Mages fugitive, p.1
Mage's Fugitive, page 1
Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
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About the Author
By Saria Bryant
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Copyright
Mage’s Fugitive
By Saria Bryant
After fourteen years being forced to serve the Order, Rían Fáidh is finally sent on his last mission before gaining his freedom, only to find a trap waiting for him. Unwilling to let one of their most talented mages go, the Order sends their personal assassin, the Mage Reaper, to dispose of Rían.
Meanwhile, Toua is a healer on the run from the cartel the Order sold him to in order to pay off his brother’s debt. When he reunites with Rían again, pulled together by forces outside their control, they must learn to trust each other and the pack offering them sanctuary if they’re going to survive.
Dedication: To the aces.
Special thanks to Deianira for her patience in letting me pick her brain on Hmong culture and shamanism. Any mistakes in representation are my own, and some liberties were taken with the magical elements in order to fit the world. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing this one.
Chapter 1
IN LESS than twelve hours, Rían would finally be free of the Order.
One last mission. One final, questionably legal task for the people who had legally abducted him when he was ten. He counted himself lucky his magic hadn’t Sparked until after the laws were updated to prevent the Order from taking kids even younger than that. The fact they’d been able to secure their position as the sole authority for training and governing mages, outside of Japan and a few smaller countries, was the result of centuries of manipulation and countless billions of various currencies into corrupt channels.
He’d daydreamed hundreds of ways to make the Order’s empire crumble, but he wasn’t stupid enough to give voice to any of those plans, much less try to enact them alone.
He squinted at his laptop screen as he looked through apartments. After tonight, he’d officially be homeless. If he survived. Not that he was too worried about it; he did have a place he could use in the meantime.
No, he was more annoyed at the fact that all of his careful planning over the last year was now moot, courtesy of a certain shifter pack and their new mage.
Denver had been a magical dead zone for the last few decades, ever since the shifter massacre there fifty years ago. It didn’t seem to be common knowledge even among other mages, but there was a definite link between shifters inhabiting an area and the number of mages who Sparked there. No shifters meant no mages, but the moment Caius and his pack declared their intentions to claim territory there, boom. Magic.
Rían had been hoping to live there for years without needing to worry about the Order swooping in to kidnap young mages, as they were wont to do. Now he had to choose between dealing with the Order for the rest of his life and setting up shop in a major city with more mages for competition instead, or looking for another dead zone. The fact he’d already signed a lease for a building and hired a crew to put his tattoo shop together meant he’d lose a decent chunk of money if he went somewhere else, but the loss could be worth it.
Niamh, his sugar glider familiar, barked from her perch on the bed, letting him know it was time to go.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered as he shut his laptop and shoved it into its bag. Even after fourteen years stuck here, most of his everyday possessions fit into a few bags. His magical tools and supplies in one, his laptop in another, and a few changes of clothes and some knickknacks in another. The first was by far the largest.
He glanced around the small room, barely large enough for a bed and a desk, that he’d lived in for most of his life and resisted the urge to set it on fire. He wouldn’t be looking back, that was for certain, though he expected the Order to have some underhanded ploy ready when he finished this last mission. They weren’t ones for letting their mages go so easily, even after they’d served their time.
Apparently he was needed in a village in Brazil, where the last several months of unrest were threatening to turn into something bigger. The greed of the local village head, Manuel, was threatening to interrupt the Order’s supply of biolume shrooms, a fungus more commonly known as Satan’s jellyfish due to its volatile qualities that only grew within a small section of the rainforest. Ironic that the Order had put the man in place to begin with years ago to facilitate their access to the jellyfish.
Now Rían was being sent to clean up the mess, and he was allowed to solve the situation with extreme prejudice. Usually that would mean he was ordered to quell the locals, not that orders meant much when he couldn’t be forced, but as the villagers were the only ones with the knowledge and skills to quickly and efficiently harvest the Order’s precious fungus, Rían was able to finish his last mission on a high note.
He moved to the door of his closet and pressed his hand against it to call his “safe house.” Truthfully, it wasn’t exactly a house at all, but his Sidhe, one of the few fairy mounds left in existence. His grandmother had access to one that had served their family for generations, but this one had come to him in his first days after the Order abducted him. When he’d been angry and lost and wanting his mother. He’d run through the halls looking for an exit, only to step through a door and onto the rolling green hills of home.
He still remembered the cloying scent of sweet grasses and flowers and the warmth of his mother’s cooking. The relief hadn’t lasted long, before his family scolded him for running from the Order.
He hadn’t been home since, but occasionally he’d find spell components or a new grimoire in his Sidhe, and he knew they’d come from his grandmother.
