CHAPTER 309 – SHADOWS

No one said anything. None of them specialised directly in light magic. This was not terrain they could cheese their way through like they had done to the area claimed by the burrowers.

Everlyn straightened up after a moment her face all business. “We’ll take a five minute break.” Then she turned to Tom with a teasing smile. “So… Have you picked a course yet or are you still going to decide later?”

He hesitated, not sure how to respond. “The mathematics don’t quite add up.”

“You know your own spells,” Michael interrupted. “Details, we don’t have access to. The subtle rules around how they all work. We can’t make this decision for you, but why don’t you take me through your concerns. I can be a sounding board.”

“The core problem is that I possess a little under five hundred mana. A contract with such little reserves will only last at most fifteen minutes but most likely more like ten or eleven. Regenerating my base pool and mana crystal requires over three times that.”

Michael licked his lips. “So, you’re worried about downtime.”

“Yep, if I go with a full elemental that’s the exact issue we’re facing.”

“So, if I understand this right the choice is a weaker summons or significant periods without any protection?”

“I dispute that characterisation.” Keikain interrupted. “We don’t have to risk ourselves while we’re unprotected. For those intervals, we can bunker down. The elemental approach is better.”

“No, No,”

They all spun to face Thor.

He was visibly distressed, and a portal opened up in front of him, crackling into existence as it did so. With a noticeably trembling hand, he plunged his arm in and pulled out a note that he immediately opened up. “Shit, no. We’re not doing an elemental. It sounds too slow, we can’t afford any delays … we have to be faster.”

“Thor,” Toni put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re scaring us. What is it?”

The larger man flinched and glared at the paper he held. “We’re out of time and you’re debating crap. Xie Lei just died. Tian Bao and Olive only have hours left as well. We need to go fast. Fuck what the callous, self-centred murder wants.” Thor crumpled the note in his fist. “We’re not doing what that cowardly arsehole is suggesting.”

“Psst,” Keikain scoffed. “This is not the time for emotions. Nobody is going to be saved if we’re running around like headless chickens attempting to save them from their own mistakes. We agreed to focus on safety for a very good reason.”

“No! Shut up you murderous sanctimonious prick! We’re not going to sacrifice them because you’re too selfish to take some risk. We all know what your morals are.” Thor probably didn’t realise it but subconsciously he shifted his hand on his hammer like he was preparing to swing it.

Keikain took a half step backwards. Tom could feel him to starting to gather earth magic.

“None of that,” Everlyn interrupted, glaring at Keikain. “Let’s talk facts. How much weaker is the lesser elementals?”

“Ten times, but… it’s not that simple. I can summon one every six minutes and that’ll let me get eight up.”

She shrugged. “What’s the debate for. That’s almost as strong and gives continuous coverage.”

“Because it’s nowhere near as powerful…” Keikain protested. “Not even close… a full elemental will be able to one hit these things, but the lesser versions won’t. They’re also slower, and these shadows can teleport. In combat, eight lesser elementals must be three or four times weaker…” his finger stabbed out. “Look at Tom’s face. He agrees.”

Tom ignored him. The decision might be different if they had unlimited time, but they didn’t. Another one of her team had died… and they were debating, when it really it wasn’t up to them. He focused his power, engaged the spell, leaned on his title and punched a hole to send an offer through. Then he waited and a moment later he got a response, and he accepted. If he was going to end up with eight of them, the personality of each individual summons wasn’t that important.

“What are you doing. You promised. Everlyn stop him.”

She arched an eyebrow at the earth mage. “It’s not your call. It was always Tom’s and having heard this debate I’m on his side. We’re all survivors, none of us are going to throw our lives away.” She turned slightly and pitched her voice a little louder. “Harry, get a ritual up. We’ll move once Tom has four and we’ll travel cautiously.”

Thor was visibly restraining himself from saying anything while glaring at Keikain his muscles white.

The earth mage shifted uneasily. “Thor, you know I want to save them, too. It’s just how we go about it.”

“Shut it!”

The ritualist took another step backwards. Thor was distracted by Toni, and the risk of the situation blowing up faded.

