SIX

  THINK FAST

  “Leihant von Geissler, Wizard fugitive. I have come for you.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say to that.

  Someone had burst into his quasi-comfy forest cave and dragged him outside. He was face-down in the dirt, with a boot on his back, then identified by name and Wizard-ness. His mind was a jumble of confused thoughts, half-formed ideas about denying his identity, playing dumb, acting coy, cooperating, along with a very tempting animal instinct to scramble away and hide.

  Before he could decide what to do, the boot was removed, then he was kick-flipped around, now lying on his back, looking the stranger in their eyes.

  Or rather, attempting to look them in the eyes.

  They were very tall, over six and a half feet tall, clad in heavy, plate armor with a slight green hue. In their left hand they idly held a great hammer with a steel shaft and a massive metal block the size of Leihant’s torso for a head. Where the helmet should be was instead some kind of armored, mirror-mask devoid of features. It was a smooth, convex shape without eye-holes. Whereas their right-hand gauntlet was of the same metallic material and pattern as the rest of their armor, the left-hand gauntlet seemed to be made of green stone, segmented and sharp.

  When they spoke, it was a woman’s voice, strong and decisive, barely muffled by the helmet.

  “I see the brand upon you and recognize facial features and injuries from your description. You are the one whom I seek.”

  When she looked, she barely tilted her head. As Leihant slowly leaned backwards in caution, she stood still, great hammer resting at her side.

  “I have no idea why I am being persecuted and prosecuted!” said Leihant, “What crime has condemned me to this state?”

  “You are a Wizard,” she replied, “that is answer enough.”

  “Really? And I must die for this?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  She made a pose, both hands atop the shaft of the great hammer with its head resting on the ground. She squared her shoulders, she raised her head.

  “I am Helga, Adept of the Jade Fire, wielder of Magic’s Bane,” she said proudly, “so long as you are my prisoner, you shall not die. I will not allow it. You will come with me to the fortress-prison of my Order, where you will be evaluated and interrogated.”

  “I’ll make a confession, right here and now,” said Leihant, staring her in the eyes, or where he assumed they were, while slowly reaching behind himself with one hand.

  “Oh?”

  “I refuse!” he shouted, throwing his retrieved object onto the ground between them. It was his experimental ash-sphere, wrapped in fur.

  Suddenly a cloud of thick smoke exploded from the sphere, far more than Leihant predicted, filling the air and blinding them both.

  “Ha!” laughed Leihant, both from genuine emotion, but also a distraction.

  He knew she would be lunging for him, so he quickly rolled away, then began silently creeping away in the other direction, hoping to pass her as she moved blindly, chasing after him. As he stayed low, carefully moving in silence, he laughed inside his head.

  This was a simple, but brilliant scheme, he knew. As she ran past him, she would think he had already escaped. She would be running into the woods, blindly chasing after him, long after the smoke had blinded her. Meanwhile he would be long gone in the direction she had come, bamboozling her and escap—

  — He was grabbed by the throat and lifted into the air.

  His feet dangling below him, his hands trying to claw away the gauntlet that held him up, Leihant panicked. He was almost choking, his lungs barely getting enough to breath, both from the dark fumes he had created himself, and the hand around his throat.

  Leihant was still trying to pry away the gauntlet a half-minute later when the smoke finally dissipated.

  It was her, of course. She just stood there, silently, holding him up with her right-hand, the tips of her gauntlets pressing against his skin. She wasn’t squeezing, she wasn’t killing him, but it hurt. He could feel his entire body weight hanging from his head and neck, his feet dangling inches above the ground.

  “Are you finished?” she asked.

  He slumped over in defeat.

  “That was a mistake, on your part and mine,” she said, “I will not extend such a level of trust to you again. Before we depart, I must now—”

  Suddenly, there was a howl, interrupted her.

  It was the cat! Leihant’s savior!

  It came barreling out of the cave, sprinting across the ground, leaping through the air at Helga’s face where it latched on and—

  —feebly scratched at the metal.

  Now it was howling out of frustration, not just anger. It left no mark on her mirror-helmet, in fact its own claws were being damaged.

  Helga just stood there, still holding Leihant up by the neck.

  With her left hand, she reached up and picked the cat up by the scruff of its neck, where it continued to flail impotently.

  Then she threw it into the forest, where the feline vanished in a burst of broken branches, fluttering leaves and a sad, forlorn cry.

  “As I said before we were rudely interrupted,” she continued, lifting her left hand with the green-stone gauntlet above her, as if to strike, “I must now strip you…”

  Leihant raised an eyebrow.

  “… of your magic and spells,” she said, finishing her ritualized speech, and even without seeing a face, Leihant imagined she was rolling her eyes. She placed her left gauntlet atop his head as if she were about to squeeze and crush it.

