- It’s here! Guys, wake up, it’s here! - Cassandra yells with excitement
Nero comes back from another cigarette as the boys wake up to Cassandras overwhelming display of energy.
- So, ya’ felt it too then? - Nero says in response to Cassandras reaction
James and Alexander wake up and look outside:
Great pine forests of a striking dark green and snowy peaks over gray giants are visible in the distance, gracing them with a spectacular view.
- Woah! Pretty pretty! - James responds in awe
At that moment Alexanders heart skips a beat and with a stern stare says:
- This means…
Nero looks down at the boy and with a slight smile says:
- Yes, you’re home lad. - Nero pats Alexander on the shoulder
- I did not expect us to travel this far… - Alexander responds
- Wait, you’re from here? - James asks him
- Not quite. We are to arrive in the Swiss protectorate of Waldheim, but it is the village closest to the Du Blanc estate. - he informs James
Cassandra doesn’t take her eyes off the view, but she directs the next words to Alexander:
- This must be a sign! There’s no way the arcane fissure would appear here by accident!
At that remark Alexander looks down, tightening his fist, and gathers back all of his determination, ready to fulfill his role.
- Here come the sad part, lads and gal, I am forbidden to intervene from now on. - Nero tells them with a slight disappointment in his tone
The trio look back at him and sigh almost in unison.
- What will you be doing, master Nero? - Cassandra asks him
- Hopefully just wait for you at the Citadel, sleeping in an arcane hammock, strung up by arcane trees. - he responds jokingly
After a few moments their train arrive in the village of Waldheim.
A modest area with several creamy white paint houses with bright colorful accents and anywhere you would look you would see the great forests behind them.
All of them step out of the train wearing better suited clothing.
Alexander donned his Du Blanc coat, of a royal blue with silver, almost crystal looking white rose embellishment that is the House’s crest on its back, just like his fathers. He also chose to wear thin white gloves that were giving off the idea of a very aristocratic man.
Cassandra chose to wear her trusty, fairly long, brown coat. It was fairly thick and so were her black gloves. She also chose to wear a scarf she had since she was little.
James had simply picked a black denim jacket and black leather gloves.
Nero was his same self as usual.
As the three admire the small town they look back at each other and remember what they’re here for.
Though in that moment:
- Aren’t you cold wearing just that? - Cassandra addresses James
- What? No, I’m fine! - James replies quickly
- Well, guess I’ll be on my way then. - Nero states
- Do you really need to leave already? - James asks
Nero smiles and says:
- Now listen, you all know I don’t much care about the rules, but I’d hate it if someone tried to discredit you three because of my presence. So the way I see it, I have to leave. You’ll be fine, just remember to rely on each other.
After that remark all three of them understood what Nero meant, but Alexander was disproportionately deep in thought.
Nero continues:
- Fun thing you might not remember James, I fucking love me a good movie-
‘I thought he loved drinking and smoking-‘
- so when you’ve found your way to the Elysium and you’re all done with the Archon introductions and all that bollocks, I’ll get us all to see a movie in a city.
‘I remember! Nero loved his westerns… when we were little he used to smuggle me into human cities and we would go to the cinema. How could I forget such dear memories, I should be ashamed…’
Nero grabs something from the inside of his satchel and tosses it onto the ground. It was a scroll, although from the motion it seemed to have more weight than it should have for it’s materials. With a chant unintelligible even for James the scroll opens at Nero’s feet.
The scroll levitates with bright, blue runes emanating from it, stopping at Nero’s shoulder level and starting to face him. Nero takes his hand and puts it on the scroll:
- See ya later! - he says before he is quickly immersed with the light, flashing once and disappearing along with the scroll in an instant
‘Of course… I remember how masters access the Elysium now. Customized scrolls, each tailored to allow only the intended wielder, and one hell of a password if you ask me. I’m usually an ace at adapting to stuff quickly, but that sounded almost like gibberish. I guess that shouldn’t come as a surprise, masters usually are so good at spell casting that you can barely tell when they’re chanting before it’s already done.’
With Nero gone, the team looks at each other, and then the boys focus on Cassandra who was busy looking at child running after a squirrel.
- What? - she asks
- The arcane fissure… - Alexander responds
- Wait a second! We just arrived here, don’t you want to show us around?
Alexander looks around for a second, and then responds:
- I would rather get on with our mission.
Cassandra shakes her head in disappointment and waves to indicate to the boys that they should follow her.
