Two volleys of arrows and except for a few dozen dead creatures added to the mass of bodies on the battlefield, I couldn’t see any effect.
“I guess we’d better start helping,” I said as I raised my right hand and sent a wide shaft of fire into the closest ranks of creatures. Fire is a devastating weapon to use on creatures with no protection. The ones with fur ignited immediately and continued to burn after I cut out the tat and prepared to switch to lightning.
Dozens of the creatures turned toward us and began to charge, ignoring the rank of gods for now.
Joe, in his spirit bear form, did not wait for them to reach us. He charged forward, covering the hundred feet or more before I could even shout for him to hold. The bear impacted the nearest warg-riding orcs and scattered a half-dozen or more just by slamming into them. Then he reared up on his hind legs and began striking around him with tooth and claw. The orcs tried to fight, but their weapons did not seem to draw blood.
Over the din of combat, I heard the sound of great wings beating the air.
I looked toward the higher foothills that made up the western side of the Garden of the Gods. Above the trees, the massive form of a black dragon rose into the air. The rider on its back was the only person I’d ever heard of who rode a dragon.
Rowle had arrived.
“Hail, hail, the gangs all here at last,” I said.
I felt apprehension in my apprentice for the first time that morning.
“No worries,” I said. “He had to make a fashionably late appearance to maintain his ego. The battle couldn’t finish without him being here.”
“Yeah, I guess, but there are already more than enough participants for my taste,” Tess answered.
I gave her a wink and a grin. “This is why we’re paid the big bucks.”
“That line is getting old, Rafe. But thanks, your confidence makes me feel better.”
I gave her a broader smile and nodded. “Good, now let’s get this party started.”
Taking out another ball bearing, I loaded my sling and cast the bearing into the sky. As I triggered my Cub Scout salute tat, I saw that several of the gods had begun casting spells of their own. Many of the spells were similar to my own–lightning, fire, energy blast, etc.–but here and there, I saw spells cast that I’d never seen before. One god on our right vanished in a swirl of black smoke. When the smoke cleared, there was just an empty spot in their battle line. On our left, the ground shook, knocking several gods off their feet, and then the earth opened beneath two of them. They fell into the chasm, and a moment later it snapped back shut with a thunderous boom.
Rowle’s dragon landed behind the line of gods on our left, and he dismounted.
While my metal ball gained altitude and energy, I moved to bring up one of my tricks that I hoped Rowle couldn’t counter.
“Tess, I may need your strength to help me on this one. Keep pulling all the power you can from the ley lines while I cast this.”
“You’ve got it,” Tess said as she took my right hand in her left. I immediately felt a surge of power as I drew on her own reservoirs of energy.
I triggered the portal tat on my right calf while I focused on the memory of the location I wanted to access. I pictured the frozen ground, the ice floes, the wide valley, and the river. Simultaneously, I triggered my levitation tat on the front of my right thigh, and we floated up. We didn’t need much altitude, twenty feet was plenty.
My portal formed behind where we had stood a minute earlier, but I placed it a few dozen yards to our west. It was a large portal for me, maybe eighty feet across, but it wasn’t the size that caused so much energy to rush out of me. It was the mass of water that flowed through it. Flowing water grounds out magic, and this spell only worked because I had anchored the portal in the air to either side of the waterfall.
“Head up, Joe!” I shouted loud enough to be heard over the battle.
The great bear turned toward us, saw my portal beginning to form and moved through the mass of creatures he was fighting on a trajectory that would take him out of the path of devastation. His foes were eager to see him depart and made little effort to stop him.
The morning filled with thunder that drowned out all other sounds as the great waterfall fell through my portal, parallel to the ground, and flowed toward Rowle’s original portal.
Swirling mist hid the water from our foe’s view for a few seconds, until the first ranks were already overtaken by the rushing water. All creatures were swept off their feet as the rushing flow scoured the land clean of everything in its path. The waterfall had already fallen nearly a thousand feet by the time it reached my portal, and nothing movable could resist its flow.
Most of the creatures, even those capable of flight, had no opportunity to escape the tumult before they were swept away and back through the portal to whatever world they came from.
My portal wasn’t perfectly lined up with Rowle’s portal, and the river tried to spread out across the land. The line of gods to our right drew their battle line closer together, and I saw a shield wall form in front of them. The mass of water swirled toward them, picking up all manner of creatures. It reached their shield and broke against it. Their shield
