Mage Errant 4 Preview

I meant to have a full short story done for you this month, but the current short story- The Wrong Librarian- is proving rather difficult, and I didn't want to give you another split short story this month, so I'm moving that back to next month. I should have the Mage Errant 4 manuscript off to the editor by then. Instead of another short story, you all get an early preview of the fourth Mage Errant book, The Lost City of Ithos. (And yes, that's the official title reveal, at least for my Patreon backers!) 

This is still a pre-beta reader/ editor draft, so you're the very first people to read it! Everything in here is still very much subject to change, fair warning.

Chapter 2: Lothal

Hugh was laying in his bunk when Sabae barged into his cabin.

“This is distressingly familiar,” Sabae said. “Haven’t I had to haul you out of a ship’s cabin due to you sulking before?”

Hugh rolled over to face the wall. “Yeah, and last time you did that pirates attacked.”

“We’re already out of the boundary zone, that’s not likely this time,” Sabae said. “We’re almost to Lothal.”

“Boundary zone?” Hugh asked, not really caring. 

“Were you not listening at all when Kanderon briefed us?” Sabae asked.

Hugh didn’t say anything, though he could feel the bunks shift as Sabae clambered up them.

“Most of the great powers other than dragons don’t bother keeping sharp borders with their neighbors,” Sabae said. “They just have a sort of neutral zone between them that both powers stay out of to avoid making their neighbor suspicious. You tend to find more bandits and pirates there.”

Hugh just grunted.

Sabae sighed, and Hugh felt her hands wrapped around his arm just below his shoulder, followed by a sharp pull.

Before Hugh could be dragged entirely out of his bunk, he envisioned a quick spellform, and rather than fall to the floor, he fell up to the ceiling, then stuck there on his side. Sabae was still holding onto his arm, her feet just shy of touching the floor.

“Could you let go?” Hugh asked. “This is really quite painful.”

“Not until you come down from there,” Sabae said.

Hugh sighed, and then Sabae fell upwards, crashing into the ceiling as well.

She still didn’t let go.

“Hugh,” Sabae said. “Enough.”

Hugh closed his eyes and flopped his head against the ceiling.

Sabae muttered something, then Hugh felt her moving around. One of her hands moved to his torso, and then Hugh felt himself being lifted up into the air.

Or down into the air? The fact that up and down were relative to the direction of gravity was a growing linguistic concern for Hugh. Not, to be sure, a problem he ever thought he’d have.

Hugh opened his eyes to see that Sabae had stood up— or maybe down— on the ceiling, and had hefted him over her shoulder.

Hugh’s spellbook shook itself a little, then launched itself off the bed. It fluttered curiously in the air around the two of them.

“Let’s go,” Sabae said irritably. “You’re going to watch our arrival in Lothal if if I have to carry you all the way to deck and hold your eyelids open.”

“You will,” Hugh said.

Sabae grunted, then staggered off across the ceiling. The spellbook fluttered off after them.

Hugh could feel his mana reservoirs draining fairly quickly, but all three had started off full, so he should be able to keep this up for a while.

Sabae almost dropped him when reaching up to open his door, and did smack his leg against the door-frame as she stepped out.

To Hugh’s surprise, she didn’t head straight for deck, instead heading for her and Talia’s room.

“Talia,” she called, knocking on the door. “We’re almost to Lothal, come up on deck to watch!”

“No thanks,” Talia called back, seeming miserable. “I’ve already seen Skyhold and Theras Tel from a ship, they were impressive enough for me.”

“Lothal’s near impressive as either,” Sabae said, “and maybe even more distinctive looking. Hurry up already.”

Hugh heard a groan from inside the room. A few long moments later, a miserable, seasick Talia poked her head out of the room. 

“This had better be worth it,” Talia said, then stopped as she looked straight into Sabae’s upside-down face. “What are you doing on the… Hugh?” 

Hugh grunted vaguely at Talia in greeting. 

“Hugh here,” Sabae said, jostling him a little, “was refusing to come out of his room, and decided to be difficult when I tried to drag him out.”

“Huh,” Talia said.

Hugh felt something bump against his leg, and he glanced back to see his spellbook hiding from Talia.

