Rikel nodded and broke the glass with her spear, releasing Jolen and the strange liquid onto the floor. Lelwyn quickly looked Jolen over for injuries. “With a cursory glance I detect nothing wrong beyond a simple sleeping spell. Though, we are too pressed for time for me to do a more thorough examination,” he lamented.

Lelwyn ended the sleeping spell on Jolen, causing him to wake up in a coughing fit. “What happened?” He asked between coughs.

Lelwyn helped Jolen stand up. “We are too pressed for time for a complete telling,” he explained. “In short, you fell down a pit and have been held captive here since. The rest can wait until a more opportune time,” he ordered.

Bewr held up her hands. “Wait!” she cried. “What about the other containers?” she asked while pointing at the other people suspended in the strange liquid.

Lelwyn walked up to one of them and cast a quick spell. “This one is beyond any saving,” he announced sadly. He efficiently walked to each container, getting the same result each time. “It appears that Tyren has even more foul crimes on his hands to answer for.”

Jolen nodded. “I’m inclined to agree!” he shouted. “To that end, do you have any idea where the necromancer is hiding?” he asked.

Kirel pointed at the door at the other end of the room. “That’s the only part of this tower that we haven’t searched yet,” he explained.

Jolen smiled savagely. “Then let’s get going!” he shouted before running towards the door, the rest of the group following close behind.

Behind the door, the group found another staircase going up. Before they could start climbing it, Kirel turned to Jolen and pointed at him. “Be careful of traps in the floor!” he ordered with a sad look in his eye.

Jolen nodded solemnly. “I will be careful, my friend,” he assured. “Not just of traps in the floor, but of the walls and ceilings, too.”

With that, the group started climbing the stairs, not seeing any doors until the very top of the tower itself.

At the top of the tower, the group found Tyren looking out at the forest. Before Tyren was aware that they were there, Jolen pulled out his dagger. “My name is Jolen of the family Durana. You cursed my village!” he shouted.

Bewr, unable to help herself, smiled. “Prepare to die,” she added in a fake accent.

The other mages rolled their eyes while Jolen and Rikel looked at Bewr in confusion. Tyren shook his head. “If you’re an example of the quality of students that the Mage’s Academy is producing these days, I need not have bothered with preparing any subterfuge,” he insulted before quickly casting a curse on the group.

Lelwyn and Bewr quickly grabbed each others hands and cast a spell together to act against the curse. Kirel then started casting spells on Tyren.

While the three mages fought against Tyren with their magic, dark shapes rose from the floor and coalesced into several vaguely humanoid shadowy shapes. Rikel drew her sword. “Jolen, help me hold off these things while the others deal with the necromancer,” she ordered.

Jolen nodded and threw his dagger at a shadow, only slightly slowing it down. “Easier said then done,” he grumbled before summoning his dagger back to him and throwing it at another shadow.

Rikel turned her sword into a spear. “Yeah, that’s the way combat usually goes,” she admitted while slicing a shadow in two. Each half of the bisected shadow rose and became a separate, though thankfully smaller, shadow.

Jolen leaped over the coalescing shadows and landed next to Rikel. “So, Bewr finished your sword I see,” he observed while motioning towards it.

Rikel rolled her eyes. “Fight now; chat later,” she admonished while stabbing one of the shadows trying to surround the two of them. Jolen laughed in response and threw his dagger at another shadow.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Lelwyn batted a curse to the side. “Cease this foolishness, Tyren!” Lelwyn demanded. “You cannot hope to prevail against such insurmountable odds!”

Bewr put up a simple barrier spell. “Surrender now and we promise to speak on your behalf at your trial,” she swore in a slim hope that the necromancer would actually start to show reason.

Tyren smiled cruelly and raised his hands, causing the three mages to slam against the ceiling. “I have as much need of your mercy as I do your pity!” he sneered. “Do you even comprehend why you’re fighting me?” he demanded while slamming the mage trio into the ground.

Bewr coughed. “What’s there to understand?” she countered. “Necromancy is evil and must be opposed!”

