CHAPTER 22
Mordred
Mordred and Wei had gone several hundred meters when Mordred thought he saw a shimmer of something up ahead. He immediately put up a shield of dense air and moved aside as a bullet tore into the tree beside him, causing it to rip apart as if it were paper.
Mordred kept running, changing direction and throwing the occasional blade of ice at where he thought the sniper would be hiding. Two more bullets hit trees close to where Mordred ran past, and a third struck a stone, showering tiny spikes of sharp rock across Mordred’s side and arm, cutting open his hand. He dove for cover to take a look at his hand, which had a three-inch shard of rock protruding from it. He removed the shard and placed one hand over the other, using his light magic to heal the wound. In seconds it was as if nothing had ever happened, although the memory of the pain still lingered.
Mordred concentrated, allowing his mind magic to activate. While what he’d told Fiona was true—he couldn’t use his mind magic except in defense—he could use it to see how many living people there were close by. It would only work over a few dozen feet, and he was forced to sit and concentrate, but it wasn’t like he could go anywhere while someone with a rifle was firing shots at him. It took a few seconds, but when he opened his eyes he could feel two people close by. One was Wei—that much was clear—but the other was a young woman he’d never met before. She was twenty feet to the left, trying to flank his position.
He waited until the last second before throwing a blast of water in the direction he knew she’d be. There was a scream of shock and pain, followed by a gunshot and then nothing. As he stood Mordred froze the water in place around a large tree. He walked over and picked up the rifle from the ground. It was the same make as the ones the humans had been using in the village.
Mordred moved the ice aside, revealing a young woman wearing a black balaclava and combat fatigues. “You feel like telling me your name?” Mordred asked.
“Emily Rowe,” she said.
“You’re English.”
“Yes. I’m a witch. I live in England.”
“You shot my friend.”
“I’d have shot you, too, given the chance.”
“Are you the same woman that Diana said knows Nate?”
At the mention of Nate’s name, there was a tiny amount of recognition and some fear. “You’re afraid of him?” Mordred asked.
“I’ve met him, so yes. He is incredibly powerful, and the last time we met he told me he’d kill me should our paths cross again.”
“My name is Mordred. Have you heard of me?”
“Yes, everyone has. I was told to kill you and your friends. You aren’t the scary person you used to be. Shame, I’d have liked to have met the old you.”
Mordred laughed, although there was no humor in it. “No, you really wouldn’t have. How’d you keep your scent masked?”
“Witch magic.”
Mordred grabbed her arm and pulled up the sleeve, revealing the dozens of small tattoos that were there. “That’s a lot of power for a witch. Trying to get yourself killed?”
“That’s what sorcerers always say to a witch trying to unlock their potential. The more magic we use, the quicker we die.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I’m not dead yet.”
“An antidote for the venom. Now.”
“I’ve got a better idea.”
Mordred saw the shadow cast over him a second before he flung himself aside, dropping the SG 553 and narrowly avoiding the descending gargoyle. The creature stood to its full seven-foot height and stretched out its enormous wingspan. Its body was covered in gray armored stone plates, and it had a foot-long horn growing out of each temple. A long red tongue flicked out of its stony mouth. Venom dripped from its claws onto the soft snow.
“I think you have bigger problems,” Emily said with a chuckle as Mordred took off at a full sprint into the forest. Gargoyles weren’t great at flying, but they could move in a straight line with incredible speed, and Mordred wanted to put some trees between the two of them.
A fox ran into Mordred’s path, turning into Wei a second later. “You get to kill another gargoyle,” she said.
“You feel like helping?” Mordred asked, looking back at where Emily was and finding both her and the gargoyle gone.
“I can’t puncture the stone plates. I can, however, keep Emily occupied. I promise I won’t kill her, but I’ll keep her and her rifle busy until you can join us. I assume you have questions.”
“We need an antidote.”
“And you think she has one?”
“I’m just hoping more than anything. It’s that or make one from the venom of the gargoyle.”
