Underkeeper

Leaving a few of the guards behind to watch the sealed tunnel, Bernt followed Kustov out into the city. If the kobolds were properly coordinating an assault, that might mean the dragon had decided to move. Even if it didn’t, this suggested the enemy was growing more organized. Regardless, the geomancer had decided they should go and reinforce the remaining breaches rather than waste time watching one that wasn’t likely to be reopened in the immediate future.

He could feel Jori’s presence over toward the east, probably near to the main breach. He wasn’t sure what she might be doing over there, but he supposed it was just as well that she wasn’t here in the thick of things. Who knows how the guards might react.

Just like when the original breach had formed, traffic flowed away from the sound of the trumpets, trying to escape any active fighting. This left Bernt and Kustov moving against the tide, so to speak, toward the next-closest breach. It was the only one besides the main breach that offered a clear route to the street level. This time, the kobolds had burrowed out of the side of a hill in a small park near the city center.

As they approached the site, a roar filled the air and a nearby house went up in flames. Surprised shouts sounded from inside, followed by screeches. Acting on reflex, Bernt immediately raised his pyromancer’s wand and controlled the fire, drawing it down and trying to extinguish it by spreading its heat out and away from the flames. Killing a fire was much harder than making one, but he had a lot of practice. It was one of the first things any aspiring pyromancer had to learn.

Doing his best to maintain the spell, Bernt hummed a tune, focusing an additional mana flow into an aeromancy spell. Like most people who had a gift for fire, Bernt also excelled at air magic. It had always felt natural, and didn’t tax his concentration too much. At the same time, it was never quite as exciting to work with as fire. But he was no slouch, and there was a lot of air to work with when casting outdoors like this.

It took more power than he would have liked, but the air thinned around the building in question, bringing the flames down lower. The building smoked more as the fire was smothered, and about twenty seconds later, Bernt released the spell. He felt like he’d been scraped raw from the inside.

He wasn’t used to moving that much energy around.

Looking around for Kustov and the guards, he realized they had gone on without him, probably to deal with whatever had caused the fire in the first place. He was torn for a moment. Should he go into the building to make sure everyone was alright?

No. He shook his head and hurried after the others. He wasn’t a healer, and he heard fighting up ahead. Bernt turned the corner, and found himself standing on a battlefield.

Small knots of soldiers fought a growing mob of kobolds that rapidly moved to encircle them. As Bernt watched, a group of three guards went down, swarmed in seconds. Where was Kustov? And where was their support? There should have already been at least one mage and an adventurer or two on watch here.

But there wasn’t time.

Bernt raised his wand and focused on the breach itself, which was vomiting more kobolds every second. If they couldn’t stem the flow, they were going to be overwhelmed here. He formed a roiling orb of flames in the air in front of him. Before he could finish his spell, though, the entire breach closed like a gigantic mouth and swallowed the kobolds that had been climbing out.

Right—Kustov was here, and he would have been thinking the same way.

Breathing a small sigh of relief, Bernt changed his target, found what looked like the center of the mob and unleashed his spell. It looked like a fireball, but quite a bit larger.

That made sense, considering how similar the spells were. But where fireballs were meant to take out a single target, this was a spell for war, usually thrown in a volley by as many as fifty pyromancers to threaten entire battalions of soldiers. The spell, called a firestorm, only reached its full potential when cast concurrently by many mages at once, but it wasn’t ineffective in this form, either. It was the capstone of the basic pyromancer qualification—since nearly all pyromancers moved directly to the military from the academy.

Bernt hadn’t cast it in two years, but this was the time.

The massive flaming projectile roared into the mass of kobolds, where it unraveled into a spinning vortex of fire so intense that Bernt felt it scorch his face from where he stood. Kobolds screamed and died in a wide area, several paces around the impact point. Others pushed away from the fire, trying to escape the pain of more minor burns.

Bernt’s vision blurred and his head swam for a moment. Casting two powerful spells like this in such quick succession exhausted him. Really, he shouldn’t have even attempted it. Throwing too many big spells around in a short time could damage his spirit. That would weaken his concentration and make spellcasting painful. If the damage was bad, the weakening effect could even be permanent. He could feel the ache of it, but it didn’t seem like he’d done anything serious to himself this time.

