The Sanctuary Series: Volume 03 - Champion by Robert J. Crane

Author:Robert J. Crane [Crane, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Novels
Published: 2012-06-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

He charged then and stopped, the air in front of him seeming to catch fire. The heat rolled in a billowing blast, driving him back a step as a wall of flames ten feet tall sparked to life, cutting him off from the enemy and causing his armor to warm.

“Get back, you daft bastard, or you’ll catch fire.” The words were casual, as though nothing of particular importance were happening. He heeded them, trying to avoid stumbling from the inferno that blazed so hot that he flinched from it. He looked back to see the rest of his force halted, and standing at the fore, hands aglow with the light of magic, was Chirenya. “Might as well start them off with the proper attitude—a healthy dose of fear.”

Cyrus looked back to the battle line of the dark elves. Through the fire he could see the front rank of soldiers ablaze. Screams rang over the crackling of the flames, the shouts of agony taking over as the blaze consumed everything within a hundred yards of the starting point. Cyrus watched bodies, wreathed in fire, leaping off the sides of the span into the river below by the dozens.

She just set fire to over half that column, he thought. A thousand of them, wiped out. The screams were howling, filling the air with the anguish of the burning. The inferno shifted, moving away from Cyrus and the Sanctuary force, rolling down the bridge as though it were wheeled, leaving flaming corpses behind as it moved forward, hungry to consume more of the dark elven army.

She has to be out of magical energy, he thought. Even if she’s four thousand years old, I’ve never seen a wizard cast a fire spell that powerful before; she has to be close to drained. Or is she already? Her eyes were fluttering in concentration, and the glow around her hands had changed from a bright blue to a dark crimson.

“Mother, stop!” Vara’s command was sharp, panic rising in her voice. “You’ll kill yourself!

Chirenya’s eyes opened, drifting, and her knees buckled. “I believe I just cost myself a century of life,” she said, falling into the arms of J’anda, who caught her. A thin trickle of blood dribbled out of her nose and onto her blouse. She looked down the bridge and saw hundreds of bodies still on fire, even though the spell had died down, and a smile appeared on her waxy face. “Very much worth it, I would say.”

“They’ll think twice before sending the next wave,” Longwell said, now at Cyrus’s side. “No army could stand up to that.”

“The next wave will be different,” Cyrus said, staring down the bridge. The army massed below, but a ripple was moving through them, their attack halted by the uncertainty brought on by watching their first division slaughtered in fire. “I’d expect archers to start peppering us soon.” He stared at the corpses in blackened armor littering the bridge in front of them. “That was a hell of a spell,” Cyrus muttered.

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