Page 66 of Realm of Crows (Wings of Ink #5)
Forty-Nine
Myron
I’ve seen my fair share of pain and suffering in my lifetime, but this is a whole different level.
Fairies strong enough to slay a hundred humans each are crawling through the blood-soaked dirt, begging for it to stop.
Some of their faces I remember from our sparring sessions in the arena behind Rogue’s palace, but most of them are nameless faces whose ending is imminent if we don’t manage to get the upper hand.
Those Tavrasian bastards have started using the close-range crossbows with tiny glass vials instead of arrows.
Whatever we destroy of their arsenal, they always seem to have something else in store to pull our legs out from under us.
Good thing Tori, Royad, and I have proven Ayna’s theory right by not vomiting more than once before getting back on our feet whenever we’re hit.
It’s a small win, but it’s a win that the three of us keep getting up to hurl our powers down Tavras’s lines.
It doesn’t do much to the soldiers, of course, but we’ve figured out that not all parts of their weapons are coated in the magic-repellent substance.
The wood and steel of their crossbows melts or bursts at our assaults, and each time, we reduce more of their weapons.
Some of them have bolted when nothing but the blades of their swords remained, but it’s not enough. Nothing seems to be enough.
We’re vastly outnumbered, with so many of the Askarean soldiers still recovering from being showered in the magic-nullifying liquid, and Tavras’s ranks keep being replenished with more projections.
With a scream, I launch myself back into action, slicing into the shoulder of a soldier whose sword just dropped from his hands, the handle and pommel crumbling between his fingers in a flash of Royad’s power.
I take the moment of surprise to pick him off alongside the three others grasping thin air.
Tori fights right beside me, conjuring more liquified rock to knock out soldiers with a hit on their forehead if their armor won’t allow the rock to go through.
We’ve found a rhythm, and we’re sticking to it for as long as it works, while Rogue took over the command of the army, allowing him to stay on the sidelines where chances of getting hit by a vial—or an arrow for that matter—are slim.
Not having gone through weeks of being drugged, the Fairy King isn’t as resilient to the substance as the three of us, and Shaelak be damned if we allow him to put himself in harm’s way.
If things go sideways, he promised Ayna, he’d send me on a ship east to find a new home. Well, I have every intention of taking him and Sanja with me if this world is indeed doomed.
“Not again,” Royad groans as the gap between soldiers is immediately closed by what could be new troops or simple projections. It’s impossible to tell at the rate they keep stepping into the scattered lines.
“We’ve had enough of those fuckers,” Tori agrees, while I raise my sword for another attack.
The blade goes square through the man’s chest without resistance, but collides with some physical form the moment my hand reaches through what’s obviously a projection.
An orange glow shimmers behind it, and I’m not fast enough to pull back my arm—a searing pain runs up my fingers all the way to my elbow as fire eats away at my armor, and I can’t help the curse rolling off my tongue as the Fire Fairy who burned me laughs past the projection.
“Shit, are you all right?” Royad ducks out under what could be a virtual blade or a real one.
“Fine.” Gritting my teeth, I stumble out of the way of another fireball, dragging Royad along.
My cousin looks a little worse for wear, a fresh cut running down his cheek in parallel to his scar, but otherwise, he’s been keeping out of harm’s way pretty well.
Unlike Tori, whose armor is peppered with little cuts where he was hit by blades and arrows.
It’s a miracle he’s still standing. Then, he’s Rogue’s general with vast experience in both combat and everything connected to maneuvering a battle.
Healing himself along the way is a survival skill I’m not surprised to see he has mastered.
Just as we get out of the way, another wave of little vials flies across the field, hitting the fairies behind us. They go down within moments, clutching their stomachs as the drug takes effect, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, more soldiers stream toward us, swords raised and ready for the kill.
I’m about to step into their path to protect the fairies I don’t know how, but just as the first soldier is upon me, he evaporates like smoke on a wind, colors fading away and scattering across our heads.
As does the soldier next to him. And the one next to that one.
And the next and the next and the next. Until a corridor devoid of opponents is staring back at us.
And at the other end of the army, I spot brown armor and gleaming blades charging at the back lines of the Tavrasian army.
“The rebels,” Royad beats me to it, and I could swear those are tears in his eyes.
I have no idea how Ayna and the others managed to stop Erina, but they obviously did, or we wouldn’t see our reinforcements barge in from the south where rows and rows of projections kept blocking us, providing cover for their shooters to take out more of us with the magic-nullifying drug.
A horn echoes in the west, bouncing off the steep face of the mountains, and Tori’s face brightens as he draws up a fresh supply of rocks from the ground.
“Just in time.” He grins at the fairy soldiers closest to him, hope sparking in each of their faces as he holds up a cloud of melted stone, aiming them at what’s left of the Tavrasian army.
Just as he’s ready to release the rocks, Rogue pops up amidst the soldiers on their knees, holding out his free hand to the one closest to him while he lifts his sword with the other.
“Cezux is here, my friends. Today, we won’t die.
We’ll fight for our freedom, our kingdom, and our loved ones.
We’ll fight to give the Prince of Askarea a home. ”
It takes a heartbeat for the message to sink in—the message apart from the ones of reinforcements.
“A prince,” one of the fairies shouts. “Askarea will have a prince.”
“For the Prince of Askarea,” another one shouts, struggling to get to his feet but managing to stand in the face of his king—and the task he called for. “For the future!”
“For the Prince!” The shouts are everywhere now, the news spreading like a wildfire as soldier after soldier rallies their strength and courage.
“Attack!” Tori booms across the field—and they do.
As if kissed by the gods themselves, they charge the thinned enemy lines, and where they strike, Tavras falls.
From the west, Cezux’s cavalry tramples into the Tavrasian flank, horse and rider immune to the magic-nullifying drug, and in the south, the corridor is filling with rebels, separating the two halves of the Tavrasian army.
“Sanja will kill me for spilling our secret,” Rogue says before he follows his soldiers into battle, and I can’t help grinning as I join him.
“For the Prince.”