Fire seemed like a solid way to deal with all this ice. Sure, ice dampened the flames, but enough heat would render the usefulness of frozen spears and armor useless. I cast blasts of Untamed Torch at my nearest opponents and melted holes in their defences for my companions to exploit.
“This way!” Kegohr pointed along a corridor.
The sounds of footsteps and shouting behind us told me that more Augmenters and guards were on their way. I turned around and called forth the chaotic power of the Burning Wheel. Fire flared from my hand, grew swiftly into a ball, and turned into a raging whirlwind of flames. I tossed it away into the passage behind us, into the path of our pursuers. It bounced off the walls, its path erratic, as it traveled toward our enemies. I heard yells of panic, frantic footsteps, and collisions as the blistering heat and sudden slipperiness of their environment tangled the initiates into knots of confused limbs.
I’d bought us some time, and I used it to sprint after the Kumi, Vesma, and Kegohr. We emerged out of the corridor into a small courtyard complete with a well and a smithy to our left. For a moment, I thought that we were nearly at the exit, but then I realized that the courtyard was walled in by pale buildings of stone and ice.
The weather had worsened as the storm took hold of the the guild house. It was just as Labu had predicted. Rain poured from a menacing sky as fierce gusts of wind hurtled around the courtyard.
We dashed through the battering wind and through a double doorway on the far side of the courtyard. I vaulted over a sawhorse as we entered a workshop full of half-made boats laid out left and right. Piles of planks lay against the walls, along with boxes full of nails and buckets of freshly mixed paint. The floor was littered with wood shavings.
Three servants in leather aprons jolted away from their work as we sprinted past them. Two had been hammering in nails to fix planks into place, while the third had dropped a boat-shaping lathe.
“Just passing through,” I said.
We dodged boats and tools as we ran across the workshop, but more Augmenters in guild robes appeared through a side entrance.
“Get out of the way!” I shouted to the carpenters.
It was all the warning I had time to give. I called forth my fire power and launched an Untamed Torch at the wood shavings on the ground in front of them. The shavings burst into flames, and I encouraged it with some Flame Empowerment. Fire raced across the floor, ignited more wood shavings, a pile of planks, and a bucket of tar.
In seconds, the workshop was awash with a fierce, orange light. The Augmenters stopped in their tracks at the sudden wall of heat. I launched another Untamed Torch into the piles of wood behind them and left them surrounded by fire. Our pursuers desperately summoned any form of water they could to dampen the flames and keep themselves unburned.
A fresh knot of initiates clad in Frozen Armor pushed through the doors. They ran straight through the flames with a hiss of melting ice and appeared through an evaporating gout of steam. It was enough to protect them and carry them through to us as we ducked under a suspended boat and moved toward the exit.
Kegohr let out a low growl and turned as a wave of Spirit of the Wildfire swept through him. He swung his mace like a batter at the plate as the fastest enemy closed in. The blow caught her in the chest and hurled her across the room. She hit the wall at the far side and slid to the ground.
Kegohr knocked the next two back into the fire with great swings of his mace. Their armor melted, and chunks of ice started to fall away, leaving them exposed to the flaming workshop. They scrambled back through the flames, heading for safety.
“Come on!” I said to my friends. “We have to keep moving.”
Smoke billowed as we pushed to the other side of the workshop. Kegohr charged ahead, consumed by a berserker rage, and the rest of us had to run to keep up. Guards and Augmenters blocked our path, but Kegohr barrelled straight through them. The half-ogre smashed some to pulp and left others standing stunned. Vesma came in close behind, picked off the ones Kegohr had missed, and cleared a path for me and Kumi.
Kumi called upon her powers as we burst out of the workshop and into the yard. Her voice sounded harsh and garbled as her Song of the Sea filtered from her mouth. I figured all this running had left her out of breath. Even though her song was weaker, ribbons of water spiraled from the rain around us and raced from her hands to the rest of us. My aches slipped away as minor cuts and burns healed over. A deep wound in Vesma’s side stitched together, as did a string of vicious cuts across Kegohr’s back.
A group of Augmenters stormed the yard to our right and shouted as they saw us.
I stopped, raised my arms, pulled on the power of fire and wood, and combined them into ash. A black, choking cloud appeared around the Augmenters. They stumbled and gagged for air as they inhaled the gray particles.
We sprinted across the yard and into a dojo where rows of initiates practiced the moves of a combat routine. They started in surprise and raised their weapons. They carried that look of malevolence we had seen on
