The three made their way through the portcullis toward the inner keep. The entry was a large light grey stone hallway approximately twenty feet long by fifteen feet wide with ten-foot-high ceilings. This part of the fort was in better repair than the outer walls and the courtyard. The stone floor was devoid of any cracks or weeds and the whole hallway was polished to a shine. Giving the grey walls a reflective quality.
Their footfalls let off soft echoes with each step. The white painted doors at the end of the hallway helped enhance the light from the torches that lined the walls, five per side, making the hall warm and inviting.
“This is not what I expected,” Nigel remarked as he looked over the room.
“I know what you mean,” Timothy added through Khloe, “I think I was anticipating something more ominous. This makes me feel like we are going to a nice ball at a respected lord’s manor,” she threw a sideways glance at Teagan, “I forgot my dance shoes and this outfit is not appropriate for a ball. Do I have time to get changed?” giving him a smirk.
“No,” Teagan said flatly. “Stay focused. We have not won the day yet. There are too many normals out there, between the town guard and the hostages, any slipup could cost lives,” he admonished Khloe as they reached the double doors. “Before we go in, how are your mana reserves?” he asked her.
Timothy had Khloe focus for a minute, dropping into a short-lived meditation, “I am good. I have a little over half,” Khloe told Teagan.
All casters had an inherent ability to sense their mana reserves. It was akin to a runner knowing how far they have gone and how much further they can push their bodies before they collapse. The exhaustion lingering in the distance but could be held off until they exhausted all of their reserves.
“Good, try and hold that for Lady Jilisa. We are not sure what we will face there. If she broke through the wall you may need to push your resolve to get through her resistances,” Teagan said to Khloe.
Another thing that casters could do is use their resolve attribute to dump extra mana into a spell, making it harder to resist. It could also be used to increase the power of a spell, effectively overcharging it. This is what Khloe did earlier in battle when the cult caster used a lightning spell at her. She overcharged the fire and force spell to give her extra thrust, getting off the ground quickly. She did not want to risk being on the ground when he finished casting.
“Then give me a few seconds,” Khloe asked of Teagan.
He gave her a nod.
Khloe untied a small bag, with two clear gems embedded in the side, from her waist and opened the mouth of it wider than it should have been able to go. She reached inside and pulled out a small compound bow with a clear gem on the grip, followed by a field quiver that she strapped to her thigh.
Neither of these items should fit into that small bag, Timothy thought and then smiled as he realized it was a dimensional bag.
Khloe smiled as well as she tied the small bag back to her waist and readied her bow, drawing an arrow and nocking it. “Ready!” she said.
The bow was Khloe’s second gem wield item, since this was her tertiary path she could only have two. The first being the knife with the red gem in her bracer. The bag was a gem forger item and being her secondary path she could have a total of four gems worth of forger items. The other two were the belt and the bracers. The belt allowed her to quickly attach or detach items from it. The bracers were a type of dimensional bag as well, which allowed her to store the knives there without any restrictions to her movement.
Nigel looked at Teagan, “She most certainly is ready. She only smiles like that when she knows she is going to win. Usually when we are playing cards, but I will take it!” Nigel chuckled as he pulled out his dagger and the black bladed knife, the blade reformed on the hilt. Teagan readied his sword and opened the white painted door.
The moment Teagan opened the door he was blasted backwards down the hallway as all hell broke loose. He rolled multiple times before stopping halfway, sprawled on his stomach. Nigel did not hesitate and pulled his cloak up to protect his face. He then ducked into the room as Timothy directed Khloe back to Teagan. She knelt beside him as she placed the bow and arrow on the ground. Khloe cast a quick spell as the green gems lit up and cat’s eye gem blinked.
She examined Teagan for injuries, her magical sight now able to perceive physical statuses. The sight showed her that Teagan had burns on his face and a deep wound in his abdomen. She rolled him over and saw that there was a large rod of metal in the wound. Pulling this out was going to cause damage and he would bleed out quickly if he was not tended to immediately.
Khloe braced herself and pulled the rod out with her left hand and covered the wound with her right as fast as possible. Before dropping the rod she saw barbs growing all around it, quickly increasing in size. She tossed it down the hall and chanted another spell, the green and blue gems flared so brightly that they overtook the light from the torches. Water started rushing out of the wound, with it came other small pieces of metal that must have been from the barbs breaking off when she removed the rod. As the water subsided the wound began to close, Teagan’s eye opened groggily as Khloe shushed him.
