inventory–the only one she’d ever been given–and quickly poured it onto her injuries in measured doses.

She hissed as the cold absence of sensation was replaced with the fierce burn of the concoction going to work. It wouldn’t heal her, but it would hopefully keep her from bleeding out. Spreading a single vial across so many deep gashes was asking a lot of the weak potion, but she was counting on her Fortitude to do the rest. Nokomi considered applying bandages until she realized where it was that the bird had come from. She stumbled and spun, then looked at the doors leading to the shelter, finding their interior nearly as badly beaten as the exterior.

Nokomi took to the air and flew to the doors, using her senses to look for survivors. A grim despair threatened to overtake her as she imagined a group of civilians locked in the shelter with the creature she’d just fought. She drew closer, expecting to find a massacre, and the first thing she did find was the body of another instructor, torn to pieces.

But that was the only corpse within.

The entrance to the shelter was narrow like the hallway, but opened up after a few feet. The cramped entryway was blocked by a wall of force, though it flickered and looked like it would fail at any moment. It was being projected from a staff that had been driven into the ground, creating a small space inside the doorway where the avian must have been trapped.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Beyond this final barricade were twenty or so students, pressed tightly into the shelter. It wasn’t many, but the academies had small populations, given the limited availability of Creation slots. For an institute on the frontier, like Krimsim, it may have been the entire student body. The group looked at her with a combination of terror and joy. Terror at what they’d undergone and joy that someone had arrived in time to help.

One young woman strode forth, carrying an air of authority with her, although it was brittle. That was to be expected, given the circumstances.

“Are you here to rescue us?” the young woman asked.

Nokomi replied with her own question. “Are you Ulia Starion?”

The woman nodded. “I am.”

“Then yes. I’m here to rescue you.” Nokomi began to feel sluggish and heavy, even though she was hovering. “But first, I think someone needs to help me with some bandages.”

Ulia looked at the flickering barrier and bit her lip. Her whiskers twitched and she met Nokomi’s eyes. “I don’t know how to take this down,” she said, gesturing at the wall of force. “Instructor Opiah activated it just before she–” Ulia’s eyes fell to the body as she trailed off. “We shut the doors as quickly as we could, but one of those things got in with us. She was Level 11 and it… it just tore her apart like that meant nothing.”

While Ulia spoke, Nokomi applied another pulse of Mystical Magic to her weapon. She tapped the barrier in three places with her kusarigama, and the entire thing collapsed back into the staff powering it. Several of the students flinched at the sound of the staff clunking to the ground.

Nokomi directed two of the sturdier-looking students to close the main doors behind her. They took it upon themselves to begin tying the handles shut, though Nokomi thought the doors were better served to block line of sight, rather than stop anything from entering now that its weaves were disabled. She decided not to say anything and let the students work, contributing what they could. It was good for them to have a purpose for the moment. She then had the students with the best medical training get some practical experience with field dressings.

“So, how are we leaving?” Ulia asked, and to that, Nokomi had no good answer.

“I have the spell Gate,” she said. “It can create a stable portal to anywhere I’ve been in the last forty days within a mile of us. It can go further if I spend a few minutes channeling it. However, everywhere I’ve been within range is probably worse off than this shelter.”

Nokomi considered taking them back up onto the walls to see if the portal she’d come in through was still open, but that plan carried a lot of risks. There was every chance it was closed, or that the section of wall was destroyed or even covered in a lethal amount of mana for the ordinary students. She could already tell that several were growing sick from the rising ambient mana levels. The smell of sweat and illness filled the room.

Before she could worry over the problem for long, the world shook and the ground kicked upwards, sending most of the students to the ground. Cracks formed along the walls and ceiling and the doors groaned as their frames bent. Soon after, a voice entered all of their minds.

“People of Krimsim. This is Captain Pio of the Littan Imperial Army, speaking on behalf of Major Tavio of Seqaria, who is the current regent of your city. The city is under imminent threat of destruction. Prepare for an immediate emergency teleport. Do not resist the teleportation, or you will be left behind and die. I repeat…”

The psychic voice repeated its instructions and Nokomi’s ears popped as a strange magic overtook everything. Her mana senses screamed at her as a presence near the center of the city grew to an absurd level of power. She felt her body growing lighter as another force joined the first. Then, the world stuttered.