  Then she tilted her head, just a bit.

  “This will hurt.”

  He thought he heard a bit of a smile in her voice, just then.

  The green-stone gauntlet began to glow with an inner, verdant light, then flared brighter. Leihant forced his eyes closed, readying himself for whatever she was about to do.

  So many emotions were running through his mind, he raised his hands to try and pry her away but she was too strong, she felt immovable like iron. The light became overwhelming, blinding, he tried to pull away, but her hand was locking him in place and then—

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “Eh!” he exclaimed.

  She paused for several seconds, unmoving, then spoke.

  “What do you mean, ‘Eh’? Did it hurt you so little?”

  “Uh, not really,” he said, her hands still around his head, “it was more out of surprise. It felt like cold metal being pressed against me, a bit unpleasant, but no pain, not really.”

  She leaned back, now holding her own head with her left hand in thought, right hand still holding Leihant up by the neck.

  While she was focusing on her thoughts, Leihant closed his eyes, focusing on something else, just for a moment, before opening them again.

  “This is unexpected, without precedent,” she said, thinking, “the Order will definitely want you taken alive.”

  Leihant lifted up his left hand, fingers outstretched.

  “But what will you do,” he smiled, “if I cast this spell?”

  “Impossible!” she cried, recoiling all she could while holding him by the neck, “I burnt out your remaining spells! You have no magic left inside you!”

  “Then how will you stop me from doing this?” he cackled with laughter as he began forming symbols, angles and strange motions with the fingers of his left hand, swinging his left arm in sinuous patterns.

  “Stop that now!” she shouted into his face, dragging him closer and squeezing his neck, “I can still choke you, I can snap your neck! Stop!”

  He was choking now, but his left arm and fingers still continued with their motions, now raised as high as possible. Then her own left hand snapped out, grabbing his wrist. He still tried to move as best he could, even faster now, shaking his limb.

  “But—” he coughed out, attempting to say something, his choked voice no louder than a whisper“ —but what…”

  “But what?” She asked with an offended shout, pulling him so close he was almost touching her helmet, trying to hear his words.

  “But what…” he said, now smiling, “… what will you do about this?”

  While she was distracted by the left, his right arm had been reaching into his shirt pocket for the matchsticks. Now, his right hand was in front of her face-mask, lit flame between his fingers.

  She yelped.

  He dropped the flame, his head tilting down to watch it fall, her head unconsciously mirroring him.

  While he had been reaching with his right hand, his song-hand had been carving into the dirt, and pulling a specific object into a specific location.

  There was a magic circle below them, inscribed on the ground. There were ominous looking runes, straight-lines intersecting at strange angles, and an inset circle right around Helga’s feet.

  Before the flame touched the ground, she was leaping back, tossing Leihant away from her.

  The falling match landed exactly where Leihant wanted, on the remains of his smoke-bomb at the center of the supposed magic circle. When ignited, the smoke-bomb burnt for just a split-second as the last reagents inside the mix were burnt.

  That split-second was all Leihant needed.

  The smoke-bomb gave off a little smoke, a few sparks, but most of all it made sound. It let off a loud bang, echoing in the quiet forest.

  Helga dived backwards, shielding her head with her arms, tumbling as she landed.

  It took her more than a split-second to realize she had just been had.

  Leihant was already sprinting through the woods, faster than he ever imagined he could. He was fueled by fear, panic, but more than a little triumph. Even taken by surprise, even with no weapon to his name or spell in his mind, he had won, he had escaped.

  There was sound like whistling behind and below him. Instincts made him leap as high as he could.

  The great hammer flew through the air beneath him, barely missing his bare feet, hitting a tree ahead of him.

  The tree was old, it was big, it was solid. The head of the hammer impacted it square-on.

  The tree exploded.

  Leihant dove into the earth, dirt splattering him as he covered his head, wooden splinters and shards flying everywhere. Pain flared across his arms where they stung like stones from a sling, pain lanced into him where they struck like arrows from a bow.

  He was back up in an instant, sprinting again, getting clear of the tree as it toppled over where a disturbingly large part of it simply didn’t exist anymore.

  Leihant gained a new appreciation for just how strong Helga must be, along with new fear. He could hear her shouting in anger behind him.

  She was getting closer. She was out-pacing him, not by much, but enough.

  But Leihant had one last trick. Unlike his rain-sodden, desperate escape from the village, this time he at least knew where he was going.

  Running across the ground, he made sure his feet never stayed touching for more than a heartbeat.

  Only a few seconds later, there was a furious scream from behind him. He turned to take a look, then stopped his running.

  Helga was sinking into the mud. She was already waist-deep, trying to run, trying to pull herself out.