She prepared another spell, this time not over charging it, and put her hands over his face. A green light emanated from her hands as the burns on his face started to heal. She laid his head back down gently on the stone floor of the hallway, turned and looked at the doorway, grabbed her bow and arrow and sprung into action.
Nigel reacted quickly, bringing his cloak up to protect himself from the flames. The moment he saw the flames pass he saw Teagan tumbling backwards and noticed that Khloe was standing far enough back to not be affected. The moment he saw Khloe move for Teagan, he turned and rushed into the room.
There was a dwarf standing about fifteen feet from the doorway. He was holding a blunderbuss, smoke drifting from the muzzle after the discharge. Nigel spared a glance left and right as he charged the other dwarf. There were two other cultists on his left and one on the right. He needed to buy enough time for Khloe to help Teagan.
As the two dwarves met, Nigel dropped to a slide on his knees as he used the green blade to slice at the other dwarf’s thigh. The other dwarf used the blunderbuss to knock Nigel’s hand away from the strike. Nigel continued the slide before popping up to his feet and charging for the other two cultist on the left. He threw the black bladed knife between the two, the blade exploding before it passed, leaving miniature cuts over each of them. They both recoiled from the blast and shrapnel.
Nigel used the green blade to cut the one on his right just above the elbow on his sword hand and turned to face the other. He used his left hand to dig into one of his pockets and pull out a small ball. This is when he heard the click of the other dwarf’s blunderbuss. He tossed the ball at the third cultist on the far side of the room. There was a loud bang from the blunderbuss as a ball of cold fire hit Nigel on the left shoulder, followed by an even louder bang as the ball he threw erupted into a bright white light.
The bright light and loud noise stunning the four cultists. Nigel grabbed a potion out of his right-hand pocket and chugged it as his right arm and chest started turning into ice. The potion warmed his bones, counteracting the ice, causing it to start melting.
The other dwarf was the first to recover and he started loading his weapon again as he backed up. Nigel took the opportunity to place a cut on the other cultist near him, this time in the leg, before he bent down and grabbed the hilt of the black knife. He sheathed the hilt before running toward the recovering cultist on the far side of the room, tackling him to the ground.
On the way down he was able to hamstring the man with his green blade. The cultist yelped in pain as they toppled over to the marble floor together. Nigel rolled off the man in time to see the dwarf level the blunderbuss at him. Nigel reached for his cloak to hopefully block most of the damage, but he was too late. The weapon blazed out as the dwarf fired, but the attack missed, smashing into the wall behind him, leaving him unscathed.
Khloe ran down the hallway toward the ball room, leaving Teagan to recover. She pulled up short of the doorway as she saw the dwarf finish loading his weapon. She raised her bow and took aim at the dwarf’s chest then let loose the arrow. The dwarf finished loading the blunderbuss, raised it to his shoulder taking aim. The clear gem on Khloe’s bow glowed as she changed the direction of the arrow while it was in mid-flight. Altering its target to the barrel of the weapon.
The arrow hit a split second before the dwarf fired, diverting his aim just a fraction as the bullet left the muzzle. Khloe rushed into the right side to check on Nigel. She spared a glance his way as she passed through the threshold. The magic from her sight spell was still active and showed that, other than a bruised shoulder, he was fine. Scanning the rest of the room she saw that the three human cultists were all injured and suffering from Nigel’s poison. The dwarf, on the other hand, was fine.
The dwarf circled cautiously to the two guards on the far side of the room, leaving the one with Khloe and Nigel on an island. He started reloading as he did. Khloe nocked another arrow and pointed it at the ground without looking. Letting the arrow go it buried itself into the other leg of the cultist nearest them as he was trying to stand, causing him to fall to the floor again in agony.
As he fell, Nigel placed another cut on the man’s back, doubling the amount of poison in his system. The wounds started to ooze a sickly green-yellow pus. The man started retching blood and bile.
“Your buddy will not last long. Drop your weapons and surrender and we will stop the poison,” Nigel said, panting.
“Our lives matter little. The great dragon will decide our fates when she arrives,” the dwarf said in a grumbly voice.
Timothy pieced things together, “Crap!” Timothy said through Khloe, “Nigel, they are only stalling us! They don’t care about dying, they only care about allowing enough time for whatever Jilisa is doing.”
“Great! Zealots,” Nigel bemoaned.
Khloe quickly drew another arrow and fired it at the guard on the left of the dwarf, before letting the bow drop to the floor. Nigel pulled his black bladed knife again, the blade fully restored, and threw it at the dwarf.
