Honorious woke up. He had been killed yet again. 'Honestly, this wouldn't be so bad if this guy was at least sane.' Honorious couldn't talk, so his master talked for him.
"Do a better job next time," his master said.
"Get me better troops."
"Where am I supposed to find better troops."
"I don't know, raid a castle."
"Good idea. I'll have you do it."
It really was quite exhausting. If he ever got killed again, he would make sure that it was by a sane mage. Neither Honorious nor his master slept.
His master had walked quite a bit away, but Honorious could still hear him mumbling. "Oh, what's my name again. Bill, Ben, Winston, eh it doesn't matter, all that matters is that anything and anyone that get in my way must be destroyed. Especially that young mage and his stone-armed friend. Yes, I will destroy them. Oh wait, that was my name, Will."
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Flyte could move, but only a little. Elliot walked into the tent.
"Oh, hey you're awake," Elliot said. "Ander made some hot cider, I'll go get you some. Elliot left he tent, but after a small bit of time he came back in with a carved wooden cup full of cider, and a handful of salted pork.
"Thanks," Flyte said as he grabbed the foods. As he drank the cider, he felt it's heat run though him. Flyte tried to stand up, but instantly fell down.
"Whoa, easy there," Elliot said. "Here, I'll take you."
Elliot carried Flyte out of the tent, and seated him on a log. "How long have I been out?" He asked worried.
"Around four days," Ander answered from behind Flyte.
"That long huh," Flyte said. He could have died. Flyte had never heard of a mage being reported to live after a spell exhaustion longer than that. "I need to go to a library."
"Why?" Elliot asked curiously.
"To learn more about these Shades," Flyte answered.
"Hey, Flyte?" Ander said.
"Yes Ander?" Flyte said.
"We're right outside of a small town named Palantriss, and I think that there is probably a library there," Ander said. "But first you need a bath, so we're bringing you to the village hot springs first. You really stink."
When Flyte was Rejuvenated and clean after what seemed like a small amount of time, he donned his clothes and walked over to Ander.
"Let's go," Ander said "It's been a while." He was looking at something.
"What's that?" Flyte questioned.
"Nothing important," Ander replied more insistent. "Let's go."
Flyte looked towards the papers that Ander was holding and saw that they were wanted posters.
"Awesome!"
"No, it's not awesome," Ander said. "Now go."
Flyte raised his arms in mock surrender. "Fine, I'll go." They walked along a dirt road as the crisp air bit Flyte's ears.
"Look," he said, pointing. "It's a library, and an old one at that."
"Why does it being old matter," Ander inquired, not really expecting a sound answer.
"Everyone knows that an old library is more magical than a new one Ander." Ander sighed in an exasperated way, knowing his friend was just not thinking again.
As they walked to the entrance, Flyte noticed the decorative pillars in the front were decayed and the whole place was falling apart. He took a mental note to watch his step.
Flyte immediately tripped, and the only reason that he didn't faceplant was because Ander grabbed him before he could. Flyte and Ander walked up to the gloomy entrance to the dilapidated library and walked in.
The place was devoid of anything but books. The group split up to look for shades, or anything else that could be useful.
Flyte traveled through the library until he reached a spot in it with a bookcase surrounding a lectern. He immediately passed it without a glance because of his firm belief that nothing important ever came of a book on a lectern.
Ander had found himself lost soon after splitting up. He had taken too many rights and lefts to know where he was in the labyrinthian library. He took a look around the section he was in. He saw several books including How to Better Your Armor, Tactics of War, Magic for Idiots, and Dangerous Monsters. Based on the titles of the books, he guessed he was in the warfare section of the library. That or the self-help section. He grabbed all of the books and kept walking.
Flyte was still looking for a book on shades, and he was so desperate that he walked over to the lectern and took a look at the book on it. It was titled To Fight a Shadebringer. Upon reading that, he tried pulling the book off of the glorified book holder, but alas, it was nailed to it on its back cover.
'Nothing important ever came off a lectern.'
He opened the dark-covered book. Where Flyte opened the book, it read in black text "Shades are just as vulnerable to the world around us as the average human, though they are innately stronger, but they are instantly destroyed by flames. Just as a candle banishes the darkness of the night, an open blaze will leave shades as ashes."
'Interesting, I'll have to keep reading.'
