“Do you know how to change?”
“No, but I have an idea,” he said, removing his black coat, and loosening the buttons of the fine shirt.
“Give me a moment to fly away before you get too indecent,” Katsi said, connecting with the air.
Migo only shook his head, clearly not in the mood for jokes.
Katsi took off, launching into the sky. The city of Wanay was not far, as well as a massive, glimmering lake. Smoke rose from the city in more than a few places. The seer, Kusari, had been right. Battle was already well under way.
“Sands,” Katsi muttered to herself, sparing a glance back down at Migo. He was crouched on the ground, wearing nothing but the undergarment. She lowered back down to him. “It’s not good. I think we can safely assume that Kusari was correct. The city is under attack.”
Migo’s response was merely a shivering growl.
“How long does that take?” Katsi asked
He looked up at her, eyes fierce, blazing like the sun over the Scorched Waste. It startled her enough that she hovered back a pace.
“Too long,” Migo said through gritted teeth. His skin rippled like boiling water, a terrible sight, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. He roared and grunted until spines appeared, bristling out of his back. His limbs started to stretch, skin darkening into blackened scales. He shook his head as his hair vanished into a crown of horns.
His paws crashed into the ground, sharp claws gouging the rocks beneath as though they were mud. A tail whipped out behind as his wings stretched into the air. A roar shook every fiber of Katsi’s body as he opened his elongated, monstrous jaws. Those dark eyes fixed on her.
She knew it was Migo, but she could still barely suppress a creeping sense of fear that tingled her spine. Sands, he was such a frightening beast, but as he stretched out his wings, testing the air, she couldn’t help but recognize the majesty and beauty he belied in this form.
Migo gave her a nod with a deep growl.
“Right, follow me,” she said, launching back up.
Migo leapt into the air, pumping vigorously behind her.
It was hard for Katsi not to simply explode ahead. The energy that surged through her almost made her gasp and tremble, like her body could hardly sustain the might to which it had access. Already in anticipation of what was to come, she started shifting the air around the city. If it was lightning that was needed, that’s what she’d bring. But she had to be cautious. Alyssad’s testing made her worried about what kind of person she may have become. She could kill. She could destroy. But who would be caught in the crossfire? How many innocents would she obliterate if she called forth her lightning within a city?
They reached the city in a matter of seconds and found it in utter chaos. People had poured out of the gates, trying to get away. Some bodies had been butchered in the streets, mostly fallen warriors, but just like in that village in Habkamal, citizens were getting rounded up, monitored by groups of shamans or waheshi.
Migo roared from behind her, diving toward the nearest group that was just inside the city walls. When they saw him, it was like pure terror itself was descending. They screamed, running for their lives. Even the citizens of Wanay abandoned their fear of the waheshi and ran to the nearest buildings.
But the waheshi stood their ground, regarding Migo as though he were just another person with their mindless, uncaring eyes. She couldn’t help but think that they might pose a legitimate threat to Migo. No matter how impervious he was to magic, the claws, talons, and jaws of the waheshi were just as sharp as Migo’s.
Katsi was only too curious to see if the shamans could deflect a lightning bolt that carried the strength of a hundred shamans. She channeled her energy, dark clouds billowing over the city.
Migo crashed down into the waheshi as Katsi pursued the shamans. Instead of moving straight to lightning, she wanted to test her strength with a more controlled approach. She recalled the stone spears Alyssad had thrown against Migo and figured that might be simple enough. She attempted the move and ended up throwing an entire pillar of earth at the fleeing shamans.
They were skilled, and tried to deflect it, but she put all her force into it, feeling the warm energy on her bedecked arms. It pummeled into the side of two shamans. They fell lifeless, bodies pulverized. One of the other shamans tried sinking into the ground, but Katsi could feel him there beneath the surface. She clenched her fist and the ground crashed in around him.
Flying above them like this, she felt as though she were crushing insects. As sickening as it was, she knew it had to be done.
Realizing Ashjagar was not pursuing them, they turned to face Katsi. There were perhaps seven of them remaining and she noticed a few others running to join them from a street further away.
Stones flew up to meet her, but with a flick of her finger, they all shattered and rained back down on the shamans. Every move she made with her magic brought with it a warm sensation. She could only imagine that if she drew on all of it she would burn to a crisp as the energy consumed her. How much would her body be able to withstand? Was there anything she could do to increase her own capacity? Perhaps this was what Jafir needed her blood for to forge the artifact from Alyssad’s blood, that it might enable her to channel more of the energy without burning herself out.
Together, the shamans were able to create a nexus, preventing her magic from penetrating. Every stone she cast bounced away.
There was an easy solution for that. Her arms trembled as she stretched them out. The sky above her roared to life and thunder boomed through the air. But wait… the shamans below her weren’t alone. They had hostages, held to blade. Casualties, as Alyssad would have called them.
Katsi grit her teeth and looked back at Migo. He was wrestling with three waheshi. Two had seemingly been torn in half already. Perhaps the two of them should work together. She groaned and floated back towards him, regretting the very idea of delaying freeing the captives.
Her connection with the air was fracturing, as if something were trying to sever it completely. Clever. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of them being able to do something like that. She zipped over to Migo, keeping her distance from the roiling mass of monstrous bodies.
Migo clamped his jaws down on the arm of a waheshi, ignoring the claws that grazed his snout. He smashed a paw onto it and jerked his mouth away, ripping the arm off completely. It made no sound, but continued to claw at Migo’s face with its free arm. He batted the beast away, tossing its entire body into the nearest building just as another waheshi leapt onto his back, biting at the membrane of his right wing. Migo rolled, crushing the waheshi into the ground before bouncing back to his feet, skipping away from the third waheshi.
“Lightning?” Katsi yelled at him.
Migo released a deep groan with a short nod.
Katsi focused on the waheshi, channeling the energy from the sky to their bodies. There was a tension in time where everything stood still. She clamped her eyes shut, using her magic instead to detect the nothingness in space that existed where the waheshi stood, deliberately ignoring that same nothingness where Migo was. Even through her tightly closed eyes, the flash of lightning that followed was staggeringly blinding, and she barely had enough sense to create a protective sphere around herself. The air trembled, thunder shaking everything.
When she opened her eyes, Migo stood in his same position, staring at the husked shell that remained of the waheshi who’d stood before him. The other two were the same.
Katsi nodded to him, then pointed further up the abandoned street. “They have captives.”
Migo only grunted in acknowledgement before taking flight. Katsi led the way back where she’d been stalled by the shamans holding captives, but when they arrived, the area was deserted. Instinctively, both of them went up in elevation to get a better view.
Everything among the low, gray stone buildings was eerily quiet. If not for the wind summoned by Katsi’s magic, the streets would have been still. She hovered in the air, uncomfortable with the way things were looking so far. Where had everybody gone? How long had the Reyganin army been attacking? It couldn’t have been more than a half a mark since Kusari sent the message.
But Migo veered off, heading towards the other end of the city. He must have sensed something. He hadn’t told her nearly enough about what it was like being Ashjagar, but she certainly needed to ask him more about that. How did it feel having a tail or wings? It was still such a bizarre thing that she wasn’t sure she’d ever come to terms with it.
Migo steered low toward a large building, and she finally noticed what had caught his attention. The building could very well have been the home of the resident monarch, but it was also the only place where she still saw any activity. A line of people stood in front of the home like a wall, fighting to defend against a host of the Reyganin army.
A few waheshi below rushed the line, crashing into the defending soldiers as a shower of stones crashed into them. A couple shamans were also gliding through the soldiers, seculas flashing.