“There’s another way,” she said, but a rifle round smashed into a nearby tree, forcing Mordred and Wei to cut short their conversation. Wei turned back into a fox and bounded off into the forest, vanishing from view.
The gargoyle roared and began to tear its way toward Mordred, who tried to remember how he’d managed to kill the last gargoyle he’d met. Luck, and a lot of cheating. He remembered Nate telling him about how he’d turned the air so cold that the plates on the gargoyle’s chest had moved just enough for him to get to the flesh beneath.
He watched the gargoyle crash through the forest toward him, tearing apart trees, which Mordred decided was more about instilling fear than anything else.
Mordred started to hum the battle tune to Final Fantasy IX and readied two blades of ice in preparation for what was coming.
“You can’t hide from me!” the gargoyle shouted. “No one can hide from me.”
Wei stepped out from behind a tree, as if appearing from nowhere, directly between Mordred and the gargoyle.
“Where’s Emily?” Mordred whispered.
“Busy hiding from me,” Wei said. “I gave her a nice bit of poison to slow her down. She didn’t have an antidote, by the way. I checked. She’ll be preoccupied for a while as she tries not to throw up her lungs. “
“Classy.”
The gargoyle laughed. “You’re going to stop me?” he asked Wei.
Wei took a step forward and then vanished from view, leaving a trail of mist where she’d once stood.
The gargoyle looked around, trying to find her, until he’d turned in a complete circle and was staring at Mordred again. He looked confused.
Wei reappeared next to Mordred. “He’s forgotten I was there,” she said. “It’s easier to do with simple people.”
She sprinted toward the gargoyle and vanished again just before reaching him, causing the gargoyle to roar out in anger for a second before once again appearing to be incredibly confused.
“That has got to be winding you up,” Mordred said, and his thoughts immediately went back to Morgan, who was dying not too far away. He blasted the gargoyle in the chest with ice, taking the large creature off its feet and smashing it through several trees.
“You want to hear my plan?” Wei asked as Mordred walked toward the gargoyle, who was pinned to the side of a tree with thick ice.
“Morgan needs help,” Mordred said. “What’s your plan?”
“My blood can be used to poison people,” she said. “But if I’m infected with poison or venom, I can also use it to create an antidote.”
“Which means you need the gargoyle’s venom inside of you.”
Wei nodded. “I’d rather not be sliced to ribbons by those claws, though, and Morgan doesn’t have long enough to wait while we kill it.”
The sound of shattering ice filled the air, followed quickly by a roar of anger as the gargoyle freed itself, dropping to the ground. It charged forward without a word, forcing Wei to vanish once again while Mordred threw himself aside, using his air magic to propel him further than his own strength would have managed. He threw a ball of light into the gargoyle’s eyes, blinding it enough to send it careening into a huge, ancient tree, knocking it slightly askew. The gargoyle tore into the tree, cutting through it with ease, until he could smash it down onto the ground where Mordred had been.
Mordred wrapped air around the legs of the gargoyle and pulled, tripping the beast and forcing it headfirst into the tree trunk. The gargoyle roared in anger once again and leapt toward Mordred, who blasted it with jets of ice, freezing it in place. He continued to pile on the pressure as Wei reappeared next to the gargoyle.
“Leave one claw free,” she called over to Mordred.
“Just do it so I can kill it already,” he said.
Wei took hold of one finger of the gargoyle, the claw popping out into her palm. She yelled and stepped back as the ice began to crack once again.
“Go,” Mordred said. “I’ve got this.”
Wei nodded and turned into a fox, sprinting off through the forest to hopefully save Morgan’s life. The brief lapse in concentration was all the gargoyle needed to tear his way out of the ice and move toward Mordred at frightening speed. He picked Mordred up in one hand, throwing him back into a nearby tree. Mordred’s shield of air saved him from serious injury, but even then the wind was knocked out of him, and he fell awkwardly to the ground.