'Furthermore, there is a way to destroy all of one mage's shades in one blow. To do this you must first obtain an item that a shade owned before they died. A spellcaster must then concentrate their magic in it to travel to the Dark Haven.'
Although the page continued on after that, Flyte didn't have enough patience to continue reading. He tore out that page and the next few. He decided that he wouldn't read for the next week if he could help it. He had to find Ander.
"Hey Ander," Flyte yelled. "Where are you?"
"Over here," Ander shouted back. Flyte ran towards Ander's voice. When he saw him he noticed that Ander had more books in tow.
"More books," Flyte exclaimed. "Why."
"They looked useful," Ander replied. "If you have what you need, let's go"
"Good Idea," Flyte said. "Where are we?"
"I have no clue."
Flyte was getting worried, and so he started looking around. Because of this he was able to notice Elliot walking on top of the stone shelves.
"Hey," Flyte shouted. "Elliot, what are you doing here. Also, this is a library, that's extremely disruptive"
"Looking for you two," He responded. "I saw you guys going into the library, but when I tried to follow you, the bookcases were rearranging themselves, so I climbed on top. Best of all, I only had to fight a few raccoons." Elliot was smiling, covered in shallow scratches.
"Here, I'll help you with that," Flyte said. "Elgro." Elliot's cuts all healed up without a single sign of scarring.
"About your magic Flyte," Elliot said. "Me and Ander were talking, and we were thinking that you should limit your use of magic a little. You can't be helpful if you've fainted. Not to mention that it's a little scary not knowing if you'll make it out of your next coma."
"Okay, I'll try." Flyte was a bit disappointed. They soon finished their walk to the library doorway. Ander handed Flyte a book, but Flyte felt like honoring his commitment. I can wait a week to know its name.
"I mostly came by to get you guys because something felt wrong," Elliot disclosed to Ander and Flyte. "I had a gut feeling."
"Well then," Ander said. "We should probably leave. Gut feelings are nearly never wrong." Flyte stopped paying attention as he heard something that sounded like screaming, but if it was, he couldn't be sure.
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He started running off only to have Ander grab his arm. "We have to save this town!" Flyte exclaimed. "Who will help them if we don't. they could all die."
"We can't stay," Elliot stoically said. 'He's seen too many people die because of these shades, and he can't handle witnessing any more.'
"Well, would you rather have them die with little to no chance?" Flyte asked looking between the two of them. Neither of them even made eye contact. "Fine, I'll go alone. I think it's worth it even if I die."
'It's a little bit of a dirty more, but maybe that appeal will get them to go.'
"Why would you die for these people that you don't even know?" Ander asked.
"Well, I guess that I would want someone to be there for me when I'm in danger," Flyte answered. "If these people die because I left them, the feeling that I caused a village of innocent people's deaths would never leave. I just feel like even though I haven't lived a fulfilling life, I can still do something great for these people."
Ander and Elliot stood thoughtfully as they watched Flyte walk into the village.
'I'm going to need something powerful if I want to survive this. This old stone sword just won't work. Maybe there's a relic vault someone around here.'
With a little bit of searching and a lot of luck, Flyte guessed that he had found the relic vault, which was being guarded despite the screams around them.
"I need to go in that vault," Flyte said as he walked closer.
"On who's orders?" One of the guards said. 'This type of people are the worst. They never stretch out their hand to help anyone under the guise of their all-powerful "rules." Rules should not be in place to protect the few and restrict the many from safety.'
"My own," Flyte said nonchalantly. Before they could draw their blades Flyte punched the one who spoke up in the liver as he used his other arm to elbow the other guard in the face. Hard. They were both on the ground when Flyte entered.
Immediately upon entering the room Flyte knew that his guess had been correct; this was in fact the relic vault. Of all of the swords, spear, armor, and other equipment, two things stuck out to him. One was a sword dubbed "Dancing Flame" which was supposed to cover itself in flames when it was swung fast enough, and the other was a shield called the "Winter Shield." The shield was supposed to automatically float over and intercept projectiles coming toward whoever wears the glove attuned to it, and Projectiles intercepted freeze, shattering so that they are unusable afterwards.
Flyte grabbed them both but saw that they were both enchanted with the same person's soul. Flyte had heard from his dad that humans had to use their whole souls to enchant an item. That could only mean that the enchanter was an elf, which wouldn't make sense because all of the elves had been missing for two and a half centuries. The city, despite being quite close to Ralthus's castle, didn't seem large or influential enough to justify holding such old artifacts.