A long walk in the woods brings them to a clearing at the slopes of a mountain.
As they get closer to the fissure Alexander starts to feel the tug of arcane energy himself:
- We are getting closer… - he says
- Ah, that’s what that is? I thought maybe I was truly getting cold. - James responds relieved
- I told you! I goddamn told you! - Cassandra replies, almost scolding him, but mostly in a tone that emphasizes how good she felt saying an “I told you so”
- But it’s just the arcane! - James responds hoping that they would believe him
As the two argue, Alexander seems tired of it and just wants to get to the next step.
As they approach they can see a small area above the ground fluctuating in what seemed to be an unstable transparent swirling sphere. They could barely discern it at first, but Cassandra was sure of what this was.
Getting in a similar position as she did previously in the Halls of Being, she attempts to connect to the energy present. Fully immersing herself in concentration the transparent sphere quickly starts to turn into a bright blue thin crack in space.
Now all that was left was for her to open it, but this was the hardest part, requiring the most finesse.
The boys would not be wrong in being confident in Cassandra’s aptitude, after all between acolytes her arcane mastery is unparalleled.
As the fissure starts to widen, blinking the progress back and forth between the thin line and a gateway, Alexander looks at James and sees him look back in the direction of Waldheim.
- What is it, Reeves? - Alexander asks inquisitively
In that moment James says:
- Something happened… something’s here. - he says as he raises his hand, pointing very distinctly at a barely visible puff of smoke in the distance
‘I know I’m seeing smoke and obviously that could mean danger because of a fire. But this feeling? It’s something else. The first time I felt something similar… was when the eldritch phantasm whispered directly into my mind to take the pendulum in the Halls of Being, before I lost my memories…
But this is different from that, this doesn’t feel as otherworldly, this feels real, tangible maybe? I need to make sense of it!
For now I know for sure intuitively that something is wrong, and that is all I ever needed to act!’
With that thought James starts running in the direction of the smoke with full intent.
- You can NOT be serious! - Alexander exclaims in frustration
In that instant Cassandra loses her concentration on the fissure and it dissolves into nothingness.
- What are you two doing?! I lost control! Who knows where we’ll find another-
As she turns around he sees only Alexander next to her, looking at James running in the distance.
- What happened? - she asks Alexander as she starts to get worried
With gritting teeth Alexander tells Cassandra:
- Just Reeves. He thinks something more important than our mission has happened. Let us leave him be and get back on track.
- If something happened we need to help! - Cassandra says
Alexander looks at her and then back in the direction of Waldheim and replies:
- Fine. We shall help then.
The two of them start running after James through the forests.
James was quickly getting in the proximity of the source of the fire.
‘Fire… it smells like burning fire, flames that are lit, ash and maybe something rotten? Is that sulfur?’
As James accelerates he begins to see something in the corner of his peripheral vision:
Beasts made out of what seemed to be volcanic rock, with a shape and running style similar to wolves, but larger and definitely heavier. Three in number, they were emanating flames from underneath their solid rock bodies.
‘What are those things?! I thought arcane touched beasts were all long gone? Is my memory still this damaged? Whatever the case they seem to be running straight to Waldheim, I need to get there before them… or attack them and stop them here. Could I do that?’
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While running parallel to them for a few seconds James noticed that the beasts were seemingly uninterested in him, there was no way that they hadn’t noticed him running along. Still, well within his heart he knew that they were clearly agents of a malicious design and so at that moment they were his enemy as a collective.
James decides to act on his intuition and charges to his right, closing the distance with superhuman speed. As he gets near one of the hell-hounds he prepares his right hand and then punches one of the beasts right where the ribs would be.
The attack launches it for several meters and the beast takes down several trees in its trajectory, but it gets right back up, as if nothing happened.
James looks down at his knuckles and then back at the hell-hound he struck. James’s glove was burned through at the point of impact, his hand was scarred and slightly torched and the beast’s rock-solid body barely had a crack.
‘I may have misunderstood its defensive capacity. And if I kept my fist there for longer than a fraction of a second I could have sustained some real damage myself, at least without taking any defensive precautions myself.’
The beast looks at James and lets out an infernal growl, it’s ready to pounce on him, but it sees it’s brethren still running on track and instead it decides to follow.
‘Beasts that do not act on pure instinct? They’ve been sicced on a specific target. Could it be someone in Waldheim? Or maybe just the village itself? But why? Either way, maybe I can still get there before them.’
