Azaleth made a sign and pulled the stones out of his pouch.
Brandt listened for the sound of the fire, familiar and faint in front of him. He pulled from the flame, enjoying the burst of energy it gave him. The room went dark except for the faint outline of blue light from the stairs. Brandt became light and jumped. He heard swords cutting below him, but he landed unharmed next to the door.
Then he ran, pursued by the sound of steel clanging against steel, the final fight of his abandoned friends.
60
Darkness fell over Alena like a protective shroud. In time, the faint blue glow coming from the stairs beyond might provide enough illumination to see more of their chamber, but that light was incredibly dim.
By the time their eyes became that sensitive, the battle would be over.
She closed her eyes, the difference almost meaningless. She felt the air, sensed its currents throughout the room, the way the constant breath of eight individuals kept the air circulating.
As she had hoped, she could also feel those small pockets where air moved around bodies. For a few moments, at least, she knew where the Lolani were, and they couldn’t see her.
One of the Lolani moved toward the stairs Brandt had just taken. Alena issued a warning. “Azaleth!”
Then she shifted away. She was grateful she did. A small object, probably a throwing knife, cut through the air where she’d been standing a heartbeat ago.
Azaleth responded to her warning, a stone darting toward the stairs. The Lolani fell, dead.
Knife in hand, Alena stepped carefully through the room. The groans of the wounded Lolani sounded like shouts in the otherwise silent chamber.
In the space of a few heartbeats she was behind the Lolani closest to her. She needed her cut to be fatal.
Her heart pounded, so loud she worried it would give her position away. Her grip became slick on the knife, but she held tightly to it. Father had given her this blade, and while he had never imagined the uses she would put it to, she hoped he would be proud of her for protecting the family.
Alena felt where the Lolani’s breath came from. The air moved down, so he was breathing through his nose, listening for any sound that would indicate where his enemies hid.
She imagined where his neck would be. If she had more time, she would have waited until she was certain. But her grip grew sweatier and her focus wavered with every passing moment. She couldn’t imagine it would be long before the Lolani planned a coordinated reaction.
Alena stood and reached around the Lolani just as a torch flared to life near the center of the chamber. Alena saw her target for the first time, closer than she’d imagined. Before she could think, she finished her cut, drawing the blade across the Lolani’s neck.
It was the first time she had cut into human flesh. She didn’t know why, but she had always thought it would be harder.
But the skin protecting a human was little different than that of any animal she’d hunted while among the Etari. The Lolani gurgled and collapsed, and the room erupted in chaos.
Ana leaped into battle, trailed by a thin whip of water. The water snapped at the face of the Lolani who stepped up to block her, distracting the warrior for a precious moment. Ana’s blade carved into the Lolani, red gashes appearing across his pale torso.
The Lolani who had lit the torch charged Azaleth. The Etari warrior was caught unprepared. He had a stone already spinning, and he sent it into the Lolani, but the projectile wasn’t fatal. The Lolani’s short blade caught Azaleth in the side, and he collapsed to one knee.
Alena shouted, but there was nothing she could do. Azaleth turned to her and smiled as the Lolani completed his attack, driving his blade deeper into the man who had followed her so far from his home.
Alena screamed, a sound that echoed and grew within the walls of the small chamber. She fell to her knees, her mind and body frozen. She saw another Lolani step toward her, sword held high, ready to strike her head off and end her agony.
At that moment, she welcomed it.
Then the Lolani stopped moving, looking down in surprise at the sword point that had appeared in his chest. The blade vanished again, and the Lolani fell to his knees, now nearly eye to eye with Alena.
She hated him. She hated the Lolani and everything about them.
With a growl, Alena came to her feet and drove her own knife into the Lolani’s chest. She knew the action carried no meaning of its own. Ana’s blade had taken the Lolani’s life, even if the man still had a handful of breaths left to take. But Alena didn’t want him to have even that many. Every breath the Lolani took was an affront to Azaleth’s memory.
The Lolani’s eyes lost their animating spark, and a fierce, hot flame of joy spread through her.
Alena looked up to see Ana engaged with the last Lolani, the one whose blade was covered in Azaleth’s blood. The pale warrior dripped blood from where Azaleth’s stone had hit him, but he seemed to ignore the damage with ease.
He was also one of the fastest warriors Alena had ever watched. Even though injured, he moved with nearly equal speed. Ana’s skill didn’t match Brandt’s, but was far superior to most. Even she couldn’t find an opening in the man’s defense. She didn’t have any time to employ her water affinity.
But the path to the door was open. Only the one warrior remained, and his attention was focused exclusively on Ana.
That plan disappeared the moment Ana suffered her first cut, a moderately deep wound in her side, the result of a deflected stab that hadn’t been pushed off course enough. Ana fell back a step, but the Lolani didn’t give her even a moment to
