Airlean Tales

It took only a single stroke of lightning for the world to burst into chaos around Sethis’s ears.

Heralds poured through the stony fields and down the clefts of rock in a thick river, chittering and yowling and baying in a cacophony of animal noise. Sethis caught sight of jackrabbits, eagles, mountain goats, even the occasional cougar and bear. Rows of Garrison archers fired volleys of arrows, and ballistae loosed bolts from their high-rise platforms, but the solitary projectiles did little to break the overwhelming ranks.

Sethis turned to where Halcyon and Karis stood at his side, weapons drawn and faces alert. “We will need the bulk of your strength for the alpha,” he said. “Do your best to reserve your mana.”

He expected to be met with suspicion, even hostility. The royal family had lost favor with their own hunters throughout the ineffective reign of his father, and the proud warriors hardly liked to be ordered around. But Halcyon only inclined his head and Karis only replied, “And you, Your Highness?”

“I will do the same,” Sethis said.

“With all due respect, Highness, maybe you shouldn’t,” Halcyon said. “You’re the heir to the throne. Engaging a Class Five would put your life in overwhelming risk.”

“Everyone around me is sacrificing nothing less,” Sethis pointed out.

Halcyon glanced at Karis, who seemed to glean some tacit message from him. “Regardless, you are loved by the people and the sign of Airlea’s strength,” she said smoothly, stepping forward. “And if we expect a Class Five, then the heralds will be nothing to underestimate. Perhaps you might consider dedicating your full strength to the heralds, Highness. It would allow for me and Halcyon to conserve mana for the Five.”

Her words were well-selected, but Sethis could hardly miss her intent: your life is too expensive and nobody can pay the price for it. Nicolina had told him as much, with how often she sent him out for trivial, safe tasks while the Storm raged in other parts of the country. Still, he could not deny the kernel of truth in Karis’s words. He would prefer to be seen as just another captain, but he knew full well that much of the army’s morale lay in his hands.

“Very well,” Sethis said, keenly aware of the rough edge to his tone. “Then you will find no heralds past this wall.”

He closed his eyes, raised his sword, and let his manawell flare like the sun.

Azalea knew exactly when she broke through the Sovendyret border. She felt a sweeping, tingling rush of mana over her skin, the same as when she’d entered—and then it was gone, leaving the air feeling dry and stale. She realized belatedly that she’d gotten accustomed to the ever-present simmer of wild mana throughout the Sovendyret. Next to that, Airlea’s ordinary climate would have felt unnaturally still if not for the raging Storm.

Northelm was a brazen dot in the distance, defiantly aglow beneath the pulses of vivid lightning from the broiling clouds above. It loomed closer as Azalea pushed her windsoles into a swift springstep, Azure bolting at her side in a blaze of dark fire. She wasn’t completely certain how his method of travel worked, and given the mana burning from him in waves, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

As they crested over the final peaks, Azalea flinched at the deluge of noise and color that greeted her. Smoke and dust curled around the town like a cloud, the air thick with arrows and blazing oil.

They haven’t evacuated! Azalea realized in horror. Northelm had chosen to stand and fight, despite being an era away from the capital. The entire village was sure to be slaughtered.

With a cry of dismay, Azalea raised her starshooter and fired down three gaunt jackrabbits, twisted with corruption. She turned to Azure, who had entirely ignored the flood of smaller critters and immediately set upon a black bear thrice his size.

“There’s still people in the town!” she called. A mountain goat rushed for her and she shot it right between the eyes. “They’ll all be killed!”

“Well, perhaps they should have left,” Azure said practically, Forming the icy polearm of Hoarfrost and spearing the bear through the skull. It roared, flailing—somehow not dead. With a snap of his fingers, Hoarfrost shattered, driving dozens of lethal ice shards through the bear’s body. It finally slumped over.

