They were all good as dead. If he stayed... if he left... Why couldn't Sachi see that Callan was just trying to protect him? He was his big brother; it was his job to keep the kid safe, not the other way around. But yet again, Sachi was dead set on bearing far too much responsibility for a child his age.
Yet again, he wanted to place himself between his older brother and danger.
Large tears rolled down Callan's face as Sachi ripped himself out of his grasp. "Please, don't," he begged, but his whole body screamed in pain and protest as he tried to stand up and stop him.
He was helpless, and he knew it.
He was useless, bawling his eyes out as Sachi's body gave way to the massive shaggy beast.
Sachi let out a roar, standing defensively— defiantly— in front of Cal.
The woman in charge sneered, a hint of mania creeping gleefully into her eyes and that dreadful grin. "It almost seems a shame to kill a Manabe that hasn't grown into its own..." But that wasn't going to stop her or the rest of the clan.
It all happen in a fraction of a second, but to Callan, it all seemed sluggish, like they were insects trapped in a pool of amber. But just like a fly trapped in a web, futile as those effort might be, survival didn't come to those who didn't seek it desperately. There wasn't honor in falling in battle— a mantra of their nation— and sheer willpower couldn't save them. Still, a shot in the dark was better than giving up. Who else would fight for their own lives but them?
At the very least, they'd drag a few of Elieveta's followers to the afterlife along with them.
Their leader and her right hand man set their sights on Sachi, leaving four to handle the rest of them. One of the sorcerers hung back, raising an arc of fore around them so that if they wanted to flee, there was only one option: they'd have to get through Paraven first.
The sorceress who'd gone after Erzia and Phoena propelled icy shards at the pair, Phoena doing her best to fend them off and shatter them with her sword. She was nimble and quick, fortunately for the telepath at her side, who was using what minute power she could muster to bind the sorcerer going after Brady and Soleil. There was only so much spellwork that the Paraven assassin could do with her movements restricted like that, after all. But the ice witch was growing angrier, her movements becoming more unpredictable. The chaos made it harder for Phoe to predict and harder, in turn, for her to keep Erzia protected. Erzia yelped as a sliver of ice struck her arm, distracting her from holding back the other sorceress, who came charging at their companions.
Soleil was steadier on her feet, though she wasn't entirely recovered from the overwhelming dark magic. She'd managed to accept the corrupted magic just enough to manage it. Better than she had been before, at least. She still felt ill, but she wasn't about to double over in pain. Sol was confident that she could fight back with some magic of her own. The question was: what was she up against?
Another air witch, like the one in charge, but younger, less experienced. Sol could tell from that first attack that this man wasn't quite on par with the sorceress who'd sent Callan and Sachi flying. His powers didn't have the same force. Sol rose a barricade from the earth, dragging Brady behind it alongside her. She pressed her back against it, leaning her head back to think as wind whipped past them. "Brady!" She grabbed him by his forearms and and stared intently at him. "Can you focus in on his thoughts?"
If he could give her just a brief insight into what the man was thinking before his attacks, Sol could use that to her advantage.
Brady took a deep breath, slowly exhaling as he nodded. "I can try."
"Good." Sol released his arms and smiled softly. "I'm counting on you."
As rough going as it was for the others, they all seemed to be in better shape than Callan, who found himself crawling towards where Sachi fought with the two clan members. He didn't have the slightest clue what he thought he'd do... He'd probably just get in the way, but he couldn't just sit there doing nothing either. As large as his Manabe form was, it was harder for the sorceress to push him around like that, which meant she'd taken to other means of hunting Sachi.
Those enchanted blades.
The runes that adorned them weren't all that different from his own. They supplied magical properties to the weapons depending on which had been cast. They were finite, repeated uses requiring the caster to recast the enchantment when the magic wore off. The Seorehen runes were more reliable in that sense; they had limited power to draw from but what remained was always there— no recharging necessary— until it was all gone.
Callan wished he'd studied runeology a bit more. They offered classes on magical runes at the Academy, but such things were usually reserved for magic users. If he knew more, he could've discerned what kind of rune enchanted that blade, and what might happen to Sachi if he was struck by it. It could have been cursed, poisoned— Paraven had the means for all sorts of horrors. To make matters worse, the woman's conspirator played with the shadows, dampening Sachi's sense of sight to give the head assassin an edge.
