Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (my reading book .txt) 📕

“Don’t know which is going to run out first,” Ambrose panted as he looked down the slope at Kimaris’ converging tide. “Our legs or this hill.”

Milo gasped for breath, spat out bile, and forced himself to straighten.

“We need to keep moving,” he wheezed and looked down the hillside they’d been climbing for the last ten minutes. The places scorched by his witchfire were covered in the murky slime of the gelatinous horror, so that everything below had a vile sort of icing.

Forcing his concentration into the proper avenue was harder the more exhausted he became, but despite everything, Milo hammered his will through the raptor skull atop his cane. The avian beak swung open, and a torrent of green fury lashed down the hill. The slime retreated before the flames, but only to the edge of its crackling reach. Milo swept left and right, trying to form a wall of fire, but every time he swung to one side, the abomination crept closer on the other side.

With nothing to kindle but bare rocks, Milo knew it was futile, buying them less and less time.

With a gasp, he stumbled back, tasting blood in the back of his throat as he forced air into his lungs.

“I can’t keep doing this,” he panted, his body burning with frustration and exhaustion.

Ambrose stepped back to watch Kimaris begin climbing again. A string of curses in several languages tumbled out as he turned away sharply, eyes scanning in every direction. Milo had just begun to straighten as the big man pointed at a jagged peak west of the hill they were climbing.

“If you make for that crest,” Ambrose said, “maybe you can send up a firebolt like a flare, and the zeppelin will swing by to throw you a line.”

Milo looked at the sheer soaring stone, and his legs trembled beneath him. A tight, bitter laugh passed his lips.

“Even if I had the strength,” he said, “there’s no way we’ll make it before that thing catches us.”

Ambrose spat downhill and snarled.

“Then I guess I don’t need to hold onto these.”

From his pack, he drew out two grenades of a type Milo had never seen. They were constructed like a traditional Stielhandgranate, or stick grenade, but instead of a canister, there was a trio of ribbed spheres clustered around the top.

“What are those?” Milo asked, eying the wicked-looking devices suspiciously.

Ambrose looked up with a youngster’s mischievous grin.

“Tunnel-brushers,” he said, stroking the handles affectionately. “Drop one of these into a dugout, hard tunnel, or even a bunker if you can manage, and it fills it with burning debris that bounces around like hornets from hell.”

Milo squatted, knowing in the back of his mind that they had minutes, maybe less, before Kimaris was on top of them.

“One for each of us?” Milo asked, looking the big man levelly.

Ambrose nodded, his smile turning grim.

“Won’t take the thing down, I expect, but we might make it regret gobbling us up.”

Milo nodded and took one of the grenades.

“Well,” he said, feeling the heft of the explosive and trying to imagine pulling the pin and charging face-first into...the end.

“Do you think you’ll come back from this one?”

“Don’t think so.” Ambrose sighed. “But then again, if everything is eaten, not sure I’ll come back from that.”

The magus shrugged. “I suppose this is as good a way as any to go.”

Ambrose chuckled.

“I can think of a few better ones,” he said, a wistful look in his eye. “But it’ll have to do.”

The men stared at each other, knowing that more could be said, but also knowing nothing need be.

“Human lives seem short enough to me as is,” a sweet, siren voice called from behind the two men. “Yet it seems men are always looking for an opportunity to end things early.”

Both whirled to see Contessa Rihyani sitting daintily on a boulder. Her two companions, the verdant lady and the bronze colossus, lounged on their own jutting stones.

Milo muscled down his surprise and relief and struck an indignant pose with arms crossed.

“Took you long enough,” he grumbled.

“I told you we should have just left,” the bronze colossus said with a voice like a brass bell.

“I have a soft spot for friends.” Rihyani threw a wink at Milo before making a show of looking downhill. “Though if you two would rather take the old Roman way out, I suppose we can’t stop you.”

“Well, we could.” The green fey giggled puckishly.

“But we won’t,” the bronze giant intoned.

Ambrose stole a glance at the creeping advance of Kimaris’ reaching pseudopods.

“Is there an exit strategy?” the big man growled. “Or are we going to just keep snarking until we become slime fodder?”

Rihyani sprang off the boulder, as lithe as a cat.

“I do believe you had plans involving a zeppelin.”

“What do you think the crew is going to say?” Milo shouted at the top of his lungs as the wind raked across his face and through his hair.

In truth, he was less interested in how the crew of the zeppelin would react and more concerned about not looking down. The sight of his legs dangling hundreds of meters in their air was something he wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to.

“Ambrose?” Milo shouted when no reply came. Twisting in Rihyani’s grip, he spied his bodyguard held between the contessa’s companions, his eyes screwed shut and every muscle quivering.

“Stop squirming,” Rihyani chided, her voice barely audible as they soared toward the zeppelin. “You might not be as heavy as Simon, but we don’t make a habit of wind-riding with passengers.”

Milo might have chuckled because she was on a first-name basis with his bodyguard, but he’d accidentally looked down again, and what he saw was more than disheartening. Besides the sphincter-puckering terror of his altitude, Milo noted the glistening gray river that was snaking along the ground below them.

It seemed Kimaris, now free from whatever hold or guidance Imrah had on it, was determined to come after them.

No, not them, Milo reminded himself.