“Well, come on then,” Sabae said.

She turned and started striding towards the hatch to the deck.

“Don’t think I don’t see you, you dumb book,” Talia said. “I still haven’t forgiven you for dragging me across Skyhold by my hair.”

The book fluttered down the hall ahead of them, towards the exit.

Sabae seemed like she would cheerfully call any bluff of Hugh’s, so Hugh slowly weakened his levitation cantrip before they got to the stairs. Sabae, well-used to Hugh’s overpowered levitation cantrips by now, expertly revolved her body in the air, landing gracefully on her feet.

She kept Hugh slung over her shoulder, though.

----------------------

The Endless Erg ended a half dozen leagues shy of Lothal, not reaching the sea this close to the Skyreach Range, which still loomed just to the east of them. They didn’t have to leave the Ox of Indris, however— some previous ruler of Lothal had carved a massive canal for the sands of the Erg, leading straight to the edge of the city.

The first sign of the city itself came nearly a league out. A single curious stone column jutted from the ground to the side of the canal. It was pentagonal in shape and around the height of a grown man, fashioned of some dark stone.

Hugh thought about reaching out with his crystal affinity sense, but couldn’t summon up the energy or the interest.

Not more than a minute later, another pair of columns came into view along the side of the canal.

“Are they guideposts?” Talia asked, still looking queasy.

Artur chuckled.

Soon, the columns began jutting from the sand with such frequency that they came to resemble a stubby forest. A large number had fallen and were lying in the sand.

“Seriously, who carved all these?” Talia asked. “And why?”

“Hugh, why don’t you use your affinity senses to answer her,” Alustin said, from his perch on the railing.

Hugh sighed, but reached out with his affinity sense towards the columns. 

Then frowned.

“They’re… not carved at all,” he said. “They’re just… big crystals. They’re naturally that shape. And they’re not connected to anything, they’re just shoved into the sand.”

“Columnar basalt,” Artur said. “It’s what happens when liquid, flowing magma is allowed to cool slowly. As the cooling magma solidifies into lava, it contracts into these columns. It’s the same formation process as any other crystal, just on a larger scale. And as for these particular columns, they were moved here to act as a training ground for Lothal’s stone mages.”

“Moved here from where?” Talia asked.

“From Lothal,” Alustin said, pointing towards the horizon.

Hugh looked, and saw a dark mass coming into view. At first, his eyes had just dismissed it as more of the stone columns, but as it drew closer, he gasped.

Lothal was nowhere near the size of the mountain Skyhold was built into or the colossal volcanic plateau Theras Tel rested atop— it reached maybe two hundred feet into the air at its highest point. It was, in its own way, more astonishing than either. 

What Hugh could see of Lothal was a solid wall of columnar basalt. Countless thousands of the pentagonal stone pillars interlocked together, stretching thousands of feet to either direction. Hugh could see the figures of guards and lookouts patrolling atop the wall.

“Smell that?” Sabae said.

“Ah been smellin’ it fer leagues,” Godrick replied.

“Smell what?” Talia asked.

“Tha sea,” Godrick said.

Hugh sniffed, and he thought he could smell salt on the wind.

Ahead of them, the sand canal entered into a vast tunnel in the wall. As the Ox entered the tunnel, the temperature dropped immediately in the shade. In the dim light of the tunnel’s glow crystals, Hugh looked up to see that the ceiling was entirely formed of the basalt columns. He swallowed as he stared up at their pentagonal bases, partially convinced that they’d start falling on the ship at any moment.

In the distance, Hugh could see a light at the end of the tunnel.

“How’s the ship still sailing through the tunnel?” Sabae said.

Alustin pointed to spellforms near the base of the walls. “The tunnel’s enchanted to keep a constant wind flowing through it. If you look at the sand on the other side of the tunnel, you can see it blowing back outward— the wind blows the other direction on that side of the tunnel.”

The tunnel continued for hundreds of feet before the ship sailed back into daylight. Hugh’s apathy had vanished entirely by that point as he gawked at the stones of the tunnel. When another ship sailed by in the other direction, far enough away he had trouble making out the faces of the crew, he realized that Indris Stormbreaker, the colossal dragon queen of Theras Tel, could likely stretch out her wings to their full extent in the tunnel, though maybe not fly down it.

