“...Well, fuck,” I said.
“Did you recognize the lover?” asked Otto.
“Yes,” I said. “It was Ophelia Lyon.”
“That’s good,” said Otto. “She will be easy to locate. Once we get out of here, we will need to investigate her. What did they talk about?”
“Ophelia was in tears about Princess Jocelyn, and Midhna was comforting her. He offered to hunt down Envy. That’s when he brought up having more connections than the church. I don’t think she realized that he was a Demon King, because when she was convincing him not to, she used the fact that Envy was a Demon King to try and convince him not to chase after them.”
“So that means there’s a decent chance that Ophelia is innocent in this, right?” asked Ingrid.
“I think so,” I said. “She mentioned his work, but didn’t say what it was. I think she knows he’s someone important, but doesn’t know what he actually does. Though, she did say ‘our work’ at one point… I’m not sure.”
“We will only know once we complete our investigation,” said Otto. “This is an excellent lead though. We have only been chasing Midhna’s tail until now, but with this, we may be able to finally get ahead of him.”
“Ugh, you guys should have shown me what he looked like when you were briefing me,” I said. “I could have contacted you. We could have already had him down by now.”
“Yes, that was an oversight on my part,” said Otto, shamefacedly. “I should have been more thorough. I didn't think that you would need to know so soon, and I knew everyone was hungry, so I didn’t want to drag out the conversation any more than was necessary. I apologize.”
“It’s fine,” I said dismissively. “But while we’re on the topic, is there anything else you forgot to tell me about during the briefing? Something that might be important for someone who spends more time awake than anyone else to know?”
“I cannot think of anything at the moment, but if I do, I will notify you immediately,” said Otto, bowing his head.
“Thank you.”
The conversation ended shortly afterward, and Hermina set out on our second round of scouting. Once again, we found nothing. It was the same on the third round, though by that time we had noticed that despite all the time that had passed, the sky had not changed, and the stars and moon remained full and bright in their original positions. It wasn’t until the fourth rotation that there was finally a change.
I had only been moving south for half an hour when I encountered a stormfront slowly working its way north. I didn’t believe for a second that it was an ordinary storm, and immediately teleported back to the iceberg with the others.
“What is it?” asked Ingrid, jumping up from a crude ice bench. “Is there something coming?”
“A storm,” I said. “I didn’t notice anything unusual about it, but considering where we are, I doubt that’s all it is.”
“I agree,” said Otto, also rising. “We must prepare. I will summon Hermina back.”
He pulled out the communication device from his pocket, willed some aura into it, and then returned it to its place.
“She is not as adept at spatial magic, so she will have to come back the long way, but it shouldn’t take her long. In the meantime, Lucy, could you make us a shelter?”
“Sure.”
I set to reshaping our iceberg, carving out a depression in the center, and using the removed ice to make a tall, domed roof. I made sure that the ice was smooth and clear so that we would have a largely unimpeded view of the outside.
Half an hour later, we all stood outside the shelter, watching the stars disappear behind the black wall of clouds, while Hermina still had not returned. She had left at the same time I had, so she shouldn’t have been more than half an hour away– less, if she hurried after receiving the emergency signal– so the fact that she was not yet back.
“Maybe she just didn’t notice the signal?” said Ingrid unconvincingly.
“I doubt it,” I said.
No one else responded. Another quarter hour later, I conjured a weak shield to block the frigid winds that had begun to blow in our faces. In another quarter hour, the first of the clouds were upon us, and the rain began to fall. I extended my shield to above in order to keep us dry as everyone waited tensely. The storm continued to grow more intense, and soon, the winds around had grown so loud that I was the only one who was able to hear it approaching.
At first, I almost mistook a particularly shrill whistle of the wind. Then, it came again, this time louder, and sounding much less wind-like.
“There’s something coming,” I said, using [Secret Message] to send my voice directly into my companions’ ears. “I hear something shrieking. It sounds like a bird. It may be the albatross.”
The others nodded to indicate their understanding, and began to look skyward, searching for any signs of the bird. It wasn’t long before we finally spotted it. Or at least, what I assumed to be it. It didn’t look like any albatross I had ever seen. For one it was enormous; It was large enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if even Casimir could comfortably stand up inside its mouth. And it was pitch black, with blacker claws and eyes so dark that they seemed to swallow all nearby light.
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“That’s a bird that brings good luck??” asked Liliane.
“No, this looks like a monstrous variation,” I said. “Still, we absolutely mustn’t kill it.”
“Heard!” said the paladins.
“Lucy, can you fly up and lure it away?” asked Otto.
“I can try,” I replied. “Barnabas, take over the shield!”
“Yes!” said the mage, conjuring his own shield just inside mine.
As soon as Barnabas’ shield was up, I immediately flew upward toward the albatross, and as I ascended, I realized that it was even larger and further away than I had originally estimated. It was well over a mile in the sky, and now with a better view, I saw that it could easily swallow our entire party whole, along with the ice we stood on. It was also much less alive than it had seemed. Its black feathers were matted, and many were missing, it had a large hole in its chest, and its eyes, which I had assumed were black, were actually empty sockets.
