The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 494

Chapter 494: An Icy Fist

ALARIC MAER

Our combined footsteps were uncomfortably loud in the confined stairwell. The thud and creak of the wood resounded sharply from the rough stonework of the walls. With only a small amount of mana to support myself, my aged body was already feeling the strain of so much exertion

And all of this without a drop of alcohol to dull the pain. I consoled myself with the fact that, despite being perhaps a quarter my age, Darrin looked a lot worse.

“Quit your huffing and puffing,” I snapped in a staged whisper. “You’re going to bring every loyalist mage for a mile right down on top of us.”

Darrin only huffed and puffed louder. “As if they could hear me over the noise of your creaking knees, old man.”

I scoffed, glad he still had the energy to be a smart ass. It meant his injuries weren’t as bad as they could have been.

Reaching the top of the stairwell, it opened out into a large, empty common room. On the wall, a rickety wooden ladder continued up to a trap door in the ceiling. I ignored the top floor of the student dormitory and ascended the ladder. The trap door was locked, but a single strike against the mechanism twisted the thin metal and allowed the door to swing upwards.

The square of sky I could see was gray-blue. Early morning, not yet full sunrise. Darkness would have been better, but I could work with twilight.

I heaved myself out onto the dormitory roof, then turned and pulled Darrin up behind me. We both ducked down immediately as shouts rang out from below.

After easing the trap door back down into place, we crept to the roof’s edge and looked out at the Central Academy campus. Several loyalist mages were rushing toward the building across the hedged yards. A few more came running out of the castle-like Student Administration Office, and more could be seen in the distance gathering outside of the Chapel, a looming black building that contained the Reliquary.

“If we’re going to make it off this roof, I need out of these cuffs,” Darrin whispered. “How’d you get out of yours, anyway?”

“The old fake tooth,” I said while scanning the nearby rooftops. It wouldn’t take long for them to find us.

Darrin snorted. “Still doing that? I’m telling you, one of these days you’re going to get punched in the mouth, and your last thoughts will be of me while that crap burns out the back of your throat.”

“Took quite a beating this time around, and I’m still here.”

I’d broken the connecting chain on Darrin’s mana suppression cuffs, allowing him freedom of movement and a small amount of circulation through his mana core, but he wouldn’t be able to cast any spells until the cuffs were completely disabled. Considering the distance we would have to jump to get to the next roof, having help from a wind-attribute mage sure would go a long way.

My dimensional storage artifact had been confiscated with all of my tools, and I’d only had the one fake tooth. Considering my current situation, I had a fleeting thought that investing in a second might be worth the trouble, regardless of Darrin’s protests. After all, we’d both still be locked up without the burning powder.

At the moment, though, all I had was the dagger I’d taken from one of the dead guards downstairs.

“Let me see those cuffs, boy,” I grumbled, taking Darrin’s wrist. By imbuing the dagger’s blade with mana, I could harden the steel enough to score the runes. It took longer than it should have with my core in its current state, but after a tense minute accompanied with the sound of the rest of Dragoth’s forces descending on the dormitory, I was able to begin scratching away some of the runes on his cuffs.

It was a delicate process. The dagger was less effective than the burning powder, and the mana suppression cuffs were equally hardened by the same mana they withheld from Darrin. I had to scour away the proper runes without inadvertently altering the spell into something that would harm Darrin, but I had to be careful not to break the point of the dagger or slip off the smooth, curved metal surface of the manacles and slit Darrin’s wrist. The trembling of my hands sure as hells didn’t help either. What I would do for a goddamn bottle of rum, I thought before reminding myself why I’d quit in the first place.

Cynthia bent down beside me, taking my hands in her own. The trembling eased, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

It took another minute, perhaps two, to successfully mar the runes. We could hear Dragoth’s soldiers in the building now, shouting commands to each other and the escaping Instillers. I felt the moment that Darrin’s mana came back under his control. His signature reappeared, spiking and diving rapidly as his core attempted to reassert control. After this, it was easy enough to break the manacles off his wrists. They struck the flat roof with a metallic clunk.

