Page 68 of Shattered Darkness
“True,” Jax replies.
“Let’s go in before we lose the element of surprise,” Kysen reminds us, “we’re getting rusty.”
The rest of us chose not to respond to that, mainly because he didn’t wait for us and just slowly slipped through the door, forcing us to follow him quickly or leave him to face them himself, and none of us were willing to miss out.
“Damn it, he’s gone too far from my reach, and I was expecting it, so my magic snapped back,” Erin curses, “none of us are covered.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say as I head toward the door, “it would be too difficult to keep us covered while we’re dealing with them anyway. It’s not like they’re going to go down easily.”
There’s no time for more talk as I make it through the door just in time to see Kysen knock one of them out, which, of course, instantly alerts the others that we’re here. Jax calls his water to him and then shoots it toward the teacher, who’s readying some sort of magic to shoot at Kysen. Jax’s water wraps around his ankles and pulls his feet from underneath him.
Erin throws up a shield, something that she’s been refining in our late night classes with Cain, and the four who were charging toward us hit and fall backward. Unfortunately, none of them hit it hard enough to knock them out. If it had, it would’ve helped us out immensely and meant that we had less to fight, not that I think any of us really mind.
The knocked over teachers recover quickly, but it’s given the rest of us enough time to get to them and Kysen. A woman teacher, whom I have no idea what her name is, shoots a stream of fire in my direction, and I duck, pushing down my magic, and the Darkness and my usual magic both rise to try and help me. I dodge and weave the various streams of fire that head my way until I get within striking distance of her and punch her in the stomach, causing her to double over. She recovers quickly and lashes out, aiming for my head.
Ducking out of the way with plenty of time to spare, I swing my leg around and knock her feet from under her, as I go to follow her down and hopefully get a good headshot in to knock her out, she surprises me by using a blast of air magic to shoot me into the air, I fly backward, and resign myself to using a small slither of my magic to cushion my fall unfortunately, I’m so reluctant to use my magic that I pull it out a second too late and while it does cushion my fall enough that I don’t break anything it doesn’t do much more than that and I land hard enough that it knocks the wind out of me.
She storms toward me, weaving magic between her hands in a way that lets me know that it's deadly, and she either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the Fae Realm’s wrath if she kills a Centre. I struggle to get up, my body recovering too slowly from the brute force of hitting the wall, just before she can get to me, Ghost and Knot swoop down from the rafters and attack her using some of their own magic and the distraction of their wings so effectively that the spell she was building dissipates before it can be launched my way.
I finally manage to stand, but as I do, flying debris from one of the other fights heads my way, and I once again move slightly too late. Fortunately, the wood splinter only slices my cheek on its way past instead of ending up embedded in it. I’ll call that a win.
Wasting no more time and sensing that Ghost and Knot are getting tired, I send them a brief picture of my plan and then race toward the woman, just as I asked. As soon as I’m in striking distance, they soar toward the roof, and I pull back my fist, striking her as hard as I can in her temple. Her eyes widen before they roll back into her head, and she slumps to the floor. I have no idea how long a non magical hit is going to take her to recover from, especially since I’m not one hundred percent sure whatsure that what kind of supernatural she is; because of this, I quickly pull out the tie that Kysen gave me, and wrap it around her wrists.
Once I’m done, I look around and see that everyone has either secured their teacher that they were fighting or is in the process of doing it, and I’m pretty proud that I managed to fight with very little magic, although I did have the help of my familiars, I know I wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise.
“Is everyone okay?” Kysen asks.
“I’m good; I'm going to have a giant bruise on my thigh. The fucker got me good,” Erin replies, clearly not happy.
“I’m fine,” Jax says.
I nod as everyone looks at me, “I’m good. I just got caught by flying debris, but it’s not bad.
“Sage,” Jax asks, watching me closely.
“Yeah? Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask.
“I’m fine, but are you?”
I frown slightly, and it tugs at my cheek making it sting, “Oh, yeah, it’s only a small scratch. It probably looks worse than it is.”
“I don’t think that’s what he meant,” Kysen says.
“Oh?” I question as I stroke Ghost and Knot, giving them praise for helping. “What do you mean then? I’m fine.”
“You didn’t use magic like at all,” Erin points out.
Well, fuck they noticed. I shrug, “I didn’t? I guess I went back to my default and just fought like hell, besides it made it more interesting and more of a challenge. I kind of needed it to distract myself.”
They all look at me like they don’t quite believe what I’m saying but, thankfully, choose not to question it.
“We should probably find somewhere out of the way to store these five,” Jax suggests, changing the subject.
“Yes, but where?” Kysen asks. “Also, I’m glad the temple agreed that this was a good reason for a fight.”
My eyes widen, “I completely forgot about that!”
“Me too,” Erin agrees, looking around like something is going to jump out and get her. It’s amusing because she looks more nervous now than she did fighting against the teachers.