When the Ox approached the end of the tunnel, Hugh was momentarily blinded by the glare. He quickly activated a cantrip that Kanderon had taught him— one intended to shield his eyes from the light of stellar affinity spells.

When they exited the great tunnel, the others all winced and covered their eyes, but Hugh gasped.

Lothal’s wall wasn’t a wall at all. The whole city was built out of columnar basalt. Lothal was a gargantuan cooled lava flow. All the walls were built of the basalt columns. The ground and all the roofs in the cities seemed to be made of cobbles themselves, but Hugh quickly realized that they were just the tops of basalt columns.

The harbor itself was a great sand pool near the top of the city. From it, the whole city sloped downwards like a great trough, walls of basalt columns rising to either side. At the bottom of the trough was a second harbor, this one of water, not sand, where ocean vessels docked at piers of columnar basalt. Out past the harbor Hugh could see the ocean stretching out to the southern edge of the horizon.

The trough was by no means an even, gentle slope of descending columnar basalt. Terraces of all different sizes interrupted its descent— some not much larger than a staircase landing, other big enough to fit an entire village onto. Houses and businesses seemed to be fashioned entirely of fitted basalt columns, making them all look like extensions of the ancient lava flow, save for the glass windows and colorful signs. Looming above the lower harbor was a great building that Hugh assumed was Ampioc’s palace, also constructed entirely of columnar basalt.

The great terraces served as streets for Lothal, and crowds moved along them and up and down immense staircases, where the columns either naturally descended or appear to have been cut to form better staircases. 

“Welcome,” Alustin said, “to Lothal, the worst city in the world to drop a coin.”

Everyone except Godrick and Artur gave him an odd look.

“Because the coin will probably roll into one of the cracks between the columns and get lost?” Alustin said.

They just kept staring at him.

“It was funnier in my head,” Alustin said.

“Yeh probably shoulda waited ‘til we actually set foot on tha columns,” Artur said. “Would have worked better then.”

Alustin just sighed. 

Chapter 3: An Entire City of Godricks

[Redacted]

Chapter 4: Grovebringer

Hugh had forgotten to stop using the glare-shielding cantrip. He’d just absently kept it fixed in his mind’s eye for hours now. It said a lot about how much his mana reservoirs had grown that he hadn’t even noticed the drain. So when the dagger-thin lightning bolt impacted the wall behind Godrick, he wasn’t blinded by the glare like the others.

As the thunder rolled over them, Hugh reached out with his affinity senses to the basalt columns of the terrace-street as he crafted a second spellform in his mind’s eye. 

Hugh’s crystal mana reservoir level dropped sharply as he severed the links in the crystal pattern of a row of columns in the street, severing them from their lower parts. He dropped the second spellform immediately, then crafted a levitation cantrip designed specifically for the columns. His crystal mana reservoir began plummeting as an entire row of columns shot up from the street, forming a barrier between them and the attackers. Hugh quickly formed a third spellform in his mind’s eye— the pattern linking spellform that was the basis of most of crystal magic. He rapidly began fusing the bases of the raised columns to the tops of the still intact columns around them.

The whole process probably took less than a five-count, and as he dropped all the spellforms save for the glare-shield cantrip, he heard a sharp clacking noise, and the flash of another lightning bolt hit the other side of the ten-foot wall he’d just raised in the street. The wall shuddered a little, but held.

Around them, people screamed and shouted in the street, dodging for shelter inside shops.

“What the storms was that?” Sabae said, rubbing her eyes.

“We’re under attack by a lightning mage,” Hugh said, running over to Godrick, who was lying on the ground groaning. “Godrick needs healing.”

“Ah’m okay,” Godrick said, sitting up with a groan. “Sore, but ah hardly got singed.”

“You were two feet away from a lightning strike carrying a giant steel hammer, how are you not a crisp right now?” Sabae asked. She started checking over Godrick, ignoring his protests.

There was another sharp clacking sound, then Hugh’s improvised wall shuddered from another lightning bolt.

“Sabae, were you watching that lightning bolt with your affinity senses?” Talia asked. “If you can pinpoint its source, I can return fire.”