Azalea wanted to be cross with him, but she couldn’t. He was quite correct. Northelm was far on Airlea’s borders, and though natural rock formations helped keep it defensible, the obstacles were not substantial enough to hold back corruptions. They should have been evacuated long ago. What had Nicolina been thinking?

“I don’t suppose you could call some of your dragon friends to help, could you?” Azalea said desperately.

“They would sooner eat the humans than the beasts, I think,” Azure called back. “Humans are perceived as the larger threat.”

“But—but you could control them, couldn’t you?”

“Control them!” His eyes flared. “Dragons are not animals! Well, I suppose they are. But they are thinking creatures with pride and dignity, not like menial dogs or packhorses.” He paused. “And currently, all the dragons are gathered at the Stone Heart for their centennial meeting.”

“Well, alright,” Azalea said sullenly. Not that she knew what the Stone Heart was.

“But it is alright,” said Azure, “because you have something better than dragons. You have me!” And fearlessly, surrounded by a rush of dark fire, he leapt into the fray.

Karis’s blood seemed to soar in her veins, lifting her to exhilaration.

She swept through uneven ranks of feral animals with her rapier darting like a needle, lines of glittering thread waltzing from target to target in spangled constellations. With the slightest flick of her sword, the lines speared through their prey, then tightened, tearing into flesh and hide. The mutilated creatures fell upon the earth like an army of corpses.

The task had been utterly effortless, even more so than usual, like crooking a pinky.

I am unstoppable, she realized. She expected a rush of glee and satisfaction. She only felt bewilderment. Power was welcome. But unexplained power—that was a dangerous, flighty thing that served no master.

Her gaze searched the surroundings for answers until it fell upon the snowy peaks of the Noadic Range, not far at all from their battlefield, and the vivid swirl of flowering trees scattered throughout the icy surface.

Ah, she realized. Of course. Her sugar-thread was composed of ice and flower mana, both of which the Range supplied in bounty. Though she was not in the Range proper, her manawell could gather strength from its proximity, the same way Halcyon gathered strength near the ocean and Sethis gathered strength beneath the sun.

In this place, she was the strongest she’d ever been.

Karis felt a sting of excitement and barely smothered a growing smile. Ice and flower was a combination that was nearly impossible to find in the wild. She’d often despised the fact that her manawell held an affinity for such an infrequent blend. Yet here she was now, empowered by her environment, the strongest she had ever been in her life. She would relish this.

Halcyon passed around her with a torrent of flowing water, flinging back a wave of hunting birds. “You’re in high spirits,” he remarked.

Karis flexed her fingers and felt the raw power churning under her skin. She laughed, the sound loose and free and unusually wild. “Oh. This is how you feel by the ocean.”

“It’s quite the boon,” he agreed.

A snap of his glaive, bolstered with a jet of water, cleanly sliced through the neck of a looming Class Three elk. It collapsed to the ground in a pile of hide and antlers.

“But don’t let it make you reckless,” Halcyon continued with a backward glance. “You’re still not invincible.”

The warning dredged up a distant memory: after the Battle of Havenport, Halcyon had been bedridden for two entire weeks on account of near-lethal overburn. Being surrounded by the ocean while fighting and drawing upon the strength of the water had lulled him into complacency, and he hadn’t paid attention to how much mana he was burning. By the time he had felled the Class Five, he’d sunk beneath the waves, a clammy, silent husk with a pulse that was barely there. Karis had been the one to pull him out of the ocean and get him to Thom. She still did not like to recall how cold and still his body had been.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said primly. Just to be certain, she checked her manawell and was satisfied to find it at a low burn. “Thank you,” she added begrudgingly.

“It’s intoxicating, I know.” There was a glimmer of a smile in Halcyon’s eyes as he looked at her. “But we’ll need you for later.”

A brush of warmth danced up Karis’s spine and fluttered in her throat. She promptly turned, wishing it away. Although she had grown to trust Halcyon over the years, she did not want him to see how he could affect her.

