“Wade, couldn't you have been born a normal sized person and not a bull?”
“No. You sound like my mother.”
It had taken them a while to find a way into the undercity that could accommodate Wade and once inside a pervading sense of dread gripped Clarke's chest as though there were something waiting for him that he did not want to find. Or perhaps that was waiting to find him.
“Can we have disguises?”
Gwen asked.
“It's Twinty and his spies. They're gonna know we're down here within seconds.”
Clarke replied but when she seemed disappointed he turned to the nearby market and picked up some cheap cloaks that the three of them threw on.
“Wow, they never have my size.”
Wade said, smoothing out the fabric and marvelling that something fit him for once.
“That's a blanket.”
“I can live with that.”
It was Alouella who led the party along as they didn't need to know where they were going, they simply needed to follow the trail. Clarke took point beside her and navigated the group through the rush of the ratlings, pushing them along and slowing them down to avoid the worst of the congestion.
Something whispered at Clarke from the dim light, moving in the dark little corners as they walked.
Not you again. I thought I left you behind.
It did not speak this time but a heavy presence in the back of his mind followed them as they walked until they arrived at the tunnel that led to the dig site.
“Here?”
Clarke whispered in disbelief and Alouella asked.
“What's in there?”
Clarke froze, not wanting to believe it. He knew that whatever the stuff was it was bad but maybe there was some hope that it could be used in a good way? Alouella leaned into his field of vision.
“Clarke-”
“Well...”
Gwen stopped her from pushing him any further.
“We're not sure. It's...uh...it's basically an enormous metal wall surrounding a city? With magic and technology inside?”
“What...just beneath the city? Under it? Come on, really?”
Wade asked and Gwen just shrugged and nodded. She wasn't even convinced by her own explanation. Clarke finally snapped out of it.
“There has to be more to it. My mother wouldn't just-”
It clicked for him as Alouella looked at him, a scowl on her face.
This...this is exactly what she meant. Her father wouldn't have either...
He did and she did and who else might?
The thought prickled Clarke's brain like ice cold claws. Change constantly making the people around him, friend and foe, those he thought he loved and those he hated, take the steps they wanted-
He stamped his foot and found that he hadn't been breathing and suddenly pulled in the air he needed. It was coming back on him. The others watched as he looked at each of them, his eyes erratic. He steadied himself.
They've never changed on me.
He had to believe that. And he owed Alouella in some way.
“You're right. Let's go have a look before this gets bad.”
They snuck down the empty hallway with nowhere to hide as though it made some difference, Alouella out front sensing as they came to the huge cave. There were far fewer workers this time, a few loitering here and there, resting after their rigors.
“It's strong in here. Did either of you see any of those things or-?”
“Not a one. No moss either.”
“Then maybe it was newly introduced.”
Clarke guessed. He looked over the lip of the path down to where the door was. They'd finished chipping away the remainder and the door gaped open, yawning wide into a bright white hallway, light emanating from flat panels.
“What's that?”
They approached the door and stepped onto perfectly smooth floor. A side of the wall had been stripped away and one of the coffee makers wired in, a hazardous mish-mash of copper connecting into pipes and coils in the wall that had been torn free. The coffee maker glowed a brilliant green and Alouella shielded herself from it.
“Don't get too close, Miss Lawfer. Wouldn't want to end up like me.”
A thin, almost tinkling voice like glass on glass spoke from just down the hallway. A number of boxes and containers, supplies for an expedition sat stacked neatly. One stood out from the rest, huge underneath a cloth.
“I imagine they thought I'd go to sleep in here if they made it dark enough.”
The voice spoke again and Clarke approached, pulling at the sheet even as Alouella tried to stop him. Something within screamed at her, the mana in her body howling for her to run, to protect her and it like it had never spoken to her before. Clarke pulled.
“But I haven't seen darkness since she did this to me. Just glorious light.”
