Natural Mage (Magical Mayhem #2)(107)

At least I wasn’t alone. Emery was in here with me. He looked behind us and started.

Everyone else had disappeared. Including Reagan.

We seemed to be marooned by ourselves in this strange, altered reality.

Off to the left, in the sea of blackened water, rose a white-gray pole, shaded with black. It looked like a celebration of Emery’s and my smooshed survival magic. It grew taller and taller, filling out as it did so.

“A tree trunk,” I said, closing my eyes as vicious intent rang out from somewhere near me. Aimed at me. “Wait.” I peeled an eye open, looking in that direction.

Emery startled again. He was getting a premonition.

“This is an illusion,” I reminded myself. I cracked a casing right before Emery shoved me so hard that my neck cracked. He dove the other way and a jet of blazing purple roared past me.

“Oh, it’s on!” I hopped to my feet and started rapidly firing again, closing my eyes now, not trusting what they were telling me.

“Look!”

The scene had changed again. The tree trunk had grown into a large tree, its leaves white, black, and gray.

“I’m not doing that, right?” I asked in confusion. “Somehow?”

“No. Over here.” Emery turned me in the other direction.

Mages came into view now, standing shin-deep in the fake water. The water didn’t interact with their bodies, and no wetness soaked their clothes.

Stars blossomed in the sky. Little pricks at first, but they enlarged as we watched them.

“What is the point of all this?” I yelled over the rushing of power.

“It’s Reagan. She’s messing with their perspective…and ours. But we’re probably supposed to do more than stand around and watch it happen.” He plucked at my sleeve. “Let’s do our part.”

“We don’t even know what our part is!” I stuffed my casings anywhere they would fit before taking off running at his side.

Flatten.

“Watch out!” I cracked a casing on impulse, then jumped to the side, hitting debris and falling, turning it into a roll.

“We’re at the warehouse line where the wall used to be,” Emery yelled as more people came into view behind us, like a screen was being pulled away to reveal what had always been there.

I cracked another casing and the magic sped out before me, spreading as it went. It smacked into five mages, churning through them. A woman’s face screwed up in pain and she grabbed at her chest. A man clutched at his privates. It was clear to see what was the most important among the various mages, since the spell was uniform.

All five went down, their screams never reaching my ears.

Emery hit a line of eight mages with a simple yet brutal spell, just powerful enough to bring them to their knees. He tried to run forward, but tripped and fell at an angle, floating in the air.

“The warehouse wall. Or roof.” He tried to climb off, but a spell jetted toward him. He rolled over, barely dodging it in time, and sent off a retaliatory shot.

I cracked casing after casing, cutting huge holes in the line. Thankfully, they weren’t being replaced, but a quick look behind us revealed the mages were over the crazy spectacle. They were making their way toward us quickly, intent on trapping us.

Always with the trapping. But this time we didn’t have any shifters to help.

“She has to do something other than make illusions!” I yelled.

That was when I noticed what the stars were morphing into.





45





“Watch out!” Emery slammed into me as I looked up, trying to place that strange thrumming sound.

Large beasts, like elephants with wings, thundered down from the sky. They opened smallish mouths with large teeth.

“But it’s only an illusion. She won’t actually kill anyone with those,” I said, staggering back toward the corner of the invisible warehouse wall.

A female mage with a purple robe, a higher-tiered Guild member, staggered as she looked up, probably in awe. Or confusion, because those flying animals were whack. Reagan had a very strange imagination. Weirder, even, than mine.

I barreled into the mage, jabbing her in the eye before elbowing her in the face, and took her to the ground. I kicked out at someone else, my boot connecting with his jaw and knocking him backward. I called up a fast weave of moderate power to take a third mage before he could reach for his smaller pack of spells.

A huge roar quaked my heart and shook my bones.

I ducked instinctively and looked up. Amazingly, like with the lion incident, Emery didn’t. So I grabbed him and yanked him lower.

The winged elephant thing swooped down. From its little mouth belched a thick stream of fire. Blistering heat washed over me and I shrank back, throwing up my arms. Emery threw a shield of black survival magic over both of us, keeping some of the heat back before it dissolved.

“Maybe we weren’t supposed to run out here after all.” He struggled back toward the warehouse, dragging me with him.

“This is why we should have discussed the plan more!” I tripped over that blasted invisible warehouse wall or roof, falling to my hands and knees. Emery helped me up again and we scrambled forward.

A mage stood before us with an orange sash. I couldn’t remember what level that made him, but the last casing in my pocket assured me it didn’t matter. My spell spread across him and bent him backward.