“We need to get Edith away from them soon, or she’ll freeze to death.” He told them, glancing back at how Jean was doing. Her shivering was becoming more pronounced, and her lips had a tinge of darker coloring to them.
Dorn had his group move closer to them, and Zack began to realize that something was off.
“Jean, we are hostages, right?” She nodded slowly, understanding where he was going with the question. “Then why does he seem so afraid to approach us? I mean, if he didn’t have Edith, we could have easily just gone back through the portal by now.”
The five mysterious travelers helping Dorn hadn’t surrounded them. In fact, outside of throwing a knife and holding Edith, they hadn’t done anything. There was no one holding Zack or the others in place. Just the possible threat of a knife in the back and Edith’s fate hanging in the balance.
“You know, my parents told me never to use this portal. It’s a tightly guarded family secret, and only a few people outside the family even know it exists. Those few all work for my family’s corporation in select positions. Of course, some people like those I hired to fetch the two of you were told, but they were going to die anyway. Besides, they were too stupid to know that this portal isn’t recorded anywhere. To them it was just like any other.”
Zack felt his eyes glazing over at the pointless monologue. “Oh, come on!” He let loose his inner construction worker and began cursing the boy, his parentage, and everything else he could think of.
Jean laughed softly when he finished. “You need some lessons from the Major, but I give that a barely passing grade.” Her chattering teeth made it hard to understand the words.
“George is ready,” Zara whispered.
“Good,” Zack straightened and looked at Dorn. “Now, if you are done with the pointless family idolizing, bragging, and whatever else you had planned, can we get a move on with this. Not all of us are dressed for the weather.”
Dorn chuckled, and a malicious smile spread across his face. “I know. Why do you think I brought you here? It was to break you and your precious little sister. We’ll start off by making you watch as the dorm matron freezes to death. From what I understand, the three of you have gotten somewhat close, so it’ll work as an appetizer. Then we’ll move onto little miss fake teacher over there.” His ugly smile morphed and twisted until it resembled something demonic-looking, and a scared Zara hid behind Zack’s back.
“Why?” Zack couldn’t understand the noble-born boy’s thinking. “Why would you do any of this? What did we ever do to you that would require you to go to such lengths?”
“You took Tessa from me!” Dorn roared.
“No, I didn’t. She was never yours to begin with! She’s her own person, and she only sat at my table to talk!” Zack shot back, feeling a headache coming on.
“Then you destroyed my family! We have nothing left except what we hid over the years. Which I admit is a rather sizeable amount. Still, our title, our lands, our authority, everything is gone!”
“That would have happened regardless,” Jean clarified. “Tessa’s mother has been gathering evidence against your family for years. She was just waiting for the right time to use it all and destroy any remnants of your nobility and standing before the crown. You kidnapping Tessa, along with Zack and Zara, gave her that opportunity. She would have found another if this one hadn’t presented itself.” She forced her teeth to stop chattering while she spoke.
It was Dorn’s turn to be shocked into momentary near silence. “Why? What did we do to her? Wait, her mother? She died years ago. What are you talking about?”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Jean gave a shivering shrug. “I have no idea what your family did to her, but it was bad enough for her to do something like this. She became a hidden advisor to the king and faked her death all to accomplish the destruction of your family.” Zack quietly passed her Aisha; he could take the full effects of the cold better than she could.
“So, let me ask again,” Zack began wearily, in a tone that belied his age. “What did we do to you? Why couldn’t you have just let us live in peace and attend the academy like we wanted? Why was it so important to you to flex the fact that you’re a noble, in an academy full of them?”
For a second, the three held their collective breaths, wondering if something so simple could work.
Dorn looked at them and then shook his head. “I don’t need to answer the questions of commoners, especially those from someone without even a last name.”
The answer was no, it couldn’t. Dorn had invested too much into it already to turn around, regardless of the truth of the matter.
“Kill everyone but the little girl. She’ll be useful in the future. Make sure she watches each of them die. I still want her mind broken, like a puppet.” Dorn commanded the five behind him, no longer interested in dragging things out.
Zack glanced back at Jean with a sad, tired smile and imparted some truth. “See, this is why we don’t trust anyone, especially the nobles.”
“I’ve got Dorn. You handle the others,” Zara told him quickly, from behind.
“Just make sure Zelda stays close to me, in case I need the crystal.”
“Can you use it in here?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
Their rapid-fire conversation took seconds to complete.
“Jean, you remember when I told you I had no elemental affinity?” He asked, raising his hand to point at the traveler who had thrown the knife before, his hand already reaching for another blade.
She nodded.
“I lied.” A deep purple bolt with hints of black shot from his finger before anyone could react and hit the traveler in the face mask. The bolt disintegrating the mask almost instantly. It was apparently more for warmth than protection.
Unlike against the monsters before, the single shot wasn’t enough to kill the traveler, but it was more than enough to remove them from the fight. Pieces of their face and eyes vanished and reappeared on the ground or in the sky. They were still alive for the moment. However, without a high-level healing spell soon, who could say how long they could survive with their skull exposed to the freezing elements?
“Zelda, George, bring that meanie down!” Zara ordered the bears, before beginning to awaken Aisha.
“There’s a knife somewhere behind us you could use to cut the ropes.” Zack reminded Jean, before running forward. The shorter the distance, the less time they would have to avoid his magic.
They threw Edith to the side, not worried about her causing them any trouble. She may have been a traveler in the past, but that was years ago. Now she was nothing more than an out of practice in whatever class she was, dead-weight.
Zack didn’t have the time to worry about the older woman and could only hope she was alright as he jumped into the fray. There were still four of the mysterious and undoubtedly much higher-leveled travelers to deal with. He had gotten lucky with that first shot and by avoiding their suits. It wouldn’t happen again, he was sure.
Preparing himself for what he was about to do, Zack firmly visualized a spell in his head. He was using the “Arcane Manipulation” ability that came with his class. It allowed him to use nearly any spell he could clearly imagine, but it also took more time to prepare than his regular magic. Not to mention the cost. The relatively simple spell he was about to do took three times the energy that one of his arcane bolts did, emptying him dry in an instant.
It was just in time. A staff whistled through the air and cracked into his arm, breaking it instantly. Zack shoved the pain to the side and used that momentary contact as a conduit for the lightning spell. The electricity poured down the wooden staff. The heat and arcs charring the polished finished and scaring the holder into releasing it, not realizing that wood was a poor conductor of electricity.
Their society had moved away from the old power source and had largely forgotten its complexities.
The result was not what Zack had been hoping to accomplish, but he was committed. An arcane bolt flew from his finger and nicked the quick traveler in the leg. The suits they were wearing showed their effectiveness as the elementless bolt failed to dig through the strange material. That didn’t mean the attack failed to injure the traveler. With a snapping noise and a scream of pain the leg collapsed beneath them, unable to hold any weight.
That was two, kind of down, or at least slowed and separated from the other, faster three. He could live with those odds.
Hopefully.
From the side, he heard Dorn yell as Zelda, and George began pummeling him into the snow. It was a good sound and more than enough to give him a little boost of extra energy.