The sheet fell away and a brilliant glow within shone so bright that it nearly blinded all of them for a moment. It faded, either at will of the speaker or naturally but what was before them was a giant cage, a huge coffee maker encircled in thick glass, buttons and thick ropes of loose wire on the side waiting their purpose.
“Hey, that's my-”
Gwen's mouth clapped shut and they all stepped back.
Whilaway looked at them, his skin a thin leather, shards of crystal scaling up his arms and around his head in a crown, grown from the thick shard embedded in his skull, from above his eye to the back of his neck.
“She really did just stab him!”
Gwen gasped.
He laughed.
“If she'd used anything else other than the chunk of this-”
He tapped the back of his neck and the crystal made a loud ping noise.
“I really would have just died. I don't know if she did it on purpose but she made me this way. I guess it could have been an accident but when she saw what I had become, what even I was strong enough to become, well, I guess she knew she couldn't just waste me and stuck me in here. Took little bits for use in her little machines so she could save her strength.”
Alouella felt weird, her heart racing, her muscles stronger than normal.
“It makes elves stronger. Is this what you were looking for your whole life?”
“Of course!”
He seemed relaxed in his glass prison, leaning back and looking up.
“It does make elves stronger or spells more powerful if you know how to control it. But it's very finicky. You take in a little, elves turn it into harmless mana and it's lost. You take in too much and you become a ghoul. A zombie. A thing. But if you're both strong enough and take in enough you become-”
He spread his arms and gestured at himself.
“A lich. That's one of the many things we learned in Whaler's Wharf. We were doing a lot of amazing research there with your mother and-...oh, looks like your lesson is over.”
They saw Twinty down the hall with a group of armed ratlings all hurrying towards them, Twinty shouting as soon as he saw them gathered.
“Get away from him!”
He pushed Clarke and the others, shoving them along back out into the cave while the other rats took up positions around it.
“You wanna get all mucked up like him! I thought you'd all had your fill and-”
He finally noticed Wade and Alouella, so used to seeing them on his side that for once he'd took no notice of them.
“Of course, you brought your enemies along. Very nice.”
Clarke looked at the scene behind them, the calmly smiling lich in his prison and back at Twinty before hissing at him.
“What the hell are you doing down here!? This stuff completely wiped out a whole city! What is mother thinking?”
“Clarke, the problem back then was the people. They didn't have the vision and clarity your mother did. If she'd been solely in charge-”
Gwen interjected, worry in her voice now.
“Aggatha is possibly a psychopath! You heard her elf problems this morning, she was unfairly imprisoned by elves for years! You know what this stuff does to elves! We can't take that kind of chance!”
“This is all very enjoyable but-”
Whilaway stood, higher than he had in years, stopping to tilt his head just so and Alouella felt it too. A burst of power behind and above her.
“You really shouldn't have left those little batteries lying around in my basement. I'm sure Wormwood found it to be too easy to take a few and deliver them to those elf camps outside.”
She could feel it spreading, the mana above their heads on the street changing as who knew how many of those things suddenly sprung to undeath.
Twinty walked back, a smirk on his face.
“So, you have an army now. Wonderful. We have their leader. And Aggatha could erase you from existence.”
“Oh, she certainly could. I'm she sure she's on her way back right now after looking at whatever battery you were going to hook me up to.”
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Whilaway flashed, a mandala only Clarke could see springing up around him to completion almost faster than Clarke could yell out.
“Twinty! He's-”
And Whilaway was outside the glass and beside Twinty, whatever spell was at the tip of his fingers merely cutting a huge portion of Twinty's ear off thanks to the warning. A second spell went off at the same time, cutting blades of wind filling the cavern with a sonic boom that blasted through the armed ratlings, slicing huge chunks from them.
Twinty swung forward from his dodge, knife in hand and going for Whilaway's throat when Whilaway was already gone, teleported behind the rat and catching him by the neck. Another spell cast that glowed around Twinty and he flew forward, guiding by Whilaway's fingers.
