Chapter 75 – The Road Home

The second day on the road was as uneventful as the first. Thankfully, the next rest station’s obelisk was in better shape, and the travelers there thanked her for charging it. It had a minor mana leak, but was functional without repairs. The third day, she saw several traders pointing out to sea as she neared them. When she turned, she saw the thin spines of a leviathan cutting through the waters, dark body the size of a ship just visible on the surface.

That was strange. Leviathans rarely came into the East Sound, and it was rarer still for them to come to the surface. She stopped Desert Rose, and while the eximontar started eying the nearby foliage, Mirian watched the colossal creature swim along the coast. It was a majestic sight from the shore. From the sea, it must have been terrifying. A little flock of fishing boats from a nearby village—sails dwarfed by the size of the spines—tacked hard to shore and beached themselves. She could hear the distant echoes of their shouting far down the beach.

Eventually, the leviathan slipped under the water, and she rode on. It was only the second time she had ever seen one. When she was a child, her parents had taken her on a long tour of the country in an extended family vacation. They’d sailed along the Rift Sea, and they’d seen a leviathan off in the distance. The crew had immediately gotten to work on charging spellward buoys while the sorcerers had gone to starboard so they could watch it in case it approached. Thankfully, it had wandered off, but the whole crew was on edge the rest of the day.

Mirian ate simple lunches of bread and olive oil so she didn’t have to stop. Just after lunch, Mirian made it to the wreck.

Five repair cars waited on the train tracks that lay just north of the road, while about a dozen workers mostly stood around, some leaning on shovels, while two sorcerers worked on levitating steel wreckage off to the side. The spell engine clearly had ignited; metal slag had melted and spilled all across the tracks, then hardened into a shiny lump. The engine car itself was unrecognizable. Two other cars had derailed, though they’d only partially melted in the heat.

Mirian could tell it was no ordinary accident, though. Anyone not an arcanist might have missed it, but there was a hole a few dozen paces from the tracks. It was only about a foot wide, and had already collapsed into itself, but she could still feel the arcane energy lingering in the spot. She paused, then rode over to see it.

“Hey! This is a work zone. Dangerous, yeah? Back to the trail!” one of the workers called.

“Just checking something out,” Mirian said, and dismounted so she could trudge up to the spot.

“Can you—?”

“Yeah I’ll deal with her. Hey!” One of the workers jogged over. “This area’s not safe. You can watch from the road if you want, but we need to keep people from the site. The sorcerers are moving around some heavy stuff, and there’s no telling if everything here is done burning.”

Mirian ignored him. There were enough people standing around it was clear they didn’t think it was dangerous anymore. What they didn’t want was a critical detail spreading. This wasn’t just a spell engine catching fire. One of the magical eruptions must have triggered it.

It’s still so early in the cycle, Mirian thought. And now, she’d looked at the data Respected Jei had given her. She knew that there weren’t even any tests on the Arcane Monument anywhere near this date range. That, and what the Akanan spy had told her all made it clear: something else was going on.

The magical eruption had been a small one, thankfully, or the entire train might have been incinerated and everyone killed. This was the first time she’d actually seen the site of an eruption, though. Naturally, she didn’t have any measuring devices or useful divination spells.

“Did you hear me?”

Besides, this is your break, Mirian told herself. “Sure. Good luck,” she told the worker, and headed back down to Desert Rose, who had clamped her mouth down on a nearby shrub and seemed to be trying to pull it out of the ground by shaking her head back and forth.

“I’m sure you’ll find another just like it,” she told the eximontar. “Let’s go.” She let a trickle of mana distract Desert Rose and led her back to the trail. Then they were off again, trotting down the road.

In the sky above, she watched a pair of two-headed vultures soar over the road, landing on the beach where they started tearing at some washed up carcass. Then she saw a lightning scorpion cross the trail ahead of them, and she realized what she’d just seen. Myrvites, crossing the road like the spellward wasn’t even there.

