Fieran lashed out with his magic, grabbing the shell and flinging it back toward the Mongavarian line. Unleashing more of his magic, he shoved it into a storm of crackling bolts filling the space between him and the enemy.
As his magic brushed the smoking remains of those magic-absorbing machines, he could still sense a faint trace of that foreign magic within them. It didn’t tug on his magic as it must have Dacha’s, as if dormant now that the machines were broken.
More of that foreign magic blanketed the gun vehicles rolling toward him. At least this magic was the strange but familiar magic the Mongavarians had used on their aeroplanes, the one that deflected his magic but didn’t otherwise impede it.
A sharp-edged smirk cut across Fieran’s face. He knew exactly how to handle these vehicles.
Reaching deeper into his chest, he blasted his magic outward, stretching it to fill the river from one end to the other. His magic raced over the ground, following the faint traces where the Wall used to be.
As the vehicles rolled forward, he strengthened his magic, gritting his teeth at holding so much power.
The vehicles plowed into his magic and halted, their treads spinning trenches into the mud as the magic coating them deflected against Fieran’s makeshift wall.
He took a step forward andshoved. All along the line, the steel vehicles skidded backward on the slick riverbed, pushed by their own protective magic deflecting off Fieran’s magic.
Fieran took another step forward, gathered his magic, and shoved with all the magical strength in him.
Vehicles lurched and tumbled onto their sides or crashed backward. Men—the lucky ones—scrambled out of the way to avoid being crushed by the falling steel behemoths.
A wave of dizziness washed through Fieran, and he had to plant his feet, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment.
No. He wouldn’t give in to this weariness. He was not at the end of his power. He wasn’t at the edge of his stamina.
He was an elf. This magic washis. It wasn’t his dacha’s. But his. A part of him, as integral as blood and bone. He was not lessened because he was half-human but he was all the stronger because he was a warrior with both human and elven blood running through his veins.
His whirling head steadied, though some of the dizziness still lingered at the edges. He snapped his gaze open and lifted the swords into a fighting guard stance. Whether this was caused by lack of stamina or lack of faith in his own elven heritage,he wouldn’t let it impede him now, not with his dacha’s life depending on him.
With his magic so occupied holding back the line of armored, tractor-tread vehicles, he hadn’t stopped the soldiers. The first rank of them rushed forward, bayonets flashing on the ends of their rifles.
Fieran steeled himself as he faced the oncoming enemy. His dacha’s swords in his hands glinted in the rising sun, the blades coated blue with his magic.
Then he launched himself forward and tore into the enemy. The familiar sword patterns that he’d practiced nearly every morning from the moment his dacha had first placed a wooden sword in his hand no longer merely met air or his dacha’s blade. Instead, the swords met flesh and bone.
He’d thought he’d understood death. He’d caused it enough times. Felt it through his magic when he’d killed hundreds while taking down airships.
But this was death so visceral, so all-encompassing, that he couldn’t escape it. He could taste it in the spattering blood, feel it in his blades meeting flesh, see it in the eyes of his enemy, live it in a way he never had before.
There was no going back. No staying his hand. His dacha lay prone and helpless behind him. The enemy assembled before him. He carried the duty of blade and battle, and he could not flinch from it.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed as he wielded the swords as the warrior his dacha had trained him to be, cutting through the enemy with blade and magic. The rank upon rank of incoming enemy didn’t give him time to think or feel. There was just the mud and the death and his dacha’s swords in his hands.
With the deep whir of the propellers and the buzz of the magically powered rotary engines, a formation of aeroplanes flashed overhead, diving at the enemy lines. The aeroplanes’machines guns chattered, strafing the Mongavarian soldiers. Several of the aeroplanes farthest away from Fieran dropped bombs, which exploded in gouts of flame and earth among the enemy ranks.
As the aeroplanes swooped upward once again, the rising sun glinted on the artwork painted on them, each one incorporating an elf ear somewhere in the design.
His squadron. Fieran had gained enough space in the fight to lift a sword in salute, only to realize that the sword’s blade dripped a rivulet of blood.
A wave of icy magic blasted from behind him, twining with and yet crackling against his magic in that way only the magic of the ancient kings ever did.
With the tromping squelch of boots in mud, ranks upon ranks of troll warriors in gray uniforms adorned with leather or metal armor strode forward, wielding swords and axes alongside rifles and sidearms.
“We’ve got this now.” Rhohen appeared at Fieran’s side, his hands laced with crackling icy-white bolts of his magic, a version of the magic of the ancient kings. He gave Fieran that pouty smirk that usually made him want to punch his cousin. Today he might have hugged him.
Uncle Rharreth stepped to Fieran’s other side, his sword in his right hand, his left hand wreathed with sparkling white ice magic. “See to your dacha.”
Even as Fieran nodded, taking one step back, then two, Aunt Vriska, dressed in her gray uniform and wielding a sword, shouted orders to the troll warriors as she led the front ranks arrayed to Fieran’s right.
To his left, elven warriors in deep evergreen uniforms edged in leather glided forward, interspersed with units of Escarlish soldiers in olive uniforms and carrying rifles. With Rhohen’smagic providing a shield, the Alliance army pressed forward, advancing across the riverbed.