Internally Tom sighed in relief and while he waited he waited for his mana to regenerate to allow him to carry out another summons he seized the opportunity to study the map of the zone from the tile. They knew Vidja’s group had moved from the safe room toward the closest of the quest objectives. They had been intending to clear it, but the mounting wounds had become too much, and they had eventually retreated and fortified a dead tunnel.

Carefully, in his memories he studied the tile to pin point their current location. The individual tiles had been a few metres wide and attempted to capture the geography and monsters of zones at what was a ten thousand to one scale. The tunnel lines were no more than the thinnest of pen strokes, and he lined up the three spots where Vidja’s team could be. There were only so many four-way intersections with a possible defensive passage nearby. The possible destinations were also clustered together. Providing they got close, they could find them quickly.

He switched to tracing a route from where they were to where they needed to be.

Everlyn looked up. “Thor, am I right that Vidja said the larger tunnels had more monsters?”

“That’s what she indicated. And not a few more. Her words were heaps and avoid at all costs..”

Everlyn frowned, holding the crystal away from her temple for a moment. “That’s a problem.”

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“It is,” Tom agreed also frowning. If they were going to avoid the major tunnels, it would take them far longer and both Olive and Tian Bao would die. “We’ll have to test our ability to fight through the bigger tunnels before we abandon them.”

Keikain threw his hands into the air. “Guys, listen to yourselves.”

Tom stared at the earth mage flatly. “I’m with Thor on this. Your crap is not needed.”

“Someone needs to be the devil’s advocate and balance the hero complex you’ve all caught.”

“We are. Everlyn is.” he pointed at the two lesser elementals that were now flittering around him. “We’re not rushing off straight away. Instead, Everlyn made sure we were prepared. Look at them.” They were moderating their light output and appeared to be little more than a white-coloured wisp and if he couldn’t feel their internal power, he would be disappointed. “There is more than one and we are waiting until we have four, which should be enough to defeat these monsters. Plus, once we’ve fought a few of these shadows, we’ll reassess like we always do.”

“And I was thinking,” Everlyn interjected. “That Tom can summon a full elemental when we first enter the tunnels as extra security.”

Keikain lowered his hands. “Fine. I can live with that.”

Ten minutes later they were ready and continued deeper into the new territory. For a period of over two hundred metres, no monsters, either burrowers or the shadows appeared as the tunnel they were in transitioned from the spongy burrower terrain into pure black stone, inter-spaced with a white stone that glowed with a cold light that lit the space but made everything else feel gloomier.

A fifth elemental was added to the ones spinning around them, and they kept walking.

“Ahrr.”

Harry leapt sideways his spear coming up to block a dark shape about the size of a small bear that had appeared next to him.

Tom hadn’t sensed it approach, but his Spark domain could feel it now. It was there, but kind of not; it was slightly insubstantial.

The ritualist stumbled back from the monster and used some sort of magic that blocked two of the three shadow spikes that shot out for him with the third being caught on his spear. It was an impressive piece of defensive magic and weapon work. It showcased a remarkable level of skill that he hadn’t known Harry to possess.

.The creature was too far away for him to stab it and unless it was to save someone’s life; he had been told to avoid using his magic. The only thing he could do was watch.

The closest light elemental swooped into the creature and hit its skin. Then it went incandescent.

The dark shape recoiled from the light and then vanished.

It reappeared in his spark domain almost three metres away from Harry right in front of Thor. The large man leapt backwards as four spikes shot out of the blob, but Thor’s agility had already taken him out of reach of the attack. With a roar, his hammer arced over his head briefly glowing with electricity and smashed down through the abruptly empty space where the black blob had been. It seemed to have the ability to blink every second or so.

It was no longer in his domain and Tom searched for where it had escaped too.

Crack.

An arrow flashed from the front towards the back of the group. He followed its flight until it smashed into the creature that had retreated to two metres behind Rahmat who was defending their rear.. Tom’s eyes widened. Visually it appeared to be standing on the ground, but Earth Sense was telling him nothing was at that spot. The monster was weightless and his primary skill against the burrowers was useless against them. He couldn’t even use it to track their movements around the battlefield.

Everlyn had another arrow drawn. “Keep up the pressure.” She yelled high pitched.

It disappeared and reappeared this time between Tom and Michael. His first instinct, unlike the others was not to retreat. If it attacked him then his dodge would probably get him out of trouble. Instead, his spear plunged forward, glowing blue, and penetrated seamlessly through the creature. Then it vanished and appeared between two light elementals.