Maybe Cal could distract them, if he drew close enough, giving Sachi an opening...
"I'm sure you know better than to interrupt," one of the other assassins growled. Cal gasped as she stomped her heel into his back, and he flung his head back. He hadn't noticed her approach; he'd been too focused on Sachi and that battle to notice anything else. "No? Guess I'll just have to teach you some manners then."
"Says the one practically kicking a man while he's down," he huffed, but he was too banged up to force her off. So, when he rolled over onto his back, he knew she'd let him. He shuffled back as he hands went to her blade.
"Feisty. That's cute." She pulled her dagger out of the sheath, hushing him. "Don't be scared. I won't kill you right away. That takes all the fun out of it." She paused as she loomed over him, pinning him down with a knee to the chest. "But so does you running away." Her solution to that was to drive her dagger through his shoulder, like a dart into a board, all the way through until it dug into the dirt. She slammed her hand over Cal's mouth as he screamed, muffling the sound with her palm.
"Can you feel it yet?" she whispered, easing back and getting to her feet. "Paralytic agents... you wouldn't be able to move if you wanted to."
He did, and his heart was racing as she waved a hand over his body. The way his body started to ache, his skin wet as if he'd just weathered a storm. He was dizzy and lethargic— and it wasn't just the toxin. She was siphoning the water from his body, slowly drying him up until he was nothing more but a shriveled corpse, and he couldn't even move his lips to cry out to his friends. Swaying in and out of consciousness, he almost wanted to go to sleep. He wouldn't have to feel the agony then. Sachi was still out there fighting, though, and it couldn't end like this.
Callan had an idea. A risky outrageous idea, but if it paid off, it gave him a chance, so he had to take it.
He was betting on the adrenaline of the shift to carry him through— if he could even manage to change his form in his current state. The last time he did hadn't gone particularly well, and he still harbored some resentment about that. However, with limited options, he needed to think a little less and do a lot more.
In his shifted form, Callan was fairly decent in size. For a lizard, that was. As he focused on the transition, Cal found it harder than ever to bind the pathways he needed to in order to shift, but in the end, he managed to cobble them together. The weaving of his human form into his animal one brought with it that surge of energy that he'd been hoping for, the enchanted dagger clattering to the dirt as his form shrunk. He was a third of his usual size, at best, but he was able to move freely again. Callan scampered away from the witch toward his companions, leaving the woman stunned for a moment.
Probably expecting more. Most people did... even Callan expected more from himself once upon a time. Though, with his memories of being Orin Crue having returned, he had more questions about his shapeshifting than ever, but in the middle of a fight with deadly assassins was not the time to be wondering about things that just didn't add up.
Erzia was hurt, injured badly enough that she couldn't use her powers to fight any longer, so Brady was keeping her awake as the battle raged on. Phoena was still fighting, sword against magic, with Sol at her side. Somehow, she and Brady had managed to miraculously take down one of the assassins, who lay crumpled in the clearing, but that brought the fire sorcerer to join his icy companion. It was two on two, but Phoe and Sol didn't seem to be faring well. They were ragged, and the assassins were taking full advantage of that and of their desperation. Callan ran up to Brady, scampering up his leg and making the telepath jump.
"You scared me!" he hissed, gaze darting back as the shifter spun around. The unwelcoming water witch who'd tried to wring Callan like he was a sponge was incoming, recovered enough to be enraged at Cal's ploy. "And you brought another crazy murderous sorceress with you. I'm going to have trauma for the next few decades, thanks."
So was Sachi, Cal imagined, given only one of the sorcerers he'd been fighting remained: the air sorceress. Meanwhile, half her shadowy companion lay a few feet from them, and the other half, across the battlefield, torn in two by the rampaging Manabe.
That was exactly what Callan had wanted to avoid. Even if they were bad people, followers of a dark sorceress with despicable, evil methods, they were still people, and Sachi had their blood on his hands. That wasn't just something you forgot... and Sachi wouldn't. He was too pure a soul to take something like murder so lightly. Killing the townsfolk that attacked him had wrecked him too, despite being self-dense. This wasn't much different (though Paraven was arguably a more outright evil that the bigoted townspeople), and the guilt of those bodies would be another weight that Callan couldn't carry for his brother.
"Do you think... it's finally over?" Erzia asked warily, that pained expression wearing her as she leaned against Brady, her eyes downcast.
