It felt like my blood was boiling as I pulled so much magic into my body I couldn’t see straight. I didn’t need to, though. The sword blast was so bright it made my eyes hurt. Through the overwhelming contact it had with my shield, I felt the blast’s reverberations as it, denied progress, shed bolts of magic.
Based on the angry hisses and the sheer amount of shattering glass that I heard, I was pretty sure this entire room would need a remodel after we were finished.
My hands were on fire as the sword’s attack pushed harder, testing my shield’s integrity and searching for a weak spot.
Every muscle in my body screamed with pain, and my skin felt rubbed raw from the amount of magic I was dealing with. But my shield held—thankfully. Faced with this much power, fae magic or not, if I let my shield fall there was no way I was coming out of this uninjured. The attack was that overwhelming, and that consuming.
I turned my head, trying to get relief from the horrible heat.
It took my eyes a few moments to realize I was seeing Killian standing some feet behind me.
His eyes were wide with shock, and for once his body language was open with his disbelief.
Hah. That will teach him!
I raised an eyebrow at him as I wondered why he wasn’t on his phone or preparing to rain pain down on the fae. Because I needed reinforcements. My arms were shaking, and I didn’t think I’d be able to hold the line much longer.
When the magic succeeded in pushing me back a step, I turned back around and leaned in. Sweat dripped down the side of my face, and the heat and pressure were unbearable. I gritted my teeth as I poured magic into my spell, fighting the squeezing sensation in my chest.
I can’t hold on much longer…
Just when I thought my arms would give out, a blue shield slammed into place on my right side, reinforcing my spell and strengthening it. I barely had time to glance to my right and realize it was Felix before Momoko snapped her shield into place on my left.
With our magic converged, the pressure lifted from my arms, and our shield grew in size, humming with the low-throated purr of wizard magic.
“At your orders, Adept!” Momoko shouted.
I felt two more shields latch into place. I leaned forward to see who had joined us, and was not surprised to see Leslie and Franco on one end. A moment later, and Mrs. Yamada and Mr. Baree shored up the other side, and we formed a straight line across the spell-crafted prison.
Magic still raged through my body, but I no longer felt like I was about to sweat blood. My palms prickled, but I had stopped shaking, and our shields were an impenetrable wall. With the seven of us wizards working in harmony, our magic shields resonated, layering over one another, so soon even the heat from the spell was mostly blocked.
I laughed.
This is what I had wanted! This is what we’d practiced for, why we got up early and sweated and bruised ourselves every day.
So we could stand between danger and what we wanted to protect, and no one would be able to tear us apart.
“Medeis!” I shouted.
“House!” My six wizards shouted the word we’d chosen as our rally cry.
“Medeis!” I repeated.
“House!”
“V formation!” I yelled. “V formation, stepping forward into blast edge attack formation!”
“V formation!” Momoko shouted to my left.
“V formation!” Felix echoed on my right.
The orders swirled down the line, and Leslie and Franco backed up on the right side, while Mrs. Yamada and Mr. Baree backed up on the left, until we resembled an upside-down V.
My shield was back to taking the brunt of the attack, but the strain was minimal. With Momoko and Felix standing just behind me, their magic flowed into mine.
I wasn’t alone. Not anymore.
The first step I took I had to push with every muscle in my body and fight my way forward. Same with the second. By the third or fourth step, we’d successfully started pushing the sword’s attack backwards.
Each step was easier, and the blast of power that pushed down on us weakened. Soon we were jogging, leaving the magic circle and bearing down on the fae.
I couldn’t see them behind the brightness of their attack, but I was pretty sure I could hear fragmented shouts from Consort Ira.
I grinned as I felt the magic in the blast weaken, and flicker, and sure enough, I caught a full yell from Ira.
“Stop the attack! They’ll burn us alive with it!”
The blast from the sword grew less blindingly bright, and it lost about half of its power, finally giving me a good look at what we were facing.
Eleven fae were huddled together, horror flashing on their faces. The three fae responsible for charging the sword were hurriedly reading from books, but most importantly it didn’t seem like they were using any defensive spell that was made out of the same ancient magic the sword was.
Perfect.
“Switch, now!” I yelled to my family. “Blast edge attack, go!”
Momoko, Felix, and I held our shields and pushed hard, forcing the fae to complete the spell that powered down the sword.
Mrs. Yamada, Mr. Baree, Franco, and Leslie burst forward at a sprint, cutting around our shield and falling on the unprepared fae.
Franco must have gotten their weapons from the cars, because he had his crossbow loaded and within moments had shot a fae in the shoulder. The rest of my family were wielding their weapons of choice as well.
One of the night fae tried to rush Franco, her sword flashing, but Leslie slithered between them and smashed the fae in the chest with the butt of her spear. She spun it over her head like a warrior princess, and then leaned forward with her whole body and almost eviscerated the closest book-reading fae.
Mrs. Yamada and Mr. Baree both waded into the action, Mr. Baree bearing a club spiked with nasty iron spikes, and Mrs. Yamada with her falchion sword.
The magic sword had successfully been turned off, so as Leslie, Franco, Mrs. Yamada, and Mr. Baree made a mess of the fae front lines, Felix and Momoko moved closer to me so our shoulders brushed. We dropped our shield spells and began charging our portion of the attack.
Ira roared in rage from relative safety at the center of the group. “Stop them! They’re just wizards!”
But the fae had been fighting a distance battle with fae magic—which wouldn’t work on us.
The fae fumbled as they hurriedly swapped their crystal studded staffs for swords and daggers. But by that time, the hair on the back of my neck was standing up with the charge of our joint spell.
A male dressed in fae knight gear, bearing a wicked-looking black sword, took a swipe at Mrs. Yamada. A female fae knight managed to give Mr. Baree a wicked cut on his forearm, but it didn’t stop him from smashing his spiked club into her chestplate, crumpling it.
“Fall back!” I shouted.
Ira pointed to me. “Push our advantage!” he shouted.
It was his mistake.
Felix had his arm resting on my shoulder, and my arm pressed against Momoko’s back. When she twisted her neck to grin at me, her wizard mark was still the dark color it had been when we had our shields raised.
“Now?” Felix asked almost lazily.
“Now,” Momoko agreed.
Together we unleashed our intertwined spells, creating a lightning bolt blast radius that was the perfect size of the area the fae occupied. It rocked the Curia Cloisters and spawned cracks of thunder so loud, we temporarily deafened ourselves.