Wearily, I threw myself back up into the air and sailed over the robot carnage of the battlefield. Here and there, damaged bots still tried their evil best to do bodily harm to my people. Grace and Claih were already moving out between the scrap, putting magical bullets through processing cores.

Eilian was standing atop the corpse of the huge kingbane, her sword still drawn and ready. Her eyes were scanning the forest back the way the robots had come. Her stance was still guarded. What did she know?

“Hey,” I greeted her, firing a quick impulse below me to slow my fall.

She gave me a quick smile, but her attention quickly returned to our surroundings. “Hey there red. I’d spend some time trying to get into your pants but we aren’t safe yet. Your mother is out there stalling the mages. She’ll be here soon.”

Alarmed, I sent out tendrils of power and touched down to the grass at the valley floor. There was definitely someone coming, but the plants were confused about who and what. “What? Mages? And my mother?”

“The robots aren’t here by coincidence Ryn, they’re here because that absolute bastard Fennimore lured them here,” she said, long canines flashing as she sneered at the horizon. “They planned to hit you while you were recuperating from fighting the steel ones. Esra and I arrived to ruin their plans.”

“Mom’s here?” I asked excitedly, forgetting the part about Fennimore for a second.

“Leading Fennimore here where it’s an even fight, yeah,” Eilian said.

My stomach froze over, hardening into a single solid block of ice. “Here? What about my people?”

The obrec mage stilled in her observations of the scree covered slopes, slowly turning to look at the massed Avonside militia. “Oh, cock,” she muttered, then with a sudden burst of urgency, looked at me. “Get them moving, now. We need them as far away as possible when the enemy gets here. They’ll be nothing but fodder.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. With a burst of adrenaline, I took hold of spacetime with a spell and my mental fist, and crushed it. The world folded like I’d just swapped my eyes for 360 degree cameras, then snapped back to normal with a crack.

Troy and the Militia general dude both choked and shouted at my sudden and violent arrival, almost knocking over the field table they were using to look at their maps. Around them, officers and various other people all swore and scattered away from the sound of my arrival.

“Troy,” I said with a no-nonsense, almost icy tone. “Get everyone to fall back. Now. We have enemy mages incoming.”

“Why would we fall back?” the militia general asked, frowning slightly. His tone was more confused than confrontational though, so I didn’t bite back.

“Because Eilian, Grace, and I can handle them,” I explained quickly, wishing they’d just get moving. Ugh, but if I were them, I wouldn’t just rush off blindly. People generally like to know why they are required to do something. Human nature and all that. With a sigh, I relaxed my stance and gave both him and Troy a look. “You will all just be collateral damage. Fennimore and his cohort are the ones who lured the robots here, and they plan to slaughter everyone who isn’t scientifically useful so they can control the tech here. You need to get everyone away from the battlefield before we no longer have a militia. Please?”

The militia guy seemed skeptical, but Troy gave a sharp nod and turned to the officers. “Sound the retreat, right now. We need to be out of sight.”

With Troy ready to do what I needed, I teleported to Grace and gently took hold of her forearm, stopping her as she moved towards the next fatally damaged steel one. “Grace, can you and Claih go and hide somewhere with good sightlines of this area? Fennimore and a bunch of his cronies are coming. I think we’ll need you both sniping and moving to help us win this.”

“Yeah, on it,” she said, giving my hand a quick squeeze of affection. Then she was calling out to Claih, relaying my request.

Finally, I teleported back to Eilian. “They’re getting ready. Grace and Claih, the obrec with the magic guns, are going to hide themselves up high so they can attempt to snipe a mage or two.”

“Good idea,” she said, throwing me a smile. “You have a beautiful mind to go with that pretty face.”

Back when we’d first met Eilian, I’d felt shy and uncomfortable about her attention. Now though, it was easy to laugh and roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. How many mages did they bring?”

“Five, I believe. Fennimore, his new apprentice, and three of his more independent and experienced mages,” she told me, eyes sparkling with mirth despite being on alert for the enemy. “Everyone that he can trust not to betray him, kill him, and steal all the secrets of your home for themselves.”

“Ah,” I grinned, flexing my fingers in preparation. “An awful person’s plan ruined by a lack of trust in his people. Classic.”

Eilian nodded once and seemed to lean forward, staring into the distance. “Yes, and I believe that our cue is coming shortly.”

Along one ridge, a bright star began to flicker along, blinking into existence in one place, then vanishing to appear closer to us.

I took a deep breath. “Is that—”

“Esra?” Eilian murmured, gripping her sword tighter. “Yes.”

“I’m going to go now. They’re close enough,” I said decisively, already scooping up power into my splayed fingers like my magic was some sort of viscous liquid.

