The Bad Insect

Randal glared at Chris and swept his staff. Fireballs spilled from its tip in a stream, every one of them hunting him.

Chris did not charge in blind. From the moment he had first scattered the branches, he had been laying his work beneath the ground. Roots punched up through the earth, lashed the fireballs, and ran them through. Whatever flame still refused to die, he met with his body and broke past.

When Chris came on like that, Randal felt the weight of it and gave ground. He retreated, already shaping a killing spell, and a keen force stabbed through his whole body, awl-sharp.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Something drove into him with every impact, and Randal's body jerked. Chris had used Death's Finger, the technique he had stolen from Marquis Dominic.

From where Chris stood, it was the blow he had been saving. Regrettably, a defensive artifact caught it, and the result fell short of what he had pictured.

The fire tiger was still stalking his back. Chris called the grass up out of the ground and snared its ankles. Grass cannot stop fire. It burned away to nothing in a breath.

The instant the tiger roared and gathered itself to kick off the earth, Chris cast Earth's Shackles. Hands of soil sprouted, seized all four paws, and clung, hauling, trying to drag the beast down under the ground.

Randal flung aside the shattered necklace and ring.

"Shooting wind-attribute mana from a finger. I have never encountered that. What is it?"

"A spell I made myself."

"It does not strike me as magic."

Randal let out a thin breath of a laugh.

"A mage, stooping to parlor tricks."

Chris wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve.

"If my body had been in one piece, you'd have been dead a long time ago."

It was the truth. Julien had left him a wreck.

"You are hardly the one to say so."

"You hurt too? You look fine to me."

"I am holding my fire in check. I mean to take you alive."

"Why alive?"

"I need to know what became of my disciple."

"I already told you."

"You are plainly hiding something."

While the two of them spoke, the fire tiger was buried completely, and at last it vanished.

Chris broke into a charge.

"I'll see that you meet David."

Randal cut his staff across on the level. Flame surged in along that line. Chris sheathed his hand in water, struck the fire apart, and drove through the gap.

Randal spoke a chant and shouted.

In the narrow space between them, more than a hundred short fire arrows took shape. Since his lessons with Tenbo, Chris's magic had grown to the point where a hundred fire arrows were well within his reach. Forming them in so short a span was not. Randal's skill was, without question, the greater.

"Go!"

At the shout, hundreds of fire arrows launched as one. Chris met them with Swallow's Dance, the art whose foundation he had laid at Calmer Manor and whose finish he had learned from Count Tren. Left foot, right foot, and his body changed direction with every step.

Randal had never seen a mage move like that, swift and strange at once. He could not land a true hit.

Chris threaded the gaps between the arrows and closed to within a step of him. In a space that tight, with that many arrows, coming through untouched was impossible. Five or six punched into his body, and still his barrier and a Grandmaster's hardened flesh endured them.

Chris was certain he had won.

Let me in this close, and you have no future.

A blade of wind took clean shape in his right hand.

I have wanted you dead for a long time.

In that instant Randal cried out.

He drew an explosive artifact from his robe and threw it.

Chris swore inwardly.

Every other breath, this bastard has been waiting.

Boom.

The artifact burst, hurling out a savage flash and a crack of thunder. Chris threw a barrier up across his front in a hurry, but the blast tore through it like paper and beat him down. He went tumbling. Dozens of shards buried themselves in his flesh, and blood ran from all over him.

The force of the explosion had been driven wholly toward Chris, so Randal stood untouched. For a blast at that range to leave a man unharmed, the artifact had to be ruinously expensive.

Randal came forward with his staff leading. A small fireball formed ahead of it and began to swell.

"Speak the truth, and I will kill you without pain."

Chris spat. It came out red with blood.

"If I talk, will you let me live?"

"No. I cannot spare you."

"Then I won't talk."

And he charged. Randal had not imagined that a mage sheathed in his own blood could still come at him so fast. Startled, he loosed the fireball on reflex.

Chris burst out through the fireball, body first. Even a Grandmaster's flesh has a limit. Shock upon shock had left his strength unwilling to answer. He had closed in again, and his body would not obey him. He reached for his final resort.

"I told you I'd let you meet David. David's right here."

Even through the fury of the fight, the mask had never left his shoulder. He seized it and flung it at Randal's face.

Randal had not forgotten the mask. Leave a thing perched on your shoulder like that, and it gnaws at the attention whether you wish it or not.

An artifact housing some unusual power. It has to be.

Anyone watching could see the fight rushing toward its end.

Randal's instinct spoke ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠plainly. This was the last exchange. Weather this one attack, and the victory was his. He set himself and leveled the staff at the incoming mask. Flame shot from it.

He had never seen an artifact that lived and moved. Naturally, the flame chased the path the mask was flying.

The mask betrayed his expectation and writhed like a living thing. With the economy of a veteran knight it slipped aside, let the flame pass, then surged all at once and came down like a shot.

Thock.

The mask clamped over the staff. In that instant the staff's power was sucked into it. Randal recoiled in horror and shook the staff. Astonishingly, the mask kicked off the wood as if it had grown feet, rose, and sealed itself over his face.

"Kh—!"