Of course the spellward went down. The eruptions always disrupt the barrier, she realized. So much for an idyllic ride along the coast; she’d need to watch for the nastier myrvites. The last thing she needed was to be ambushed by a manticore and be stuck full of poison needles just before she made it to the safety of Madinahr.

In the end, it wasn’t a manticore. It was a desert drake, sunbathing in the middle of the road, thick front claws dug into the corpse of a half-eaten man. She rounded the corner of a bluff, and there it was. The corpse’s pack still lay in pieces by the side of the road. The desert drake snapped its head towards Mirian.

The tide was in, and here the bluff was steep enough she couldn’t just go up it. While there was a bit of beach left to the side, desert drakes could move fast, despite their bulky size. There was no way she was just going to go around it.

This drake was larger than a bull, and while ‘human’ was a perfectly acceptable meal, she knew it could feel the magic radiating off of Desert Rose. It moved forward in little bursts, then froze. Readying to charge, she knew. At least this species of drake couldn’t fly, though it still did have stubby wings protruding from the scales on its back.

Her eximontar made alarmed clacking noises. Mirian quickly dismounted and opened up her pack, digging into the bottom where the spellbook pages were. She snatched out the only two pages that were going to do anything here: a flame beam and force razor spell, each of which were practice spells for novices, not combat spells. They would just have to do. She tossed the pack to the side of the road so it wouldn’t be in her way.

The desert drake crept forward again, eyes darting between her and the eximontar. Mirian shooed Desert Rose back while keeping her eyes locked on the drake. As the beast backed up, the drake froze again, beady eyes watching her.

Precision would be key, she knew. Hitting the drake on the scales, especially with a fire or cutting spell, would do next to nothing. She had to target the vulnerable parts. The closer the range, the more damage she could do, but she also needed to make sure the drake didn’t get its claws into her. One swipe could be fatal.

The drake’s muscular legs tensed.

Mirian loaded her own legs and got ready to dodge.

The desert drake charged forward, huge bulk coming right at her. Mirian started with the strongest force razor spell she could muster and aimed it right at the beast’s eye. Then she flung herself off the road and into the sand to her right. The myrvite let out what she could only describe as a chittering roar-hiss. It started moving erratically, but Mirian finished tumbling down the shallow slope and bounded to her feet, circling around on the side she’d just blinded. The beast caught sight of Desert Rose, who was now galloping away back down the road.

The last thing she needed was the two myrvites chasing each other back the way they’d came for who knew how long. Mirian sent a flame beam into the side of its head near the ear hole, which caused the beast to recoil first, then turn. It made a low growling noise, then charged again.

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This time, Mirian was only just able to scramble out of the way as a huge claw came lashing out to smash her. She rolled, then dashed behind it, leaping over the tail as it too tried to swat her. She grabbed a rock from the bluff and pitched it at the drake’s head, then sent another flame beam at it, channeling the spell until she could smell burnt flesh.

The overgrown lizard charged again, but Mirian ducked to her right again on its blind side, so it only swatted at the cliff, sending up a cloud of dust. She froze as the drake did. They have poor eyesight, right? Thanks Professor Viridian, never knew that would come in handy. The drake slowly moved its head side to side. Mirian kept still. When the world’s smallest landslide tumbled down the bluff face, causing the drake to still again and cock its head, Mirian took her opportunity, sending a force razor at its other eye. The blades sunk in deep, and the drake let out another roar, then burst toward her. This time, there was nowhere for Mirian to go. She pressed herself up against the cliff-face and tried to breathe as quietly as she could.

The desert drake came close enough that Mirian could have reached out to touch it. It was scrunching up its face and making a weird sound, then its tongue would dart out. Shit, they can sense heat, can’t they?

As the drake turned towards Mirian, she channeled one more time, pouring as much mana as she could into the spell so that the beast’s spell resistance wouldn’t hamper the cut. As its tongue darted out again, she slashed through it, then sent pulses of fire at it again and again.