When I was almost level with it, I cast [Secret Message] again, and tried to speak directly into the bird’s ear
“Oi, birdbrain!” I said, cringing.
The bird did not react, so I shot a [Greater Magic Missile] at one of its enormous wings. The spell punched straight through, and out the other side, but the bird still did not respond. I prepared to shine [Laser] in its eye, when suddenly it shrieked again, and started diving towards the main group. I tried to grab it with [Hold Person], but it was simply too large and it ripped straight through my magic, barely slowing down.
“It’s ignoring me!” I said to the others. “It’s diving you, so watch out! It’s undead and it’s not very strong. I hit it with a weak spell and it went straight through. Be very careful not to kill it.”
I dove after it, but somehow, even with [Fly], I wasn’t able to catch up to it. The wind seemed to be hell-bent on pushing me back, while the albatross was unimpeded. As it got closer and closer to the others, showing no signs of slowing down, I realized what was about to happen, and I teleported back to the main group.
“It’s trying a suicidal dive-bomb!” I shouted. “We need to slow it down! We can’t let it hit us at this speed, or it will die! Barnabas, can you help me slow it down?”
“Slowing down and restraining things is my specialty!” said Barnabas.
As he said this, a small spatial gate opened up beside him, and an enormous chain started flying out. Each link was bigger than my head, and made of some kind of black metal that I didn’t recognize.
“Adamantium alloy!” he shouted, grinning in a disturbingly not-jolly way. “It was designed to restrain even Midhna! The church spent a fortune getting me the materials!”
“Excellent!” I said. “I will go up and try to slow it down! Be ready with your chains!”
“Aye!”
I flew back upwards toward the rapidly descending zombie bird, and once it was nearly within range of Barnabas’ chains, I cast [Hold Person] again, this time putting as much of my [MP] as I could into it. The bird ripped through my spell again, but its speed decreased by half, so I cast it again, further slowing it. It took two more casts before I was finally able to stop it in its tracks, but it was such a huge creature that I was already down to a quarter of my mana, and the rest was rapidly disappearing.
Barnabas was quick, fortunately, and it wasn’t long before his chain reached the shrieking bird and started wrapping around it like a metal snake. I loosened my control around its wings somewhat, allowing the chains to fold them inward, and continue their journey. When my mana was down to a tenth, I called down to Barnabas.
“I’m almost out of [MP]!”
“Release it!” he said, his face screwed up in concentration. “I’ve got it!”
I did as he bid, and released my spell, and immediately, the bird started moving toward the iceberg again, though now in a much more controlled manner. The black chain was wound tightly all around it, and Barnabas had fused the two ends of the chain together, so there was no way it could shake loose, no matter how much it struggled. A few seconds later, Barnabas sighed with relief as he released his control, and the albatross fell a few feet and landed with a loud thump next to our dome.
“We did it!” said Barnabas. “I have almost no [MP] left, but we did it.”
“Great work!” exclaimed Otto. “It seems that we have averted the crisis for now, but we should not let our guard down. Mages, meditate to replenish your mana. We will stand guard for whatever else there may be.”
Barnabas and I both sat down without a word in response and immediately began meditating. It was less efficient than it could have been, since we were both trying to absorb mana right next to each other, but we didn’t have much of a choice. If something else appeared, or the albatross somehow managed to get out of the chains, we needed to have our [MP] back.
However, before I had even gotten a tenth of my missing mana back, I was suddenly forced out of my meditative state by an intense wave of nausea. [Greater Detection] must have been trying to warn me about something. The source of the feeling made itself known before I even had a chance to look for it when I heard a loud boom, and the iceberg began to split in two, directly underneath the chained, squirming bird.
“No!” shouted Sylvester, running toward the albatross.
He was soon followed by the other aura users, including Liliane, to grab the chains and pull the bird away from the growing chasm. Barnabas and I ran after them, watching as they dug their feet into the ice, struggling to pull the bird away from the brink. For a few seconds, they succeeded, and the albatross slowly inched toward safety. Then, the iceberg split again, and the section upon which they stood began falling into the sea as well.
I reached out with [Telekinesis], grabbing all of them, including the bird, at great cost to my [MP]. A soon as I could, I tossed the aura users unceremoniously to safety and focused my efforts on the bird. Barnabas helped me, and once again, the bird appeared to be moving back to solid ground. However, his assistance only lasted a few seconds, before he collapsed, completely out of [MP], and I was stuck holding it on my own.
The wind was determined not to let me have my way, and a strong downdraft formed within the crevice, preventing my from moving the albatross any further. It was all I could do to hold the beast in place. I watched my HUD as my [MP] ticked down to 1 before [Perseverance] activated, and my [HP] started to go too. I held it a little longer, but when my [HP] was a quarter gone, and I still had not made any progress, I gave up, and watched with sorrow as the bird plummeted into the raging whirlpool that had formed in between the two halves of the iceberg. A few seconds later, the System notification arrived
Your party has slain [Cursed Albatross] lvl 62
[Archmage] lvl 69 -> 70
[Pride] has nullified [Curse of Dehydration]
[Pride] has nullified [Curse of Madness]