The man walking into the room out of the darkness smiles, stepping over Samissa’s body. He is human, scraggly brown hair sticking directionless out of his head and face. He chuckles to himself, hovering a blade over Samissa’s corpse, the ichor dripping off the blade sizzling as it touches her clothes.
“Well, well, well, it looks as if I found--”
Dovik is there, blocking my view of the man. I hear a horrible gasping sound as Dovik’s coat falls around him, and with a roar he hoists the man with swords up into the air, Dovik’s twin weapons sticking all the way through the man’s chest to emerge out his back. The man gurgles a scream as he is hoisted into the air. Mana roils up through Dovik’s weapons, entering the man’s body, and forcing a cough of blood to pour out of the impaled man’s mouth.
“Get to cover!” Dovik yells back at us; Macille is already moving. I hear a sickening squelch as another arrow punches into the back of the man Dovik holds in the air like a shield, blocking the doorway with his body.
Macille swears, tearing out the arrow in his shoulder, and tossing it across the room. With deft movement, Macille makes it to his feet and grabs his shield, grunting against the pain that comes with strapping it to his arm.
I scuttle backward, pulling myself around the corner of the island at the far end of the room, getting out of line of the doorway. Weak moaning draws my attention. I peek down the other aisle the island creates, seeing Adrius there, slumped against the countertops, staring down at the stumps of his arms with horror and disbelief. I check my mana, 230/2150. Dammit.
The door that leads into the room is at the corner of the room, having a clear shot of the left most aisle close to the ovens, but on this side of the island the hidden archer in the darkness of the hallway should be unable to touch us. “Macille,” I call to him. The man is inching closer to Dovik, on the lookout for more arrows that might come sailing out of the darkness and make it past the human shield Dovik is using. “Can you heal Adrius?”
Macille looks in my direction for an instant before turning his attention back to the door. “It would take me a long time. Days maybe. He would be better at it than me.”
Dovik looks over where I am kneeling next to Adrius and curses. Another spike of mana flows into the suspended man from Dovik’s weapons, causing him to seize and shudder. With violent swiftness, Dovik rips his weapons out of the man and brings one around to slam into the man’s temple before his body has finished falling. He crumples to the ground next to Samissa, dead as a doornail.
“Get out of line of the door!” Dovik commands as he dives toward the right-most aisle where I am. Macille is already moving, rolling over the island to fall into the aisle; his shield never stops facing the doorway.
“They have at least four more,” I tell Dovik as he hurries over to us, crouching, never raising his head above the level of the island.
“Is he cogent?” The question from Dovik is hurried; I can hear panic in his voice.
I look down at Adrius. The man continues to stare down at the spot where his hands should be. I touch Adrius’ face, he feels cold, his skin pale and clammy, spongy with sweat. Looking down, I realize I'm kneeling in a pool of the man’s blood. I feel vomit start to rise in the back of my throat.
“Adrius,” I try, but there is panic creeping into my own voice. I have fought monsters before, terrifying things out of nightmares, but that isn’t what is happening right now. There are people on the other side of that dark hallway, people that want me dead. “Adrius. Can you answer me? Adrius.”
The man is muttering something now, but I don’t know elven. His pupils are wide, like giant saucers of black looking at the ruin of his body.
“He has lost too much blood,” Dovik says, he starts fiddling with his waist, pulling off his belt. “Give me your belt,” he tells me.
“What?”
Dovik doesn’t bother saying it again. He reaches forward, grabbing ahold of my belt, and rips it off with one fluid movement, breaking the buckle. The bag Arabella gifted me falls to the ground, bumping against Dovik’s hand as he holds my belt. I see something flash across Dovik’s face as the bag touches him, and he gives me a curious look. The moment is gone before my bag hits the ground. He tosses me my own belt.
“Tie it tight around his arm,” Dovik commands as he starts doing so with his own belt. “Around the bicep, here. We need to stop the blood flow to his arms, or he will bleed out.”
At another time I might despise the man for speaking to me this way, but in the moment I am grateful. I use his command to ground me in the moment; I lean on his confidence and his competence. We tie the belts around Adrius’ arms, and by the time that we are done, the man is unconscious, his breathing rapid and shallow.
“Anything else?” Dovik asks Macille.
