Qing's Quest book 2, Chapter 1: Firebolts and lightning

Spoilers! Please don't read before you've finished book 1!

I'm writing some random stuff here so you don't get spoilers in the preview in case you haven't caught up yet. Lalalalalalalalalalalal :)

Notes before starting book 2:

-Qing didn’t get to keep the machine gun he took from Jerome, it wasn’t there when he woke up. I forgot to write that in.

-Major change: At end of epilogue, it isn’t Rowan who comes running after them. It is Morgana. She doesn’t want to stay there, but asks to come along because she wants to make up for the evil she has caused. 

-A lot of other edits will be done to book 1, but these are the two major changes I’ll be making that should should know before starting book 2 that I know of now. 

And with that, let's get into book two!

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“Drop your weapons and release the kids,” Qing said, staring at the cloth-covered bandit’s dark eyes. He could barely make out the man’s pupils in the soft light coming from himself. Cloth covered the rest of the man’s face, tightly wrapped to protect it. Qing shifted his weight, and the sand underneath his feet shifted.

God, I hate sand. It is coarse and rough, and it does get everywhere.

He refocused on the man’s wicked sword, sleek and curved to cut. It hung angled towards the ground, as if the man felt no threat at all.

“Take off your fancy armour, strip out of those red pants, and drop your valuables. Then we might consider letting you go.” His voice was coarse and dripped with venom. “We are twenty, and there is only one of you.”

Qing held up a finger, and with a thought, Qing brought up his quest log.

Quest: [Rescue the children]

Bandits have kidnapped The True Moon tribe’s children. Rescue the children, bringing them back to the tribe.

-Objective: Rescue children (0/6)

-Optional objective: Defeat bandits (0/15)

-Optional objective: Defeat bandit leader (0/1)

-Reward: Thawb of the moon

-Optional reward: Health potion x 2

-Optional Reward: Smokie

What was a thwab and what…or who the hell was Smokie?

Then he opened the map he had received after surviving the attack on Shadowgrove and scanned it. Five red dots represented the enemy, spread out in front of him. Useful, except he’d tested with Knut, and it only extended sixty feet.

“There are only sixteen of you, which means you are at least fourteen short,” Qing said, crossing his arms. “Release the children, or suffer the consequences.”

The man tilted his head. “What makes you think you can walk in here, demanding we hand over our prisoners, and your blood will not water the desert?”

“Poetic words for a bandit leader.”

“Who says I’m a bandit? To the desert tribes, I’m a rebel, yet my comrades see a leader. One who stands against the king’s tyranny.”

Qing’s eyes flicked, caught by motion in the distance. A flicker of red in the evening light. Knut was in position, ready to provide covering fire. That meant he had stalled long enough for Jenny and Morgana to be ready. All Qing had to do now was hold out until they rescued the kidnapped children and arrived to reinforce him. Or he could just kill all the bandits by himself.

“You might as well step out of the shadows,” he said and lifted his hand and mimicking a gun, pointing at the five places he knew the bandits lay.

The man clicked his tongue, and five bandits rose, sand cascading off their clothes. They stepped forward, rolling across the shifting ground like dancers, to line up around the leader.

“I’d know your name before we kill you,” he said, eyes narrowing.

Qing closed his eyes briefly, reached out to the electricity that held everything in the world together, and pulled it to his hand.

Let’s see what this baby can do.

“I don’t care,” Qing said and raised his right hand and fed it mana. His fingers started crackling, as if he was emperor of the galaxy, and he cast Chain Lightning.

The spell arced forth and struck the bandit leader in the chest before forking to strike four of the surrounding men. They all seized up and collapsed. As the boom thundering through the camp stilled, camel screams mixed with the men’s groans. The lightning had not killed them, but they were all stunned, as if they’d shoved a fork into an electric socket.

Qing charged, and as he did, blinked his eyes. He peeled back the curtain of reality, siphoning off energy to soar through his body, forming into Magic Missiles that he cast on the remaining bandit. Light from the three missiles lit up the surroundings before slamming into the figuratively shocked man. He fell to the ground, dead, blood spurting from holes in his throat, chest, and hip.

Qing equipped Paulhandler’s Keg-smasher and raised it in an overhead chop and jumped towards the downed bandit leader.

“Wait! My uncle is—”

The edge carved through his chest, warm blood splashing across Qing’s face. He spat as he ripped the axe out.

Two more bandits charged from the black tents, as Qing rushed among the stunned bandits, dragging the axe across their throats one by one before they regained their senses. Then he stood to meet the incoming bandits, head held high, axe across his chest.

Brave bandits. To charge me as I stand across six of their defeated comrades. Or maybe…

Qing checked the map.

I see.

He smiled.

A spark of fire followed by black and yellow zipped past his head. A thud and a scream came from behind as the sneaky assassin took Knut’s arrow through the heart. The two remaining bandits slowed and looked at each other. When one man’s head exploded, splattering the other with blood and brains, it was too much, and the bandit dropped his weapon and fled towards the open desert.

Qing stared after him before deciding that no, they could not afford to leave him alive. He might hurt others. Those too weak to stand up for themselves.

