Chapter 88: Beauty in a lost cause
As he hit the ground, covered by Gareth’s body, Caius saw what remained of the carriage. It didn’t look like it had exploded but more like it had hit something.
Except, it made very little sense for anything to have hit it in such a way that it’d break open like it had. The Carriage was fortified to survive powerful collisions and break through most, if not all, obstacles. This clearly had not been caused by some loose rock. This was Magic.
’Duh,’ Caius told himself, ’What else would it have been?’
"Young lord, are you alright?" Gareth asked as he eased his weight off Caius’ body and got on one knee, looking him over in concern.
"I’m fine," Caius said with a huff as he pulled up off the ground. He had the wind knocked out of him and was a little shocked but otherwise, uninjured.
"Good," Gareth said and his serious tone made it sound anything but. He cast his eyes about and the other guards were stirring. No one had been injured and they were all looking about for the cause of their crash.
Gareth looked like he had already figured it out as he said in a grave tone,
"An ambush."
Almost as soon as he said that, symbols appeared all around them. They seemed to have been etched into the ground with deliberate purpose but Caius could have sworn they hadn’t been there until that very moment.
The circles became connected by strings of Mana and let out a thrumming sound as they began to erect a Dome intent on shutting off the inside of it from the outside. Before the dome was completely up, figures began to ’appear’ so they could be sealed within along with Gareth, the other confused Guards, and Caius.
’Appear’ being the tentative word to be used here because Caius was sure the figures had been lurking and simply chose now to jump into view. They had moved too fast for him to see their movements but something about their poses told him they didn’t just materialize out of thin air.
The figures wore dark cloaks, complete with hoods. But they didn’t really try to hide their faces from view. Their faces ranged from fairly good-looking to average, to displeasing but they had had the same set of eye-catching details; Bright red eyes and fangs.