They both struck, shining like a twin star system had been born with the blackness of space between them. The creature withering, ducked and shrunk down but the light followed it, burning the darkness away as it did so.

Like every other time that they had counterattacked, it vanished and the light elementals switched themselves off but his vision still had the motes of light swimming in them.

The shadow creature reappeared twenty metres down the corridor clearly intending to flee.

Crack.

This time, it was Everlyn’s arrow that made shapes swim in his retinas. It slammed home into the blackness that shuddered and became fully corporeal as some essence left it, and it shrunk down to the size of a possum.

“Experience gained. It’s officially dead,” Everlyn reported. “Any one hit?”

Everyone shook their heads. It had been a frantic few moments, but they had got through unscathed.

“They’re tough,” the earth mage observed. “But a full elemental would have obliterated it after the first jump. The lesser ones are good, but they aren’t fast enough.”

“We defeated it without injury.” Everlyn told him. “We press on. They’re annoying, but nothing to be afraid of.”

When he passed the mangled monster, it resembled nothing more than chunks of shredded rubber. Tom lacked the motivation to investigate further. Given its nature, it’s body in death would provide nothing useful to guide how to fight it in life.

Almost immediately, another one of the shadows assaulted them. There was a brief scramble to avoid its attacks, but its first teleport took it into the range of a Thor hammer swing that did sufficient damage that it only got two blinks in after that before it was obliterated.

They hurried on. Every fifty metres, they would have to fight one of the creatures. Now that they knew what they were looking for most of the time they got a couple of seconds warning so that more often than not when it blinked amongst them it was greeted with multiple weapons already coming to kill it.

It was not peaceful, but nor was it concerning in any way. One at a time the monsters were easy enough to deal with.

Abruptly Tom’s Spark domain screamed. There were two presences, and they hadn’t tripped any alarms when approaching. He guessed they had attacked from a near invisible hole in the ceiling or something like that.

Of the enemies, one was behind him and the other in front. They were both targeting him.

Time slowed.

Tom’s eyes widened. Six spikes were launched at him from the two monsters. He could twist easily enough to avoid five of them. A teleport did the rest. His elementals flared with magic and a grid of light abruptly snapped into existence as Toni used one of the new spells she had purchased. The creatures screamed and moved, but the grid followed them, burning them to bits while the light elementals spread across the group could harass the creatures no matter where they teleported too. That was in addition to the thrusting, stabbing weapons that greeted them at each new location.

The pair were overwhelmed shortly after. They kept moving and ironically, as they hadn’t suffered an actual wound, they were apprehensive. They didn’t know if they were exposed to the monsters or not. While they believed Michael’s magic could heal them the lack of evidence was a concern.

“The main tunnel is up ahead.” Everlyn reported. “Tom, can you bring out an elemental. The existing setup is letting us fight two at once and the way Toni’s spell worked we’ll be able to cope with up to four simultaneously. The issue is there is no way to tell if that’s all we’ll face.”

Tom summoned his first light elemental. The new spell was different to the others, but he followed the steps that were now burnt into his memory. He protected himself from the plane but skipped the more complicated components that were needed if he was going to insert his consciousness inside it. Then he created the contract but took every shortcut offered. It still took over thirty seconds to cast, but it was successful. An elemental entered the real world with a blaze of light. Visually, it was a dull ball of energy that was about three times larger than the lesser versions.

The instant it materialised Everlyn jogged forward.

A shadow appeared!

It materialised from nowhere above Everlyn. Without slowing, she dived into a forward roll. Its attacks flashed through the space that her upper body had occupied, but it was too slow.

The elemental shot at it like a bullet the moment the creature had manifested. It slammed into the monster and disappeared into the creature’s black depths.

There was nothing for a moment and then a single ray of light like from a window shutter that hadn’t been fully closed escaped to briefly illuminate a spot on the wall.

Then the elemental extracted itself and the shredded deflating remnants of the shadow fell to bounce limply on the hard stone at their feet. They were smoking.

Everlyn, back on her feet, glanced over her shoulder. She appeared unimpressed with what she could see. It was like the overwhelming ease the elemental had destroyed the shadow was expected. She kept running. “Hurry up. This is a race.”