At almost the same time, the trap door was thrown open again, only ten feet away.

A woman's head appeared in the opening. From her desperate grimace and look of physical malaise, I knew she was one of the prisoners, not a soldier. She saw us immediately, and her mouth opened to speak. If we had any hope of hunting down Dragoth and the recording artifact, we couldn’t have a trail of his loyalist bloodhounds on our heels…

I hooked the manacles on the end of my boot and kicked out. Whatever she’d been about to say turned into a scream as the manacles struck her across the face, and she plunged back down through the hole. There was a crash and shouting, followed by the sound of fists striking meat.

Darrin gave a quick jerk of his hand, pulling a gust of wind toward him. It caught the trap door and slammed it shut again. Biting back a curse, I bent low and started running while trying to keep my footfalls as light as possible. Anyone with half a brain would see the manacles and know someone else had been up here.

The most likely escape route took us north, across another rooftop and into an adjacent building via a balcony window, but we were standing on the western edge to look out over the campus. It wasn’t far, perhaps fifty feet. I was nearly there when the trap door slammed back open. Myopic Decay flared with power, and a man cried out before ducking back down into the hole and rubbing frantically at his eyes.

Planting my foot firmly on the roof’s lip, I used what mana I could to strengthen my legs and jumped. A gust of wind pushed me from behind, and I heard Darrin let out a grunt of concentration.

I cleared the fifteen foot gap, absorbing the impact of the descent to the other roof by tucking into a forward roll.

My battered and bruised body protested, but I came to my feet already sprinting, no longer concerned about noise. Before we could search for the recording artifact, we had to lose our pursuers.

I heard Darrin come down hard behind me. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed him favoring his left leg slightly, but I didn’t slow down. I’d seen him dismantle a convergence zone guardian with expert efficiency before; I had no doubt he could handle a bit of torture and a twisted ankle, even with his limited pool of mana.

Reaching the far side of the second roof, I leapt across to a balcony, turning my shoulder into the arc and using myself like a battering ram against the glass door. It shattered, and I felt a burning line across my cheek as broken glass cut my skin. My feet slid out from under me, and I collided with a bulky lounge chair, sending both the furniture and myself sprawling with a crash.

Behind me, I heard the crunch of Darrin landing in the broken glass. His shadow loomed over me, and he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and hauled me to my feet. “No time for a lie-down,” he muttered.

A black bullet of force clipped his right shoulder, knocking him into me and sending us both sprawling again, and the apartment’s far wall exploded. A jet of orange fire sprayed over our heads. Flames engulfed the room in an instant.

“Eyes!” I barked, reaching for Sun Flare.

The orange flames catching in the carpet, furniture, and support beams blazed bright, transforming their glow into a blinding glare. _{ƒгeewёbnovel.com}

Sending out a sonar-like pulse with Aural Disruption, I grabbed Darrin by the back of his ruined tunic and dragged him along behind me, both our eyes shut tight. The heat of the flames blistered my skin, and several more concussive strikes of force shook the apartment. Somewhere to our left, a roof collapsed.

Only when I sensed our proximity to the door—now hanging off its hinges and smoldering—did I risk releasing Sun Flare. Through my lids, I saw the hot white light dim to a dancing orange and yellow, and I opened my eyes again. Standing and heaving Darrin in a single movement, I thrust him through the door in front of me.

The hallway was choked with thick black smoke, and the collapsed wall and ceiling had sent embers flying. In a minute or two, this entire floor would be in flames.

“At least the bastards can’t follow us in that way,” I mumbled to myself.

Ahead, Cynthia was gesturing me toward the stairwell down. “They’ll come in through the ground floor and try to trap you.”

“No shit,” I grumbled, running past her.

Darrin rubbed at his eyes and stumbled in my wake. A racking cough burst out of him. “What?” he choked out around the coughing fit.

