A shock went through my head. By the time I realized I’d been struck, I was already on the ground.
“The tables have turned,” Randy said wearily, getting to his feet. He was shaking his head, but his feet seemed steady.
“Shit…”
All that damage I’d inflicted was healed. Randy straddled me on the ground and placed his hands on my neck. He was going to strangle me.
“Sure you want to do this? Won’t killing me make your master angry?”
“We do not need weak sufferers.” Randy’s beady eyes were as clouded and grimy as sludge. “If he learns I killed you, both he and Sam will think better of me.”
“Killing out of the desire for acceptance? That’s a new one.”
“You die now.”
Randy’s hands squeezed. My mind was going blank. I tried to struggle, but I didn’t have the leverage, and I was weak. Nothing I could do was going to help.
“Hey!”
Ralph swung at Randy from behind. He’d come back.
“Let go of him!”
A magic sword would be able to inflict damage on a preacher. Randy was straddling me and not easily able to dodge out of the way. A line of light glowed in the darkness, and the magic blade stuck into the floor.
Randy had floated into the air, holding me.
Shock flooded Ralph’s features. Run, you fool!
“Begone.”
Randy grabbed my leg and swung me like a staff. The impact ran through my body from head to toe; I felt dizzy. The next moment, my body was flat on the ground again, and Ralph was slammed against the wall. He was still alive but knocked out. I never thought I’d live to see my own hardiness used against me.
“Let’s continue,” Randy said, squatting over me again and squeezing my throat.
“Hrg…gahk—”
An ordinary person’s neck would have snapped long ago. I was actually starting to enjoy it; that was a bad sign. If I passed out, the next time my eyes opened would be in the afterlife. I kicked my legs but couldn’t even twist my body. I reached for the temporary sun but couldn’t reach it from where I lay.
“Stop it!” screamed a voice that caused his hands to loosen for an instant. Blood rushed back into my head, and I felt dizzy. Through blurred vision, I saw the little form of April. She grabbed Randy’s arm with both hands and pulled.
Get out of here, you idiot, I tried to shout, but nothing came out.
“Let go of Matthew!”
“Move it.”
He swung his arm free. That was all it took to hurl April off her feet and send her sliding across the floor. For a moment, I saw nothing but white, until I heard April groaning. She tried to get up, every muscle in her body trembling. Hitting the hard stone floor like that had to hurt. She would have bruises and scratches all over. But she tried her best to get up anyway.
“Let go…of Matthew!” she screamed, extending her arms.
“Silence, heathen.”
A ball of fire shot from Randy’s palm. I reached up and grabbed his arm at the last moment, shifting it just enough to change the fireball’s path so it went past April. Though it didn’t hit her directly, the force of its passing was enough to bounce her off the ground like a ball, tumbling until she stopped near the door. The fanged amulet came loose and slid away.
“April!” I shouted, able to speak at last. “I’m done for. You must send a message to Arwin! ‘I’ll always love you!’ “
Knowing the squirt, she wasn’t going to wise up and run away. She was going to insist she’d save me and stay.
“And tell her I’m sorry for pilfering some silver from her purse the other day.”
The message could be anything. I just needed to get April to run away from this place.
“Please. You’re the only one who can do it.”
“No, Matthew…”
Instead, April stubbornly stood her ground, making her way toward us, determined to stay and save a wretch like me.
“You have to tell her yourself…”
Stop. Just stop.
There was a dry crunch. Randy crushed the useless amulet under his foot.
“Those who mistake foolhardiness for courage do not live long,” he said, and created more flames. This one wasn’t just a fireball but a wave of fire with many overlapping layers. There would be no escape.
“Just run, dammit!”
“As a last act of mercy, I will leave the girl’s bones behind,” Randy said, turning to me with a cruel smile. He lowered his arms. “So I may hear your screams of despair better.”
The storm of fire spread toward April.
“I’m sorry, Matthew,” she said, smiling, stock-still, “for not being able to save you.”
The next moment, she was engulfed by a red vortex of searing heat. The flames formed a massive pillar that burned and scoured the place where April stood.
Randy laughed. “Don’t worry. She barely had time to feel the heat.”
“Oh, no, it’s plenty hot,” said a calm voice.
The pillar of flame was cut in two. Then those parts split into smaller flames, until the whole thing had disintegrated.
In no time at all, the fire was gone, revealing a familiar woman.
Natalie.
She was dressed in the same traveling garb as when she first arrived in town. She had April tucked under her arm and held Dawnblade, her red sword, in her other hand.
“I thought I was going to get burned,” she said grumpily, setting April down next to the wall. “Don’t worry, she’s just unconscious. It won’t be fatal.”
Instant relief flooded my body.
“I ran into Dez up on the street,” she said, going on to explain that he was being arrested by the town guards when she helped him out and got an explanation of the situation. I could’ve made plenty of jokes about her insistence that she didn’t kill the guards, but there were more important things at the moment.
“I’m surprised you managed to find us.”
“I had a tour guide,” she said, pointing to an old tubby cat. It was lazily rubbing its body against April.
“Watch out, this guy is—”
“Dez already warned me. He’s one of those ‘preachers,’ isn’t he?” Natalie sighed dramatically. “Who would want this so badly that they’d willingly look so hideous and embarrassing?”
“Why do you stop me?” Randy demanded, hurling me against the wall. That hurt.
“Do you even need to ask? Did you think you would get away with such ridiculous antics?”
“There is no way this man is worthy of the holy one. So I will—”
“I’m talking about her,” Natalie said, glancing at April.
“What of the heathen girl?”
“I’m going to give you a very helpful ‘revelation’ right now, so clean out your ears and listen closely,” she said, gripping her sword’s hilt. “And be warned, I’m quite furious right now.”
In an instant, she had closed the gap to attack Randy.
“Dammit!” Randy hissed, leaping away in a panic. He hurled fireballs as he dodged, but Natalie sliced through each of them.
There was nowhere to run in the cramped basement space. Randy gave up and fled into the treasure room, then picked up coins and hurled them. The velocity was tremendous, but to Natalie, they might as well have been frozen in midair. She was in mid-swing when her eyes widened and she shifted her body, causing the coins to hit the wall and splatter into goopy liquid.
His attack had heated up the coins and melted the gold. She couldn’t be careless with her sword, then. If she blocked or deflected the coins, the molten gold might splatter and burn her.
“That seems like a terrible waste.”
“Silence, mongrel!”
He hurled more coins. He was relying on the rule of numbers, now that he’d decided this was an effective tactic. A shower of coins rained down on Natalie. But he was making a major mistake.
“There we go.”
Just before the coins could land, Natalie deftly angled her sword, deflecting the coins right back at Randy.