“My lightning affinity sense is more like hearing,” Sabae said, “and wherever it’s coming from, it’s way out of my range.”

“What’s that noise before each strike?” Hugh asked.

“Galvanic beacon, probably,” Sabae said, peering into Godrick’s eyes. “Acts as a target for lightning spells, lets you fire them more accurately and hit from a farther distance.”

“So we wait for the next clack against the wall, then Hugh and I jump out from behind the wall and attack,” Talia said.

“Me?” Hugh asked.

Talia gave him a level look. “Are you forgetting about your starfire bolts?”

Hugh paused. “I… uh, yeah, actually.”

Talia strode over to one edge of the wall. “Get ready, Hugh.”

Hugh did the same on the other side. “Oh, by the way, I’m using the glare-shield cantrip Kanderon taught me to keep the lightning from blinding me. You should do the same.”

Talia nodded.

The seconds seemed to stretch on and on as they waited for the next clack. It was probably only a few heartbeats, but it felt like an eternity. When it finally struck, Hugh hurled himself out from behind the wall and looked in the direction he thought the lightning strikes were coming from.

Immediately after the lightning bolt struck the wall, which was already looking battered and cracked, he threw himself back behind it, without firing a single starfire bolt. Talia, on the other side, did the same, and they exchanged a startled look.

“What is it?” Sabae asked.

Another clack hit the wall, followed by yet another lightning strike.

“The lightning’s coming from halfway across the city,” Hugh said.

“They’ve positioned themselves up on top of the edge of the trough near the upper harbor,” Talia said.

Godrick groaned and glared at his new hammer. “This really isn’t tha timeliest purchase ah ever made, is it?”

----------------------------

Artur was watching the ships in the harbor when the attack began.

Well, more glaring at them from where he was sitting on the roof of the inn. 

The tide was approaching its highest point at the moment, so ships were moving freely in and out of the harbor. At low tide, the water level would be a solid forty-some feet lower, and the harbor would become a closed bowl, the ships inside hemmed in by walls of basalt pillars. 

Artur sighed, and slowly clambered to his feet.

“Ah don’t,” Artur said, not looking around, “know why yeh thought ice would be a decent choice ta use against’ me.”

Around him, the stone began to crack and crumble, flowing upwards in streams towards him. 

“Consider it a gamble,” a voice from behind him said. “People have tried lightning, poison gas, and every other method they could think of to take you down, and it all fails.”

“In fairness,” Artur said, as his stone armor started to form around him, “That was while ah was already armored. Ah’m as vulnerable as anyone else when caught unarmored and unaware.”

“I didn’t take you unaware, though, did I?” the voice asked.

Artur turned around, his armor halfway completed already.

Facing him was a whip-thin man not much older than his son, wielding a blade of ice engraved in spellforms, and covered in armor of his own crafted of ice. Beneath the armor, he wore a pristine white uniform with glittering brass accents.

“Yeh didn’t want ta,” Artur said. “Yeh wanted ta prove yerself against me, and ah imagine yeh specifically ignored orders ta ambush me. Probably even misled the others in yer Hand ta get a chance at me alone.”

“You guessed right,” the man said, then launched a spray of razor-sharp ice crystals at Artur, whose armor was still incomplete.

Artur raised an eyebrow, and the shards of ice halted in midair, before simply falling to the ground. 

The Havathi Sacred Swordsman stepped back. “How did you…”

Artur grinned as the stone of his armor began sealing around his face. “Ice is jus’ another type a’ stone, son.”

The Swordsman took another step back. “Ice isn’t a rock, that’s absurd. It’s frozen water.”

Artur shrugged as a half dozen basalt columns tore themselves loose and rose to hover around him. 

“An’ rock is jus’ frozen magma. But ah don’t really think this is tha time ta’ be concerning yerself with academic debates. Yeh have better things ta worry about.”

The six hovering columns, each weighing most of a ton, shot forwards like spears.

In the distance, lightning began to crackle across the city.

------------------------

“How, exactly,” Talia asked, “are we supposed to take down a lightning mage who can hit us from across the whole city?”

She kicked Hugh’s impromptu wall with a satisfying thunk.