“No one else has come through,” Macille says. Macille stands just high enough to get a clear view of the doorway, still holding up his shield. “How can they see us through the doorway? When we came in, we couldn’t see the kitchen from the hallway.”
“I don’t know,” Dovik says. He looks back at Adrius, worry clear on his face.
“Dovik!” I yell, pulling his attention away. I point down the aisle to where another of the furry rodents has appeared, looking at the four of us curiously.
Dovik flashes, disappearing and reappearing next to the rodent, seizing it violently with a bloodstained hand. I see it happen this time. The rodent starts to spasm in Dovik’s hand, its body deforming and bulging unnaturally. It explodes with a pop, a whiff of violet light splashing into the air. Dovik continues to crouch in the aisle, completely unharmed by the explosion of the rodent. He opens his hand, strands of red hair falling to the ground at his feet.
“It is an ability,” he says. “Too weak to make it past my magical defenses. If you spot any more, let me know.”
“What is the move, boss?” Macille asks. “No one else is coming through the door. They might all be ranged combatants.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Maybe,” Dovik says, he peeks around the corner of the island toward the door. “That would be an imbalanced group, but it is possible.” Dovik reaches with his weapon, Pokey, and slides one of the dead man’s scimitars towards himself before he slides it down the aisle in my direction. I pocket the sword in my inventory without thinking about it and do the same thing with the second one he slides me.
“That would mean that if you and I can get close, we should be able to beat them,” Macille growls.
“We should retreat,” I say, drawing both of their eyes in my direction for an instant. “This is a bad position.”
“You want us to show our backs to these bastards?” Macille asks.
“I want to torch them just as much as you do,” I explain. “We can’t stay here though. We have no idea about their strengths. This is a bad place to try and fight them.”
“She’s right,” Dovik says. “If they have a trap master waiting for us then we would get ourselves killed trying to go down that hallway.” He starts crouch-walking back over to me and Adrius. “Macille, get the pie.”
Macille stays still for a long moment, glaring at the dark entryway to the room that stands silent. “Fuck! Fine.” With a smooth movement, Macille tumbles back over the island, his shield blocking the punch of an arrow the second he lands.
I can’t see him anymore, but I assume he is doing what Dovik said. I scoop up my bag and wedge it between my armor and shirt before I start inching back toward the yellow barrier at the end of the room. Depending on where the hidden archer is, they might have a clear shot on the doorway to the treasure room, but no arrows spin out of the darkness to take off my head.
Sickness builds in my stomach, bile biting into my throat at the thought of retreating from an enemy. The sensation catches me off guard, the pure black hatred I feel toward our unseen enemy. Without thinking about it, I pull the Bane Crystal out of my inventory and put it onto the ground at the end of the aisle. I stop before continuing, really seeing my own hands for the first time in the last few minutes. They are slick with blood, looking like I have plunged them into red paint. The hate rising up in my stomach only builds more and more.
With a growl that seems feral in my own ears, I pull Lamplighter’s Charge out of my inventory. There hasn’t been a cause for me to use the weapon yet, but right now I want all of the firepower that I can get my hands on. I feel a rush of mana pour into my body from the weapon, the bar in my vision indicating that I have received two-hundred additional mana just from holding it. My orange fire snakes up the length of the staff as I grab ahold of it, lighting a beacon of dragonfire in the lamp that sits at its head. Testing, I touch the lamp of the staff to the Bane Crystal. Something brushes against my soul when the two meet, almost like the weapon is asking my permission for something. I assent, and the orange fire in the lamp explodes for a split second before settling back into its cage, green light casting harsh shadows around me.
Macille comes around the corner of the island. If it weren’t for the blood all over me, its sticky hotness keeping me grounded in the moment, the way the man crouch-walks backwards, keeping his shield in front of him, with an apple pie held protectively in his other hand, might have made me laugh.
“Take it,” Macille growls, holding the pie back towards me.
I look over to see that Dovik has his hands full carrying Adrius, and I don’t want to let Macille be distracted from keeping us safe from the arrows. I slink over to him, taking the still hot pie from his hands, crawling back to the statue in the wall. The second that I place the steaming pie into the hands of the statue, it makes a burping noise, and the yellow barrier disappears from in front of the treasure room.
“Through the door!” Dovik yells at us, dragging Adrius through the doorway himself, keeping low to avoid any more projectiles.