  The surface of the mud was speckled with blue dots.

  She howled with range, her arms clenched above her in fury, then she slumped. The pace of her sinking slowed to a trickle as she stopped struggling.

  “Come to watch me drown?” said said flatly, “I already knew you were a villain at heart, I did not expect you to be this sick and twisted. You won, you tricked me, I followed you into a patch of blue-mud, you won. Take your victory and go.”

  “No,” replied Leihant, triumph forgotten as melancholy entered his voice, “I needed to make sure the sayrellus maw here is too shallow to kill you, even if you struggle. I very much doubt it is that deep, it has not enough surface coloring to be mature enough. If you move slowly enough through this one, you can climb out, though that will take hours.”

  “You? You would stop your escape to ensure my survival?”

  “Yes. If you truly were in danger of drowning, I would have tossed you a large enough branch so you could climb out.”

  “Really? What if I instead pulled you in with it? Hooked the branch around your feet and tugged?”

  “I would have thrown it from pretty far away, and I doubt you would do that.”

  “I can throw things from very far away.”

  “Yes!” said Leihant with a laugh, “I certainly noticed that with the hammer.”

  Her head focused on him, she remained still and silent. He wondered what she was thinking, then realized it didn’t matter.

  “Goodbye, Helga, Adept of the Jadefeuer!” shouted Leihant, turning away and waving, “I hope I never see you again.”

  Suddenly there was a sharp pain in his buttocks. He yelped, turning to try and see what it was.

  It was a knife. A throwing knife.

  With a gasp of pain, he pulled it out.

  It was a flat, straight, symmetrical thing, steel sharpened enough to pierce bone, black string wrapped around the hilt to form a handle.

  He looked back at her with confused anger, something approaching betrayal in his voice.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  She was unmoving, silent, still waist-deep in the mud. It was almost as if she hadn’t just thrown a knife at his back. Her head tracked him.

  He turned away with a huff, pulling splinters out of his skin. He walked away with only a slight limp, for the knife had not sunk that deep at all, unlike her.

  * * *

  It was the work of a few minutes to pull the large, fallen log across the riverbank, dragging it through pebbles and sand, and just a small push to set it floating in the water. Clambering atop it, Leihant was soon set to sail down the river.

  The scenery was beautiful. Amber-gold sunlight beamed from the overhanging tree canopy, tall trees hanging over the water. The river was ever-flowing, ever-moving, sparkles of light flickering atop waves and ripples. There was no sound to be heard but that of the river, lapping at the shore, splashing against rocks, always murmuring. Specks of red and pink peeked through the green grasses and verdant bushes, flowers coming into bloom, fallen petals drifting with the current.

  If he wasn’t running for his life, he would have liked to try painting it.

  Lying down on the log, balancing himself to not tip over, Leihant closed his eyes, letting the current carry him away. The music of the river filled his ears.

  And then he heard a howl.

  Sitting up, he saw that his friend had returned. The cat was running along the riverbank, trying to keep up with him, wailing all the while.

  “I’m glad you made it! I’m sorry I couldn’t wait for you, but I hoped you were coming!” shouted Leihant with a laugh.

  The cat stood atop a small outcropping, wary of the river before it. Letting out a long, sad meow, it must have realized there was only one way it was making it onto that floating log with Leihant.

  “Sorry my feline friend, it looks like you’re in for a swim.”

  Hesitating just once, the cat leapt into the water with a fairly ungraceful splash. Paddling along the surface, it made it almost halfway before deciding enough was enough, and started to turn around and swim back to shore.

  “Oh no you don’t!” said Leihant, “there is no turning back now! Not for you, certainly not for me!”

  Reaching out with the song-hand, he easily pulled on the cat, dragging it towards the log. It let out another miserable howl.

  The cat must have been feeling tired indeed, for it let him lift it onto the log. A wary look in its eyes told him not to push his luck, and left it alone to sulk on its side of the raft. For a once-proud cat, it looked quite miserable, resembling a drowned rat with how wet and waterlogged it was, warm fur pushed down to reveal the thin body underneath. He laughed, supposing that he didn’t look much better himself, clad only in a filthy, tattered shirt that was once white, underwear that was in even worse condition, and a collection of rope, string and tree bark that resembled a skirt-belt if the viewer were to squint very hard. He was cold, and he would be colder still when there would soon be no sunlight to warm him and he had to swim again.

  “I know things look bad right now, friend,” said Leihant, gazing down the river ahead of them, “but believe me, our situation is much improved.”

  Lifting it from where he had bound it to his makeshift belt, Leihant watched the sunlight play across the bladed surface of the throwing weapon that had been stuck inside him only several minutes before.

  “Now we have a knife.”