Lysander groaned behind them, fighting the vestiges of the paralytic poison. A level-ten Griffin battling beside them might help even the odds, but Lysander was barely able to crawl up the gentle incline of the shell.
Another Sobek broke from the pack, gliding closer to test their defenses. There was a spray of water as a webbed foot erupted from the river, sending the reptile tumbling in the air. It splashed back down in a deluge, floundering, half-stunned among its brethren. The Zaratan was fighting back.
“Think,” Fletcher muttered to himself. He ran through the spells he knew. Shield spells were useless against demons; the demonic energy tore through them like rice paper. There were spells to numb pain, open and close locks, pull moisture from the air. Spells that amplified and deadened sound, spells that allowed the caster to detect nearby movement. All useless.
But then, as he stared out at the marshes around him, he remembered another swamp, back in the orc jungles. And Malik, testing Jeffrey’s ice spell on its inky pools, turning the black water into solid ice. Sobeks would freeze just the same.
He etched in the air, trying to remember the pattern that Jeffrey had shown them. It was a complex glyph, in the shape of a snowflake.
“Wait…,” Othello said, his eyes widening. “That might just work.”
The pattern sizzled, but Fletcher’s year of training in Pelt’s dungeons came to the fore, his mind easily maintaining the pulses of mana both to and through his finger. As if galvanized by the symbol’s blue light, a pack broke off from the circling Sobeks. Three of them, powering through the water in a V-shaped formation.
A bead of sweat trickled down Fletcher’s brow. His finger darted back and forth, its pad burning and freezing as the last line was formed in the air. The Sobeks were so close, he could see their slitted pupils focused on him with malevolent intent. A bolt from Cress’s crossbow whipped past his shoulder, but it missed, disappearing into the dark water with barely a ripple.
“Fletcher, hurry!” Sylva cried, and he felt the Zaratan shudder beneath them.
Then, as the first Sobek hurled itself out of the river, a long streak of white gusted from Fletcher’s fingers, blasting ice crystals into the water. He could feel the mana draining from him, but he redoubled his efforts, sending pulse after pulse at the approaching demons until the air was filled with a blizzard of snowflakes. It was only when half of his mana had been expended that he stopped, collapsing to his knees and panting with exertion.
Slowly, the flakes settled on the water, revealing the full extent of Fletcher’s efforts.
The Sobek hung motionless in a jagged lump of crystal, its jaws half-open, claws outstretched for Fletcher’s throat. Only its tail and back legs remained uncovered, hanging limply from the back of the floating iceberg. The other two demons could be seen half-submerged in the water, their bodies frozen solid, while a sheet of ice crackled and snapped around them on the swamp’s surface.
“Bloody hell,” Cress murmured. “That worked like a charm.”
“Is the Zaratan okay?” Fletcher asked, worried at how close he had blasted the ice spell.
As if in answer, the shell beneath them shuddered as the Zaratan began to swim. Fletcher kept the ice symbol fixed in the air, but already the remaining Sobeks were breaking away at the sight of their stricken companions, one by one at first, but soon in twos and threes as the Zaratan neared the edge of the circling pack.
Soon they were alone once again in the swamps, the silence disturbed only by the gentle rattle of tree branches as a chill wind wafted over them. They had survived.
For now.
CHAPTER
3
THE ZARATAN SWAM ON as the sky began to darken, pausing only to chew on the occasional patch of river weed that floated by. It swam with new purpose, and they ate up the distance quickly, even if their surroundings looked much the same. Every minute that ticked by was a blessing, for it meant they were going farther and farther away from the orcish part of the ether, where the orc shamans and the Wyverns they rode would undoubtedly have already begun their pursuit.
As they waited for the swamps to end, cold became their greatest enemy; the damp air sucking the heat from their bodies to leave them shivering against the faint warmth of Lysander’s downy sides. Fletcher left Ignatius draped around his mother’s shoulders, while Athena curled up in her lap. Alice twisted her fingers absently through Athena’s fur, a distant smile playing across her lips as the Gryphowl purred and chirruped.
A dull lethargy began to take hold of them as time passed by—and Fletcher could barely muster the energy to move at all. He wondered if it was the aftereffects of Jeffrey’s darts … or the ether’s poison slowly taking hold.
As night fell, they produced a small wyrdlight and ate the last of their supplies from the mission—salted pork from Briss’s kitchen and bruised bananas harvested from the jungle. It was simple fare, but Alice wolfed down the pork with feral jerks of her head, as if she had not tasted meat in years. Fletcher gave her his own portion, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she sat back with a mindless groan, clutching her distended belly. Moments later she was almost asleep, her head resting on Fletcher’s shoulder.
Fletcher’s vision of his mother, for the brief time he had known her as Alice Raleigh, had been of a gentle, beautiful woman, full of love for her only child. Now he found himself the caretaker of a lost soul with a broken mind and no memory of even herself, let alone her son. Yet, as he gently wiped the oily stains from the corners of Alice’s mouth, he found his heart breaking for her. How could he hold his disappointment against her, after all she had endured? He loved her just the same.
They used the last light of dusk—if you could call it that in this alien world—to check their supplies. They even had some spare dry clothing, which they changed into surreptitiously, using Lysander’s body as a makeshift wall between boys and girls.
To Fletcher’s surprise, they discovered that they had kept all of their weapons, though most of their gunpowder had become soaked in the water. Sylva’s arrows had all been lost, but Fletcher had some to share, and Cress had seven remaining crossbow bolts too. Yet, in this environment, they all knew that it was their demons that would be their most useful tools, and Fletcher felt a pang of pity for Sylva. She had no demon or mana anymore.