shut, straining to hear their footsteps over the wind that grew in its ferocity. The spell wasn’t strong enough to generate a wind that could stop the ogres, but then I wasn’t trying to do that. The scuff of feet on concrete sounded close, but it also sounded as if they were approaching much slower. Someone cursed in a gruff voice before something large hit the ground. Holding my breath, I waited, body tensed. They were damn close. I could hear the rustle of their clothes as they moved. A part of me was waiting to feel the ripping of flesh as a knife dug deep.
It wasn’t until I heard two more heavy thuds hit the ground near me that I breathed a sigh of relief. I murmured a few words and lowered my hands to the ground as if I was pressing the air to the earth. The wind slowed and died down.
Lifting the collar of my T-shirt, I ducked my face inside, wiping my eyes with the interior of the shirt before daring to open them. Two ogres lay on the ground less than three feet away, their snores reverberating through the silent air. The third one was a little farther away, curled up into a ball on his side, while the ass wrapped in the fence had even dozed off. It had been a little closer than I would have liked, but it worked, and so far, no one had been killed.
The spell was called Sandman’s Kiss, and I had never worked it before. However, I had used other sleep spells before so I knew the theory behind it. I was also pretty decent at manipulating the weather. It was only a matter of combining a few things to get the Sandman’s Kiss working. The dirt on the ground was twisted into a sleep agent and the wind was the delivery method to get it into their eyes. The only problem was that I was fucked if I was stupid enough to get it in my eyes.
With a grunt, I rose back to my feet and brushed off my hands on my jeans. The sleep spell lasted roughly an hour on humans and like-size creatures. I was hoping that it would last at least half as long on something the size of an ogre. I couldn’t imagine that it would take me that long to locate and deal with Reave. My best chance for handling the dark elf was to catch him by surprise.
Unfortunately, it looked like the shouting ogre had ruined that for me. A heavy metal door screeched as it was pushed open and an ogre leaned out to look around. Spotting me, he frowned, his large brow furrowing so that his eyes were cast in shadow. My steps slowed as I warily approached the building while he watched me.
“You Gage?” he said almost in a grunt.
“Yeah,” I called, stopping several feet away with my hands out to my sides, waiting for the attack to come.
The ogre grunted again. “Reave’s waiting for you.” He moved back into the building but one hand held the edge of the door, propping it open for me. Yeah, I wasn’t so comfortable with that. When I entered the dark building, I would be at a disadvantage as my eyes struggled to adjust from the bright sunlight I was currently standing in.
Spreading my legs wide, I reached out with both hands, feeling the power filling my frame as I magically grasped the edge of the door. With a jerk, I pulled it free of both the ogre’s grip and the doorframe. The metal door groaned and shrieked as it jumped from the building and flew across the empty yard. The ogre lurched back and I could hear shouting from inside the old paper mill as sunlight poured unexpectedly into its entrance.
I waved one hand at the guard and he stepped back into the shadows as I approached. Pausing just over the threshold, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, trying desperately to discern more than vague shapes of large creatures moving around in the shadows. An increase in the sound of shuffling feet on gritty concrete nearly had me taking a step back in to the yard, but I couldn’t backpedal. I needed to take out Reave, or at the very least hand him over to the Towers so that they would stop their madness.
Using the same spell I had called up to rip the door off