“I’m assuming that’s well out of your range?” Sabae asked.

“I’d be lucky to hit a quarter of that distance,” Talia said. “Hugh?”

There was another click, then the wall shuddered from a lightning strike.

“You want me to build a lightning ward?” Hugh asked.

Talia rolled her eyes. “No, I want you to fire a starfire bolt. We just talked about this a few seconds ago.”

“Oh, right,” Hugh said. “I mean, hypothetically it could travel that far, but I can’t really aim it effectively, and I don’t have enough mana to keep up the containment shell for the starfire the whole way, so it would just detonate above the city somewhere.”

Another click, and another lightning bolt. Slivers of rock cracked off the fused pillars and clattered onto the basalt cobbles. 

“Actually, maybe yes on the lightning ward?” Godrick said. “Ah’ll start reinforcin’ and reshapin’ the wall a bit, yeh put the ward out past the wall.”

“It’ll take longer because of the gaps between the columns,” Hugh said. “I’ll need to grow them together along the path of the ward. If I…”

“No,” Sabae said.

The others all turned to look at her.

“If the lightning mage is using a galvanic beacon to hit us, how are they getting it all the way here?” Sabae asked.

Talia blinked, then realized what the taller girl was getting at. 

“They’ve got a spotter!” Talia said.

“What?” Hugh asked.

Another click, and another lightning bolt. More shards of stone broke off the wall, and Godrick cursed and began reshaping the stone columns to reinforce them.

“Galvanic beacons are single use enchantments, so the click each time is a galvanic beacon being launched,” Sabae said. “It’s extraordinarily unlikely that our lightning mage has the ability to fire a galvanic beacon from this distance— it’s almost certainly copper or silver, and there’s no way anyone short of archmage level could be controlling or firing metal at this distance, and a copper or silver archmage would have annihilated us by now.”

“So there’s got to be a second mage launching and activating the galvanic beacons,” Talia interjected. “And they’ve got to be much closer. If we can find them and take them down, the lightning mage is useless.”

“How are we supposed ta find ‘em, exactly?” Godrick asked, not taking his eyes off the wall.

“That seems like it would be up to you boys,” Talia said. “Since you’ve already got a metal affinity, and metal’s sort of crystalline, right?”

Hugh sighed. “I mean, sort of, but only sort of, and only a rare few crystal mages can do anything with it. Kanderon and I aren’t among them.”

Godrick shrugged, still not looking away from the wall. “Ah can’t detect copper or silver with mah affinity senses.”

“I’ll do it,” Sabae said. Gusts of wind were flowing towards her as her armor began spinning up around her limbs. “I’ll act as bait. My lightning affinity’s not useful for much, but I can still block lightning with it.”

“This is way different than Rhodes’ lightning, or what you faced against the pirates,” Hugh said, looking nervous.

Sabae shrugged as the wind started to wrap around her torso. “We don’t have a lot of other options, do we? You and Talia just need to be ready to hit the spotter hard when he fires the beacon at me.”

Talia glanced at Hugh and realized she felt almost as nervous as he looked— risking her own life didn’t bother her too much, but having Sabae risk her life for them felt awful. She’d had more than a few nightmares about what might have happened to her friends if she hadn’t made it to the top of Skyhold in time on the summer solstice, and she knew she wasn’t the only one of them having nightmares about that day.

Talia looked back at Sabae and nodded.

------------------------------

Alustin sighed, set his bookmark into place, then tucked the book into his storage tattoo under the guise of putting it into his satchel. 

Then he leapt onto the iron-mesh teashop table as an arrow hammered into the chair he’d been sitting in, his arm still in the satchel. His teacup skittered off the edge of the table, shattering on the basalt floor, but the teapot managed to stay on the table.

Alustin pulled his arm out of the satchel, magically withdrawing a dozen books-worth of loose sheets of paper from his tattoo as he did so. He spun as he did so, spotting a tree growing out of the ruins of the metal chair he’d been sitting in.

The other patrons sitting on the teashop’s balcony, as if woken from a reverie, began shouting and fleeing for the inside of the teashop.

Alustin sighed, then leapt for the next table as an arrow hammered into his table, knocking the whole thing over. The arrow immediately sprouted roots and leaves as it began to grow. 