The dwarf slammed a brick into the floor making a half wall appear in front of him, also giving a quarter cover to the guards on either side. He rested the barrel of his weapon on the wall as he took aim at Nigel. The black blade burst from Nigel’s knife as it passed over the wall, showering the three in another wave of shrapnel.
Time for my favorite spell, Timothy thought to himself.
Four gems on Khloe’s belt blazed to life, the two red, the white and the purple. Khloe pointed her finger at the dwarf, the air in front of the wall exploded into roiling flames, heat and pressure. When the air cleared of the smoke and fire the two guards flanking the dwarf were charred remnants that looked like dark statues of burnt flesh from a horror movie. The dwarf was somehow still alive but barely. All of the hair and clothes on his body were gone. The skin had a melted waxy appearance.
Stolen story; please report.
Teagan walked in and looked at the dying dwarf and then at Khloe and Nigel.
“Put him down,” Nigel said with pained eyes, “I know he deserves to die, but not like that. End it.”
Teagan turned from Nigel with a blank look on his face and walked over to the dwarf. He raised his sword and sliced down, removing his head.
Teagan stood there, frozen by an invisible fear. It was his job to be the front man for the group. He was supposed to be the one the others could always count on to be the last man standing.
When he woke a few moments ago he was stricken with terror, not knowing what happened to his two companions. He sat up as a large fireball erupted in the room in front of him. Quickly getting to his feet he rushed the door to find two burned husks of men on either side of a shorter man with melted skin.
He turned his gaze to Khloe and Nigel and saw a man on the floor at their feet dying from poisons racking his body. He heard Nigel say something. Even though he did not comprehend the words, he understood what Nigel wanted and ended the melted dwarf’s life. At the same time, Nigel slit the throat of the man at his feet, ending his life as well. “It didn’t have to be this way,” Nigel said with regret. He rolled the man over and closed his eyes.
Timothy looked from Teagan to Nigel through Khloe’s eyes. “Both of you, snap out of it. This is not over. This group was only here to slow us down. They must be close to completing whatever ritual they are planning. We need to move!” Khloe roared at them.
Nigel nodded his head quietly and stood up. Teagan didn’t move. Khloe gave Nigel a glance with anguish written on her face, then turned and walked over to Teagan.
Once she got close to him she used her hand to move his head to look at her, “I know you are hurting. I know what you feel your roll is in this group and that you feel you failed us. You didn’t. There have been more times than I care to count that you have been there for us. Saved us from certain death. Today was our turn,” Teagan continued to look at her blankly. “I don’t have time for this!” she exclaimed, and slapped Teagan in the face. “Get over it Tea! The mission is not complete.”
Teagan shook his head and blinked a few times, “Yes mam,” he said with the conviction of a trained soldier.
He gripped his sword tightly and started to hurry to the stairs leading to the balcony overlooking the ballroom. Khloe looked over at a stunned Nigel and gave a shrug of her shoulders and a smile before following Teagan up the stairs. Nigel chuckled and shook his head then ran up the stairs on the other side of the balcony. The three meeting on the landing at the top.
“Split up or stay together?” Teagan asked.
“Stay together,” both Khloe and Nigel said simultaneously.
“Right side,” Teagan directed. The three ran for the stairs on the right leading to the second level.
They slowed their approach as they reached the stairway. “Let me take the lead,” Khloe asked the other two, “I want to assess the ritual first before we move in.”
Teagan and Nigel agreed and Khloe started ascending the steps. Murmuring a quick incantation, once again, the cat’s eye gem blinked as her magic sight returned. The three moved cautiously up the polished white marble stone stairs. Upon reaching the top Khloe peaked her head around the corner of the stairway wall to look at the large oval room.
There were two doors on the curved wall in front of her and two doors on the opposite side of the room. The center of the room, before the entrance to the large hallway that led to the throne, was a large magic circle with a five-pointed star at its center. There were four cultists around the circle, each one standing at a point of the star, two on the near side and two on the far side with Lady Jilisa at the fifth point, closest to the throne. Using her magical sight, she could see that the ritual was nearing completion.
Whew! We are not out of the woods yet, but at least we have a chance, Timothy and Khloe thought.
The ritual was a magical version of a signal fire. It was the equivalent of the ground being cleared, the wood laid out in a lattice pattern and stacked high, with small kindling stuffed in the gaps. The entire thing covered in lantern oil waiting for a spark to ignite. This is what the cultists and Lady Jilisa were doing now. The magical representation of drawing the flint back to strike against the steel.
