Page 28 of Chosen Spirits (The Bartender Mage #4)
Instead of joining the two, Rahul stayed closer to Tucker, beside I'ari's ward. "I've got your back, pup. Fuck, though! I wish we knew what it was. Hostile, or benign? Spirit, or flesh? The only clue we have is the bell that was dropped in the lake last year."
"Wait!" Mina called over to them. "Did you say a bell? Was that what caused the lake to turn red? The news never said."
Rahul glanced over his shoulder, while Tucker tried to see if I'ari's ritual dancing was approaching any kind of finale. "Yes? A church bell, dropped in the dead center of the lake."
"No, that wouldn't have been… latha, shoot!" Mina abandoned her refuge, ignoring Tucker's warning growl and shooing gestures as she dashed down the slope back towards them, stopping beside Rahul. Leif was right behind her, likewise ignoring Tucker's admonishments .
"Not a church bell," she said to Rahul. "A ceremony bell. Remember that book in my room, the one that you said showed me and my mom reading it together on the couch? It was a book of stories about cultural rituals. Bells would be rung on special occasions like weddings."
"Did the book say what turning a lake red meant?"
"Not the book, but my mom. She'd said—"
The wind carried a trio of fresh scents to Tucker's nose. He leapt past the others, interrupting Mina as he shifted into his weredog form. "Hold! Show yourselves, please!"
From beside the house approached three individuals, and though they weren't walking as if they were trying to mask their steps, Tucker's ears couldn't hear their footfalls.
Magic of some kind. Arbiter Joseph Hernandez was a familiar face, though, and the dark-haired druid with his pleasing ears and everpresent staff was looking well since Tucker had last seen him in Tenabrut.
He was accompanied by two others, a male elf in dark vestments and carrying a rune-carved staff that could have been the twin of the one Joseph held, and an older woman with white wispy hair that wore a lace-up bodice over a silken dress.
"Tucker Johnson," the woman said, her eyes skimming over them.
"And others. I'll kindly ask that you four leave, for your own safety.
We'll handle matters from here. Joseph, why don't you see what you can do about banishing those summoning chains.
Ren? Make us a fortified position, it looks like we're moments away from a breach. "
Tucker growled, but it was Mina who strode forward.
"Excuse you! But these three are here as invited guests, thank you very much, and this is my home. Just who do you think you are, waltzing up and giving orders?"
"Arbiters Edith, Ren, and Joseph, and we're here to stop an eldritch beast from escaping a timeless prison," the woman said, striding past their gathered group and pausing to study I'ari.
She was soon followed by Ren, who plunged his staff several feet into the shoreline and began a chant, and then an embarrassed smelling Joseph.
The druid began tracing glyphs on the ground with both his staff and his feet, and Tucker could smell the scent of fir trees.
"Sure, sure, just invite yourselves in, why don't you," Mina said to their backs, her tone syrupy sweet. "It'll be a party! Me, my mom, three real guests, three rude guests, and my mom's soon to arrive plus one. Assholes ."
Rahul frowned at their backs, then looked at Tucker.
"This is a good thing, isn't it? Letting the arbiters take charge? I'ari always brings trouble."
Tucker whined, then shifted back into his human form so he could articulate better. "I don't know. Didn't you say that she was only unbinding creatures that had been kept prisoner for far too long?"
"That's true, but the messes still had to be handled by DOMA. If three arbiters want to give it a go instead…"
Tucker watched as Edith continued to direct Ren and Joseph, and heard Leif whispering to Mina, asking her about the bell.
"The bells would be rung for special events, and it would send out auroras that sensitives could see. The bigger the bell, the bigger the ripple, and the more special the event. Some northern lights you see are actually the results of rung bells."
"And red?" Leif pressed, staring out at the lake. "What does red mean?"
"A new heir."
"Enough, you four!" Edith called out. With a single spoken word, an invisible force started pushing them away from the shore. "Last warning to clear away, the breach is in thirty seconds. Status update?"
"Physical and psychic shields are up," Ren said, his voice a deep bass. "Working on adding a sanctuary."
Joseph didn't cease his scribing. "Not making headway on the chains. The lady's ritual is repairing the damage as fast as I cause it. If we could interrupt her dancing—"
"Not an option, the Lanathanon princess is not to be directly interfered with. Fifteen seconds!"
