Dammit. What am I going to have to do? Yell?
No, that would be suicide. The Arachnids would know he was up to no good, and they’d gut him on the spot. All he could do was go with the flow. He needed that ruby, no matter what.
The Arachnids picked up their speed. Low growls escaped from their throats, and they held their blades high above them. Leaves rustled, and they got within about fifteen feet of the clearing and the wizards.
Harry decided to hang back, which he would’ve done anyway. He was not much of a warrior; he was more the kind of guy who picked the corpses clean after the war was over. His motto was, ‘Let them do all the hard work, and then prosper off it’. The Arachnids burst into the clearing, and their swords came down in hard slashes.
Unaware as the wizards had seemed, they moved like men who’d been expecting an attack. Ignatius rolled backward and sprang up with more athleticism than Harry had ever possessed—and he was much younger than the ancient wizard. The other, unknown wizard pulled his wand free. The movement reminded Harry of an Earth cowboy drawing his weapon at the start of a gunfight. A stream of electric green magic shot forward with enough force to shake the birds from the nearby trees; they took wing, squawking. The light was nearly enough to blind Harry. He had to bring his bag up to shield his eyes. When the light subsided, an afterimage of it was tattooed on his vision.
Harry was still able to see Ignatius pull out his own wand and shoot blue magic from the end, hitting one of the Arachnids in the middle of their chitinous armor.
The monster’s face was a mess of pain and anguish as it teetered on the edge of the hole that had been dug into the ground. His arms pinwheeling for balance, the Arachnid fell back and landed with a thump that Harry could hear all the way back in the trees.
“The wizard has still got it,” Harry whispered to himself. “Good to know. I’ll definitely avoid him at all costs.”
The other wizard tried a spell in the direction of the remaining Arachnids, but Jinxton caught him in the arm with—thankfully—the broadside of his sword. No limbs were cut off, only smacked harshly. The wand flew out of the wizard’s hand, and he cried out in pain. Harry watched as the wand skittered across the clearing, lost to the overgrown grass.
Well, that’s not good.
The killing blow was on its way to the unarmed wizard’s midsection, when he leaned backward, and the blade swiped through, connecting with nothing but thin air. Harry’s jaw dropped as he watched the wizard lunge forward, his arm swinging toward Jinxton with at least as much force as Jinxton had used to swing his sword. The wizard’s fist connected with the soldier’s face. Black blood sprayed into the air, lit by the moonlight. Jinxton swayed and rocked. He looked like a boxer about to be knocked out. Just then, the remaining Arachnid threw his shoulder into the wizard’s side. Harry could hear the cracking of his ribs from all the way over in the forest. It caused him to cringe and grab his own side with a grimace.
The Arachnid raised his blade and pinned the wizard down with his massive body, but Ignatius shot a bolt of magic at the back of the spider’s head. It connected with a fizzling pop, and the beast’s head was nothing more than a smoking hole above the thing’s neck. The body fell forward, the sword falling closely after it, and landed on the wizard, cutting his cries short.
“Salem!” Ignatius shouted, but the wizard was seemingly passed out, smothered by the headless Arachnid.
Ignatius tried to pull his friend’s body free; before he even got two hands on him, Jinxton, with blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth, swung his sword at the struggling wizard. Ignatius must’ve heard the blade whistling through the air, because he spun around fast and rolled free of the hit. The sword wound up in the corpse of the Arachnid, landing with a meaty clunk.
Harry’s stomach rolled. He thought he was going to be sick when he saw the spray of blackish blood as Jinxton pulled the hooked sword free, but he hadn’t eaten anything in quite awhile, so nothing came up when he dry-heaved. Still, he was sure that image was going to stick with him for a long time.
Ignatius was up in a battle stance. Harry found himself wondering where the great wizard’s famous sword was—the one that had slain many Arachnids in the Great Spider Wars. Maybe he had forgotten it, or maybe it had been lost to time; Harry didn’t know.
It turned out that Ignatius didn’t need it. His magic was as strong as ever. He yelled an incantation Harry had never heard before, and a great crack of lightning parted the dark sky above. The bolt struck near Jinxton’s feet. Flames erupted across the wild grass, lighting up the stalks, burning them to crisps.
Jinxton flew backward about five feet with small bolts of electricity dancing over his arms and legs. The stubby hairs fizzled with smoke as they were burned away. Harry screamed out loud, but he could hardly hear it over the roar of the Aracnid.
Just as fast as the small flames had come, however, they were gone, and there stood Ignatius Mangood among the smoke and ruins with his wand held high, ready to go in for the kill.
Harry was completely entranced by the skill possessed by Ignatius. He had heard the stories—the giants slain, the piles of Arachnids left in his wake, the blood of the Rogue Dragons coursing through him, all of that—but those were just stories.
Or so Harry had thought.
Stories were one thing; seeing the wizard in action was entirely different. It was like witnessing a hero, a legend,
