This was what I had feared. The other two I could probably convince to stay quiet, but a monk of Tetotec wasn’t going to play ball. It was looking more and more like I was going to have to prevent him getting back to our front lines the hard way. Still, there was one more trick I could try…

  Using as much mana as I had on hand, I concentrated and tried something Den had taught me, back in Hawthorne. The technique was called Mind Penetration, which was actually misleading. It should be Mind Shield Penetration, because that’s what it was designed to do.

  If you thought of a person’s mind shield as a sheet of, I don’t know, strong plastic let’s say, a normal mind probe would hit it and bounce off. A Penetration spell was like a sharp needle, or perhaps a knife, designed to jab through the shield, which would then give you access to the mind of the person it was protecting. A tiny hole was all it took.

  That was the theory. Unfortunately, whether it was because I wasn’t experienced enough in the technique, or maybe I did it wrong, or perhaps Priest’s shield was of a different sort, maybe glass instead of plastic, my probe totally failed to penetrate.

  Not only that, he was aware of what I had tried to do.

  “You dare!” he roared. “Tetotec will smite thee!” He muttered a short prayer incantation, which left me with only moments to Gate several metres away, thereby avoiding the powerful lightning bolt that smashed into the earth from above, turning the sand where I had been standing into glass.

  “Well, fuck you too!” I snarled. “Acid Rain!”

  Priest cried out in shock and surprise, as my deadly rainstorm enveloped him. Still, this was no low level monk I was dealing with. My storm fell, mostly, upon some protective barrier that flared up, allowing him to jump clear of the deluge.

  I wasn’t going to let him off that easily though. “Iron Needles!” I cried. “Rock Golem! Attack!”

  “Curse!” Priest said, and threw a black ball of hazy energy at me as he simultaneously deflected my needle attack.

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  “Nullify!” I held a hand out and neutralised it. One curse was enough, thank you very much.

  “Theo, stop this!” Reeves cried out. She and Armitage had retreated a good distance from our battle, and were watching, aghast, as we threw magic at each other.

  Priest had pulled his sword out, and, having cast some kind of divine charm on it, was busy hacking away at my golem that had dragged itself out of the ground, smashing chunks of the thing as he lumbered after him.

  “It’s too late,” I said, and threw a Quagmire spell at the monk’s feet, turning the area he was standing on into a bog.

  My spell worked, but it also caught the golem in it, and whilst Priest used some incantation to pull free, dragging himself backwards through the air, my rock monster was left floundering.

  “I’m not done with you Helmage!” he snarled at me, coming to land some metres away. So saying, he pulled a small orb out of a pocket in his robe and threw it to the ground, by his feet. It exploded in a cloud of grey smoke, which billowed up and enveloped him.

  When it cleared, the monk had vanished.

  “Fuck!” I said.

  “Wh… where did he go?” Armitage stuttered. He had turned white with shock.

  I stomped over to where the monk had vanished and looked down at the ground. Had he teleported?

  I frowned. No. Maybe not. There were traces of muddy footsteps heading away. Maybe it was a stealth spell!

  I looked at my golem, still struggling to get out of the mud. It was facing the direction the footsteps had gone.

  I snapped my fingers. “Ah hah!” It was still trying to carry out my last command, which was to attack Priest.

  It was my spell that had made the quagmire, so I dispelled the thing, which meant that, whilst the muddy area didn’t vanish all at once, it almost immediately started to solidify, allowing Rocky II to finally scramble clear and stomp off down the Gap, in the direction of our front lines.

  “What are you doing?” Reeves asked, making me jump. I’d not been paying attention to my two squad members. “What’s going on Theo? Why are you fighting Priest? He’ll have you executed for this you know!”

  “Well, that’s why I’m trying to stop him getting back to our lines,” I snapped back, irritated. Then I stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault. Look, I’ll explain everything later, all right? First, I need to catch up to the monk.”

  “Catch up?” Armitage joined us. “How do you know where he is?”

  “My golem,” I said, pointing at the giant rocky creature that was now some distance away. “He’s still obeying my orders.” They both looked blankly at me. “It’s a magic thing, all right? Just follow for now.”

  So saying, I started jogging after Rocky II. Reeves and Armitage, after only a short pause, followed.