James attempts to run even faster, but the beasts were faster still.
‘I won’t make it in time!’ he thinks to himself.
At that moment a flash of lightning runs past him, leaving a straight line of scorched matter on the ground, though a figure was slightly visible and the lightning very much so, the “object” made no noise until it has passed James, and when it did there was a sonic boom that pushed the trees outward.
As he sees the hell-hounds in the distance he also notices a thick wall of ice rising rapidly before them.
‘Hah! About damn time!’ James thinks to himself as he knows what happened.
[One minutes ago, well behind James’s location]:
- If we’re going to catch him we need to use your powers! - Cassandra exclaims while running alongside Alexander
- My powers? We? Whatever do you mean? - Alexander replies
- Actually, we have to use our powers!
Alexander looks away for a second and thinks to himself “Does she plan to-“
- Yeah, pick me up Lex! - Cassandra says
- Absolutely not. - Alexander replies calmly
Cassandra sighs and continues:
- If we don’t do it like this I’m going to be left behind, remember what Nero said, we need to stick together.
- He said to rely on each other, actually. - Alexander corrects her
- Potato, potato!
- You have pronounced it the same way twice, I do not think that was your intention.
At that moment Cassandra places her hand on Alexander shoulder and jumps towards him. Forced to catch her or let her fall, he decides to hold her up.
- Good! Now let’s! - as Cassandra says this she continues immediately by placing on Alexanders chest one finger of the hand she wasn’t using to hold onto him and chants:
“Eternal River, Twilight Wisdom: Tneloveneb Egrus!”
As she does so, arcane energy pulses from her hand and into Alexander’s body, charging him up.
Eternal River, reliable concentration words used to ensure a steady and continuous flow of the spell chanted;
Twilight Wisdom, complex concentration words necessary for those who wish to chant spells directing pure arcane output, it’s primary use being to create a failsafe point in the spell where it would stop itself before causing irreparable damage to the magi.
Alexander does not waste a second and uses his lightning affinity and natural bioelectricity to charge his whole being.
[Right where we left off]:
As he arrives Alexander drops off Cassandra on the other side of the rising ice wall, she was visibly shook from the speed, but sustained no damage other than her hair needing some brushing.
He wastes no time raising the wall even higher and wider, holding his palms together tight.
Alexander stares down the beasts as they seem to still charge toward the wall as if it was not there. In a moment of thought he notices the red flames with which they burn, the dark stone and he shouts back at Cassandra:
- Get away!
The beasts start burning hotter and get closer to each other in formation, as they do they leap together, full force against the wall and they crash through it with little effort.
Cassandra was still trying to grasp the events that were happening and who exactly they were fighting. The hell-hounds break the wall and charge out right before her eyes.
Shocked and confused, she freezes for a moment.
- No! - Alexander yells worried, bringing up his hand, trying to cast a spell in desperation
With the beasts closing dangerously in, Cassandra snaps back just in time to react, but as she prepares herself, the beasts run around her, as if she was an obstacle.
James catches up to them, still running:
- They don’t want us! They won’t stop until they reach their target!
Now, dangerously close to Waldheim, they all run together.
Alexander’s attempt to stop them wasn’t for naught, the hell-hounds had to use some energy to break through, and so their pace slowed down.
Because of this, James was able to leap forward, landing an attack from behind on one of the beasts, holding his palm on it’s head using his whole body-weight and motion, sliding it’s head through the ground and then using the same momentum to launch himself further into a front-flip.
He lands before the other two, grabbing the first by it’s head and by stomping his foot deep in the ground to get leverage he swirls it whole around once and hits the next one coming towards him with it. The second one gets launched into a tree, breaking it and losing it’s balance. The other, he still held onto and launched into the air as high as he could.
But the beasts were incredibly heavy, made out of solid, dense, rocky material, and so that kind of fall would have done no damage by itself.
At that moment Alexander raises his left hand and a rotating, thin, blue circles appear around it. The temperature around his arm starts to visibly drop. He takes his right hand from behind and places it in the left, pulling with his fingers backwards, not too different from the motion of using a bow and arrow. The circles start to be pulled back towards his right hand as well and the more he pulled the brighter a projectile made out of purely freezing air was forming.
He lets it fly straight at the hell-hound in mid-air!
It strikes it with incredible force as it crashes against its rocky body, sending pieces of it flying.
