A roar reverberated from the cave, and a vast lizard ran out, twelve feet long from nose to tail. Its body was black, and soot tumbled from its sides. Its eyes flashed as bright as the sun, and fire shot from its mouth.
A scorched salamander.
Hamon had positioned himself perfectly for the moment the salamander burst from the cave. The scaled beast ran straight for his bait, grabbed it between its teeth, and kept moving. As it turned to head back into the cave, Hamon leapt out of his hiding place, curved sword arcing through the air.
The salamander twisted away, barely avoiding a meeting between blade and neck. It dropped the lure and shot a fireball at Hamon. He leapt over the projectile and landed just beyond the reach of the flames. He closed his eyes, and the air seemed to ripple around him, as though he was gathering his Vigor.
I didn’t know if scorched salamanders could hold a grudge, but this one clearly had Hamon in its sights. It ran after him, claws outstretched, teeth bared.
Just as the salamander reached him, Hamon leapt into the air once more. He twisted end over end, and as the beast’s head came up, his hand came down to meet it and punched the salamander in the snout. It stumbled back a step and shook its head as though it was dazed. Hamon landed behind it, and his sword swung around in an arc that sliced through the beast’s neck. The salamander fell to the ground, and its head rolled away. Blood ran thick as lava from the decapitated corpse as Hamon stood triumphant.
I turned my attention back to the fight around me. Between us, my trio had killed perhaps 30 or more ember sprites. Although Vesma battled unarmed, she’d handled herself as well as any other initiate. Kegohr chuckled as he swatted a sprite a dozen feet away with his mace, the end caked with blood and innards.
I stabbed at another of the sprites as it ran past and skewered it with my sword. As I pulled it off the blade, its core lay exposed in a cage of bones. I stared at the glowing block of power.
The tide of ember sprites was tapering off. A few minutes before, they had been streaming out of the cave in a vast wave, but that was over. A few were still lurking around the cave mouth as they eyed the lures from a distance, but none were rushing at the initiates any more.
Given the chance, we stopped to catch our breath and check the score.
“That was fun.” Kegohr tugged a core out of a dead sprite’s corpse.
“More exciting than another morning of meditation,” I agreed as I flung a corpse on the heap.
“Shit,” Vesma said. “There were so many of them, we didn’t think to be careful about the kills.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Look.” She lifted an ember corpse with a torn midsection. I could see the bone-cage where the core should have been, but there was only a glowing residue.
“The core was destroyed?” I asked.
“Yeah. If we weren’t fighting for our lives, we could have been more careful. Ember sprites have really weak skeletal corrals.”
“Skeletal corrals? Are they these bone-cage things?”
Vesma nodded. “Other beasts have stronger cages, so it’s less likely you’ll damage the cores inside them. Some monsters even have magic that encases the skeletal corrals.”
“Then we’ll be more careful. But surely we didn’t destroy so many cores. We should have enough to gain Flame Shield.”
“We have fourteen.” Vesma looked at our collection of cores. “Not enough.”
Everyone was in the same boat. Across the mountainside, groups of initiates faced the cave mouth with a mixture of trepidation and annoyance. Some bore injuries from clashes with the sprites—red raw bites and scratches on their arms and faces, burnt patches on their robes.
“Any group got their 30?” Rutmonlir called out.
There was a shaking of heads and some disappointed mumbling.
“Better lay your lures out again, then,” he said. “You’re going to have to wait some more.”
The initiates groaned as one. After the thrill of the fight, I imagined the last thing they wanted to do was sit here for another hour or more and wait for more sprites to find their way out. I suspected it might take longer than before. After all, we’d just slaughtered the beasts that had been nearby, able to sense our lures and be drawn out by them. If more came, they would be drawn from deeper in, perhaps only coming out a few at a time, a dribble of power to be shared between all the initiates in the class.
I hadn’t groaned, nor was I unwilling to be patient. Except I knew that waiting around for more sprites to show wasn’t the smartest tactic.
I could do better.
I grabbed my team’s lure, its smooth surface warm against the palm of my hand. Heat radiated from it, along with the increasingly familiar tingle of magical power.
“What are you doing?” Vesma asked.
“Getting us the rest of our cores,” I said. “Follow me.”
I walked toward the cave mouth while I spun the lure on the end of its cord.
“You feeling brave, lad?” Rutmonlir yelled from atop his boulder. “Don’t go getting yourself killed. The last thing I want to do after a hard day’s work is pick up your charred corpse.”
I ignored the tutor and continued toward the cave. The rest of the class watched as Kegohr and Vesma followed me, right up to the edge of the darkness.
“Effin, what are you doing?” Kegohr whispered.
“Getting the first shot at any sprites that turn up,” I said. “If we can kill them as they come out, we can get the ones we need before anyone else does.”
“I like it.” Vesma stretched her arms and took a fighter’s stance.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kegohr said. “But what if there’s swarms of them again?
