Chapter 8 An Obsession

Sary Smith had had better days. Earlier today she was visited by the scariest woman in town. Some drow monster that was supposedly a knight and supposedly in the service of an even scarier monster. Sary had been one of the few people to actually see what Isaac had done to people that crossed him. She had been minding her own business, walking down the street, when two men appeared out of nowhere and tried to assassinate the previously mentioned monsters. The first one was killed in one punch by the drow but the other, the other had disappeared. Not disappeared in the way that invisibility spells or even Disintegrate make things vanish from sight. No, this was different in the worst way possible. The magic used only hurt the assassin. The man’s body turned to dust in the street like a god had decided that he didn’t need to live any longer. That was the day that Sary realized she needed to find a way to move their operation to a different city. There were just a few problems with that.

The first of Sary’s many problems was that the person dearest to her would get executed by the guards the moment one of their infernal moon talismans got within five feet of him. The second was the distinct lack of clients in any other cities. The third was her inability to properly use her higher tier magic without that stupid court mage and his annoying detection array finding out. Her fourth and final problem was that she had no way to move the money that they had been raking in. There was simply too much of it. Sure she had spent an insane amount already but there was still almost a ton of precious metals in storage. She had made traps, set up glyphs, carved wards, and made a ritual room that still needed to be refreshed regularly. Memory modification magic needed to be done in a place where the court mage couldn’t sense it and that meant Globes of Negation which was an expensive spell to turn into a glyph. She thought that those problems were bad enough. This had been a major hit to their finances when they had just started out but that was a very long time ago.

Today her problems just kept getting worse. Right after the drow had left her store she got a message that two suspicious individuals had been spotted entering her other two locations. One of them had been apprehended but there had been no word back from the bar after the initial message was sent. Like it or not it was time to pack up and get the hells out of Safeharbor, at least, that was the plan. A few of Sary’s alarm spells had been triggered notifying her that someone was tearing their way through the secret passage connecting Tic’s to their warehouse. The warehouse was used as a storage and holding area for everything from drugs to people and gold. She had to step up her time table. They had gone from having at least an hour to get out of town to five minutes. She left her subordinates to pack up everything they could and start loading wagons while she went to deal with the intruder. She hoped that the traps would get rid of them when suddenly she stopped getting new alarm messages.

Sary hoped that the intruder had gotten themselves killed but right when she was going to check she got another alarm. This time her bubble and globe had gotten triggered from someone trying to unlock the door without an enchanted key. She breathed a sigh of relief. That trap was her most expensive but it was also the hardest to get out of. It required a mage on the outside to break the bubble and that was unlikely but not impossible. She had opened the door to find the man that she was most afraid of looking like he was about to pass out. He didn’t have anyone behind him so she figured she could take a few seconds to mess with him before she activated the poison gas spell. Once she was done with him she activated the spell and waited to make sure that it would kill him. One could never be too thorough.

When he started to break down her spell with raw mana output she realized that he didn’t seem to play by the same rules as her or any other mage in the world. When he pulled apart the bubble of reality magic with his hands she hadn’t even known what to do. She was too shocked by the spectacle to even react. When he had stepped through and almost fell she had a sliver of hope that maybe he would still die to the poison. When he took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and grinned at her she realized that her hope was a fool’s dream. She only had one thing that she could do. Run.

—

Isaac started burning half of his mana regeneration rate to cleanse his body of the poison. He realized almost immediately that his death flames had no effect on it. His body was healing but the poison was only fighting against the antitoxin and not his own power. That meant that his lungs, eyes, and sinuses would continue to feel like they were on fire for a while. That put him in a bad mood. The fact that he had survived an unsurvivable trap had put him in a good mood. In the end it sort of balanced out. His eyes focused on the clerk who was frozen in place in front of him just long enough for him to feel a surge of mana and watch her vanish in front of him. ‘Did that bitch just silent cast a teleportation spell?!’ He swore internally. ‘Recurring villains are the worst.’ He grumbled and took a few unsteady steps forwards. The bubble had sealed itself back up and the poison was locked inside so no more was leaking out in his direction.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Isaac took a few more steps forward and leaned against the wall. He slid down and sat leaning against the wall. ‘I think I’ll just wait for Lenna. She is going to kill me as it is. I don’t need to make it any worse.’ He thought and looked around. The odd feeling he had had about that side of the door was gone. ‘She must’ve gotten rid of it so she could cast spells.’ He shrugged. ‘At least that’s better than sitting here and suffering.’ He thought while his eyes, nose, and lungs were burning from the airborne poison.