The moment the mask adhered to his face, Randal screamed.

"So how's an evil spirit taste?"

Chris got the words out through blood.

"Foul, isn't it? I've been through it. I know that flavor well."

Randal fled screaming, just as Chris once had. Chris did not follow.

He had expected the evil spirit Tenbo to devour Randal, but if that guess was wrong—if Randal overcame the spirit and came back to himself—then Chris, in his present state, could not deal with him. And even if Tenbo won, as expected, that was its own problem. There was no knowing what an evil spirit wearing Randal's body would do.

He might turn on me. He might take the Motaro.

Chris did not trust Tenbo. He never had. So he set off in a direction other than the one Randal had run, and as he went he turned the fight over in his mind.

Among the Sikbae, the mages of Seed Cultivation, he had thought himself the finest, because he had killed a Chukhwan. Granted, more than one circumstance had favored him then. Sheikh had already been wounded by the ambush; he had been fighting while protecting a magic circle, and so could not bring his true strength to bear; and he had misread the field, not knowing his enemy possessed a Grandmaster's body. Even so, a Chukhwan was a Chukhwan. Helped by the situation or not, a victory was a victory.

So he had been sure of himself, and yet, astonishingly, he had very nearly lost. Everything that had worked for him against Sheikh had turned the other way this time. He had taken Randal's ambush already gravely wounded. Randal's fire magic had been powerful, and the explosive artifact thrown at the end had been truly lethal. He had come within a breath of dying.

Just as an objectively lesser Chris had brought down a Chukhwan, a lesser Randal might well have brought down Chris.

In a fight where your life is the stake, carelessness will kill you.

He muttered it inwardly and kept walking without rest. Blood fell from him in heavy drops and darkened the ground.

They could follow the blood.

He rose about a handspan on flight magic and traveled that way, a barrier shaped beneath his feet to catch what fell.

For a fortnight he hid, treating his wounds and drilling his magic. He had meant to stay buried for half a year, afraid of Julien, who would be hunting him with his eyes alight—but the food would not allow it, and he had to leave the hiding place.

The ruins held no animal worth catching. Fruit picked from the trees, roots dug out of the dirt, bark peeled and eaten, insects caught and swallowed: a man can live on that only so long.

He wanted out of these sickening ruins. He wanted to tear into as much meat as he could hold. Sweet, soft bread. Hot soup. A sweet cake.

And a cup of wine.

The thought of food drew the water into his mouth.

This is not the time to be thinking about eating. Run into Julien, and I'm a dead man.

Chris bit his lip and forced his eyes wide. He woke his senses until they were raw and watched every quarter, straining for any stir of mana that did not belong. It slowed him. He moved the whole day and still covered little ground.

Near sunset he made a new shelter. He dug deep into the earth, then drew grass up over the surface to hide the trace of it. The problem of air he solved by drawing in the roots of a nearby tree. He was a Sikbae mage with a wood-attribute seed; setting a tree to drink the air and pass it down through its roots was no difficult thing.

Sleep would not come. He tossed and turned, then linked to the mask for the first time in a long while.

Chris sent a thread of Thought Language into the fifth window.

"Did you succeed?"

"Where ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠are you?"

The question in return told him Tenbo had taken Randal's body.

"That's a secret."

"Now I'm hurt."

"What's there to be hurt about?"

"A secret between us. Of course it stings."

"And what are we, exactly?"

"Two who saved each other."

"I took you out of a drawer, so yes, I'm your savior. I don't recall you ever saving me."

"I handled Randal for you, didn't I? If I hadn't attacked him then, you'd be dead."

"True enough. But look at it slowly, and what I did was make you a new body. You could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠call that a favor from me."

"Fine."

"You're admitting it?"

"Yes. I'll repay the favor, so tell me where you are."

Chris had no wish to meet him. A favor, with Tenbo, might be repaid as enmity.

"That would be difficult."

"Why?"

He made something up.

"I don't even know where I am. I've been running myself ragged, dodging Julien."

"Keep heading toward the sunrise. Do that, and you'll be able to meet me."

"All right. While we're at it, can you tell me how to get out of here?"

"Find the Silver Key. As for what the key is—"

Chris cut him off.

"I already know that. What I want is where it lies. Where do I go to get one?"

"I'll tell you when we meet."

"Fine. Have you tried speaking to the other masks?"

"No."

"If you do make contact, I'd like you to act as if you don't know me."

"I have no intention of reaching out. If they contact me, I'll say nothing of you. In return, you say nothing of me. Not only to those who wear the masks. To everyone."

A chill went through him.

"You're planning to live as Randal."

"For a while."

"Think you can fool the people who knew him?"

"I can."

He seemed to have a method of his own. Whether the evil spirit Tenbo, living on as Randal, did harm to Mick Magic Tower or not was no affair of Chris's.

"Fine. We'll both pretend we've never met."

Chris severed the link and slept deeply. At dawn the next day he set out toward the setting sun. For four days he wandered in search of anything made by hands, and found only wasteland, stretching on and on.

Did I choose the wrong direction? Should I turn toward the sunrise even now?

He had stopped to weigh it when the ground turned over. Ahead of him the earth rose. Under his feet, it sank.