Yuri was a little worried.

When he ran out of the safe room, he was greeted by swaths of ghouls coming from both ends of the hallway. There were at least a few dozen approaching from each side. If Yuri had been with Pullman, he wouldn’t have felt so nervous. That man was about as powerful as Yuri’s own teacher.

But Pullman wasn’t around, and was now aware of what side Yuri was really on.

What the hell had brought so many ghouls this way?

Last time Yuri had seen that many was when he and Pullman had been running from the death knight. That grey monstrosity seemed to attract other grey dead, as if it were their leader.

The spell Yuri had erected with the pendant given to him by his grandmaster, his master’s master, should have prevented most of them from even finding this place. It was some sort of divination protection, among other things.

His teacher had warned him to avoid employing the leaf pendant around Pullman. Such a powerful item would have drawn even more suspicion from the warlock.

Now though, it was just Yuri and Nico. Yuri would not break his geas by employing the pendant. The leaf pendant was made by his grandmaster, the most powerful mage Yuri had met. There was no way it didn’t work.

That meant something drew them here.

He looked over his shoulder and studied Nico in the hallway.

The weak but brilliant hedge mage drew impractically small spell formations all over the floor, not seeming to mind the slow, but inexorable arrival of the ghouls. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be a greater ghoul among them to direct their intelligence. According to his teacher, they were the ones to watch out for.

“Finish your preparations and head inside the safe room,” Yuri exclaimed, forcing a stronger accent than the one he had. Sometimes, his fake Russian accent almost sounded comical to him. He was fluent in English, but still had to pretend he was struggling with words.

Nico ignored him, humming some kind of song while doodling his odd spell arrays.

Yuri tried very hard not to yell. “Hey, not time for pop tunes. Are you listening?”

Finally, Nico looked up, and grinned. He capped his marker and stood up, admiring his work. “There. All done. It should work, even with a margin of error of up to thirty six percent.”

“Head inside,” Yuri repeated, ignoring Nico’s random babbling. How in the twisting sands could he protect this scrawny hedge mage outside in the hall? Yuri’s school of magic focused purely on attacking to protect.

Attack, attack, attack until the threat was no longer a threat. If you were on the defense, you were losing.

Nico didn’t seem to hear Yuri. He connected the thumb side of his open palms. On them were another of his confounding spell formations. He muttered something inaudible to Yuri and nodded. “There are thirty six on your side and twenty two on my side. Seems about right. Still within the margins.”

Yuri blinked.

It wasn’t the first time Nico seemed to summon precise information out of nowhere. It wasn't like Yuri was bad at math, but somehow Nico gathered the exact number almost instantly. Was that some kind of divination spell on his hand?

No. A hedge mage with divination abilities? Impossible.

But wasn’t it also impossible to cast spells off of one's body?

Yuri felt a growing headache in the back of his neck, and relaxed. He kept his voice level, mixed with his exaggerated accent. “I cannot go all out if you are in hallway.”

Understanding seemed to dawn on Nico as his expression widened. He said, “Ohhh. You thought you were going to fight them all by yourself. Sorry about that. Those are yours. These are mine.”

He pointed respectively to both sides of the hallway.

Yuri’s impatience began to bubble into anger. He unclenched his fists. Yours? Mine? This wasn’t a game.

Was this how his teacher felt when dealing with the grandmaster? How could Yuri uphold his honor to protect the hedge mage if he wasn’t listening?

Nico seemed to understand what was going on with Yuri and said in a diplomatic tone, “I know you’re very powerful, but let me remind you that I saved your life more times than you saved mine. Since I woke up this morning, I’ve survived haunts, grey dead, Coalition Sentinels, Pullman, and this death trap of a tower. I can handle myself.”

Yuri sighed. He was right. It just felt odd to think a simple hedge mage had any level of confidence above lighting a candle, especially in the NextOver. No. It was better not to think about it. Just trust the grandmaster’s plan.

He bent his knees, and was about to invest a minimal amount of magic power into the new spell formations in his shoes, but a finger tapped him on the shoulder.

Nico said, “You should probably use your ash summoning spell to make a bunch of formations preemptively.”

Yuri looked up, closed his eyes, and prayed for God to grant him strength. Once again, Nico was right.

The Russian had spent so long hiding his true abilities in front of Pullman that he had already built up a bad habit. His teacher would have thundered him with his band.

He pulled out his chalk and quickly drew the ash array. The memory of the burnt wood of his childhood home flooded his senses.

Corpses of his father and mother huddled over Ilyana’s crib.

lyana’s wails under the Moscow sky.

The grandmaster standing on a pile of dead gangsters.

The array solidified with his power, fueled by his memory of loss and a promise. It snapped out like a viper down the hall toward the ghouls. A wall of fire erupted, blocking the hall in a brilliant red and yellow light. The flames vanished in a flash, leaving only ten ashen circles.

Even more ghouls came from the hall, adding to their already large number.

Yuri roared a battlecry, invested the smallest amount of power into his shoes like Nico taught him, and jumped.

To his surprise, he cannonballed forward, as if catapulted over a mountain. Years of rigorous physical training in his master’s gym kicked in. His bodybuilder’s frame came from his mother and father, but his muscles were carved from gymnastics training. He flipped forward midair, rolled on the ground over his shoulder, and landed expertly on his feet.