The gargoyle was upon him in seconds, forcing Mordred to block the attacks lest he be infected with the same venom that was killing his friend. His mind was on Morgan, not on the fight at hand, and that would get him killed.
Mordred blocked a swipe of the gargoyle’s claws and blasted him in the chest with blinding light, allowing Mordred to escape and put some distance between the two of them. Whoever the sorcerer had been before turning into a gargoyle, he’d been incredibly powerful. Much more so than the gargoyle who Mordred had fought all those centuries ago.
“You’re like a rat,” the gargoyle bellowed. “I’m going to enjoy crushing the life out of you.”
Mordred bit his tongue and kept quiet as he moved behind a large tree to figure out his next attack. Fighting head on wasn’t getting him anywhere, and despite the cold of this part of the world, combined with his magical ice, he hadn’t seen much movement in the plates that kept the gargoyle safe. If he was going to get through to the flesh under them, he needed a different strategy.
He glanced around him, trying to figure out if anything in his surroundings was going to help in the fight, and spotted Emily’s rifle lying thirty feet away to the side. The gargoyle was close enough that if Mordred ran for it, he wouldn’t have enough time to get to the rifle and use it before the gargoyle got to him. Mordred would have liked to have gotten hold of the SG 553 again—it had silver bullets and would have probably done some damage even to a gargoyle. He couldn’t remember if silver could kill a gargoyle, but he was certain it couldn’t hurt to find out.
“Where are you?” the gargoyle roared. “You coward. You sniveling little nothing.”
“Aren’t you just a joy?” Mordred asked, using his air magic to throw his voice fifty feet to the right of him, deeper into the forest.
“I’m not going to fall for that trick,” the gargoyle said.
“You sure? You look exceptionally stupid.”
Mordred felt a trickle of blood run down his scalp and touched it, rubbing the blood between his finger and thumb. “Damn you,” he said. “I really don’t want to be that person anymore.”
“What are you talking about?” the gargoyle asked with a laugh. “You just gave your position away.”
“I know.”
Mordred stepped out, whipping a tendril of blood magic at the gargoyle, wrapping it around his arm.
The gargoyle laughed as he walked toward Mordred. “You can’t hurt me if it doesn’t touch my skin.”
“I know,” Mordred said, and launched a second, much thinner tendril from his other hand. It slammed into the open mouth of the gargoyle, muffling its screams as he pushed it further and further inside. The gargoyle thrashed and bucked, trying to swipe at Mordred, who remained just out of reach.
The use of so much blood magic made a smile tug at Mordred’s lips, and he knew he could keep going. Just keep pouring more and more blood magic inside the gargoyle until there was enough to tear him in half from the inside out. Mordred stopped and switched the blood magic off as tears of blood fell from his eyes. “Not like this,” he whispered.
The gargoyle was on his hands and knees, coughing up blood onto the snowy ground, as Mordred tried to push away the need to keep using the blood magic. It called to him, screamed at him to continue the assault on the gargoyle, to allow himself to give in, but he wouldn’t. The desire to use blood magic would always be with him, and sometimes he had to give in to that to do what needed to be done, but to use so much all at once was inviting something back into his life he wanted no part of.
Mordred walked away from the gargoyle and picked up Emily’s rifle. He went back to the gargoyle, who was still on his knees, and fired two shots into the creature’s chest, knocking him back onto the ground and cracking one of the stone plates that covered his heart. Mordred ejected the magazine and, finding it empty, tossed the rifle aside.
The gargoyle rolled to his side as Mordred sprinted toward his target and smashed a ball of frozen air into the cracked plate, forcing the magic inside, tearing the plate apart.
The gargoyle screamed in pain before Mordred drove a blade of light into its chest. He poured more and more light magic into the body of the gargoyle, tearing the beast apart from the inside, and in one motion Mordred leapt back, dragging all the magic he’d put into the gargoyle out of it. The gargoyle was torn to pieces as the light magic left the body, turning everything around it into a crimson mess.
