hear anything at all. Bren closed his eyes and gritted his teeth against the sound of the roaring wind. When everything died down and Bren slowly opened his eyes he found that he was under a layer of thin glass shards. Reaching up he encountered Thuraman’s shield. Looking to his left Bren was happy to see that everyone was safe as well, though they didn’t seem to be enjoying their glass coffin.
“Do you think it is safe to move yet?” Faye asked meekly.
“Only one way to find out,” Cass replied reaching his hand up and touching the shield as well. “I didn’t think you could use magic,” Cass commented as he pushed against the invisible wall.
“I can’t,” Bren replied honestly. “This is my staff’s work.”
“If you can use your staff, then can’t you fight the Brotherhood like you did before?”
“It’s not that simple,” Bren replied. “The staff can only work one of two ways. It can use spells that have been etched into it by my father, or I can give it a spell and feed it magical energy. Since I can’t feed it energy, and it has to rely on its own stores, then we are limited to what spells are already ingrained in it.”
“Are there any ways I can use you to attack?” Bren asked feeling silly for not thinking about it before.
Not on a large scale, but I can release pent up energy, though with my limited capacity and you not helping resupply me, I would be severely limited in the number of attacks I could use. At the same time though, the magical energy around here is so strong it might not matter that I can’t receive any help from you.
Digging out of the glass was a lot harder than Bren would have thought. As soon as the shield fell a very heavy glass mound fell upon them. Cass was the first one to reach the top and helped the others pull themselves out. One of the guards got a large piece of glass stuck in his eye, which blinded him on one side. Luckily, other than that, there were no major injuries. Shaking the last of the glass shards from his clothes, Bren lifted up his blanket to find it couldn’t keep a flea warm. Though it was little use to use for sleeping anymore, Bren still stuffed it in his pack in case he could find a use for it later.
Thanks to the storm, Bren had forgotten about the Brotherhood until two of their soldiers showed up walking toward them. Their metal armor was a bit dented but other than that, it looked as if the storm had done little damage to them.
“Brotherhood,” Bren shouted as he dropped to look for his sword.
Cass had his drawn well before Bren could pull his from the tangled mess that lay at his feet. The Brotherhood were skilled warriors but compared to the Katanga, they might have been children with pointed sticks, and Cass had been expected to become a Katanga officer.
As the first soldier approached Cass, he drew back a large double handed sword, but Cass didn’t jump or even move out of the way of the impending blow. As the heavy sword descended, Cass took one step to the side and held his sword up, pushing the heavy blade to land safely to his left. As the soldier tried to pull his weapon back up Cass stepped into the man and pushed him with his shoulder. The heavy armor might protect the soldiers from blades or glass, but when standing on something that slid beneath you, it made it hard to keep your balance. The Brotherhood soldier fell back, and like a turtle, was wriggling in an attempt to right himself. Cass headed toward the man but quickly found the other soldier moving to block his path. Cass started to turn to meet the other man, but Brenda jumped in from the side bringing her sword up and cutting off the man’s sword hand. Cass didn’t stop to watch the fight; instead, he turned to the man who still lay on the ground trying to maneuver himself onto his side so that he could push himself up. Cass didn’t give him the chance.
Cass calmly walked over to the man and kicked the edge of his helmet knocking it off the man’s head. “Need a hand?” Cass asked the man who answered by spitting at Cass. “Thought so,” Cass said with a grin just before he