“Keep alert,” she said briskly. “With the energy index this high, it’s only a matter of time before a Five shows itself.”

Azalea threw herself aside, avoiding the dangerous swipe of a cougar’s claw. Her time in the Sovendyret, if nothing else, had hardened her nerves. Compared to facing down dragons and wyverns, even Class Twos and Threes felt comparatively unintimidating. At least they weren’t breathing fire at her.

She found her hands steady as she released firebolt after firebolt, each round finding its deadly mark. She allowed herself to feel just the faintest glow of pride as her targets fell, only to flinch as their corpses were trampled by a flood of other animals.

Is the Guild really defending Northelm? she wondered, taking in the overwhelming numbers around her. So far from Mythaven? So far from supplies and reinforcements?

Like an answer to her silent question, the sky suddenly exploded with light—but not the shattering flash of lightning. A golden glow poured like a beautiful river into the clouds as wispy, featherlike tendrils unfurled over the walls of Northelm, flaring like a brilliant pair of falcon’s wings. The stunning sight nearly stole the breath straight from Azalea’s chest.

“I sense the power of an exceedingly strong warrior,” said Azure approvingly. He pushed his steps faster towards Northelm.

“You mean, those wings aren’t yours?” said Azalea, surprised. They were such a flagrant use of mana that she had simply assumed.

“Those are not wings of sunfire, but light mana,” said Azure. “And they are not wings of flight, but of protection. Your warrior is shielding his brood, not taking to the skies.”

He turned and leapt somewhere in the distance, clearly seeking the most dangerous prey he could find.

Azalea searched her memory for a light manacrafting Hunter, but came up short. As far as her history lessons served, light mana was a symbol of hope and royalty, inextricably tied to Excalibur; thus only the immediate royal family was authorized to Form it. And while the Airlean crown prince was technically the Third Hunter, Nicolina would never dispatch him to what looked to be a critical zone.

Perhaps tradition had loosened in the face of the Storm, and any Hunter could use light mana. It was the only satisfactory explanation.

Nodding to herself, Azalea pulsed her windsoles and arced over the walls of Northelm. Beneath her, disorderly ranks of animals scrabbled at the walls coated with shimmering golden wings, which rippled beneath every impact but did not give. Several mountain cats and swooping birds were lunging over the defenses, aiming to dismantle the archers.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Azalea breathed. She flicked the toggle on her starshooter, flared her manawell, and fired without hesitation. A volley of firebolts shimmered like falling stars, spearing down the beasts and scattering them like dust.

One of the soldiers on the wall—a militia captain, judging from his burnished helm and thick cloak—looked up at her, his mouth agape. She landed next to him, continuing to fire down the wall.

“Captain, has there been any sign of an alpha?” she said commandingly. She shot down a writhing, mutated eagle that plummeted to the rocks below with a spray of debris.

The captain did not respond. She could sense his eyes boring into her disbelievingly. Perhaps he did not recognize her as a Hunter without her armor and sigil.

“I’ve come to provide reinforcements,” Azalea tried. “Where’s the presiding Hunter?” She caught a flicker of motion over the captain’s shoulder and swiftly fired past him; her firebolt founds its mark in a scrabbling bobcat, tearing out a cauterized hole from skull to tail. With this many heralds, a Class Four or Five alpha was inevitable. It was imperative that she find the presiding Hunter as quickly as possible.

“’Zalie?” the captain whispered.

His soft voice forcibly throttled Azalea out of her thoughts. Her eyes snapped to the captain’s face, trying to lift his features from beneath the shadows of his helm.

A kind, boyish face; thick brows; square and steady shoulders that bore a burden too heavy for his youth.

Wesley Geppett blinked back at her, his amber eyes round and hollow with shock.

“Wes?” Azalea said numbly. Her dearest friend was on his feet, hale and whole, the flush of good health in his cheeks. The sight of him was so alive and vibrant that the memory of his pale, waxen body lying flat on the medical bed seemed little more than a forgotten nightmare.

