Any lingering exhaustion burned out of her when Jularra caught sight of the stranger. She planted her feet, and her hands rumbled with furious power.
Sixteen
Jularra felt the air around her thicken. She let some of her remaining energy seep out into the area around her, and took hold of the climate in the nearby environment.
She raised her arms and whipped the gathered energy at the trees flanking the monument. On one side, a tree ripped out at the roots. A massive oak on the other broke at the base as if it had been chopped through with a colossal ax. As soon as they were free from the ground, Jularra used her energy to fling them at the shadowed figure on the steps.
Wreathed in rings of smoke, the figure didn’t flinch. Almost as soon as Jularra flung them, the trees rebounded and soared away even faster than they'd flown in.
As Jularra’s attacks were deflected, Melcayro reached into a pouch and pulled a pinch of something out. He clapped his other hand onto it, knelt down and then thrust back up, shooting twin blasts of fire from his palms towards the witch.
Meanwhile, Abranni had brought her sword up to her mouth. With closed eyes, she brushed her lips gently across the flat of the blade as she whispered something. She opened her eyes and threw her sword at the woman on the monument steps. As the sword left Abranni’s grip, it erupted into flames and spawned ten matching swords that hurtled through the air in a loose group.
Melcayro’s fire and Abranni’s swords reached their target at the same time. But the cloaked enemy held up a hand, invoking some form of invisible barrier in the same way Jularra might politely decline the offer of a drink. Melcayro’s beams of fire passed around the shape of a transparent sphere; Abranni’s swords struck it and ricocheted off in various directions. One of Abranni’s deflected swords broke off wildly towards Jularra, forcing her to dive to the ground.
She tumbled and rolled, still trying to make up her mind what to do next. Disgruntled yet undeterred by the stranger's casual dismissal of her trees, Jularra quickly realized the futility of attacking with objects, and decided instead to go for something more direct.
Jularra bounced back to her feet, her hands tightly gripped around an energy sphere. Caught off guard by the unexpected move, the figure on the steps began to float, bound within Jularra's ball of energy. Jularra walked closer, wary. Had she really captured their adversary?
Yes—but not for long.
She experienced resistance immediately; had expected it, in fact, but not like this. Her foe's defenses were powerful beyond belief, and Jularra was at a complete loss as to how to break them. Jularra’s hold on the magic collapsed.
This has to be her!
The enemy dropped a few feet out of Jularra’s sphere of captivity. As soon as she landed, bits of the circling, smoky energy struck out, engulfing Jularra, Melcayro, and Abranni in their own spheres of captivity, which they each struggled and flexed against. Jularra focused, releasing blasts of energy in an attempt to free herself, to no avail. Melcayro futilely struck the inside of his sphere with blasts of elemental magic, while Abranni attempted to stab her way free with a dagger. Each strike only resulted in sparks of useless friction.
The three prisoners in their bubbles rose off the ground as their captor descended from the monument. Fatigued Acorilinian and Messyleian fighters shuffled from the battlefield toward their helpless leaders.
A new silence, dripping with dread, bit into the hope of each nearby soul. The witch continued her approach, showing no visible signs of exertion in her control over Jularra and the others. She stopped a dozen paces from Jularra. The circling loops of smoke dissipated, and the woman reached up to pull back the hood of her cloak.
What initially stole Jularra’s thoughts upon first seeing the woman was the appearance of her skin. Her flesh was grey, but far from lifeless. Its overall shade was formed from millions of varying pigments of brown, black, white, and silver—like the floor of a riverbed, or the banks of a freshwater lake. And though the colors in her skin resembled natural sediment, its texture was as smooth as the most veteran of river rocks.
The woman’s hair was long, and it fell free from her hood in a thick, healthy tumble. Its dull silver patina resembled fine jewelry set in the shadow of a clouded sun. She stood tall and solid, as stout as any man, and waved her finger at the magic that held Jularra and her two friends.
“Is this what you were trying to do?” she mocked.
Jularra continued to struggle and writhe. “Are you Leona?” she shouted from inside the bubble. Her voice was muffled by the invisible barrier.
“Have you not already inferred that?”
Jularra spat back. “I came here to ask for your help, and you’ve killed my people, you bitch!” The sphere of captivity dampened Jularra's volume, but not her aggression.
Leona rolled her eyes. The rings of smoke reappeared.
“There are some that are dying, yes. And if I do nothing more, they will die. But there’s still time.”
Jularra launched into an exasperated plea. “Then do something. Do whatever you need to do to save them.”
Leona smiled. “And you supposedly have some of the Gifts?”
Jularra boiled with rage, but choked it away.
“Please,” she added.
Leona’s rings of smoke sped up again and shot out into the field. Jularra strained to turn her head far enough to see what was happening.
The prone combatants—those who were dead, or had lost consciousness before Leona could heal them just minutes before—were now struck by streams of power that throbbed with color and energy noticeably different than the previous wave of healing magic. Despite the strain upon Jularra’s neck, she watched as her soldiers started to sit up, seemingly shaking off the beginnings of death itself.
Jularra looked back to Leona, incredulous.