As it lands, the beast is greatly disoriented and it’s flames burning lower. It sustained damage, and it seemed to be almost frozen on the surface at the point of impact. But even so, it got up, dazzled.
The other hell-hounds get up as well and walk closer slowly, growling with malice, their attention being set strictly on the three acolytes now.
James, Cassandra and Alexander get back to back, being circled by the three hounds.
- Huh, look at that, we got what we wanted, right? - James says anxiously joking
- Maybe we should make a plan instead of joking? - Cassandra tells him off
James agrees, but he can’t think of much right now, he does tell them a bit of information:
- Just so you know, I wouldn’t attempt to have direct physical contact with them if I were you. - he looks down at his red hands, his gloves have been fully melted off at this point from the previous attacks, but he feels surprised that he didn't sustain even more damage
- No shit, genius, they’re walking volcanoes. - Cassandra replies
- Shall we throw him to the wolves? - Alexander asks Cassandra
After that phrase the hounds started to charge toward them from different directions, as they did, Cassandra raised her hands and chanted: “Ciretose Reirrab!”
An arcane barrier forms around them, and as the hounds take turns attacking it, it slowly starts to crack.
- I didn’t have time to concentrate the spell… - Cassandra says to them worried that the barrier will brake soon
At this point even the hound damaged by Alexander’s arrow had recovered its full flames.
Cassandra didn’t have to keep the spell up continuously so she isn't currently risking damage from using pure arcane, but the barrier is quickly breaking before their eyes and so they have to think quick.
Alexander places his hands on the shattering barrier and chants “Eternal River.”
The barrier quickly starts to turn from arcane into solid ice. Alexander turns his head around at his teammates and says:
- This is temporary, we need a plan, now!
The hounds start attacking again, but the ice barrier is clearly getting damaged even faster.
Cassandra remembers the one instance something had impact on the beasts, and then she starts telling to the other two an idea.
- I’m all for it! - says James
- I do not know… - says Alexander
- We rely on you, we rely on each other! - Cassandra shouts
At that moment Alexander closes his palms tight and crosses his arms with his fists close to his shoulders, followed by an outward motion of extending his hands wide laterally with his palms open again.
In doing so he sends out what was left of the barrier into a cold mist, barely slowing down the hounds, but creating a good enough distraction for the three to start running in separate directions.
Each of them run through the forest, evading their hounds using the terrain and their superior agility to their advantage. Gaining a good lead the hounds almost lose track of them, but they are relentless.
With demonic fury the hounds start to burn up hotter, becoming faster, and each chasing their prey.
After a full blown chase that is still on, James runs from the forest into the clearing where they found the arcane fissure. He leaps into the air and chanting: “Evitcurtsed Tsalb!” he lands a punch into the ground in the middle of the clearing, creating a fairly deep crater and sending stones flying off around him. He attempts to recover from the strike as fast as possible and continues running.
From his front Alexander is running full speed towards James, but Cassandra is also appearing from their side. As she does she chants “Gnidacsac Ordyh!” raising her hands in front of her and shooting forward massive amounts of dangerously accelerating water volumes.
The attack, targeted in the direction of James’s crater and above it, hits all of the stones that were still flying in the air, destroying them thanks to the pressure, but sending deflected water in all directions from the middle of the clearing.
After this Cassandra continues her sprint, leaping over the crater using her momentum, and trying to climb over the rocks of the mountain as high as she could.
During this, Alexander meets James on the other side of the clearing, running by each other. Alexander runs into the clearing, raising his hands from their sides and thinks to himself “Eternal River!”. During his sprint in the clearing, he freezes the wet terrain around the crater behind him, and continues running forward to where James came from.
Cassandra’s hound approaches quickly from the middle of the clearing, but it loses traction on the ice created by Alexander’s powers, landing into the deep crater which was now filled with ice cold water.
Over the next two seconds, as the hound attempts to get out, on each side of the clearing James and Alexander dodge opportunistic attacks by the others original chaser.
As they do, and thanks to the speed of the beasts, the hell-hounds both slide into the clearing and lose traction themselves, landing them towards the crater where they fall as well.
- Got you now! - Cassandra shouts with excitement and fueled by the adrenaline induced by the fear of the chase, looking down on the dogs who fell into their trap
From high up on the stone foundation of the mountain she chants as she sees the hell-hounds almost getting out of the crater in mere seconds:
“Ciretose Sniahc!”
Several pure arcane chains spawn at the craters base, ensnaring all three of the hounds under water and pulling them together.