Without losing momentum, Yuri ran and slid into one of the middle spell arrays like a cricket player. He immediately invested power into it, summoning the memory of his pledge to his teacher, under the watchful eye of the grandmaster. His teacher and Yuri’s hands were clasped above a flame.

It was the first time Yuri had seen hope in the fire.

Red power cycled between the array and his body.

Yuri lifted his fist and spread his fingers.

White hot flames surged between his fingers, striking the nearest ghouls in their chest. The flames grew quickly over their skin, covering their entire bodies in blistering heat. Five of the ghouls took a fiery step forward, and collapsed into ash.

Yuri got up, reminding himself not to use Nico’s spell formation in his shoe again. That thing almost killed him.

He spared a quick glance behind him, and saw Nico hadn’t moved. His posture looked patient, almost amused. Was he even summoning a spell?

Yuri couldn’t sense any magical power coming from Nico, not even with the assistance of the leaf pendant.

“Protect the boy, my ass. Someone should protect him from his own stupidity,” Yuri complained to himself while spraying another flame blast spell at the next row of ghouls. Luckily, he didn’t need to trust Nico’s capabilities. Yuri only had to trust the grandmaster, and he was rarely, if ever, wrong.

Two ghouls sailed past his flames, kicked off the walls, and used the added momentum to attack Yuri from both sides in tandem.

Yuri planted each foot in separate spell arrays, and threw his hands up, still leeching off the memory of his promise with his teacher. Twin pillars of fire gushed out of the arrays like spewing magma, burning off their skulls. Their lifeless bodies crashed on the ground behind him.

The remaining ghouls picked up their pace, having sensed a real threat. Six of the closest sprinted at him, claw-like fingers outstretched.

Yuri stepped on one of the remaining arrays, and summoned another wall of fire behind him. He didn’t wait for the fire to die, and jumped backwards. The flames vanished when he was only a hair’s breadth away.

He had spent countless hours practicing that move to make sure he didn’t burn.

Yuri landed inside one of the arrays. He looked down to make sure he had drawn Nico’s modifications right. It wasn’t nearly as precise or elegant, but it would do.

A memory of Ilyana’s first day in school when Yuri and his teacher dropped her off warmed his body. It was the flame of pride, security, and hope. Power coursed through him, and he cycled it through the newly modified formation.

It surprised Yuri how quickly his flame halberd appeared in his hand. The magic felt clean. If he survived this, he’d have to thank Nico again.

Yuri moved his fingers in a half circle.

The halberd rushed forward, swinging in a horizontal arc wide enough to touch both sides of the hallway. It cleaved through more than half of the remaining ghouls, killing them instantly.

One managed to duck in time. It scrambled beneath it and pounced at Yuri.

The halberd spell took all of Yuri’s focus to maintain. He couldn’t sparel any more fire magic into another attack.

A voice shouted behind him. “Your shoes!”

Right. The weird spell formation. He could invest a small amount of magic power into the ghoul and also create space.

Yuri lifted his foot, chambered his knee, and executed a perfect front kick into the ghoul’s teeth.

The shoe exploded with so much power, Yuri kicked the ghoul’s head straight off its neck. The recoil blew Yuri away from the dead ghoul. Yuri’s back and head collided onto the floor as he was thrown backward several yards. His ears rang.

The magic left Yuri, and the halberd disappeared. The world seemed to spin, and the back of his neck felt like it had been hit with a hammer. Even in the haze of his vision, he saw his left shoe was completely ruined, splayed apart at the ball of his left foot.

Focus. He needed to focus on his mission. Protect Nico. All else would fall in place. But his ears were ringing so lou he couldn’t focus on a single thing. Everything was moving all wrong.

Yuri roared at his own weakness, and attempted to get up, but his body went weak. He collapsed to the floor once more.

The ghouls were coming. Protect Nico. Where was he? And what were those loud sounds? It sounded like mini grenades going off.

He groaned, turning his head as far as the pain would let him so he could tell Nico to run inside. Yuri had failed his mission. He failed the grandmaster’s trust. Worst of all, he failed his promise.

“Jesus, dude. I said small amount of magic, not fifty GTUs,” a familiar voice complained, confident and unhurried. He sighed. “You’re concussed. You can cycle your power in a second.”

A hand yanked at his jacket collar, and Yuri felt himself getting dragged on the stone cold floor. He saw black markers and the familiar signs of the recovery array. On instinct, he cycled his magic, and could feel the pain subsiding.

“I gotta get to the gym, man,” Nico huffed. “Twenty one more seconds until they reach it.”

He looked up and saw Nico standing between him and the oncoming ghouls. No. He was going to die. They both were.

But what about the ghouls that came from the other end?

Yuri managed to push himself up on one elbow and looked behind him. Piles of ghouls and what looked like the remains of ectoplasms littered the hall just outside the safe room. Several of the ghoul’s legs were encased in ice. Three of them looked like their arms were blown off.

Scorch marks, cracks, and ectoplasmic remains lined the floor, ceiling, and hall where Nico had stood before. What in God’s name had happened?

“How…” Yuri croaked. He turned to look at Nico. It was only now Yuri saw the scrawny hedge mage had drawn several spell formations in a tight cubic area of the hallway. They did not radiate with power. The arrays looked…ordinary. Without any magic power, the arrays just looked like very impressive drawings.

Nico turned over his shoulder and grinned like a little kid at show-and-tell. “Check this out.”