I didn’t have the breath to reply as I led the way into the stairwell. Its stone walls rebuffed the heat, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees in a few steps. The smoke floated up it like a chimney, rising on the hot air, and the floor below was clear—for the moment.

We descended two floors as quickly as we could, then turned into one of the hallways that connected to other rooms, sprinting its length. The window at the end exploded with a casting of Aural Disruption. There was no neighboring building to jump to, but the ground wasn’t yet swarming with Dragoth’s soldiers.

I paused, taking two seconds to breathe and bemoan the loss of all my equipment, which included at least five different artifacts that would have eased our descent.

Darrin went first this time, crawling through the broken window, hanging from its outside, and then dropping down to the next ledge. Gusting wind stabilized his fall.

As he prepared to drop to the one below that, a man in rags ran around the corner, sprinting as if the fire of the abyss chased him. My guts dropped into my shoes.

Two mages came running after him, both in black and crimson. One fired a weak shock spell that struck the escaping prisoner in the back. The man pitched forward, landed on his face, and slid a couple of feet along the cobblestones. Neither seemed to have seen us yet.

Darrin, who was still thirty feet from the ground, pushed off the wall, leaping back in a graceful arc.

The second of the two mages, his eyes drawn to the movement, gave a shout and threw up a quickly manifested shield in the form of gusting, circular wind.

As Darrin descended, he lashed out with a combination of strikes. Wind-attribute mana formed around his limbs and projected the force of the strikes forward and down. The lightning-attribute Caster had half turned toward his shouting companion but was too far forward to be protected by the quickly cast shield. The blows landed like hammer strikes, driving him to the ground.

Darrin used his own wind-strikes to cushion his descent, but he still landed too hard. His injured leg gave out, and he collapsed to the ground with an audible thump.

The Shield shot a furtive look up at the window, and I pulled myself back, hoping he hadn’t seen me. Slowly, I peeked out again. The Shield was creeping toward Darrin, a short blade in his hand, the cyclone of wind-attribute mana still spinning in front of him.

I waited until just the right moment.

Leaping out the window, I aimed myself like a catapult stone at the Shield. As I fell, I bellowed a warcry.

The mage flinched, automatically pulling his shield up above his head. I struck it full on. The swirling wind caught me and redirected my momentum, tossing me to the side. I hit the path in a roll, tumbling across the ground like a tossed die. The fall should have broken every bone in my body, but between the shield absorbing the brunt of the impact and redirecting the force, and my own mana infusing my muscles and bones, I rolled up to my feet with nothing but a cracked rib.

The Aural Disruption rune was already alight on the small of my back, and I channeled the spell into the mage’s ears before he could recover and reposition his shield. He yelped, his face crimping into a tight, pained expression, and the wind-attribute shield flickered. The confiscated dagger flew through the air, spinning end over end toward his ribs.

The wind-shield caught it and flung it aside. The mage’s hands tightened around his blade as he regarded me with a calculating expression.

“Well, shit,” I grumbled, struggling even to stand.

A strong wind slammed into me from the north, making me stumble. The Shield fell backwards, leveled by the force. I lunged forward, dove on the man, and fought him for his sword. The fingers of one hand dug at my face with the other tried desperately to hold onto his weapon. My own fingers clawed at his, trying to pry them away from the hilt. I only needed a little bit of give…

An icy fist reached inside of me and grabbed my core—the very mana that filled it—closing tight, like a wyvern’s claw through flesh. With a horrified gasp, I reeled back from the Shield, clutching at my sternum. I spun around instinctively, looking for the source of this horrible sensation, but no one else was there. Distantly, I saw the same look of terrified confusion on Darrin’s face, the same clutching fingers scrabbling against his flesh in bitter discomfort.

My mana was ripped away. A blood-speckled cough burst out of me, and I collapsed.

Visible in the air, bright streams of mana streaked from every direction, pulled on the wind back northward, toward the mountains.

Through the ringing of my ears, I heard gasping and weeping from nearby. My head lolled toward it.