Just then, a cry went up from some of the kobolds, and he saw one pointing right at him. Bernt’s blood froze as heads turned to look. He raised his wand and cast a fire dart at the group. It worked, eliciting a scream from a kobold as the flame burned through the scales over its ribs. But it hurt Bernt, too. His right arm hung at his side, useless. It tingled painfully as if he’d just banged the inside of his elbow against something. He’d bungled the mana flows a bit, probably, and strained himself as a result. If he wanted to cast like this in a fight, he needed to get stronger.

Assuming he lived that long.

The kobolds charged at him. Bernt activated his thorn skin amulet and looked for a way out, trying to ignore the uncomfortable sensation of thorns pricking his neck.

There was a group of guards nearby, but not close enough to help him. Besides, they had their own problems to deal with. He raised his wand again, in his left hand this time, and tried to think of a spell that might save his life right now. He could only cast one, and it had to be fast.

But nothing came to mind—there just wasn’t enough time.

The entire group of kobolds disintegrated into a spray of body parts and gore. Bernt flinched unconsciously, but not at the spectacle. It was the sound. An earsplitting, deranged laugh boomed through the park at an obviously unnatural volume.

In front of him, the entire kobold incursion fell apart, brought down by a single large fighter holding a bloodied sword in one hand and a broken spear in the other. Split by Bernt’s undersized firestorm, the kobolds had reformed into smaller groups, each going after the weakest targets they could find. Over the course of maybe thirty seconds, the madman worked his way through group after group, not breaking stride for even a moment. He didn’t look graceful, the way Furin or Oren did when they were fighting. He just ran right at the enemy and swung at them as hard and fast as he could. And that was very hard and fast.

When the last group of kobolds was down, the man stopped, looking around for more targets as he gasped little cackling laughs between his heavy breaths. He was covered in wounds, most relatively light, but a few looked serious. He bled heavily from a deep cut on his arm and a puncture wound in his side. Even in those few seconds, though, the blood on his hand stopped dripping, and several of the smaller cuts on his face just… closed up.

Bernt gaped. He’d never seen a berserker in action before, but there weren’t many ways to explain what he was looking at.

“Do we have a healer? Who has potions?”

It was one of the guards—one of theirs, from the first breach earlier. She was on her knees, leaning over another armored form and pushing down on his leg as blood seeped out between her fingers. Another guard was tying his belt around the leg in a makeshift tourniquet.

Kustov. That was Kustov.

Bernt hurried over. He stumbled over the body of a kobold and almost cut himself on the spearhead that stuck out of its back. Arriving, he pulled out a minor healing potion—all he could get, considering his relationship with the alchemists—and handed it to the woman. She accepted it, though with a slight grimace.

“Ah, same shit as we get on watch.”

She poured it into Kustov’s mouth. The dwarf wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t exactly all there, either. A few moments later, a bit of color returned to his face, and his breathing evened out. As long as they made sure he didn’t bleed out in the next few minutes, he would probably be fine.

There was a lot of blood on the ground. Bernt took a moment to look up and around and realized they’d lost a lot of people, and many more were injured, by the looks of it.

The bottom dropped out of Bernt’s stomach at the sight. He’d seen bloody fighting before, but this felt different. This was in the middle of Halfbridge. Things like this just weren’t supposed to happen here—and he didn’t have any more potions on him.

Two guards ran up from the periphery doling out more potions from bags they had tied to their belts. Another was bent over one of the wounded, applying a bandage. Bernt felt some relief at the sight. They knew how to handle things like this. It was their job, after all.

A hand descended on his shoulder.

“Underkeeper?” a smooth, neutral voice said. Bernt turned and found himself facing the gigantic berserker, who looked completely calm now, like a totally different person. “That was a pretty good spell. Can you do it again? We should get to the main breach—that’s probably where the biggest push will be.”

Bernt shook his head, clearing his mind. The man’s confident tone helped to ground him, and reminded him that he had his own responsibilities here.

“I can’t. I injured myself with that one—I’ll get my colleague over there to headquarters and see if I can find anyone else there to help.”

The berserker frowned, but nodded. “Alright. I’ll update your commander. Send anyone you can find there, alright?”

Bernt nodded back, but the berserker was already running off, not even bothering to try to rally any of the guards. Bernt decided not to worry about it. He needed to see to Kustov.