Wes moved immediately. His free arm cradled her head, pulling her close until she was nestled against his chest. Azalea could hear the sweep of his breath on her ear, feel the drumbeat of his pulse beneath his gambeson, a roaring current that drowned out the distant din of clattering metal and warring cries.

“You’re alive,” Wes said raggedly. “Alive. I didn’t think…”

The words fell from him, lost.

Azalea instinctively nuzzled into his shoulder, a strange, slow heat curling in her belly. What an odd feeling. She didn’t have a name for it, but it made her want to linger. For a moment, she was spirited back into the workshop, the calm chittering of its hearth, the soft moonlight pouring through the open window, shielded from the outside world by the brace of his arm. There was no battle, no storm, no drive of panic and desperation…

…but no, there was. And Wes was right in the midst of it.

The dreamy feeling slipped away like morning mist. Azalea felt the gravity of the situation sock her plumb in the chest, driving the breath from her lungs.

“You’re here,” she said disbelievingly. “In the middle of a battlefield. Wes, you’re—what are you doing here?”

“What?” said Wes distantly, brushing a finger through a lock of her hair.

Azalea pushed him away, her fear slowly churning into anger. “You should be in your father’s manor, or at Mythaven. Resting. Anywhere but here!”

The film of emotion slowly cleared from Wes’s eyes, replaced with calm clarity. “I’ve made a full recovery,” he said, gesturing to himself. “Why shouldn’t I be helping?”

“It’s dangerous!”

“And?” His tone grew sharper. “Am I just in the way?”

“I couldn’t bear to see you hurt again,” Azalea said desperately. “You know I can’t!”

Wes stopped, his mouth slack. An inhuman screech sounded from just beside them. Azalea instinctively drew her short sword and sliced wide in one fluid motion; her blade caught right on a cougar’s hide, sending it sprawling back down the wall.

“Go,” she commanded. “I’m sure that somebody would escort you back. Grey! Grey Dismas, where is—wait, where’s your company?”

She looked around frantically, but there was no sign of House Geppett’s telltale forest-green tabards, nor any glimpse of its leaf crest.

“Surely you didn’t come alone,” she said in horror. She knew that Wes’s relationship with his father was…strained, but surely Lord Geppett would not have sent his heir apparent to a certain and lonesome death.

Wes’s gaze flickered upward. Immediately, Azalea ducked, and Wes’s sword seared over her head to cut down a swooping hawk.

“I’m not here on my father’s orders,” Wes said quietly.

“But…why else, this far north—”

“I had to find you.” He met her gaze. “You had to know I would try.”

Her blood ran cold. She had wondered; she could still vividly recall the moment where she’d crouched over a table and penned her final words to Wes. She’d wondered if Wes would possibly, for reasons unknown, try to follow her into the Range. She was a commoner and a fool and not worth his time, but perhaps he would anyway, because he was far too kind for his own good.

“How did you know?” Azalea said, dazed. She batted down a plump, distended rat that had scrabbled over the parapets, then stabbed it clean through. “I didn’t…No one should have told you where I went.”

“So that I wouldn’t follow you?” Wes said sharply.

“Yes.”

She thought the answer would placate him, but to her surprise, he wheeled around, his eyes blazing. “Please be well? Really?” he hissed. “I’d rather follow you into hell than be kept safe and pretty like some kind of doll.”

“You shouldn’t,” Azalea fired back. “You have so much to live for.”

Wes bristled. “And you don’t?”

“I didn’t even know if you would wake!” Azalea blurted angrily. Stubborn tears dotted her eyes as she sheathed her sword and shot down at the swarm of animals around the wall. “I thought that I’d gotten you killed!”

Wes glanced at her, mouth agape. A slash of falcon talons nearly caught his ear and he quickly dipped away, spearing the bird through the belly. “Why would that be your fault?” he demanded.