With a quick glance inside to ensure nothing was out of place, he tossed all but his bag of casting supplies through and closed the door. Then, since he had no intention of stepping into this room ever again, he broke the decade-old link on the door that allowed him to call his Sidhe with a simple touch of his hand.
That done, he opened a portal to the location he’d been given, the outline of a door shimmering a translucent blue in the air. Then, for the first time since his first few solo missions, he hesitated. He wasn’t naive enough to think that the mages who disappeared after their last mission were living happily ever after. Far too many died tragically on what was to be their last mission for him to believe this wasn’t a trap, but he’d researched all the information as thoroughly as he could. He’d even hidden a few scrying mirrors in the forest around the village the moment he received what was supposed to be his final mission, but there’d been no suspicious movements. No traces of magic aside from what was there naturally.
Nothing was out of the ordinary, but then the final missions of others hadn’t been either.
He could only hope all his training paid off and he could handle whatever was waiting for him.
With a deep breath he stepped through into a hot, humid evening in the heart of the rainforest.
He was sweating within moments.
Niamh barked quietly as she landed on his shoulder, and he reflexively checked the pouch around his neck to ensure his other sugar glider had made it with him. The only male in the litter he’d rescued had a penchant for disappearing and making Rían’s life difficult. When he spotted the white fur of the albino inside, he breathed a soft sigh of relief and let the doorway vanish.
He turned around to get his bearings, but there was nothing but trees, trees, and more trees. With the time difference between Brazil and Austria, he stepped back in time from early morning to dead of night, and the only light came from the stars and full moon. As his lungs adjusted to the thick, heavy air of his new environment, he welcomed the respite that came with the void of nature. No electricity buzzing beneath his hearing. No press of other bodies nearby. Best of all, no living auras filling his vision. Only the quiet drone of night insects and the green-tinged darkness swallowing him.
Niamh chirped, and Rían turned again, catching the flicker of human auras in the distance.
“Right,” he muttered and headed towards the village. He didn’t have a plan—he rarely had time to put one together—but he’d figure it out when he got a better look at what he was dealing with. As he drew closer, he saw it was a small village, barely large enough for fifty people to live there, all residing in thatched houses raised off the ground.
Farther back was a small modern villa, and he could see why the villagers here were ready to riot. The audacity of the building itself, with its stone flooring, glass walls, and soft orange lights, was a stark and blatant middle finger to the other villagers living nearby.
He stepped into the village, meeting the startled gazes of the few villagers who saw him. All their auras were faded, with pale lines of stress and anger, most with signs of poor health. Overworked and underfed. He hated how often he saw those markers on his missions.
He motioned to the opulent house in the distance and asked in Portuguese, “Where is the one you want dead?”
A young woman made a startled noise and stepped closer, fear sparking in her aura as she raised a small hatchet covered with the blue bioluminescent glow of the fungus they harvested.
Rían lifted his palm before she could strike. “I’m here to take care of him for you.”
She stopped with a wary look, but she lowered her weapon. “He’s inside,” she said slowly with a jerk of her chin to the villa. “Most likely eating. Again.”
He shook his head and headed for the cleared path leading from the village, though he stopped when he passed a large crate full of Satan’s jellyfish. A single one was worth several thousand dollars, but he didn’t need the money. They were far more useful to him as ingredients. He’d stocked up on the rarer components as best he could over the past few months, knowing he’d lose the Order’s unlimited access to anything he could ever possibly need, but the jellyfish had such a small harvest area that the Order tended to monitor their supply more closely than others. He pulled out a pair of tongs and a large jar from his bag and stuffed seven mushrooms into it. That should last him months if not a year.
Then he continued on, picking his way along the footpath. He was nearing the villa’s door and in need of a plan when he felt a ripple of seeking magic. A familiar enough sensation, since the Order liked to keep an eye on all their mages, but this one gave him pause. Rarely did someone seek him out until a day or two after he started a mission.
The silver spiral amulet on his wrist flared, intercepting the spell and redirecting it to the small crystal left under the bed in his room. The crystal acted as a decoy, and whoever cast the seeking spell would be informed Rían was in the room and not the middle of the rainforest.
The basic wards on the home flared bright against his eyes as he approached, and he squinted as he studied them. When he didn’t see any hidden traps, he reached into his bag and pulled out his jar of twisted clover. He pinched his nose against the pungent odor and quickly whispered the words to coax the magic of the clover to pierce the ward.
Brown smoke oozed across the bright glow, eating through the protections like acid. When the hole was big enough for him to pass through, he hurried inside, sealed the jar, and shoved it back in his bag. The solid wood door was locked, but a simple spell removed the door entirely and dropped it several feet away.
Niamh leapt off his shoulder and glided across the room. When she reached the end to turn the corner, she chirped in surprise and rebounded off the wall before racing back to Rían.
