Page 47 of Prince of Flowers
I slammed my hand against his shoulder, forcing arcane essence through his blood, protecting him in a silvery-gold sheath. At the same time he summoned a burst of foliage from the trees, dismissed his own armor, forming it all into a dome made of leaves.
The dome blocked out the sunlight. I stared at his silhouette in the darkness. Our first reflex had been to protect each other. That had never happened before.
Stone struck Sylvain’s shield, the impact of the boulder causing the entire structure to shudder. The leaves clanged like metal, hardened with his power. He dismantled his dome, the leaves swirling around him, as deadly as Evander’s iron butterflies. The great guardian was crouching, reaching for something else to throw.
This wasn’t sustainable. We were bound to run out of juice eventually, and then we’d be easy pickings, a pair of vulnerable bullseyes for the guardian’s target practice. I clenched my teeth, hesitant to summon the last of my eidolons. But this was important. This was a matter of life and death.
I needed to summon the cat.
“Oh, gods,” I grumbled, reading through the incantation in my grimoire, tracing the gestures. “This never ends well.”
“A little warning,” Sylvain said, eyes hard as he stared at me. “You promised we’d start warning each other.”
“Right, yes. This is the only eidolon I’ve got left. It’s — it’s a cat.”
“Only a cat?” he said, almost laughing. “I don’t see why you’re so nervous over summoning a measly — ”
A blur of orange rage erupted from the portal I’d opened, yowling, hissing, spitting. I could barely focus long enough to imbue the cat with my essence, but that was Scruffles for you.
Scruffles was an angry ball of orange fur with an appetite for only two things: kibble, and destruction. Scruffles fought like he was on his ninth life, giving absolutely zero fucks about what happened to him as long as he caused heavy bleeding and extensive property damage in the process.
In short, Scruffles always made for an excellent, if wildly uncontrollable distraction. I squinted, watching for the glow of light around his paws, his constantly exposed snaggletooth. Good. My magic had taken effect.
Scruffles launched himself at the guardian’s leg, scratching and scraping at the wood. The guardian howled as yellowish sap leaked from its bark-like skin. A boulder slipped from the creature’s grasp and thudded in the dirt. Good. Now we had an opening.
“A rope,” I told Sylvain. “The biggest rope you can conjure, something to tie its legs together.”
“Consider it done, oh summoner,” he said, the word no longer dripping with sarcasm. And that look in his eye. Was it admiration? Why did it feel so good?
Sylvain raised his hand, then slashed it forward. The air cracked. A thorny vine materialized in his hand, conjured by his power. It was long enough to immobilize the guardian and lined with barbs to guarantee ensnarement. He swung his arm in a circle, then roared as he cracked his whip. Oh, gods. Why was that so sexy, too?
The vine stretched and stretched as it approached the guardian, striking its shins, wrapping around its legs several times over. It bellowed as Sylvain tightened the vine like a lasso, more sap dribbling down its bark as Scruffles did what Scruffles did best.
Sylvain roared again as he pulled, felling the guardian. Scruffles leapt off just in time to avoid being flattened under its weight. The ground rumbled as the guardian slammed heavily into the earth, throwing up clods of dirt and grass.
Pity swelled in my chest. I felt sorry for the creature, but this was part of my trial. Once defeated, the guardian would leave behind its seedling, regrow anew. And so it was time for the killing blow. We couldn’t wait for Sylvain to slowly pluck the guardian to death, and it sounded inglorious, a terrible way to go. I wanted to make it fast, as painless as possible.
“Allegra’s Lament,” I muttered, selecting a spell I was normally too weak to cast.
Grand Summoner Allegra was one of the greatest, known for forging pacts with eidolons who created magic with the power of voice. She worked with sirens, banshees, even mandragoras. According to legend, her eidolons had fallen one by one in battle against a rival mage. Allegra distilled what remained of her arcane essence into a destructive outpouring of mingled terror, grief, and anger. She obliterated her opponent.
Allegra’s Lament was a desperation tactic, a last resort, something a summoner would only turn to in times of great need. This was one of those times.
I pulled our last potion out of my backpack, the blue one for restoring arcane essence. I choked it down in huge gulps. A little minty, like a faint mouthwash. The whole thing, down the hatch. Arcane essence flooded my body, my insides humming. Gods, this was exhilarating, but far too much for me to contain. A more experienced mage could control the flow, sculpt it into fine spellwork. I needed to unleash this before it tried to unleash itself through my orifices all at once.
The Wilde grimoire read my thoughts, levitating, spinning to face the guardian. It opened its cover, spreading its pages to the spell. Allegra’s Lament was one of the few spells I’d heard of that didn’t need recitation, only requiring an unholy quantity of arcane essence. I touched the grimoire’s spine, felt the magic reverberating in my body. It rushed out through the pages in a single raging blast.
A colossal torrent of neon fire shrieked out of the grimoire, my essence channeled and magnified through the parchment. The guardian’s dying screams merged with the horrible clamor of Allegra’s Lament, the magic wailing as it spilled out of my soul. The spell wrenched at my body, draining my strength even as it drained my last stores of essence. I fell to my knees as it ended, mumbling an incoherent apology to the fallen creature.
The guardian was still, at first, the luster of its amber eyes dimmed. Then like the Venus flytrap it shuddered, crackled, sighed as the entirety of its body became a dry, brittled brown. The remains of the great creature disintegrated, then blew away in the wind. Something had infected these forests, sickened the guardian.
I reached for the gemstone the guardian had left behind. Deep green, polished, tumbled, just like the doctor ordered. Somehow the victory felt hollow.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen. It’s supposed to dig back into the dirt, plant a new version of itself. The cycle continues.”
“So now you see,” Sylvain said. “The first creature we fought, and now this? The Withering has come to your world.”
I gritted my teeth as Scruffles clambered onto my shoulder, his claws digging into my skin. Good thing my magic had already faded or he might have shredded me to ribbons. I dug around in my backpack, retrieving the little baggie of kibble I saved for him.
