The sounds of battle continued to assail him, grunts and cries, the grinding of stone, and the wet noises of flesh being torn, and in his mind, Will began to fear for those he loved. But he couldn’t see what was happening.
Wild magic can help, advised the voice. Your focus is strong enough.
He didn’t have time to wonder at the source, but Will understood. Adjusting his vision, he reduced his sensitivity to turyn, and the brilliant glow around him faded, becoming transparent. He could see.
Laina and Mark Nerrow stood side by side, while Tiny and Darla stood in front of them. Their elementals, earth, fire, air, and yet more fire, danced around them, burning and destroying anything that came near. Some of the students assisting in the defense were already down.
Laina’s earth elemental provided substantial defense, but they couldn’t see through its walls, so she couldn’t surround them with an impenetrable dome. Instead she used moving panels, stone walls that flowed and shifted back and forth, allowing them a view at the battle around them. As Will watched, one of the undead leapt through a gap, only to be met by Darla’s silver blades.
The Arkeshi didn’t have room to maneuver, though, and with Mark and Laina behind her she couldn’t retreat. Despite the timing of her attacks, she might have been overwhelmed, but for Tiny’s timely intervention. Seizing the fiend with both hands, the big man used his mass to arrest the creature’s momentum.
It was too strong for him to pin, though, and the vampire turned on him, clawing and biting at his armor, but that was enough. Tiny held it in place long enough for Darla’s silvered weapons to disable it, cutting through tendons and joints. Soon they were kicking the pieces of the creature back outside their little stronghold and waiting for the next entrant.
The single-entry idea had worked perfectly, but for the obvious flaw. As they’d predicted, someone among the vampires was smart enough to direct some of the monsters to find other entrances. Laina and her father alone were enough to guard the door, but those that remained of the other student sorcerers were in trouble.
Two of the stone-sealed windows had already been breached, and there were burning remains on the floor beneath them. Fire elementals were picking off vampires as they entered, but the fiends moved so quickly that some kept slipping through.
While he watched, one such free agent ran up the aisle toward an unsuspecting defender. It slammed into a point-defense shield, then lost its head a second later as a force-lance tore through its neck. Will felt a brief tremor run through the currents of turyn around him, but they stabilized a moment later.
Then he spotted another vampire that had somehow escaped notice. It was crawling down one wall like a roach as it prepared to drop down on some of the ritual participants. He wrecked the beast with three force-lances, and then one of the defenders noticed and dispatched a fire elemental to dispose of the quivering remains.
A juggler had come to Barrowden once when he was little, and Will imagined that his experience felt somewhat similar to what the performer had done back then. He continued to balance the devastating currents of power, while occasionally throwing force-lances out to disrupt the enemies that had gotten past the defenders. It was like keeping a dozen balls in the air and unexpectedly tossing one out to the audience now and then.
He had never learned to juggle, but Will was starting to think he might be good at something much better, at least for a wizard. He fought to contain a giggle of hysteria as he continued feeding turyn to the ritual seed, all while letting his peripheral vision inform his reflexes, blasting anything that moved too quickly.
He felt like a god.
The student defenders rallied, burning the bodies of the ones he brought down and consolidating their control over the open windows. The entry of vampiric invaders slowed, and soon the cathedral sanctuary was quiet, except for the heavy breathing of those who were grateful for the rest.
Will didn’t need a rest, though. He could have kept it up forever. The power was spinning around him effortlessly, dancing in and out as it passed between his hands and entered the ritual seed. How long he spent like that he was unsure—long enough that it began to seem normal, as though he’d spent his entire life doing nothing but that.
He became exquisitely aware of the feeling, the touch of turyn, the way it moved. He’d never controlled that much power before, not firsthand. It required a delicate touch and a sense of rhythm, like dancing. Fortunately, unlike dancing, he seemed to be a natural. Once you’ve felt it, you can never forget, said the stranger’s voice. It becomes part of you and everything changes. You are reborn, child; this is your baptism in magic.
“Who are you?” Will cried, but he didn’t receive an answer.
And then it was time. Seizing the currents, Will sent them crashing inward to fill a ritual construct that was finally large and strong enough to contain them. His head fell back, and his mouth opened as his voice screamed out with joy, though he had no idea what he might be yelling. It was like an orgasm—no, it was better.
Argent energy streamed outward in the shape of millions upon millions of brilliant silver spheres. They blinded him even through closed eyelids, and they kept coming, an endless flow emerging from the living womb of power he had built. Those around him fell to their knees, covering their eyes with hands and arms, trying to block out the searing light. But Will merely laughed. He had changed his eyes, dimming everything, and when the others could finally look at him again, they saw that where his eyes should be there were only unsettling black orbs.
The ritual power finally finished and passed beyond the cathedral walls, soaring into the night and dipping into the earth and sky. It rushed over the city like a wave, purifying everything, and wherever the vampires hid, they perished, burning away into piles of ash that the breeze soon scattered.
As the light died away, Will’s eyes returned to normal, but he couldn’t stop the giddy laughter from spilling from his lips. It had felt so good. He was nothing but smiles—until he saw the bodies of the students who had died.
Blood was splattered across the sanctuary floor and walls, some red, some black. Scorch marks covered everything, along with crumbled pieces of stone and splintered wood. But while the vampire bodies had disintegrated under the withering glare of the ritual’s magic, those of his fellow students had not.
He got himself under control, and then his ears began to decipher the sounds around him, a mixture of quiet sobbing and tearful goodbyes being said to friends who wouldn’t see the sun rise tomorrow. Looking toward the door, he was grateful to see that his friends and family all appeared safe and unharmed.
Two students, one male and one female, stood out to him, for they had died while holding onto each other. He didn’t know either of them, but their faces were vaguely familiar. Unlike most of the other victims, these two showed no signs of tooth or claw. They had died instantly, from the distinctive, fist-sized hole of a force-lance that had gone through both of them simultaneously.