Flyte wondered what it could possibly mean as he walked to the outer walls, but he forgot all about the strange mishap when he saw what was happening at the walls. Soldiers were fighting but easily losing as hundreds of shades climbed the walls. Flyte ran up the stairs to the wall, and when Flyte got up the stairs the shades immediately attacked him. He swung the relic sword as fast as he could and watched as the shades turned into ash. He dual wielded his blades and cut through the shades. "Forlso," Flyte yelled, feeling like the world around him was burning. The inferno around him did nothing to lower this feeling, but he brushed past it and threw his stone sword at a shade out of his flame's radius.
The screams around him died out as he saw that no change had been wrought upon the shades, that their numbers were still growing. Hundreds of blood tainted scythes flew down the lines at the wall, killing both shade and man. Flyte's shield blocked them from hitting him, but all of the scythes around him disappeared into ash as if they had never been there.
Flyte had been too distracted for too long, and a shade pounced on him and had it's blade up and ready to kill him. It screamed at him and Flyte felt dizzy, like something was utterly wrong. He stared the shade in its eyes as it lowered its blade, but right as he flinched away the shade received an arrow to the head, and it shrieked as it fell from the wall. Flyte looked to the origin of the arrow and saw Ander and Elliot approach him, Ander with a bow in hand.
"I thought you weren't coming." Flyte said.
"Well, what could I do, you were right," Ander said. "Plus, it's always worth it to save you, it's normally quite funny."
"Here, take this," Flyte passed him the "Dancing Flames" sword. "It's supposed to catch on fire if you swing it hard enough, but it's only been able to make sparks."
Ander swung the blade in a circular motion as it gained more and more momentum. Soon the longsword erupted in flames. "Let's go save this town," he said.
The three of them took position. Flyte was in the middle, Ander was off a distance to his right and Elliot was that same distance to Flyte's left. They started their advance against the shades.
"Who will follow us against these infernal beasts?" Ander called out to the soldiers of Palantriss. "I was once a general under King Ralthus, and no soldier under my command was slain. It that's not enough, you've seen our friend here fight these shades with you, despite not having any tie here! Is that the kind of soldier you would follow? If so, march onward with us, and we will throw this trumped-up usurper out of your town!"
The soldiers, though likely not inspired by Ander's lacking words, did see the logic and reasoning behind them, and many followed. The few who didn't were the ones injured enough to not be able to.
Flyte was most heavily targeted due to his fires from his previous assault. "Sari," Flyte said as quickly as he could. He sped up the majority of the human fighters on the wall, albeit just a little bit.
"Can you get me a small bucket of cold water?" Flyte asked of one of the unaffected men. The man hurried off to help Flyte, hopefully not just to escape the battlefront, but either way Flyte couldn't blame him. This wall was surely a hellscape if Flyte had ever seen one. Flyte's mana consumption had given him a bad headache and he nearly fell down more than once out of shear exhaustion.
Ander headed the army with his small group and was cutting a gaping hole in the shade's advance. Flyte understood why the sword was named "Dancing Flames" as he witnessed the fire branch out on its own, striking shades out of the way each time that Ander swung. It seemed almost alive and based on the fact the enchantments used pieces of someone's soul, Flyte had no doubt that it was somewhat alive. In such a short amount of time Flyte could tell that he already trusted the people around him with his life. Ander and Flyte agreed that you could generally tell who you could and couldn't trust based on their eyes.
Elliot's group was not bad off. Despite how it seemed when they fought together a night before, or rather four, Elliot definitely knew his stuff. Elliot had instilled a shield wall, which completely covered the front, and when shades came at his side, he had shields facing that direction too. He sometimes sent a small advance party when the shades thinned out, and that advance party wiped out the remaining shades before more could arrive at his front. Elliot's group seemed unstoppable.
Flyte heard something that sounded like thunder strikes firing off in rapid succession. The army had done well so far with minimal loss, but each death caused Flyte to ache a little more inside. He couldn't be as cold as Ander or Elliot, and each death he saw weighed him down more and more because each life was worth so much.
And so, his wary, young eyes saw the sickles before anyone else could. "IRAS!" He barely slowed them in time, but the three groups of soldiers were able to dodge with some room to spare. He was relieved, until he finally found the source of the thunderous sound.
