Parlor Trick
Hoping for an advantage, the former infantryman conjured fog, but it only managed to bring about a precarious stalemate in his duel with the wizard. Albric stood motionless in the lair of his foe, not daring to move more than his eyes, least his plate mail give him away. Keen ears and trained eyes pierced the fog further than most, but his foe hid well. Darting eyes glanced to the parchment nailed to the back of his shield. He mouthed the incantation before focusing on a spot several yards to his right. The vacant area creaked with the sound of jostling chain mail.
A jagged beam of green-white lightning ripped through the fog on its way to its supposed target, etching the lithe outline of its caster in a flash of green shadow. Albric hurled his spear and charged. A blood-curdling scream told of his spear striking flesh. He couldn’t help but smile. It was the first spell he’d ever learned, a simple illusion. The conjuring of a still image or the throwing of a noise. He’d never even heard of it being used in combat before.
Running in mail defeated his hearing, but the wizard’s hand contorted with a symbol that revealed his next spell. Albric braced, shouting his own arcane words of power. The runes carved around his shield ignited blue as another bolt of pallid lightning crashed against his. A decade in the shield wall prepared his shoulder for such a blow, and the last four years studying magic kept his shield from splintering under the eldritch bolt. Drawing an axe from his belt, he sprang.
His foe ripped a dark, jeweled ring from a crooked finger, stabbed it into the crimson wound on his leg while chanting blasphemies in a long-forgotten tongue. He hurled it at Albric’s feet. From underneath the fresh blood, the ring glowed, casting sickly pink hues across the stone tiles. Then, it grew. Albric leapt back as the ring melted into a large puddle of black liquid. Readying his axe, he took aim at the smiling wizard, but a large ripple disturbed the inky slime before the dark pool exploded in a torrent of tar-like sludge. He lost the shield and axe as he crashed backwards. This couldn’t go on. Opening his hand, he spoke his most powerful spell. Energy stirred by magic and fueled by spirit flowed through his body, coalescing at the tips of his fingers as voice shaped power into a sphere of arcane revenge.
Pushing his magic to its limits, he produced an orb unimpressive buy the standard of trained wizards, but, as a dagger is to a sword, still fully capable of dealing death. A coldness took him, and his spell weakened. The Wizard laughed as the spell dimmed. His power faded, pulled upwards and away, drawing attention to the thing on the ceiling.
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Two unblinking eyes glowed hideous pink. Beneath them, where a mouth should be, was a tear or a wound that opened in crude mimicry of one. The otherworldly visage sat atop a writhing mass of undulating tentacles that seemed to disguise their true number. The mouth-wound opened and drank the last of his spell as it shambled from the ceiling. He leapt for his axe and swung it in a wild arc. The blade sank into the thick muscle but failed to cut the leathery hide. It swiped at him, but its attention seemed elsewhere as the ghastly maw opened again. With a whirring sound, it consumed his fog spell in mere moments.
A cackle filled the chamber, “I commend your efforts, neophyte, but you’re between to unconquerable foes. Your magic is no match for my own, and your steel can’t save you from his kind.”
Grabbing his shield, Albric turned in time to spare himself from the smashing tendril. Suction cups on its underside puckered as they ripped his shield away, shoving the glowing runes into its greedy maw.
“It exists to consume magic and blood,” taunted the wizard, “that is the price to summon his kind. He can only be satiated with powerful magic or a human sacrifice. Perhaps another spell might satiate him. Have you another, or did you come into my lair with only parlor tricks and arrogance?”
Slowly, the beast turned towards him, its flailing tendrils creating a forest of crushing whips his axe couldn’t parry. Armor dented and ribs bruised under the beast’s onslaught, Albric jumped back, before his legs failed him. Blinking and shaking through the concussive head fog dealt to him by heavy tentacles, he collapsed. The ringing in his ears deafened him to the wizard’s taunts, but the sight made him wonder why he’d ever thought he’d been prepared to fight against a true wizard.
The beast closed, but Albric couldn’t move. Instead, he remembered what drove him to such a hopeless endeavor and took solace in the wound he’d given his son’s murderer. With the last of his strength, he whispered a final incantation. The same one he spoke every night. The first spell he’d ever learned. Looking just passed the wizard, he conjured the image of his son. He smiled at his boy and prepared to join him, but the blow he expected never came.
The beast turned sharply and made for the wizard, its mouth opening with that horrible sound. It drank his image instantly, but in panic of the shambling monstrosity, the Wizard defended himself with a bolt of green lighting that only enticed the creature more. Spell after spell were consumed until it descended upon him. Tendrils enveloped the screaming wizard as pulsing suckers drank deeply of his blood and magic. A curved dagger drove uselessly against its hide as the beast retreated back into the black pool it’d came from. Dragging its squirming bulk and a screaming wizard back to whatever hell awaited on the other side.