Khloe pulled back to the stairway, turning to the other two. “This is what we have. They are done building the ritual and they are in the process of lighting it. The four cultists are pooling their mana, allowing it to flow to Lady Jilisa to direct. We only have a short time to act,” she took a breath and continued, “Fortunately they will not be able to stop what they are doing to engage us. They must stay focused on the ritual, if not the mana that they have accumulated will be lost. Most likely in an explosive manner. This is what I will need you two to do…guard me. I will start by creating a mana sink, this should slow them down. After that I will create a ritual to siphon the energies of theirs, using it for a different purpose. I will need to stay focused on this to adjust for any variances in the magical layers of their ritual. Once the siphon starts you can engage, I will give you the signal.”
She looked at Teagan, “Are you good?” Teagan gave her a quick nod and she looked at Nigel. “You?”
Nigel gave a thumbs up. Timothy chuckled, causing Khloe to do the same. Nigel and Teagan gave her a quizzical look.
She shook her head, “I will explain later. Let’s move!”
The three burst around the stairway wall, Teagan and Nigel trailing Khloe. Khloe stopped about fifteen feet short of the ritual circle and began to cast a spell, the purple and clear gems flared up as she poured her resolve into it, causing it to overcharge. A translucent purple archway with a shimmering reflective surface in the center appeared in front of Khloe.
Kind of looks like a stargate, Timothy thought to himself just as the flow of mana from the cultist started diverting to the arch Khloe made.
This was only visible to Khloe thanks to her sight spell. As the mana came into contact with the surface of the shimmering magic at the center of the arch the two sources of magic began to interact.
Khloe’s spell was dissecting the mana into its core components. The surface now had swirling colors of red and green with a smattering of white. Then a blotch of darkness hit the center and spread to cover the majority of the archway. Khloe’s eyes when wide!
“Torrithrax,” she said with a growl.
Teagan and Nigel took a tentative step back at the name. Torrithrax is a dragon of legendary brutality, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants of Draconous and enslaving millions more to her will.
“No, no, NOOO!” Lady Jilisa screamed in rage.
The mana that the cultist were directing toward Lady Jilisa started to divert to the archway created by Khloe. The four cultists startled out of their trances blinked a few times before looking from Lady Jilisa to the group of three.
“FOOLS! Continue with the ritual, build the mana needed before she dries it out,” Jilisa admonished the cultists.
“Foolish child. How could someone be naive enough to imagine that summoning this beast would help them on their path to power,” Khloe admonished.
“Child! How dare you call me CHILD! I am of nobility and you will address me as such. I will not be disrespected by a common peasant!” Jilisa roared.
“If you act like a child, you are a child. Your nobility will be stripped from you after this. Fortunately for you, you will not be alive to see it,” Khloe said somberly.
Jilisa spat out a magical curse, a sickly green bolt streaked toward Khloe. Khloe did not flinch, she just stared at Jilisa, and just as the bolt got close to Khloe, Teagan jumped in front and intercepted it with his shield of force.
He turned to Khloe, “Stay focused. Nigel and I have her, get your ritual up.”
Khloe shook her head before looking at Teagan. She turned and pulled out a bag of salt mixed with iron filings and started to pour the contents on the floor, making a circle with the archway incorporated into the border. From behind her she could hear Teagan and Nigel holding off Jilisa’s magic. The occasional bursts of debris passing by her. Once she completed the circle she stepped inside and started to empower it. She weaved the mana into various symbols, each symbol conveying what she wanted to accomplish.
First, strengthen the power of the archway to draw in more mana. Next, turn the mana into a fire that projects upwards. Then turn the archway into a mana vortex that grows slowly in intensity to pull the subtle magics out of the other circle, followed by the more foundational magics. Last, set a time limit. Otherwise, it could grow out of control, turning a few of the acres around this fort into a magical wasteland.
The last symbols added were not of true magic, they were holy. A shattered moon, a lake of fire and finally a tree. She closed the ritual, then all gems but the cat’s eye, flared as Khloe dumped her remaining mana into the ritual. Activating it with her in the center.
“Now!” she shrieked.
Teagan saw the bolt racing toward Khloe, he summoned his shield and jumped in front of her to intercept it.
He turned to her, “Stay focused. Nigel and I have her, get your ritual up.”