Dozens of small balls of light flickered around in the air, until one by one they vanished, leaving Mordred alone next to what used to be a living creature.
“Not enough of him to pick up,” Wei said from behind Mordred.
“How long were you there?”
“Long enough to see you kill him, not long enough to help.”
“Morgan?”
“They took my blood. She’ll be okay, we hope.”
“Hope?”
“It depends on how much venom was in her, and how strong she is.”
“She’ll be fine, then. Where’s Emily?”
Mordred followed silently as Wei took him to find Emily, who was lying on her side, curled up next to a large pool of vomit. Wei touched her head, and Emily groaned, but after a few seconds she was no longer green.
“You here to kill me?” Emily asked.
“Yes,” Mordred told her. “You tried to kill my friend. I won’t have that.”
“You should keep me alive. You need me. Why not just let the poison kill me?”
“Because the poison I inflict doesn’t kill,” Wei said. “It makes you wish you were dead, but it’s not lethal. I’m not an assassin. Not anymore, anyway.”
Emily sat up and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “So, this is you allowing me some dignity?”
Mordred shook his head. “Not really, I just wanted to ask you a question. How many are up at the mountain?”
“Few dozen blood elves.”
“You got anything you’d like to say before you die?” Mordred asked.
“A confession?” Emily laughed. “Why bother?”
“Nate told me he was angry with you because he’d liked you. He felt betrayed. I kind of think he’d have liked you to die quick, with a clear conscience. Morgan is safe now, so I have a few minutes.”
She thought for a second before sighing. “You know what? I liked Nate. He was a good guy, and it sucked that I had to play him like that. I don’t like Mara. She’s helping Abaddon and her crew, by the way.” Emily laughed. “Doesn’t have a lot of fucking choice in the matter, though. Goddamn, it was funny to see her face when she realized she was a prisoner, not an ally. She’s such a fucking asshole. If you kill her, make her suffer. I would.”
“Anything else?” Wei asked. “Do we need to sit down for this? It sounds like you weren’t a good person.”
“I killed dozens for Hera, and that witches’ coven. It was a shame I had to kill Gilgamesh, though, but he couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut. He was all about honor, and he knew too much. Still, a rifle round was never the way. He deserved to go out in combat, although at least he died after losing in combat, so there’s that. Elaine’s alive, by the way. She’s in the mountain somewhere. I thought they’d kill her, but that Abaddon chick is really keen on keeping her alive for some reason.”
“Abaddon?” Wei asked. “You mentioned her a moment ago. Is that the same Abaddon of old? One of the seven devils.”
“You know her?” Emily asked.
“By reputation, yes.” Wei looked over at Mordred. “If Abaddon is here, we’re going to want to get Elaine, Alan, and anyone else you need, and we need to leave. Soon.”
“She scary, I take it?” Mordred asked.
“She’s going to kill you all,” Emily said. “Like, all of you: your friends, family, their pets, the people who cut their hair. Literally anyone who knows you. She does not mess around.” She stared at Mordred for a heartbeat. “You want to know how I used magic to mask my scent, don’t you? I can tell. You keep me alive and maybe I’ll tell you.”
“No thanks, I’m good.”
“I’ll tell you all about real magic. The stuff you can’t even comprehend.”
Mordred created a thin blade of ice on the palm of his hand. He held it between two fingers. “Real magic. You don’t know anything about real magic.” He threw the blade of ice at Emily, catching her in the eye and piercing her brain. “And now you never will.”
Wei drew a dagger and jammed it into the witch’s heart. “I hear they can come back if you don’t destroy the heart,” she said.
A second later Mordred was running back to Morgan. He almost leapt down the cliff at one point, but thankfully his better judgment took over and he was soon back inside the prison and found Mac standing beside a still-unconscious Morgan.
“She’ll make it,” Mac told him. “She’s strong. Stronger than most.”
Mordred continued to look down at Morgan and smiled. “The strongest I know.”