Nokomi’s senses went haywire, but she quickly adjusted from what she recognized as a teleport, although nothing about her surroundings had changed. Several of the students collapsed fully from the disorientation, while several more violently lost the remnants of the last meal they’d had.

“People of Krimsim, you must immediately exit any building you are inside of. The structures are no longer sound. I repeat…”

Nokomi immediately began mapping the structure of the underground shelter and the chapel above with echolocation and quickly agreed with Captain Pio’s claim. She started to cast Gate but abandoned it when she realized the spell had no targets. Wherever she’d been teleported, it was much farther from her original location than she’d expected.

A mighty crack further split one of the shelter’s walls and the mana-woven wood overhead snapped and began to sag. Nokomi looked over the mass of students. They would be painfully slow leaving the shelter, and there was little she could do about that. However, all she needed was a good target for her Gate spell.

Nokomi blasted through the doors without warning, snapping the ropes and robes tying them shut with ease. She pushed her speed to its limits, tearing out of the chapel and casting Gate the moment she was clear. The portal connected her to the shelter, and she urged the students to evacuate even as she moved rapidly in and out, grabbing the sick and injured while manipulating her momentum with Dimensional Magic. In a handful of seconds, all of the academy students were outside. The lingering feeling of lightness ended, and the chapel collapsed in on itself, followed by the tunnel and shelter beneath.

Nokomi finally took a moment to study her surroundings, finding the sky lightless and empty. The students fumbled in the dark until she was satisfied that there were no more avians nearby, and she produced a single, dim glowstone. The students gathered around it like a campfire, a few of them gasping after catching sight of a dead bird. Then, they waited.

The sky slowly came to life with what looked like stars, but which Nokomi recognized were actually distant glowstones, burning a thousand times brighter than her own. They grew more numerous by the second until Krimsim was coated in a dull light, just enough for mundane eyes to see their surroundings.

Suddenly, Nokomi realized that the entire city had been teleported. She wrestled with that concept, trying to recall any ability with near that level of potency. Perhaps one of the Hiwardian patriarchs or matriarchs, but Nokomi couldn’t bring one to mind with such wide-area portal abilities. Nokomi tore her gaze away from the sight above, dismissing the distraction for later and forcing herself to keep watch on their surroundings.

She tensed when something appeared just above them, and she gripped her kusarigama tightly as she looked up to face the new threat.

It was the little man who’d talked down to her earlier. He hovered there, looking over the students.

“Is the count’s daughter alive?” he asked, drawing the attention of all the students.

“I am,” said Ulia. She took a step away from the crowd and squinted up through the dark at the figure.

“Good. I would never hear the end of it if we were involved in the death of another one of that man’s children.”

Nokomi scowled at the little person’s blunt indifference, but if he saw her expression, he ignored it. The man waved a hand, and a new portal appeared beside their group, leading to what looked like a comfortable lounge, of all things. There was even a soft fire crackling in a hearth.

“Come then. Your near-death has earned you VIP privileges.” The little man paused and looked over the other students. “Your friends may come as well, I suppose.”

Without another word, the fellow disappeared. Nokomi looked into the portal, then back out at the ruined city around them. She wavered on whether to enter, uncertain of the man’s intentions, until he appeared standing just inside the portal itself.

“We have food and drink,” he said. His eyes roamed over Nokomi’s many blood-soaked bandages. “I also have a healing potion for you over there.” He pointed at a fully stocked bar, where a potion sat on the countertop, its bottle sparkling in the room’s warm light. Nokomi suddenly realized just how badly she was injured, but bit down on the sensation.

She turned to the students and ushered them through the portal, making sure everyone was safe and accounted for before floating to the counter and shakily grabbing up the bottle. She knocked it back like a shot and let out an exhale of relief as it flooded her with healing energies. She let herself down gently onto the barstool and checked her regen, nearly falling out of her seat when she saw how high it was. She looked up to ask the mysterious man a question, but he was gone.

Nokomi let out a heavy sigh and looked around the room. The students were handling the events in a variety of ways, most of them bad, but as far as Nokomi was concerned, her mission had been a success. She reached over the bar and snagged a pair of bottles from the shelf.

Nokomi uncorked them both, gave each one a sniff, and then took a swig from the one that smelled stronger.