Macille starts backing towards the doorway, but this time, I ignore the order. Sparing a look over the island, I slowly raise my staff, pointing it at the furthest oven. I don’t put too much power in the Dragonfire Bolt that I launch at the oven, but even the base form of my magical attack consumes more than fifty mana now. The fire washes over the iron appliance, eating into it like a termite, blackening and corroding the iron until it begins to fall apart. I am surprised to find that the dragonfire at the head of the staff stays lit, still flickering green.
“Perfect.” I pocket the Bane Crystal once more as I start destroying the other ovens with blasts of corrosive dragonfire. I look back behind me, seeing Macille standing in the doorway of the treasure room, waiting on me. I shuffle backwards, keeping my eyes trained on the doorway to the kitchen. I have to push Macille back so that I can get a good shot on the statue in the wall.
Something tells me that the statue will take a bit more magic to destroy than the ovens did. I can only hope that the barrier will spring back to life if it is. I over channel my dragonfire, pouring more than a hundred mana into the attack, and standing in the doorway, I fire the Dragonfire Bolt at the statue.
There is movement in the corner of my eye as I unleash my attack. An arrow sails out of the darkness straight at me as I stand in the doorway. My body moves without thinking.
A burning line cuts across the skin of my palm. In the next second, I stand there in the doorway, the point of an arrow inches away from my eye, my hand wrapped around its shaft. The blood of my skinned palm mixes with Adrius’, running down the length of my forearm. The yellow barrier springs to life again, separating us from the kitchen. I had no idea that I was fast enough now to catch an arrow.
It is only a few seconds later that I realize I’m not breathing. I take in a shuddering breath, letting the arrow fall to the ground, as I stumble backwards a step. Big hands settle on my arms as I try to catch my breath, keeping me upright.
“I’ve got you,” Macille says in my ear, trying to comfort me, but my body isn’t shaking with fear or panic. I am so out of my mind with anger that I can’t stop myself from shaking.
There is a soft grunt behind me as Dovik settles Adrius onto the ground. “See what you can do for him,” he tells Macille.
“Sure.” Macille lets go of me, moving over to Adrius, light pooling in his hands as he presses them to the injured man. “My healing isn’t all that powerful. It would take me days to heal something like this.”
I stand in the doorway for several minutes, looking back into the kitchen, watching as my mana slowly fills back up. I spot a kind of lever on the inner side of the doorway and expect that it will shut off the magical barrier between us and the kitchen. All I need to do is wait for my mana to come back and for those bastards to wander in.
How dare these bastards do this? We haven’t hurt anyone. We weren’t planning to hunt other people. This competition is hard enough without us turning on each other. How could anyone do this? Killing other people like we were beasts, like we were monsters. How could they do this? They need to pay for this. The need to die for this.
My eyes fall on the rune of attunement in the center of the room. Dovik is looking at it as well, and when he notices my staring at it, he nods toward the rune.
Rune of Attunement(Very Rare):
When an essentia magician utilizes this runestone, they are able to place a permanent affix onto one of their abilities granted to them by an Essentia. This rune contains the affix for Power.
It appears that without the glowing sheet of yellow blocking me, I can identify the item just fine.
“What kind is it?” Dovik asks me.
“Power,” I answer. I step forward, picking up the rune. Dovik makes no move to stop me, to keep me from seizing this power for myself. I turn back to look into the kitchen, listening to the soft sounds of the treasure room around me. Macille whispers small encouragements to Adrius, but I don’t think that anything is getting through to the man. Dovik has put himself in a corner of the room, biting the nail of his thumb, looking back the same way I am.
I wait, feeling my anger continue to smolder in my stomach, looking toward the entrance of the kitchen. They should just show themselves already. I want them to come into the kitchen and see how I have ruined everything for them. I want to see their faces. I want to see the faces of these people that think they could kill me.
The minutes pass with nothing happening. The rune grows heavy in my hand as my nails scratch against its surface. I can’t help but squeezing the thing so tight that my arm starts to shake. The waiting continues for more than ten minutes, but nothing comes. My anger settles into hate, and I am sure that if I could see my face right now, I would be revolted.
Letting out a long breath, I shake. I let my arms relax, the rune hanging limply in my hand as I turn. “Macille, if you take this, do you think you could heal Adrius?”