He saw her turn and pull a bag off her belt. He knew that body language, her determination radiated from her like a warm fire on a cold night. It was almost tangible. A green gas started to rise from the floor at his feet. It burned his calves at first as it made its way through small gaps in his armor. Moving up to his knees and thighs before there was the sound of glass shattering at his feet.
Nigel had pulled out a vile of something and thrown it at the ground. Wisps of white, edged in blue, started dissipating the green gas quickly neutralizing it. Lady Jilisa started to cast another spell as two black spears started to form above her head. The gems on Teagan’s bracer lit up as he stabbed his sword into the floor. A wall of ice coalesced in front of him and Nigel just in time to block the incoming spears. They stuck in the ice wall, but it held, even when the spears themselves shattered. Sending debris everywhere.
“That attack was too weak. I don’t think she broke through the wall yet,” Teagan said to Nigel.
“Agreed. Once Khloe finishes, we should be able to take them down quickly. I don’t think the other four are even gem users. I think they are just conduits to pump extra mana to Jilisa,” Nigel replied to Teagan. He spared a look back at Khloe, “Damn! She works fast,” he said as Khloe yelled “Now!”
Teagan shot off like a bullet toward Lady Jilisa. Nigel was transfixed looking at Khloe as he realized what she had done.
“Why?” he said, his voice breaking.
She simply gave him a sad smile. The archway on Khloe’s circle became solid an instant before the shimmering colors in the center flowed into Khloe’s circle and turned to flames. The vortex that replaced the center of the arch began pulling all the mana from the room into it.
The mana in the other circle started to flow to it, slowly at first but as it picked up speed the mana became visible without magic sight as the air around it heated up. It incinerated the two cultists on the side closest to Khloe’s circle as the superheated mana passed through them. Nigel wiped a tear from his eye just as the fires in Khloe’s circle punched through the ceiling, lighting up the night sky. Nigel turned and rushed the two cultists on the opposite side.
Lady Jilisa tried to cast a spell as Teagan charged but the vortex tore it apart and consumed the mana. Teagan gripped his sword with two hands as he aimed to split her in two. She saw this and stepped into his attack; it wasn’t enough. The cross-guard side of the blade caught her in the shoulder, going several inches deep. Her arm and chest went cold. She pushed back on it with her body’s resistances, but she could already feel her blood slowing down. A strong hand grabbed her by the neck, then she was thrown, soaring through the air for a fraction of a second before a searing heat engulfed her.
Teagan looked over to the other side of the ritual circle where Nigel was standing over two dead cultists. Nigel grabbed each, one at a time, and threw them into the mana fire, then stared at Khloe’s ritual. Teagan followed his gaze. Horror came to his face once he realized the silhouette in the circle was Khloe. She was on her knees, back arched with her arms above her directing the energies up to the sky. Her body was blazing so brightly that it made her difficult to look at. Determination and resolve came over him and he started to walk toward the circle.
The mana void began to close just before the last remnants of the cultist ritual ran out. When the void closed the remaining energies flashed out of existence with a small pop, the damage minimal thanks to Khloe’s ritual draining the vast majority of the potential energy.
Teagan covered himself in ice and wind once the vortex closed and stepped into Khloe’s ritual circle. He was immediately assaulted by heat so intense that the ice started to melt. Any liquid quickly evaporated and formed a mist around him that would have gotten superheated if not for the fires dying out as the ritual ended. Khloe began to drop to the floor, her clothes and hair were gone, burned off by the fire and heat. Her skin melted. Teagan rushed to Khloe’s side and caught her with his arms covered in ice.
He cast a spell that rapidly started to cool the air around her when Nigel got to her side with a healing potion. He opened her mouth and poured it slowly down her throat. The skin rapidly started to heal, yet the potion, even being of the highest strength she could handle, was not enough to heal all of the damage.
Nigel and Teagan breathed a sigh of relief, the fact that her body healed meant that she was still alive. The remaining damage could be healed later by a cleric.
Healing potions have a limit in this world, consecutive potions could not heal the same damage. One could imbibe as many as they wanted in a row, but unless there was a new source of damage in between each the magic would go to waste. Alchemist forgers have been trying to circumvent this for ages without success.
Nigel pulled out a blanket once the healing was complete and gently wrapped Khloe in it. Once Nigel finished, Teagan cautiously picked her up, resting her head on his chest as he used both arms to hold her close and safe. Nigel gave Teagan a smile as tears ran down his face and into his beard. Teagan smiled as well; his eyes watery as he held back his emotions.