The castle was a mess of a place. Abandoned for years, we had traveled dilapidated hallways filled with moth-eaten tapestries, cobweb filled windows, and enough dust on the ground that every step had kicked up a small cloud. Years, perhaps decades had gone by since the last resident who bothered to clean the place at all had lived here. In the courtyard, I had been far too terrified to get more than a passing look at the walls of the castle, but truly this was a place that had been abandoned and I couldn’t help but wonder why.
Following Ophelia’s pace was almost impossible when she was traveling as quickly as she wanted. The woman’s short stature hid an impressive physique, and I simply couldn’t keep up. There were hints of her physical ability back in the dungeon but Alex and I had slowed her down enough that outside of the short bouts, I hadn’t really understood what she could do. But with the focus core giving shape to her latent power, she had only grown stronger.
I had a distinct feeling that my own powers were particularly powerful, but I was getting that tabletop RPG feeling again. Against Ophelia, there would be nothing I could do to stop her from defeating me. The two bandits who we had run into on our way to the prison chambers hadn’t been able to do more than delay her a few seconds either. She had certainly gained a focus of physical combat, and I’d guess it specialized in speed and decisive strikes. The expression ‘Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard’ came to my mind, though I hoped I was wrong. Being at a disadvantage early because I used magic instead of a sword would suck.
The prison doors opened in front of us, Ophelia kicking them open like they owed her money and she was here to collect. “Seriously? You couldn’t use your hands?”
She turned to me as the dust settled and just peaked a single, razor thin eyebrow at me, not saying anything. She was right though, we weren’t being sneaky, we were racing against time. Roquain had taken a hell of a hit, but he had gotten back up despite the impalement. He would be coming after us, I was sure of it.
The jailer had been up above in the courtyard, hiding as soon as the fighting started. He was the bully type it seemed, happy to pick on those who couldn’t fight back, but fleeing the moment someone might be able to give him his own medicine. We checked around quickly, but couldn’t find any keys.
“Just blast them open with that tome of yours. I don’t want to be sitting here when he finds us.”
I nodded, checking my mana bar to see how much fuel I had left. It was sitting around 70% and going up slowly. Not nearly as quick a regeneration as it had been in the dungeon. I looked a bit lower, and checked the active effects to see if there might be an explanation.
Active Effects
In combat: Health, Mana, and Stamina regenerate slower while fighting, and for a short duration after.
Ah, wonderful. If I wasn’t ‘resting’ I wasn’t going to regain my resources as quickly. A problem to solve later, I suppose.
Following Ophelia’s idea, I went to the four cells and told the inhabitants to back away. Force bolt quickly bent the locks out of shape until they were unable to serve their original purpose, and the four gathered in the hallway. They stank of unwashed bodies and refuse, and none of their clothes looked particularly nice. All were torn and dirty, and none of them were wearing shoes anymore, their feet battered and bruised from walking barefoot from place to place.
Besides their smell though, they seemed well enough. Each of the four had a race that I figured would make for desirable traits in one way or another. Two were young minotaurs, harry legged and thick muscled with long, gently bent horns coming out of the sides of their head just above their ears. I won't lie, it kinda freaked me out to see them hunch down through the doorway and stay bent over like that. They were easily 7 feet tall at the head, and closer to 8 at the tips of their horns. Each of their vaguely bull like faces had a thick, circular ring in the septum, and their noses had traces of dried blood from where the rings had been pulled and ripped the skin.
The sight pissed me off, truly. They were so thankful, so happy not to be stuck here anymore. I couldn’t imagine how they had been captured, but it was obvious they hadn’t offered any resistance after being captured. They had just been led around by their noses, literally, and if the wounds on their back and the torn clothes were any indication, beaten if they disobeyed at all.
The other two were likely not meant for labor. One was a woman, or something that looked like a woman at first glance. She was shapely, ridiculously beautiful, and utterly different from anything else I had seen that day. She had skin the color of summer leaves, long delicate fingers that ended in sharp clawed points, and hair that shifted about to somehow look like falling autumnal foliage. Her legs were a bit too long, and her facial features were pinched a little close to her face. She seemed to read my uncertainty and frowned. “Have you never seen a dryad before?” She snapped, ruining my impression of her almost immediately. She turned away from me and walked over to speak with Ophelia, who started examining a silver cuff of the dryad’s left wrist.
The last prisoner wasn’t bipedal at all. Rather, he seemed to be a deer? A deer-taur? A centaur, but with a deer’s body instead of a horses. I asked, and he said he was a cervitaur. I had certainly never heard of them at least. Four legs, each ending in cloven hooves, with a human man’s body where the head ought to be. His hair was a tawny brown shorn close to his skull, and his face was freckled. He was a willowy thing, seeming more suited for a life of academia than labor and I had no idea what value he would have as a slave. Though I supposed he was cute, in a young teacher kind of way. The other prisoners offered obvious value as slaves. The minotaurs could do physical labor, the dryad would be sold as a curiosity or for other things, ick, but I just didn’t get why anyone would buy a cervitaur if centaurs were around. Well, IF centaurs were around, I suppose. I certainly hadn’t seen one yet.
The group all gathered together at the single entrance. Ophelia had posted herself just outside the door while I released the four prisoners, and only the dryad had joined her. But they came back now, the door to the prison left open so we could see out of it and into the hallway in case someone came.
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“Elf, why did you bring the human with you? Isn’t he with them?” The dryad asked, giving me another hard look. I pursed my lips a bit, and glanced over at Ophelia. Was this one of those ‘humans are giant shit heels to everyone’ worlds?