The shade dragon was huge, far bigger than anything natural that Flyte had seen before. It roared, and as it did the soldiers couldn't help put their hands over their ears in vain attempts to block the guttural sound. Flyte yelled to Elliot and Ander, but they couldn't hear him. Flyte sent messengers to them, telling them to unite forces.
Three people hopped off the dragon just as Ander and Elliot's forces started coming in. The shade of the dragon sucked in air. Oh no, it's going to blast us! Elliot and Ander's men ran to the middle and started setting up a shield wall, but against dragon fire, Flyte knew it would be useless. "Elliot", Flyte said. "If we can get close to that dragon, we can kill it. It's still a shade, it'll die to flames. I just need a few shield users, you, and Ander."
"I agree," Elliot said. They both got Ander and he handpicked some of Elliot's shield users after a cursory look. The dragon spit out black flames, luckily too early to wipe them all out, and the whole army ducked under the shields. The trio's advance group ran towards the dragon. Elliot, Ander, and Flyte killed as many shades as possible and they could on their way, and Flyte caught a glimpse of two of the people who had gotten off the dragon and suddenly the dragon shot another column on flames too early. Flyte lost sight of the two. He heard movement behind and smiled. It had been an effective smokescreen. He spun around, trying to get a good cut in as fast as he could, but his blade was ripped from his hands by the shade of Borigan. The shade's grip on his sword tightened until it shattered with a nasty crunch. It turned out Flyte thinking two people had been too generous.
"Ander," Flyte exclaimed, but his good friend was already on it. Borigan dissipated in the air and Ander, seeing Flyte's old sword crumbled, gave Flyte his own stone sword. Flyte assumed that the other shade was Honorious, but he couldn't see him. they were only a few hundred feet away when Flyte realized that the dragon hadn't shot fire for a while, he looked and saw that it was almost able to kill them all, regardless of shields.
A spear shot into a shield user's body, piercing their shield, and Flyte knew Honorious was there. He quickly chopped down the other members of the Palantriss vanguard. How many of them had families waiting for them? Flyte couldn't excuse Honorious. "Ander, you get the dragon."
Flyte watched his friend go, and while Ander ran towards the dragon with great speed, but Flyte didn't think he would make it in time.
"Hello, intruder."
The boy turned to see Honorious aiming a sword at him, and he drove his arm into the blade and yelled "Forslo" with a fire burning in him, only fueled by the knowledge that he probably wouldn't be able to defeat Honorious. To Flyte, the whip of flames launching at the dragon was moving slowly, but he knew that was just him. It wove its way into the once majestic creature's opening mouth, and it soon found its way in, sealing the shade's fate.
Flyte looked back Honorious and stared him straight in the eyes as he felt himself start to fall. Honorious then stabbed Flyte in the lower stomach. Flyte was pushed into the stone beneath him and stared bleeding out slowly. Elliot decapitated his former mentor, and knelt in front of Flyte, his shield raised.
The dragon blew apart, orange flames twisting out. It was blinding, but beautiful, and yet all the Flyte could think about was whether Ander had gotten out safely. As the flames cleared, instead of shades, Flyte could see mounds of ash. The townspeople cheered wildly, but Elliot did not. He paled when he looked back at Flyte, seeing that breaths were only barely coming into the youth's shivering body.
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Ander was rushing back, and Elliot could not feel anything but guilt. Flyte wouldn't have been stabbed if Honorious had been dead sooner. "Flyte," Elliot cried out. "You have to be okay. Come on Flyte. Please." Elliot could only mutter the last word. Flyte looked up at Elliot, and tried to get up, but he immediately fell back, wincing. "Flyte, you killed a dragon today, do you know how many people have been able to do that." Elliot couldn't hold back his tears, and he didn't want to. "Somebody, help!" he screamed. "Anyone, please."
Flyte coughed, blood splattering on the stone floor. "Did I save them," He asked. "I couldn't see."
"Yes Flyte, you did," Elliot responded. "You did." Flyte looked into his eyes, as if trying to find something.
"Are you crying over me," He asked humorously "I've done what I needed to, if I was able to save people." Flyte himself was able to tear up. When Ander reached them, Flyte smiled as he fell to his knees. He started coughing and wheezing, and then he just stopped.
Elliot would not let his death be in vain. He looked to his newfound friend, dead on the floor.
Flyte Tenner would be avenged.