Cal shook his head, and Brady shot her a worried glance. "Don't tell me you're giving up." She still had that damn mental barrier up; she still had fight left in her! Phoena and Soleil were giving everything they had into keeping those sorcerers at bay, and Sachi chomped a man in half to protect them all.
"Do you really think we stand a chance?" she said.
"We have to. We can't let the innocent people counting on us suffer, even if that means giving all of ourselves. I know it's easier to be selfish, but—"
"I am selfish. I've always been selfish," Erzia muttered, her fists clenching as she looked away from Brady.
"Then for once, don't." He reached out a hand to her. "Get up. Come on."
"I can't do this anymore, Brady... You don't get it. You couldn't possibly. I'm not like you, can't you see—"
The thunderous roar that drown out her last few words was oddly distant, not close enough to be Sachi, but near enough to reverberate in their ears. Another cry followed. And another. Until something emerged from beyond the fire wall and slammed into one of the assassins fighting the Runeholders that could still muster their strength, slashing the witch with razor sharp claws.
"Is that a—?" Brady started, and Callan finished that thought for him mentally.
Manabe.
Not one. Not two. Not even three, but rather four massive patchwork beasts come to their rescue. They'd answered Sachi's cry for help. They'd heard him, and they'd come there. The odds were turned in their favor, with only three of the original six assassins remaining. They actually stood a chance of escaping.
The Manabe set in on the Paraven assassins with a vengeance, no mercy shown from the creatures to the merciless clan. The sorcerers came back at them with every magic at their disposal, but it still wasn't enough. The havoc and bloodshed had the Runeholders huddling together, Sachi looking on in shock as his volatile emotions recoiled and he returned to his human form.
Only their leader, the ice witch, and the insane water witch remained— the latter being smart enough to flee from the situation that promised her a swift death. The others, however, were too headstrong, though the ice sorceress did manage to wound one of the Manabe severely with a massive jagged shard to the chest. It was hard to tell how badly the beast was injured as it howled, but its pain seemed to set the others off that much more.
The final two didn't stand a chance, the leader being the last to fall after her comrade... her sister, and the clan would say.
The fight was over, which meant that their Manabe forms were no longer a necessity, their rescuers returning to their human forms.
"Look like we got here just in the nick of time," a man said, looking over the haggard group before his gaze turned to Sachi and he bowed his head. "You did well, young one."
Sachi, who stood alone, peering back at the man, glanced to his brother and the others. Callan was back in his human form, the toxin having surpassed the adrenaline as he stood (if you could even call it that) slumped over, his limp weight entirely supported by Brady and Phoena. Erzia was out cold on the ground, Soleil doing her best to wake the telepath up, but it was a fruitless endeavor, so she simply sat on the ground and held her hand instead. Sachi broke into tears, bawling his eyes out as he pleaded with the other Manabe. "Thank you. I— thank you." His body quivered as the tears continued to spill. He rushed over to the others, tugging on Phoena's arm as he moved as close to Callan as he could. Though holding his brother near could only help so much, the tension in Sachi's shoulders seemed to ease. "Please help them. You can help, can't you?"
As if they hadn't already done enough by saving the Runeholders to begin with, but the man simply nodded his head in agreement. "We'll do what we can," he promised, waving for his own people to head in and help gather the injured. "Once we're home," he added, "It isn't save here since the one witch escaped."
The plan had been to find the Manabe colony for Sachi on their way to Taetha. The expected circumstances had been quite different, but the destination was the same. They hadn't found the long lost Manabe, but the long lost Manabe had found them.
A/N: It's been awhile since the last update, which is admittedly bumming me out a bit, but brain fog, what can ya do? I managed to catch myself some Covid (I'm just fine now, so no worries!), but that made writing recently a real hassle, unfortunately. I'd been planning (since about mid-October I think) to try finishing this novel up by the beginning of November so that I could work on the sequel/companion novel for NaNiWriMo this year (which I haven't done in AGES and thought would be fun.) Alas, it being the 29th and me having 9 chapters minimum still to go, chances are that won't be happening... Still, it was a nice goal for a little while!
I may or may not have decided on a potential title for the next book, if anyone's interested at all... Maybe. Possibly. Idk. Let's at least see if I can get a few more chapters out before October's done as a spooky season treat! Love y'all who actually bear with me through these rambling author's notes! ~ Rissa