—

Lenna moved at a fast walk down the secret tunnel with Lenny in toe. Her eyes scanned the ground for any untriggered traps. “Looks like the boss made it easy for us.” Her companion said from behind her. His eyes were darting around at all the projectiles and poison residue. Lenna had cut through triggered spike traps on multiple occasions already.

“There.” Lenna said and pointed at one of the paving stones making up the tunnel’s floor. They both made sure to stay well away from it as they passed. Isaac had missed a trap. If Lenna could have been sure that Isaac had cleared all of them then she would be running and not speed walking down the tunnel. They continued for a while until something caught her eye. “Bone chips.” She said and bent down to pick one of them up. The chip had a weird impression of a scale on it. The tunnel around them was blackened from fire and still wreaked of sulfur. “Fireball trap. We need to be more careful. You won’t survive one of those.”

“I’ll just keep following your lead.” Lenny replied and started only stepping where Lenna stepped to be safe. Up ahead was an iron cage that blocked the path.

“Such a waste.” Lenna grumped as she used her aura and mana to empower her swing to cleave through four bars at once at head height and then again and knee height. The four bars slid away and clanged onto the ground.

“You’re freaking scary, you know that?” Lenny commented and eyed the smoking pipe.

Lenna ignored him and continued. Once they were through they both realized something. “He stopped triggering the pressure plates.” Lenna voiced their shared thoughts. From then on they moved at a slow but steady walk going over and around pressure plate after pressure plate.

“Whoever made these has both too much time on their hands and an obsession with traps. Wouldn’t it be easier to just have a few that were super amazing instead of hundreds of shitty ones?” Lenny questioned while stepping over another uneven stone.

“The first dozen were just a warning.” Lenna explained. Those ones hadn’t had a high likelihood of killing most people. “The next dozen were to prove a point.” There needed to be a reinforcement to the idea that the tunnel would be dangerous. “The hundred or so between them and the fireball trap weren’t necessary. The iron cage was to be petty.” She continued her breakdown of the impromptu dungeon. “The rest of these are to-” Her voice was cut off by an orange ball forming in the air two feet in front of her. Lenna only had a fraction of a second to move and her body moved on its own.

Lenna’s hand shot out and smacked the orb before it could explode naturally. It went off. An explosion of heat and fire blasted out. Lenna’s arm was flung away and she was met by a force about a third as strong as a normal fireball. She staggered back and shook her head to try and clear it. Her ears were ringing and her wrist was sprained but she was otherwise fine. She turned to look back at Lenny. He was as pale as a ghost but otherwise fine. “Thanks.” He squeaked.

Lenna nodded and continued on. Her body had taken the part of the fireball that was meant for the lad and the rest had been directed away from them further down the tunnel. “Keep this distance.” She ordered him. Lenna really hoped that whoever set up the glyphs really liked fireballs and not something worse. There was just one problem. She hadn’t seen where the glyph was that had just gone off and that was a bad precedent to set.

The next trap was worse, much, much worse. They hadn’t been ambushed by another magical trap for quite a while until suddenly prismatic sheen appeared in front of Lenna. She turned around to see the sheen behind her too. It had almost trapped Lenny in with her. “Uh, lady boss? What am I supposed to do?” Lenny asked from his side of the barrier.

“Wait.” Lenna told him. Before she could tell him how glyphs could only hold so much power in them so eventually the barrier would fade away the situation got worse. A thick green fog started to form in the bubble with her. Lenna’s first thought upon seeing the poison cloud was: ‘I hope I have enough mana to heal through this.’ Her second thought was: ‘Isaac. Isaac please be okay.’ She felt a knot forming in her stomach. ‘Please be okay.’