Qing closed his eyes, sending his feelings down into the ground. He felt the sand, how it flowed like waves. This was no forest crawling with life. This was like the sea, except the waves moved in days and months rather than seconds and minutes.

Unlike the demons, the man’s steps did not repulse or burn nature, it merely... tickled.

Qing cast Nature’s Grasp and opened his eyes to watch as the man fell forward with a scream. As he walked closer, the man’s feet disappeared, followed by his ankles, dragged into the quicksand.

So that’s how it works in the desert. Curious.

He pulling in heat from the cold air, mixing it with mana until a Fireball appeared in his hand. He threw it at the man’s neck, knocking him flat, face down in the quicksand as his flowing robes went up in flames. His arms stilled.

“Help!”

Qing turned. Morgana jogged towards him, clutching her right side, face set against pain.

“Qing, help me.”

He ran to meet her, pulling down light energy from above, casting Divine Light to heal her wounds.

She sighed in relief and stood.

“Where are Jenny and the children?” Qing asked.

Morgana looked away.

“What happened?” Qing said, grabbing her arm.

“I hesitated. One of them came out of nowhere,” she said. “He got me good, cutting deep. I…I needed healing.”

“Damn it.”

Qing took off towards where he knew they kept the children.

“Leaving your comrade alone in a fight is not the way to gain our trust,” he said as Morgana followed.

She replied, but Qing angled between two tents and activated Dash. His stomach sank into his body as flashed across the ground like a lightning-powered Tesla. As he dropped to normal speed, he kept running, but stumbled, not used to the soft ground.

Damn sand.

“Jenny,” he shouted, standing.

Aside from his footsteps, the camp was quiet, and the smell of camels covered everything.

If something happened to Jenny, then…

“You fucker!”

Qing’s lips tugged into a smile at Jenny’s voice. She lived.

He rounded a tent and stepped into the opening where the bandits had kept the children bound and secured to long posts stuck in the ground. Jenny stood over a bandit clad in black, flowing robes. She struck his face again and again, plate mail clanking. How she could bear wearing full plate mail in the desert, Qing couldn’t fathom. His metal chest armour was plenty warm.

“You don’t. Hurt. Children,” Jenny said, each punctuation marked with a fist.

“That’s enough, Jenny,” Qing said. “Is he still alive?”

She turned, and Qing winced at the sight. Blood ran down her side, and she missed part of her right cheek.

“No,” she said. “But I’m pissed off.”

“Want me to heal?”

“Not now. One of the bandits took off with a kid.”

“Shit,” Qing said. “How did that happen?” He looked at the four bandits laying dead on the ground, some missing entire limbs.

“It was chaos. And we missed one. They weren’t sixteen.”

“Why are we standing here? Which direction did they go?”

“Knut is tracking while I’m…interrogating”

“But you killed him.”

She looked down and let go, dropping the body to the sands. “Yeah.”

“Damn it, Jenny,” Qing said and looked at the kids. Five sat bound to the posts, but there was a sixth post, empty. A young girl had sat there. Middle Eastern and about the same age as his little sister. Anger bloomed in his chest, and he rounded on Morgana, finger pointed at her chest.

“If she dies because of you…” He couldn’t get out another word. He didn’t have to. She knew what he meant.

But as she looked away, her eyes widened, and she pointed to the sky. “There!”

Qing turned to see an arrow soaring through the air, tip glowing. A signal from Knut.

“Stay and free the kids,” Qing said. “We’ve got this.”

The blazing sigil they put on Knut’s bow during the Battle of Shadowgrove proved its use yet again.

His muscles compensating for the shifting ground as he sprinted up a sand dune, unequipping his axe, freeing his hands. He bounced to the top and looked around. Far ahead, Knut stood facing a robe-clad man holding a staff and a girl. Unlike the other bandits, this man wore no head cover, wearing only a circlet on his shaven head. Set in the front was a blue gem that shone in the darkness.

As Qing sprinted down the other side, Knut loosed an arrow. It flashed forward, but splintered to pieces upon an invisible barrier.

Damn it. It’s a sorcerer. This could be bad.

The man held the young girl in front of him as a human shield and shouted, “Stand back! Let me leave, and I will release the girl unharmed. But if you take one step closer, you will regret it.”

“You take one more step, and you die,” Knut said, another arrow already knocked. “My quiver is never-ending, but I doubt your mana is. You don’t piss against the wind, do you?”

“What?”

“You’d have to be dumb enough to piss against the wind to keep fighting. Let the girl go, and drop your staff.”

The sorcerer snarled and stuck the tip of his staff into the sand and turned, drawing a perfect circle in the sand. Then he tapped the screaming girl on the head, and she fainted.

Qing sprinted, and with every third of his rapid steps, Knut loosed an arrow, but each splintered uselessly against the shield.

The sorcerer dropped the girl to the sands and hopped out of the circle before raising his arms to the sky.

“Great demon Orzos, I summon you. Take this virgin offering as I, Masheer el-Farah, summon you to fight for me. Come kill, slay, and feast with glee.”

The sorcerer lifted his staff and Qing felt the magic gathering, welling up from deep within the ground.

“Damnit.”