"We should clear out," Tucker said, nodding to Rahul, and they each grabbed one of their smaller friends. Leif struggled against him, though, continuing to focus on the shore line.
"No, I think—"
There was a loud crash, like waves upon a rocky shore, and then the I'ari's guest appeared, a titanic creature that dwarfed the shoreline.
Tucker winced, ducking his head to block out the sight. Just staring at the leviathan left his mind reeling. He could make out a number of tentacles, though, moving at a glacial speed, and the wave crash seemed almost suspended in midair.
"Break those chains," Edith said, then spoke words that seemed more solid to Tucker than the wind and sun on his skin. A hammer of blood-red energy began striking at seemingly thin air. "They're what's tethering the beast to our world."
"Cub, come on."
Leif shook his head fiercely. "No, I get it . I can see what the chains are connected to, and parts of the binding.A timeless prison, right? Stasis? Arbiters, you need to stop!"
"We told you to leave!" Edit shot back, and her floating hammer struck again, leaving an after-image of a shattered chain. With another word, her hammer moved to a new position.
" Listen to me! You bound two people, not just one. You bound a pregnant being!"
Edith's hammer paused in the air for a moment, but then continued on to strike at a second chain. The tentacles were starting to speed up, thrashing on the shore. One glanced off of Ren's barrier, and even at the speed of a falling feather, the ground shook from the impact.
"Edith?" Joseph asked.
"Keep going, arbiter. They're just making suppositions."
Tucker took a deep breath, smelling the different emotions from his boyfriends, and the mixed frustration and worry from Mina.After meeting Leif's unwavering gaze and seeing Rahul's cocky grin, he realized with that they were all on the same page, and he stood up straighter.
After a few whispered words and gestures to the others, Leif swung off his alchemist's kit and began mixing, while Rahul followed Tucker as he trudged down to the arbiters.
"Joseph," he began. "It's not just a guess!
You and I investigated this lake ourselves, remember?
The unexplained red waters? The fish and frogs that were unusually jubilant?
That bell that we found was acting as a damned positive pregnancy test !
Whoever or whatever your Order bound here, however long ago—"
"—is too dangerous to be allowed free, or it never would have been bound in the first place!
" Edith countered.She hissed between her teeth, laying him and Rahul flat with another burst of power.
"Joseph, stop stalling. Help me break these chains, so we can send this thing back to its prison.
Maybe after a sensible review panel looks over the threat, we can discuss unbinding. "
With an apologetic look, Joseph renewed his glyph scribing.
Rahul helped Tucker stand upright, and he heard him snort in amusement. "Hey, pup. It kind of looks like these three party crashers are trying to interfere with the arrival of one of I'ari's invited guests. You think we should help our hostess out?"
"I reckon I do," he said. Glancing back, he saw Leif shaking a mixer, while Mina now held a top hat in her hand and was whispering over it. Turning to the arbiters, he shifted into his largest were-shape and moved in.
Howling, he charged directly at Joseph. The man's eyes widened, staring at him slack jawed before holding his arms up in front of himself at the last second.
Tucker was abruptly lifted off of the ground and sent flying, landing some forty or fifty feet down the beach.
Reversing quickly, he made a second charge, with a similar result.
Barking playfully at the fun game, he continued distracting the druid, forcing him to repel him with wind spirits instead of doing his assigned job.
Rahul, meanwhile, had torn off his shirt and planted his feet.
Glimmers of fire and light wafted off of his body as a golden sheen crept along his skin, and with a clap of his hands he conjured a nimbus of light right in front of the other two arbiters, blinding them.
Tucker simply shut his eyes, navigating by his sense of smell.
"Stop interfering," Edith demanded. "Ren?"
Tucker was knocked aside, this time by a sand golem rising from the ground.
Tucker swiped at it, severing an arm, but the creature didn't have a firm shape, and for each appendage that Tucker knocked off, the elemental grew two or three new ones, and soon the nightmarish collection of limbs had him pinned to the ground beneath flowing waves of earth.
Tucker hastily considered his dwindling options, like changing shape for the surprise factor, but then Rahul was there, flames roaring.
"Fuck off!" his Roo bear shouted, and with flames dancing along his skin, he thrust his hands inside the sand elemental. Some of it fused immediately into glass, other bits into molten slag that Tucker was quick to roll away from, but either way, it no longer had the cohesion to be a threat.