At that moment James thinks to himself as he looks back at the clearing:
‘That spell does not seem very different than what Jack attempted to do to me at the combat trials, except for the fact that there is a dangerously high concentration of pure arcane in those chains. But the bad part is… Cassandra didn’t have time to use Twilight Wisdom, her health is in your hands now, hurry-‘ as James almost finishes his thought he sees Alexander launch himself in the air in a flash of lightning.
While mid-air over the crater Alexander lowers his left hand towards the chained hounds, the cold circle appearing again, flowing around his palm. The temperature starts to visibly drop around him and sparks of lightning start to shoot off from his right arm as he places his fingers on his left palm.
From the beginning of his ascending motion he focused on one thing and chanted calmly under his breath:
“ Du Blanc Secret Technique:
A Noillim Snroht. “
Over the course of his movement in an arch from one side of the clearing toward the other, lasting barely under three seconds, Alexander had fired off an incalculable amount of projectiles with incredible speed, making his arm movements barely visible to the naked eye. The sound of crashing ice echoed throughout the forest, sounding almost like righteous thunder.
The insane speed of the succession of hits, coupled with their powerful output, had created a branching iceberg over the crater, looking vaguely similar to giant rose thorns.
At its base, the three hounds were barely visible, the fire had been snuffed out wholly from their dark, rocky bodies.
On one side, Alexander thinks to himself:
“I have done it, I have… but Cassandra, I must check on her-“ on that thought and trying to look up Alexander almost trips and loses his balance. He is fatigued from the vast amount of arcane he had used for the attack.
Up on the rocks, Cassandra faints from the effort herself. The few seconds she needed to hold the pure arcane spell were enough to raise her temperature to drastic levels, and her hands had cuts under her gloves, indicating that it was even starting to tear her flesh apart.
James jumps up and catches Cassandra before there’s a chance for her to fall and injure herself. He takes her to Alexander’s side of the clearing and lets her down gently next to him.
Alexander kneels down next to Cassandra and asks:
- Is she?
- From what I can tell she’s going to be fine, but this was incredibly hard… for both of you. - James responds, feeling bad at how much his comrades had to push themselves
Alexander looks up at James and then back at Cassandra and sighs:
- It is the life we have chosen for ourselves, do you not agree James? - Alexander asks him, filled with a feeling of forced compliance
- I agree Lex. Not like there’s a lot of interesting choices for magi. Try to become master or live as a nobody in a protectorate....
At this point Cassandra was beginning to wake up and starts to hear the boys and their conversation.
- There is also the Church of Arcane. - Alexander says
- Sure, or the Court of Ink. - James says
- You remember things about the Court of Ink? - Alexander asks him
- Well, yeah, but I don’t think dedicating your life to looking for forgotten spell-books or scrolls all over the world and being forbidden from using arcane unless for the sake of gathering them is much fun, so I didn’t mention remembering it. To be honest I don’t understand why there are so many magi picking those two options. Master is it for me, not one of the other three options. I need to matter, and that's not going to happen by being a blind follower or a mindless librarian.
Cassandra opens her eyes and both James and Alexander look at her.
- Do you guys ever think about what head priestess Eyana said? - Cassandra asks while sitting up and placing her hand over her forehead in pain
The boys look at each other confused and James replies:
- Hell no, but what do you mean?
- Maybe she meant that becoming master means risking a lot of stuff, lives even. I think that’s why someone might pick the other choices. - Cassandra tells them sincerely and almost with regret
James helps both of them stand up and says to their face:
- Listen, we did great. You two did great especially! Actually, I did the least back there. So I promise you this: if anything happens, I will be there! I don’t care how long it takes, or how far you are, together we’ll be fine.
Cassandra calms down and smiles, while Alexander looks at him and laughs:
- Hah! Nice one Reeves, do you think we will need you saving us, though? - he says as he points back toward the giant ice structure
James gets ready to smack Alexander but at that moment Cassandra yells:
- Enough! I can’t with you two. You’re so busy fighting each other you forget everything else.
The two look back at her simultaneously:
- Huh?
Cassandra sighs and shakes her head in disbelief, raising her hand in the direction they came from and saying:
- Hello, Waldheim?! The smoke stopped but who knows what happened there, hell-hounds or not!
James and Alexander look at each other and nod in agreement, they will drop this and the three of them will make haste for Waldheim to find out the fate of the village!