“You wound up half-dead!” Azalea cried. “I thought—I thought I’d lost you!”

She heard the hitch in Wes’s breathing, the break in his voice like a shard. “And I did lose you!” he snapped, whipping around to face her. “You got to say goodbye, but I never did. You were already gone when I woke. Good as dead. I mourned you.”

He was suddenly very close, his breathing ragged and his gaze unbearably sharp. I hurt him, Azalea realized, and the thought squeezed the hollow of her chest like a winding knot. She knew the feeling all too well, waking up to a vacancy where there should have been a familiar weight, emptiness where there should have been a smile. No funeral, no pyre. Nothing left but unspoken regret.

Why had she done that to him?

She reached up with a shaking hand, brushing her fingers over the dirt smudged on his cheek. He stood very still beneath her touch, his eyes softening at once.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Azalea whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He leaned slightly into her hand. “It’ll happen again, won’t it?” he murmured. “It’s what the Guild needs of you.”

The Guild, Azalea pondered. Azure had told her that she didn’t need to be a Hunter. She didn’t have to fight at all. She owed him nothing, he implied, and he would prefer for her to find her own joys and live her own life. She had turned in her sigil and resigned from her post, anyway; the Guild would have nothing to ask of her again.

Yet when she turned her eyes to Wes’s face, every line and blemish that she counted as precious, a speck of light flowered in her mind. For the first time in her life, she felt steady and sure.

“Not for the Guild,” she said softly. “I’ll always fight to protect what I love. Every time.”

Wes inhaled, the sound a lovely, breakable thing. But there was no time to hear his response; the sky behind him flashed, and together, they turned with weapons raised.

The world around them exploded in a spectrum of noise. Past the wall, foxes and lynxes charged down the mountain side, only to be flung back by a rolling wave; Azalea recognized the touch of Halcyon Yuden’s manawell even before his figure shot over her like a blue star. Far above, where the stocky clouds boiled and shrieked with iridescent lightning, giant buzzards dove and slashed at a dancing speck wreathed in shimmering lines—lines that were most certainly the sugar-thread of Karis Caelute. From the northward mining caves, bats swarmed, thick and grotesque as a cloud of arrows—but they were met with pinwheeling rays of light that flared like the sun, slicing and searing through both gloom and flesh.

Halcyon was here. And Karis. The First and Second Hunters, in all their power. But where was the light coming from?

Azalea squinted, gradually tracing the coursing mana to its source. She found a Hunter who was bearing a noble broadsword. His movements were not sharp and graceful like Karis, nor smooth and rolling like Halcyon’s, but bold and defiant, every strike unwavering. Light coalesced around his blade in radiant solar flares, which glittered like stained glass with every swing, and the liquid blue of his cape flowed and shimmered with the embroidery of golden stars.

Royal stars.

“The crown prince?!” Azalea cried aloud.

Wes looked up, flicking animal blood from his sword. “What?”

“The crown prince is here! In a critical zone!” Oh, this was terrible. The idea that a Hunter was blasphemously Forming light had been awful enough, but the crown prince doing it himself was far worse.

Without hesitation, Azalea fired her windsoles and vaulted into the fray, ignoring Wes’s cry of alarm. She loosed firebolts in a swift, tight volley, spraying back a horde of overgrown jackrabbits. Prince Sethis turned to face her. He had already been in the thick of combat for some time, it seemed; his brows were coated with sweat and his hair was utterly disheveled, but his green eyes blazed with undeniable strength.

“Reinforcements?” he said, sounding surprised.

Azalea bowed her head slightly—a dignified and practiced motion that belied the fear churning in her gut. “Your Highness,” she said desperately. “You mustn’t be here. Allow me to escort you back to the palace.”

“A Hunter,” Sethis mused. “Did the guildmaster send you?”