He leapt erratically from table to table as the archer bombarded the balcony. By the time he reached the last table, the first sapling had already reached the height of a man.

The sheets of paper spun wildly around him. A couple of the arrows hit the papers, which, while not strong enough to stop the arrows, were enough to deflect them away from Alustin.

The railing was, of course, just a raised row of basalt columns. Without any hesitation, Alustin leapt from the last table to the railing, then hurled himself off the third-story balcony. 

Thunder rolled over the city.

The sheets of paper around him swarmed, wrapping around his torso and forming a set of four dragonfly wings behind him. They flapped faster than the eye could see, but Alustin was only head-height off the ground when his fall stopped and he shot forwards, dodging another shot from the archer.

Alustin had faced this bow before— Lothal was going to have a small forest to to clean up after this. He’d never encountered Grovebringer on this side of the Skyreach Range before, but then, he’d seldom faced Havathi agents west of the mountains, let alone Sacred Swordsmen. 

He hugged the ground as he flew, staying behind what little cover he could find, only going up to dodge the few Lothalans who hadn’t hid indoors. Your average Lothalan might be huge, but no more of them were mages than in any other city of its aether density— they knew to get out of the way of a mage battle fast.

Lightning crackled over the city again. Alustin considered heading for the source of the bolts— he’d wager all the gold in his tattoo that either Artur or the apprentices were being targeted— but he needed to shake off the wielder of Grovebringer first. 

Which wasn’t going to be easy, considering that Grovebringer’s warlock wielder had also pacted with some sort of item that granted them invisibility. They’d proven to be one of the longest-lived Sacred Swordsmen the Librarians Errant had faced over the years— both organizations had high fatality rates, in no small part thanks to one another. One-on-one, most Librarians Errant were more than a match for the Swordsmen, but the Swordsmen never traveled alone.

Alustin summoned even more paper out of his tattoo, took a deep breath, then released himself from the grip of his wings. The wings kept flying forwards, while Alustin plummeted down towards the street below, without losing his forwards momentum. He rapidly assembled a new spellform in his mind’s eye, and the loose paper trailing behind him shot forwards, linking together to form a series of blanket-sized sheets of paper.

He tore through them one after another, but by the last, he’d slowed down enough to hit the street, roll, and start running immediately. The rough cobble-shapes of the basalt were going to leave bruises, but better bruises than…

A rain of brilliantly glowing droplets tore through his wings, still buzzing over the street ahead of him, and Alustin grimaced and withdrew his magic from the paper wings as they caught fire. They collapsed into hundreds of sheets of loose paper, torn and burning.

Several pedestrians still in the street screamed as they were pelted with the glowing droplets, and the smell of burning flesh rose into the air. At least one person dropped to the ground unmoving.

One of the glowing droplets hit the ground just ahead of him, sizzling. He leaned forward to take a closer look, taking care to keep several sheets of paper with wards drawn onto them floating in front of him. 

Molten lead.

Before the lead droplet finished cooling, it started rolling away from him, then leapt into the air. Countless other droplets of lead replicated its motion as the Swordsman responsible called the lead back to themselves.

Alustin sent his vision racing forwards with a farsight affinity spell, and spotted the wielder. The arrows from Grovebringer had ceased, so they likely thought the rain of molten lead had taken him down. The Swordsmen would realize he was still alive soon enough, but he had a chance to escape through a building or side-street in the meantime.

He did seriously consider it for a moment, but his feet didn’t. Within a few heartbeats, he was sprinting at top speed towards the Swordsman pulling on the molten lead. 

Alustin pulled his sword from his storage tattoo as he ran. The spellform lines of its enchantment began to glow, and Alustin smiled grimly.

-----------------------------------

Moments before Sabae was about to windjump, Hugh caught her attention.

“How are we supposed to know where the galvanic beacon is heading towards you from?” Hugh asked.

Sabae paused. “I, uh…”

Hugh fumbled around in his beltpouch, dropping a couple of Lothalan blanks on the ground, one of which promptly rolled into a crack in the street. He pulled out a lumpy, misshapen hunk of quartz and tossed it to Sabae.

