Page 58 of Wizards & Weavers
This time Augustin slashed his arm sideward, the air blurring in an arc. A faint crescent of something arcane fired from his fingers, traveling at top speed toward an icicle situated right above the elemental. Braiden’s mouth fell as the concentratedblade of air sliced clean through. The massive spike of ice and rock dropped onto the elemental’s head with a colossal crash.
The wizard whooped. The elemental raised its head and roared in fury. There, on top of its skull: a crack. It was something, but how many more icicles would it take to actually stop the beast?
Clacking, snapping noises echoed from far below. Elyssandra and Warren were each attacking one of the elemental’s feet. Elyssandra stabbed with her spear again and again like it was an oversized ice pick, and Warren battered the other foot with powerful strikes from his staff.
But nothing. Chips and shards of ice flew every which way, still hardly enough to damage the elemental. Their efforts did, however, draw the creature’s ire. It looked down, bending its horrifying head. It reached below.
“Take me down,” Braiden shouted, unsure of how he could help on the ground, but it was better than being completely useless up in the air. “Drop me off down below.”
“And then what?” Augustin asked in disbelief.
“I don’t know, but we have to do something before that thing flattens our friends. Hurry!”
Augustin grimaced. “Hold on tight.”
Braiden’s stomach lurched as they swooped into a sudden descent. He squinted against the chilling wind whipping at his face. The frost giant had noticed them again, all the disinterested annoyance of a man finding a pair of flies circling his lunch.
The sound of cracking ice filled the cavern as the elemental opened its mouth. A rush of mist emanated from its wicked maw, gathering into a shrieking gale as it blew. Fantastic. The monster had some wind magic of its own, and it was just strong enough to blow Augustin off course.
Braiden sputtered as they spun through the air, his hair scratching at his eyes, Augustin’s cloak tangling around them.With a decisive twist, Augustin regained his bearings, setting himself upright.
Unfortunately, that came at the cost of losing his grip on Braiden.
The air whistled in Braiden’s ears as he fell. Augustin cried out as he dove again, but Braiden knew in his heart that even the Wizard of Weathervale couldn’t outfly the pull of gravity. From somewhere below, Elyssandra screamed.
Calling on his very deepest reserves of calm, Braiden concentrated on the tips of his fingers. This wasn’t how his story was meant to end. Not here. Not now. He could fix this with magic.
Gritting his teeth in defiance, he swept one arm out, and then the other, conjuring the strongest, sturdiest cloth he could muster. He gripped its corners with desperate fingers. The fabric swelled up with a whoosh, puffed up by air on the way down, slowing his descent.
He gazed downward as he drifted back to the ground, a dandelion on the breeze. The cloth in his grip had ballooned into the familiar shape of a mushroom, or a jellyfish. He heaved a sigh of relief knowing he would land with both feet as Braiden Beadle, and not as a Perfectly Pressed Pancake.
The frost giant gave him a quizzical look. From high up above, Augustin cheered. From below, Elyssandra and Warren ran back and forth with their arms outstretched, as if hoping to catch him in their bare hands.
It almost worked. The three crashed together into a chaotic heap, bruised and aching, but none the worse for wear.
The frost giant roared, leaving a crater with its every stomping step. Braiden sprang to his feet, exhausted, yet determined to see the battle through. He rummaged through his backpack, more grateful than ever that he’d taken a few hours, if not days to write out his plan for the dungeon.
He fished out the coil of rope he’d purchased from the Noose. He didn’t think he could conjure something this long and sturdy, and he’d already expended so much of his arcane willpower saving himself from death by pancake.
“I need the two of you to help me,” he said, shaking out the coil. “Take one end of the rope each, then hurry toward opposite ends of the cavern. Secure it to something. I’ll do the rest.”
Warren stared at him like the fall had rattled his brains. Elyssandra’s face was etched with worry. But neither of them stopped to argue, grabbing their respective ends and running to stretch the rope far across the chamber.
High up in the air, Augustin pelted the elemental with spells to distract it. Braiden licked his lips, tasting salt as he waited for the others to reach the walls. Warren knotted his end of rope around a pillar. Elyssandra secured her end of rope to her spear, then drove its enchanted tip deep into the ice, a needle and thread.
Now or never. All or nothing.
“Hey,” Braiden shouted, waving his arms, jumping up and down. “Hey, you great stupid brute! Yeah, that’s right. I’m talking to you. Come and get me, ugly.”
It felt awfully childish, taunting an elemental like that, but it worked. The ice giant roared as it turned to fully face him, the cavern rocking and trembling with each of its footfalls. Braiden ran away from the creature in a straight line even as Augustin harassed it with a fusillade of magic.
Perfect. It was much too distracted to notice the rope stretched tight across the cavern floor.
The giant’s foot snagged on the taut rope. It tripped forward. Sweat beaded on Braiden’s forehead even in this oppressive cold, but he couldn’t fight his curiosity, peering over his shoulder to see if his gambit had actually paid off.
It could have been Braiden’s imagination, but the elemental’s face appeared to have changed. It looked surprised and almost sheepish as it toppled from its great height, like a tree felled in a forest. “Oops,” the giant’s face seemed to say.
Warren whooped, Elyssandra cheered, and Augustin laughed victoriously. Braiden allowed himself a smile, but kept his legs pumping, suspecting that the elemental’s body wouldn’t hold once it made impact with the ground.