He swore under his breath as he hurried to catch up, pulling ghost tongue and devil’s bittercress from his bag. But when he reached the corner, he came face-to-face with the glowing yellow eyes of a shifter.
“Naughty little mage. And here we thought you were a smart one.”
Adrenaline spiking and heart pounding, Rían chucked the jars with a frantic command that caused both to immediately shatter. A haze of white powder and red bubbles exploded into the air, and he called on the wind as he exhaled to blow the mixture in the wolf’s face. The man snarled as his skin blistered on contact.
Rían didn’t linger. He threw himself around the toxic cloud and ran for the kitchen ahead.
“Niamh, where’s the target?” He only had minutes before shifter healing combated his attack. What was a shifter even doing here? There’d been no mention of a bodyguard or hired gun. They were supposed to tell him these things.
Except they hadn’t. Which meant this bastard was likely there to kill him on behalf of the Order. Fecking bastards.
Fine. This was fine. He could handle a shifter. Once he found the target and finished the mission, he’d either take out the shifter or disappear through a portal. Part of him wanted to open a portal then and there, but he wouldn’t risk being labeled a deserter. He’d lose his freelance license and never find work anywhere again.
Niamh barked as she flew over the railing of the connected hallway and sailed down to the lower level.
Rían took one look over the edge, saw the glass table directly below, heard the shifter cursing from the kitchen, and threw himself over anyway. Another command word as he fell activated one of his amulets. A bright pure-silver bubble of light surrounded him, absorbing the impact as he crashed through the glass. Then he was racing after Niamh, to the top of a set of stairs in a narrow hallway leading down to yet another floor.
There was a loud crunch as the shifter landed in the shattered glass, and Rían swore. He grabbed a small jar full of a viscid black slime and threw it behind him as he started down the stairs. The jar shattered on impact, and the slime immediately spread across the floor, the top few stairs, and climbed up the entryway like a living web. It might not cause any damage, but at least shifter healing couldn’t do anything about a slime stronger than epoxy.
Rían thundered down the stairs that ended at a solid iron door and hissed. He didn’t have much fae blood, but he had enough that he could taste the iron in the air and fought the urge to sneeze. But iron was pervasive enough in the modern world that he knew how to deal with it.
From the top of the stairs came sudden disgusted cursing. “What the fuck is this shit?” the shifter howled.
Rían reached into his bag again, cursing this mission and the toll it was taking on his supplies as he pulled out a jar of blue-tinged silver liquid. Niamh chirped and swooped down to climb into her pouch with her brother, and Rían swiped a thumb over the triquetra amulet around his neck. Then he opened the jar and splashed the liquid on the door.
Absinthe of Winter, his own recipe, froze the door quickly enough that his breath frosted the air, but his amulet kept the sudden below-freezing temperature from affecting him. Another moment and the embrittled iron buckled and cracked.
The shifter snarled as he came into view, struggling down the stairs as the slime coating him kept sticking to the walls and steps. “Going to rip you apart, starting with your nails!”
Nope, nope, nope. He liked his nails right where they were.
Rían slammed his foot into the door, and it shattered as easily as the glass table. He shoved his hand into his bag again and rushed inside, eager to get this over with and leave before the shifter could make good on his threat. But the moment he crossed the threshold, he realized he’d walked from one trap right into another.
Manuel lay on the floor, his throat ripped out and his protruding belly slashed open.
Worse, the protective spells on all of Rían’s amulets fizzled out beneath a nullifying barrier targeting his unique magic signature. Dread sank like a suffocating weight in his chest. Null fields were difficult to put together and more expensive than was usually worth the trouble. It was almost flattering that the Order went to so much trouble rather than set him free.
Instinct told him to run, but with the null field up he couldn’t open a portal, and there was little chance of him getting back up the stairs. He took a slow step towards the nearest wall and glanced around. The space looked like some kind of panic room meets sex-torture dungeon. His skin crawled even as he deliberately refused to think about what a depraved man would have used it for.
Then his attention caught on the living shadows in the corner, before another shifter stepped out of them, and Rían’s dread morphed into terror.
He really wished his ring for calm and clear thinking was working, because the last thing he wanted was to give the Mage Reaper any satisfaction of smelling the fear on him.
“Rían Fáidh,” Reaper said. “I was hoping I would get the chance to add you to my collection.”
“Gabh suas,” Rían snarled, reflexively slipping into his mother tongue despite it not being as explicit as a succinct Fuck you. He pulled his aconite-coated dagger from his hip sheath. Even if he didn’t have much of a chance to survive without his magic, he only needed to last a few minutes.
Reaper’s aura was more black than silver, countless lines of violence and death running through it. “Ah ah ah, no need to be crude,” he said, drawing closer with a casual air.