“Launch that at whoever’s firing the beacons at us, I can track it with my affinity senses, then Talia can use my starbolt to aim. Both of you use the anti-glare cantrip I showed you,” Hugh said.

Sabae bounced the hunk of quartz in her hand a couple of times, then nodded at Hugh. 

“Hurry up,” Godrick said. The wall shuddered, several large cracks forming in it. Godrick quickly began sealing them, but it was clear the wall wouldn’t take many more hits.

“Three,” Sabae said.

“Wait, are you jumping at one or at go?” Talia asked.

Sabae sighed. “At go.”

She shot Hugh a glance, and he look briefly abashed.

“Three,” Sabae said, and spun her wind-armor up even faster.

“Two.”

“One.”

Sabae swallowed nervously. “Go.”

She detonated the swirling winds around her legs, and she blasted straight upwards into the air. She immediately started spinning her leg armor back up. 

Sabae carefully resisted the urge to look up towards where the source of the lightning was or down to check the damage to the wall, keeping her eyes focused on the nearby buildings.

There. From the corner of her eye, she caught a glint from a window, and she turned her head to see a crossbow bolt flying straight at her. 

She pitched her arm forwards in a perfect throw, detonating the wind armor around the arm just as the lump of quartz was leaving her hand. It shot forwards like an arrow just as the crossbow bolt struck her wind armor dead center over her chest and was thrown to the side.

She pushed outward with her lightning affinity as the lightning struck the crossbow bolt just inches away from her, and she found herself blasting towards the ground, away from the lightning. 

As she fell, Hugh’s starbolt lanced towards the window, almost bright enough to blind her even with the cantrip protecting her eyes. Just before she fell behind the wall, a ball of purple-green dreamfire followed it. Interestingly, with the cantrip protecting her eyes, she could see spots of yellow in it that must be drowned out, normally.

Her armor collapsed when she hit the ground, and thunder rolled over her a moment later.

Sabae groaned. She could feel her limbs tingling, like every other time she’d come so close to lightning. She didn’t feel any pain, like she had when she’d burnt the scars into her hands, shoulder, and face, but it still wasn’t pleasant. The armor had protected her from the crossbow bolt-shaped beacon and the fall, at least.

Godrick rushed over and said some thing that she didn’t quite catch. Sabae shook her head.

“What?” she asked.

“Are yeh okay?” Godrick repeated.

“I’m fine,” Sabae said, sitting up with a groan. “Did we get the spotter?”

“Without a doubt,” Talia said, peering around the wall. “Wow. Starfire and dreamfire interact really explosively.”

Godrick helped Sabae to her feet, and she glanced over at Hugh.

“Thanks for that crystal, Hugh,” she said. “Don’t you use that to fight with sometimes?”

“I used to,” Hugh said, who was still looking past the wall. “Pretty sure it got destroyed just now. It was the first crystal I ever fused.”

Sabae rubbed her neck awkwardly. “I’m sorry, Hugh, I…”

Hugh turned to look at her and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. It had sentimental value, but my friends have a lot more sentimental value for me.”

“Ah think we should get moving,” Godrick said. “We’re out a’ the lightnin’ mage’s range now, but ah’d rather not let ‘im track us down again.” 

“Right,” Sabae said, collecting herself. “We should head back towards the inn, try and find Artur or Alustin.”

“I think I see Artur fighting down towards the harbor,” Talia said.

Sabae glanced to where Talia was looking and spotted a massive stone figure looming over houses near the harbor, swinging a tree-sized hammer. Blasts of ice and yellow-green gas rolled harmlessly off Artur’s immense stone armor.

“And ah think ah see Alustin,” Godrick said, pointing. 

Sabae glanced over and spotted what appeared to be a forest growing in the middle of Lothal that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. A huge flock of origami golems and darting sheets of paper raced through it. Much of the paper was on fire, as were a number of the trees. Burning ropes of what looked like molten metal tore through the air above the forest.

As Sabae tried to make up her mind about which of the older mages the apprentices should head towards, Hugh spoke up.

“I just killed someone,” Hugh said. “An actual human being, not, like, an imp or monster or whatever.”

He stared at them for a second, then bent over and vomited.