Page 109 of Junk Magic

“I’ll do it.”

I looked around to see that the Were father had come up behind us. He’d been padding along in wolf form, so silently that I’d almost forgotten that he was there. But other than for being traumatized, he was unhurt, and probably in the best shape out of the three of us.

He looked up at the spell, his face bathed in yellow light, and the next time I blinked, he was beside it. The leap took him up almost two stories, with his weight hitting the wall hard enough to make me cringe in sympathy. But it popped out the baseball-sized spell, which fell to the ground, sizzling in a little in a pool of blood.

I looked back at the trapped mage.

He had brown eyes. They looked strangely normal, like they could have belonged to anyone. Somebody cashing me out in a shop or passing me on the street. Just anyone.

He didn’t look evil.

It made me wonder how he got there. And what choices had led to him dying like this, in a desert fortress surrounded by his enemies. Yet destroyed by one of his friends.

I licked my lips. “Ready?”

He blinked.

I hesitated, then started toward the hissing spell. But before I could reach it, the Were father pulled me aside and Caleb kicked it instead. He moved hard and fast, so that his boot didn’t touch it for more than a split second, like a soccer player going for a goal.

And sheered the statue’s head clean off.

It hit the wall, exploding in a shattering of dust, and the spell finally extinguished, flaming out against the floor. Leaving us in darkness again, which suited me just fine. I didn’t want to see what was left.

I didn’t want to see any of this!

And I guessed the Were father felt the same. Because he Changed back into human form a moment later and started sobbing. The strange acoustics threw the sounds back to us, over and over, bouncing off the walls from all angles and sounding strangely like hysterical laughter.

I took his hand and pulled him out of that hellish echo chamber, to a place down the hall where the rock was configured differently.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he gasped. “He was an enemy. I know that. He tried to kill me—and my son! But to die like that—”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I told him harshly. “You’re a good man. And you shouldn’t have had to see that.”

“My father saw worse. He made us listen to constant stories about the old days, when we were growing up. About the war.” He looked back at the headless statue, now just a column of rock in the gloom, and his face crumpled. “None of them were ever like this.”

Caleb and I exchanged a look, but there was nothing else to say.

We walked on.

It was a shorter trek than I’d expected, because the corridor had doubled back onto itself more than once, while we sped through a maze that had had us crossing and crisscrossing our previous route without realizing it. Yet, surprisingly, there were still stretches with little signs of combat, where you could almost believe that nothing had happened. Although at others, usually bends in the corridor, the bodies were washed up in heaps like flotsam on a beach. The latter presented a problem, because the mages’ enchanted weapons were still circulating overhead, protecting their fallen masters.

“No resupply here,” Caleb said, voicing my thoughts, as I eyed loaded potion’s belts and sidearms still in their holsters, but had no way to get to them.

We edged around, hugging the opposite wall, while the circling weapons obscured what light there was, casting bat-like shadows onto our bodies. It was so dark that the shapes they threw were black on black, visible only in occasional rays of moonlight that caught their edges. It made the place even eerier, sending shivers up my spine and causing my jaw to clench.

And then the torches flickered back to life, all at once.

The father screamed and Caleb and I reached for weapons we didn’t have. And then stood there, looking sightlessly for the next threat, because that much light was blinding. But even when my eyes adjusted, I didn’t see anything.

Unless you counted the stampede of frightened people from down the hall, which caused us to have to hug the walls again to avoid being swept away with them. Well, the Were dad and I did. Caleb was still trying to play war mage.

“Stay away from the bodies!” he yelled, waving his arms. “Their weapons are still active! Stay away—”

Several huge, panicked Weres all but ran him down, and I jerked him over by the wall.

“It’s okay. There are too many targets!” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the crowd. And pointing at the weapons, which were buzzing around agitatedly, but couldn’t figure out who to pursue with no masters left alive to direct them anymore.

And then the Were father yelled excitedly at us from Caleb’s other side.

---