It paints the remaining bricks on the road in red, but the sight and smell seem to make the other creatures more bold, not less. They come at us in a group as Taavi steps up beside me, folding his arms across his chest and grunting.
“Wizards are insufferable, but they’re also powerful.” He sighs and looks down at me. “Remember that, Oz, always.” I open my mouth to respond, but then my attention flicks back to Stryker and the charging scarecrows.
He might not be afraid of anything but a lit match, but I am fucking terrified.
“Pathetic,” Stryker sneers, throwing his left arm out and sending the rest of the bricks forward like bullets. They strike the scarecrows with alarming accuracy, knocking off legs, arms, and heads, soaking the forest floor in blood. “Is that all you’ve got, Isaac, the Just and Wise?”
Stryker stands up straight, dropping his arms by his sides as he watches the shadows just beyond his sea of light orbs. A moment later, a foot appears, cloaked in a brown boot. The man steps forward, pausing in a puddle of blood, like it doesn’t bother him in the least.
His hair is as yellow as the brick road beneath my feet, but his beard is gray, the skin on his face slightly wrinkled, his eyes a piercing blue.
“Stryker,” the man says, sounding resigned. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“And yet, I’m not,” Stryker says, crossing his arms over his blue military jacket. The bricks that were suspended in the air come crashing down, creating clouds of yellow dust that smell a bit like … piss? I look down at the ground beneath my feet and shiver. Taavi said I didn’t want to know what made them yellow, right? Maybe I really don’t. “But seeing as you’re here, I’m guessing you wish I were?”
“The Regiment has suffered because of your actions; Dorothy and her morality police have been crawling all over Oz looking for us.” The man turns to me and Taavi, the corners of his mouth turning down into a frown. “I don’t know who you are, Wizard, but if you’re smart, you’ll turn and continue on your way. This business doesn’t concern you.”
Stryker glances over his shoulder at me, and smiles. It’s a resigned sort of smile, tinted with a deep-seated melancholy that strikes a chord within me. His face is the one I wore to my family’s funerals, this pretend smile meant for the world while inside … I just screamed.
“It’s been lovely speaking to you, Oz, the Great and Terrible. Safe travels back to dreary, gray Kansas.” He turns back around and uncurls his fingers, two blades of light appearing in his hands.
The man with the yellow hair and blue eyes does the same … except the single, long blade he creates is not one of light, but one of flames.
“Every Wizard has their weakness, and mine just so happens to be fire. If you have need to kill me, you know how to go about it.”
“Oz?” Taavi asks, looking over at me. I glance back and meet his eyes. It’s clearly my decision here, but it’s obvious what Taavi wants. “My recommendation is to leave. We don’t want to make an enemy of the C.R.O.W.S, or of Dorothy. And we don’t know what exactly Stryker did to earn their ire.”
Looking back at the pair of wizards, I see Stryker’s back and shoulders tighten. He’s preparing to die right now. And the man threatening his life poses no threat to us. It’d be best if we just kept walking, right?
Yet … that’s never been my MO, to just walk past something like this.
“What did he do?” I shout, cupping one hand around my mouth. The man with the yellow hair glances briefly my way, assured of his victory against Stryker. He knows that his weakness is fire, and he’s willing to use it. “To deserve to die, I mean.”
“He entered Dorothy’s Ruby Trials, and tried to kill her, bringing her wrath down on our organization. So many of us have suffered because of that, so many have died.”
“Dorothy’s a monster,” Stryker says, looking back at me again. There’s a bit of pleading in his gaze this time, but just a hint. I doubt I’d have even seen it if I hadn’t spoken up and gotten him to look at me again.
He thinks that Taavi and I can save him.
The question is: should we?
“She’s taken over Oz, and she’s imposing the rules of her own twisted morality on the rest of us.” Stryker spins the blades in his hands and exhales, giving me a look that’s raw with stark emotion. “She killed my fiancée. What else could I do?”
“Dorothy needs to be removed from power, true,” the other man says, “but the way that you went about it wasn’t right. We’ve all anguished under her laws; that’s no excuse, Stryker. If she finds out you’re still alive, the Regiment will continue to suffer.”