“He isn’t. They threw him into the trial grounds with me. Niles wants out of here just as much as the rest of us.” The minotaurs seemed relieved at her words, the cervitaur mildly curious, but the dryad remained unconvinced.
“He will just try to sell us himself the moment we escape. We should toss him in a cell and go.” The dryad was starting to get on my nerves.
“Look, lady? I don’t know what your damage is, but I don’t really care what you do once we are out of here. You can go live in a van down by the river for all I care.” I rolled my eyes at her, just really aiming for that teenage level of pettiness.
“What's a van?” asked the cervitaur, giving me a much more curious look. I had piqued the professor's interest, well damn.
“We should talk later. Dana, be quiet for a moment. The human helped us, let us trust him until we escape.” The smaller of the two minotaurs spoke up, his voice far higher pitched than I had ever imagined a creature that big being able to make. Was he still a teenager? Did minotaurs go through puberty like humans did, squeaky voice and all? No way, right?
“He’s right Dana. I know you have a history, but hold onto your anger for a bit so we can all leave here alive.” The cervitaur again, his voice having a faintly english accent to it, which only drove up the ‘professor’ vibes he was throwing off.
“Cyril, you plan to trust him too?” the dryad, Dana, asked, turning to the cervitaur with a hint of disbelief in her voice. She pronounced his name as Sai-Rill, which was just perfect.
“At least until he does something to prove I shouldn’t.”
“We need to leave.” The largest minotaur said, his large, pointed ear aimed at the open door. His voice was deep, far deeper than the others, and I figured he had to be the older of the two. “I can hear footsteps getting closer.”
We all quieted down, and the sound of feet approaching was audible in the distance. Our bickering had covered it up from all except the minotaur. “Can any of you fight?” I asked suddenly, glancing over at Ophelia as she posted up at the door. All of them shook their heads no.
“This bracelet stops my magic.” Dana said, showing us all the silver object that was around her wrist. It was tight against her skin, with a small hole for a key near the hinge.
It turned out that the minotaurs both had farming related focus cores, without any combat abilities, and Cyril’s abilities all required a bow to be used. At least the minotaurs were strong, but without weapons, they would be fodder to a combat focused person.
“Well shit, stay close then. Ophelia, let's go. You know the way out, right?”
“More or less!” She said, almost cheerfully, before she started a brisk walk down the hallway. We all followed her, but only made it to the first corner before we were stopped.
In the confines of the hallway were three people. The jailer, who had traded in his wooden club for a nasty spiked mace, and two bandits behind him, holding shortbows. They took aim at us from across the hallway, nearly 50 feet away.
“Ophelia….” I started. I could stop both arrows, but if I had to do it more than once or twice it would start to drain my limited mana pool quickly. If the archers fired at the same time at least. If they staggered their shots, I could block plenty more, but using concurrent shields would drain me quickly.
“Stop the first volley, then just protect the group.” She sounded confident, so I just nodded and hoped she knew what she was doing.
“Fire!” The jailer shouted, taking up a defensive stance with the mace in front of his body. The archers loosed their arrows, both right at Ophelia. I waited for a split second, then cast my barriers in the middle of the hallway, in the path of the arrows. The shields shattered in a cascade of light, blocking the arrows and obscuring everyone’s view.
Ophelia dashed down the hallway at full speed, covering the distance like an olympic sprinter going for gold. The distracting shattering of the barriers gave her enough time to close the gap, and the archers could only fire a single volley more before she was in too close. The fight was viscous as the jailer fended off blow after blow from the elf with his mace. He used its weight and size to great effect, and the archers had dropped their bows in favor of short swords.
Ophelia had a very direct fighting style, aggressive and forward. She launched a barrage of attacks from her crystal rapier, constantly targeting the jailer’s exposed flesh. Each thrust aimed to either kill or disable, but the jailer had some skill that allowed him to shift the blows. Each time I was sure she would land a hit, the jailer would shift his body just enough that the sword just missed, and he would return the attack with one of his own, aiming to crush her arms, or her legs, or even her skull.
In addition to the jailer, the two henchmen continued to try and circle around Ophelia, trying to get past her so they could attack at her blind spots. I could see them all using skills, weapons glowed red hot, or seemed to hit the ground with extra destructive force. The jailer even had a skill that caused a phantom weapon to repeat the hit a moment after the first, which caught Ophelia off guard and knocked her sword from her hand. The bandits capitalized on the brief moment to lunge out and stab at her with their swords, but she danced away.
She recalled the sword to her hand then, and stabbed out, catching one of the bandits in the gut. His blood poured out of the wound, coating the crystalline sword, which quickly absorbed it and turned from a pale pink to a brilliant crimson. Ophelia danced back three steps, out of range of the remaining two. She started attacking the air in front of them, looking like she was threatening them not to come closer at first. But each thrust left a phantom blade in the air, a red facsimile of her rapier. Ten missed strikes, ten crimson blades. Then she stepped forward and thrust once more, and the blades flew forward in a cloud, lancing through both the jailer and the remaining bandit.
“Done. Let's go!” Opehlia yelled back as she wiped the blade off on her clothes. The sword was no longer crimson, the color having faded to a nearly translucent clear, like a quartz.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side, yeah?” I asked as we caught up to her. She nodded, a grim expression on her face.
“If we find Roquain, I’ll need you to buy time. It's gonna be a bit before I can use that attack again.”
“You just had to say that, didn’t you?” I asked, knowing it was impossible we wouldn’t find the bandit chief now. I sighed, figuring it would happen at the last possible moment.
Lo and behold, I was right. God damn event flags.