“Your valley, your people, your mother,” she shrugged. “I’ll make sure Fennimore’s people don’t hurt yours.”

I shook my head as energy began to flood into it. “My sister is back there. She has more than enough skill with defensive spells to keep them safe.”

My plant form came to the fore while I worked on casting my spell. Dimly I heard her grunt and turn to look back, but I was already caught up in the momentous effort of pulling this much power from my grove. More stars had joined the first on the ridge, flinging spells that melted stone and burned foliage in passing.

Esra was firing back even as her brightly glowing shields took hit after hit. She was even stronger than when she’d first become my magemother. Living out in the wild reaches of the nameless garden had increased her power.

God, I was tired. My grove didn’t have a whole lot left to give, at least, it didn’t have much of the storm stuff to give me anymore. I guess I’d be fighting with just my usual. Which meant…

I clenched my fist into a ball and pulled the finished spell into my now fully manifested plant body. I gasped and swayed on my feet. Oh, mercy… that felt good. It was a simple enhancement spell, but I needed it. Because like, I figured that spells were going to be flying hot and heavy soon, so it was probably a good idea to just dodge most of them. Faster reflexes and muscles would do the job where shields might falter.

Now to make a dramatic entrance.

I grinned, glanced down at my singed and battered silver outfit, then summoned my floating energy blades into a flower pattern behind me. Then, I jumped off the massive Kingbane.

Space warped, then reformed with a thump, depositing me right in front of one of the brightly glowing mages that were battling along the ridge. She was an older woman, or at least she looked it. Her silver-red hair was up in a tight bun on the back of her head, and she wore a ball gown altered for more strenuous activities than a waltz.

My blades moved with terrifying speed, coming around to my front to form a sort of umbrella. I came out of my teleport with a substantial amount of speed from my jump and that all came crashing against the woman’s magical shielding. Sparks exploded out in all directions as the opposing energies clashed.

With a shove of her hand, she sent out a wave of force that disengaged her from my blades. My feet touched down against warm stone, and I stepped forward, throwing blade after blade at her in a vicious series of attacks that gave her no room to make her own.

I was high off the triumph of destroying the steel ones, and I’d be damned if some random backwards-ass noble would take that away from me.

A flick of my wrist sent three blades around behind, pinning her between the points. Her red eyes went wide with fear when I began to squeeze. Working with frenzied hand movements, she cast something, then raised her eyes to the sky beseechingly.

I threw myself to the side on pure instinct. Lightning smashed down, smelling of ozone and molten rock, and I was forced to pull my blades back in order to land on them. Flat side up, of course.

They acted like a set of stairs, shifting in coordinated, scintillating patterns to keep me aloft. My foe didn’t wait for me to touch down again, with me on the back foot. Thump, thump, thump. She threw three fireballs at me in rapid succession, each of which I blocked with a blade of energy. Goddess, how uninspiring was that? Boring old fireballs. She needed to apply a little imagination to her spells.

Something like, say, this.

It was another one of those spells that would only work once, and it probably would have been better to use it directly on Fennimore. Still, I had no idea if it would work, so… may as well test it, right?

It was such a simple spell. Basically a glorified pump. A pump that formed a thin separating membrane of near invisible energy around the target, then began to suck all the oxygen out of the bubble.

The mage woman saw the spell form around her and threw her energy into reinforcing her shields, expecting some sort of attack. When nothing happened, she frowned in wary suspicion and threw another fireball out, aimed at me and the bubble alike. It passed harmlessly through.

She blinked, and then seeming to put the bubble out of her mind, unleashed a torrent of fire, ice, and lightning. I dodged what I could, then blocked what I could not with my blades. I pretended to tire, getting sluggish in my movements, and even let a fireball through my blades to splash over a reactive shield.

Seeing the fireball make contact with my passive defenses, she began to throw even more, and my goodness it was hard to hold back my feral grin. I had an idea. I let her think I had some sort of weakness, blocking the ice spikes and lightning strikes with seeming ease, but not the fireballs.

Another mage teleported into our duel like a rude slap to the face, and I jumped backwards to avoid a lance of sunlight that tore through the air with deadly purpose.

“Long time no see,” James said venomously. “I figured you’d be stronger than Maud. Guess we were all worried for nothing, huh?”

His words were followed by another lance, that I deflected with a well-placed blade of magenta energy. “You should have just left us alone,” I replied, with a cold, seething rage. “It would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, you’re about to see just how much I’ve changed…”

QuietValerie

Gasp! Is this... is this a Ryn chapter??? Oh mah gawsh. Hehe. Anyway, hope you all enjoy! I'll get started on the next one! Also uh, please check out my patreon! I would like to one day make enough money to support my girlfriend living with me instead of like 2000km away Q.Q...