***

Jori watched with some trepidation as kobolds spilled out of the sewers. She’d been on her way to check in on Theresa, the bad alchemist woman, when the trumpets went off, first to her right, then ahead and to the left. While the imp didn’t know what the signals meant, she could guess. The kobolds were coming in force.

At first, she had turned to go back the way she came, toward Bernt, but then she remembered she couldn’t get into that stupid guard building. Instead, she’d decided to check on the nearest breach, which was located in the sewers near the wall on the eastern side—not too far from the main breach, incidentally.

Approaching the spot now, she doubted she could even reach it—the people guarding this entrance must have been completely overrun. She needed to tell the Great Mage, Ed.

Turning away and keeping out of sight as much as possible, she climbed the nearest house and began running toward the main breach in a straight line. She jumped from rooftop to rooftop, spreading her wings to give her a bit more distance on a few of the longer jumps. Considering what was going on, she hoped not too many people would be looking closely enough to recognize her for what she was.

A short while later, she caught sight of the main breach up against the wall. All the noise—shouts, clattering noises and screams—indicated a fight was going on, but she could only see guards and a few people she assumed to be adventurers. Whatever the kobolds were doing here, they weren’t making much progress.

She made the last jump from this roof to the slightly lower one of the rowhouse that held the command post. This was where things would get tricky.

Jori needed to reach Ed without the guards seeing her—they hadn’t immediately attacked her before, but this was a bad time to count on good luck. Most of them were facing the other way, which was fortunate, but she knew a few were probably guarding the door, just like the last time she was there.

She looked around consideringly. Maybe a solution would just present itself! She pondered for a moment and then scampered across the shifty roof tiles to the far side, peeking down into the alley behind the house. It was a blank wall. Hmm. No windows.

Then her gaze fell to her feet.

Experimentally, she reached down and tugged on one of the roof tiles. It lifted easily, revealing the wooden skeleton underneath. Pulling up a few more tiles and setting them onto the roof beside her, she then jumped through the gap between the slats, and landed on the dusty, dry wooden floor of an old attic. She sneezed, choking on the dust she’d just kicked up, and flailed at a cobweb stuck to her face.

That wasn’t so hard.

Below she heard Ed’s voice as he gave gruff orders to someone else. Quickly but quietly, Jori descended, then stopped in the tiny room at the base of the stairs. A moment later, she heard steps as the other person left, and then all she heard was a pen scratching on paper.

She opened the door and scampered inside, where Ed was sitting with his back to her, hunched forward over a small desk. A wisp of smoke rose from his pipe, which she could just see jutting out to the side of his head.

“Great One!” she called out. “There are kobolds in the streets!”

“Hm?” The archmage turned in his seat, surprised. He pulled his pipe out of his mouth and furrowed his brow. “How did you get in here?”

“It’s the closest breach,” she explained, pointing to her left. “That way!”

Ed’s expression shifted from confusion to comprehension and then alarm. He immediately cast a spell that created a moving picture in the air in front of him. It wasn’t detailed, but it showed a mob of small forms swarming down a blurry street—the kobolds, she guessed.

“Shit,” he cursed, and cast another spell. Another picture formed, though this time the street was empty.

He cast the spell twice more. Both time, the picture showed small groups of kobolds running down a street. In one, they were chasing bigger people, probably humans, until the humans ran into a house and slammed the door in their pursuers’ faces.

“They’re coming up all over the place.” He breathed. “There have to be new breaches involved here. How the hell did Iri miss this?”

The old man rose and strode to the door, but he stopped, looking back at her.

“What happened to Bernt? Why aren’t you over with him?”

Jori shrugged. “I couldn’t get into the guardhouse. Bernt is…” She felt at the familiar bond, finding a few impressions, but no clear images or sounds. “Bernt is fighting, but not afraid. He is fine.”

Ed nodded, businesslike. “Good. I’ll check the other breaches in a moment. See if you can find Iriala and help her with whatever she’s doing. She should have seen this coming. If she didn’t, it means a stronger diviner than her was obscuring her sight. She might need help. Regardless, I could really use her here. I hate this scrying crap, and the gods know we need her sight for this.”

Then he was out the door, bellowing orders at the top of his lungs.

Jori hesitated. She wanted to go check on Bernt. But… she needed to get into Ed’s good graces. Besides, Bernt would probably want her to help him anyway.

Making up her mind, she darted back up the stairs toward the open roof.