Tyren sneered. “Is that what your pitiful little Academy taught you?” he demanded while throwing the mages into a wall. “Do you even know how the feud between Xosha and Sira even started?”

Lelwyn shook his head. “It matters not!” he objected.

Jolen, seeing Tyren’s state of distraction, threw his dagger at Tyren, hitting him in the shoulder. Tyren grunted in pain as he clutched his wounded shoulder, causing the spell he used to end early and releasing the three mages. “Insolent elf!” he shouted. Tyren stretched out his hand to cast a curse at Jolen. Jolen leaped over the curse, summoned his dagger back to his hand, and stabbed Tyren in the chest with it. “Necromancer, raise yourself” Jolen quipped.

Lelwyn stood up while trying to catch his breath. “Well done, my Elvish friend!” he complimented. “We are indeed in your debt!”

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Rikel shouted out in pain. “These shadow things are still active!” she warned the others while trying to fight them off by herself.

Kirel sighed and cast a powerful wind spell, knocking the shadows back but allowing the heavily armored Rikel to stay standing. Once the shadows were far enough away from her for his liking, he cast a lightning spell which destroyed all of them practically instantly.

Jolen chuckled. “I think we got our combat tactics backwards,” he pointed out. “The two of us should have been fighting the necromancer while the three of you dealt with those shadows,” he explained.

Lelwyn nodded. “Indeed, it appears that you are correct,” he agreed. “When we return, I shall endeavor to make sure that this information is spread to the Order of the Golden Shield and the Mage’s Academy, should similar circumstances arise again.”

As soon as those words escaped Lelwyn’s mouth, the room started shaking. Bewr shrieked in terror. “Everybody run!” she shouted. “The spell keeping the tower up is failing,” she added while running out of the room, the rest of the group right behind her.

Bewr quickly ran down the hallway, turning to a left corner. Rikel pulled her to a stop. “Wrong way, Bewr!” she told the directionless mage. “Follow me! I remember the correct way out!” she ordered the others while sprinting down another pathway.

With Rikel’s guidance, the group soon found themselves back outside of the tower. Jolen quickly headed to the horses to start freeing them.

Bewr stopped him with a hand on his arm. “That won’t work,” she told him. “We don’t have time to try to escape the blast area; we’ll have to try to fortify ourselves here.”

Jolen nodded in understanding while Bewr and Kirel joined hands and cast a barrier to protect the group. Rikel turned to them. “How bad is this going to be?” she queried.

Lelwyn crouched down and motioned for Jolen and Rikel to do the same. “That is dependent upon the nature of the tower’s spell ending,” Lelwyn answered. “If the spell is merely ended, we are safe and a barrier is redundant. If the spells is broken, our chances of survival are dismal.”

Rikel nodded in understanding. “Then shouldn’t we try to get further away?” she asked while Jolen brought the horses with him and ducked with the others under the barrier.

Lelwyn shook his head. “Nay,” he objected. “We could not travel far enough quickly enough to have any chance of escape. Further, Bewr and Kirel will not be able to maintain the spell while we ran and it is needed for us to have any chance of survival.”

Bewr grunted. “The tower’s about to collapse; brace yourselves!” she ordered through clenched teeth.

A deafening crack filled the air as a large wooden beam fell behind them. It was soon followed by the remains of a door. Jolen covered his ears with his hands. “What in the name of the gods is happening?” he shouted over the debris hitting the ground.

Lelwyn cast a spell to reduce the noise somewhat. “The compression spell has ended,” he answered. “The tower is reverting to its proper size with nowhere to for it go; it will rain down its contents until the inside is only as large as the outside frame could contain.”

Rikel’s eyes widened. “And how long will that take?” she demanded in worry.

Lelwyn shook his head. “I know not,” he admitted.

Jolen made to stand up. “Maybe we would be saferelse...” he started to suggest before a large piece of debris hit the magic barrier and bounced off. He quickly ducked back down. “Okay, we need to stay here until it’s done,” he concluded while trying to keep the horses calm among the falling debris.