Azalea paused. She did not want to lie, especially to royals. She was not even a Hunter anymore, not in an official capacity. But with her windsoles and her starshooter, Sethis clearly saw her as a Hunter, and explaining the entire story would be far too bothersome.

As she was still searching for words, Sethis’s voice carried on. “I bid you return at once. We’ve no time to afford preferential treatment, and other areas could benefit from reinforcements.”

That puzzled Azalea for a moment. Other areas? Then the Storm was widespread; but if that was the case, then why were the top three Hunters all dispatched to the same area? Surely that was a gross oversaturation of power.

Unless—if the top Hunters were all here, then it wasn’t just a critical zone, but the epicenter.

One where they expected a Class Five.

Azalea’s mind spun as she rained firebolts upon swollen, ambling goats. As strong as they were, surely three Hunters could not hope to best a Class Five alone. And though he was Third Hunter in position, the crown prince had yet to prove himself on the battlefield. Was he so eager to throw away his life?

“If I may be so insolent, Your Highness,” she said pleadingly, “at least fall back to the wall.”

Sethis slashed down several bloated rats, his blade glowing with a soft light. “I will do so when the alpha surfaces,” he promised. “Until then, it is important that we acquire any possible advantage.”

“But your life is in danger! Um, Your Highness.”

Sethis opened his mouth to respond—then his gaze fixed on something over Azalea’s shoulder, and his arm jerked upward. Azalea turned just in time to see the extended claws of a mountain lion slashing down at her neck.

Careless! She should have known better than to lower her guard in the middle of a battlefield.

But before she could move, mana crackled from behind her, and—

—a veil of golden light surged into being, warding off the mountain lion’s blow with a silken touch.

Sethis lowered his hand and the veil dissipated. His sword cut downward, and with a blaze of light, sliced the mountain lion clean through. Its body crumpled to the ground, undone.

Azalea’s jaw slackened. A part of her—a part of everybody in the Guild, really—had wondered whether Sethis had earned his place, or if it had been in name only due to his royal bloodline. She should have known better. Nicolina was not the kind of person to entertain bribery. The crown prince and Third Hunter of Airlea was, in fact, a capable manacrafter.

“Thank you,” Azalea said, mystified. Then she flushed and bowed. “I’m sorry to make you waste mana, Your Highness. I won’t be careless again.”

“Hardly a waste. You would do the same for me,” Sethis said. He carved his sword in an arc, and light crescented outward, sweeping back a cluster of wolves. “Now go. No doubt the guildmaster will require your services elsewhere.”

Azalea nearly opened her mouth to argue. For all his strength, Sethis was clearly overburning; she could feel it in every ripple and dapple of the enormous light-wings that shielded Northelm’s ramshackle walls. She did not have to be a top Stabilizer to see how he winced with every blow it absorbed. And he was burning yet more to enhance his blade and strike back.

But he was a senior guild member, an older fighter, and her lord as crown prince. No doubt he had his reasons.

“Very well,” Azalea said with a salute. “I would be put at ease, however, if you allowed the Whisperer to remain. He fights for us this day.”

Sethis faltered for a moment and nearly suffered the lash of an elk’s hoof. “The Whisperer…the Dragon Whisperer? The legend of the Noadic Range?”

“Yes.”

It was not relief that spread over his features, but tense trepidation. “How—no, that matters not. You informed Lord Yuden and Lady Caelute of his presence, I presume.”

Before Azalea could open her mouth, an earth-shattering roar of mana crackled in the sky, resounding with a pulse of power that bowed every blade of grass. Sethis braced his stance low to weather it, and Azalea was nearly knocked off her feet. She watched in horror as the air blazed with tongues of dark fire, only to be answered by gleaming bursts of diamond dust and tapestries of sugar-thread, each strike as swift and deadly as twin vipers, brutal and without quarter.

The Whisperer had found the Second Hunter, and not as an ally.

“No,” Azalea said faintly. “No, I did not.”