Nearly an hour later, the necromancer’s tower finally finished expelling itself onto the forest floor. Bewr made a face at the remains of the various bodies that were now on the ground. “I really, really, hope that there wasn’t anybody still alive in there,” she prayed.

Lelwyn hung in head in shame at not thinking of that himself. “There is naught that can be done for it now in any event,” he pointed out. “Take solace in the knowledge that we ended a great evil this day!”

Rikel sighed. “I know that we should be cheering or celebrating right now or something,” she told the group. “But right now, all I want to do is climb into a bed and sleep for an entire season.”

Kirel put his hand on Rikel’s shoulder. “You and me both,” he agreed. “Let us head back to Midway.”

Lelwyn shook his head. “Nay. Before we can do that, we must determine why the location spell we cast for Rikel gave her two contradictory sets of directions, lest there still be a ghoul wandering the forest,” he objected.

Rikel help her forehead in her hands. “I completely forgot about that!” she admitted while pulling out her sword and holding it out. She followed the sword for a few feet until it led her to a piece of ghoul that had fallen from the tower.

Bewr, seeing this happen, tried not to vomit. “That is absolutely disgusting!” she complained.

Rikel shrugged. “Vile as it may be,” she replied. “This bit of ghoul is all that the spell is leading me towards,” she reported while kicking the ghoul to make sure that it wasn’t still active.

Bewr walked over to Rikel. “This piece of the ghoul being in the tower must have messed with the direction spell,” she observed. “When we make camp for the night, I’ll go ahead and remove the direction spell from your sword.”

Rikel nodded in agreement. “Good,” she smiled, “I can’t see any value in a sword that leads me back to a piece of leftover ghoul in the middle of the elvish forest.”

The others laughed and started heading back to Midway. The group was surprised when night started to fall just a couple of hours after they left the tower.

The group stopped and started setting up their camp. Jolen sighed. “We must have lost track of time while in the tower,” he mused. “I thought nightfall wasn’t going to be for a few hours yet.”

Bewr shook her head. “There were so many spells in there, one of them could easily have been there to mess with our sense of time,” she explained. She then turned to Rikel. “If you like, I can go ahead and get that direction enchantment removed for you now.”

Rikel wordlessly handed over her sword to Bewr, who quickly removed the enchantment and handed the sword back. Jolen cleared his throat. “I never claimed to know much about magic,” he started. “But I recall my sister telling me that enchantments don’t work well together.”

Bewr chuckled and nodded. “Veorn’s first law,” she answered. “The only reason I was able to make the two enchantments work together is that I cast both of them. I, well Kirel, was able to set up the Rune Matrix in such a way that the enchantments didn’t interfere with each other. And even then, it only worked because the direction spell was always intended to be temporary.”

Jolen and Rikel looked at Bewr with blank stares. Bewr blushed and shrugged. “I suppose that only makes sense to fellow mages,” she added. “In simpler terms, because I made both enchantments, I was able to keep them from interfering with each other.”

Rikel laughed. “If that’s the simpler version, I now know that I would never have lasted very long at your academy,” she joked.

Jolen joined the laugh. “Me neither,” he agreed. “My, already deep, respect for my sister just increased even further,” he proclaimed.

Lelwyn conjured some food and passed it out to the group. “We must not let ourselves become too distracted,” he warned. “Tyren may have had allies we should be weary of. We must remain vigilant. Bewr, after we eat, cast the advanced protection spells again, please.”

Bewr nodded while taking a bite. “I can’t wait to get back to Grainmarket to buy some real food,” she complained.

Kirel put an arm around Bewr’s shoulder. “Right now, I couldn’t agree with you more,” he joked before taking a bite of the bland conjured food.

The group quietly ate the rest of their meal and headed to bed. They managed to return all the way back to Midway without any incident several nights later.

As the group reentered the city as the sun was starting to set, Mayor Tethith came running up to them. “You did it!” she shouted. “I’m surprised it took you so long to return, though; the curse ended shortly after you left!” she announced excitedly.