“But I've learned she has to be in fairly close range to affect anything. About the size of a small village. And after that, it's simply too easy to have someone find her and finish her.”
In a rush of wind he bounced from stone wall to stone wall, crashing against surfaces that surely broke something with each blow. The whole exchange had taken seconds and Clarke was finally moving forward when Whilaway threw Twinty at him, the broken, bloodied body hitting him hard enough to put him on the ground.
“Here's your father back. It'll be fun to torture him some more when you heal his wounds with that miraculous power of yours.”
Clarke slammed his hand to the ground, writing quickly as the others rushed to him and Whilaway vanished into thin air.
It was obvious but the others watched as Clarke made lines and circles, complex geometric movements as he wrote as quickly as possible using Twinty's blood.
“Clarke, you heard him, heal him!”
“JUST. A. MINUTE.”
“Don't...bother...my boy...”
Twinty whispered. He pushed his arm out, the bone shattered through the skin to puddle beside Clarke.
“He knows...what to do...”
Their eyes latched on to Clarke as he spread the formula wider and wider, sweat dripping down his face at the rush of his mind, the speed with which he wrote and begged.
“FINISHED! Alouella, look at that and cast it when I tell you!”
“What, but I-!”
She looked at it, complex movements and combinations she'd never considered before, some of it wind magic, some of it...seemingly theorized spatial magic.
“You saw this, this was why-”
She studied it intently, tracing it in her mind as the others tended to Twinty. Gwen held his head as Clarke grabbed his book.
“Boy...you heard the evil guy...”
“YES, I know. I know.”
Clarke whipped out his pen, a few strokes and Twinty gasped to life and Clarke's vision blackened, things leaping from every corner, things he was sure weren't there. His head pounded, hisses seeping from every corner of his mind. His heart beat too fast.
Twinty screamed, bones snapping into place and blood filling his body at a pace it found excruciating without a proper set up to the action and merely a 'Twinty healed instantly'.
“Clarke, this is- I can't cast this!”
It was Gwen who turned to her as Clarke held Twinty down while his body knitted together.
“Gwen, Clarke wouldn't have told you to do it if you couldn't.”
“Yes, he would!”
Clarke rubbed his head, sparks shooting through it as the skin of the universe peeled back.
“Okay, he might have. But you are probably leagues a better wizard than Whilaway and you're only going to get better! This is nothing to you if you have the recipe!”
Twinty pushed Clarke away, his teeth grit and aching on their own.
“Couldn't have chosen your words a little better, could you! Healed instantly, like that couldn't be misconstrued like some wish gone wrong-”
“I brought you back from the brink of death and-ah, forget it!”
He stumbled up, Wade steadying him as they joined the others.
“We can't let him get away. Alouella teleport, kill lich, save town. Or something like that.”
He'd caused wind to blow, he'd tried to open gateways and teleport people or so his journals had told him from the time he went insane and more others but he'd never done something that made his skull feel like another skull was trying to break out like a baby chick.
And mom did this stuff regularly?
Alouella looked at the blood on the ground, the expectant eyes of those who needed her and those above fleeing as a wave overtook them and shook her head, raising her staff above her head.
“Alright. Alright, I can do this. We' won't be shredded to bits, we won't be shredded to bits!”
Wade's eyes went open in shock.
“Wait, wha-”
And they blinked out of existence and for a second they were nothing and nowhere. At the gate leading into town a mandala formed on the ground and they came into being, matter birthed from nothing.
“-t?”
The group was alive, in the midst of a city at dusk, painted in ruin.
Turned elves shrieked through the streets, spells bursting off into the sky as they chased the people, the mana around them going thick and foul as the creatures ate up the local mana and replaced it.
And there was Whilaway, standing at the gate and finishing the last of a few guards who had been brave enough, or simply in his way enough, to challenge him.
“Guess there aren't any more Roots left after that.”
He muttered to himself.
“Go!”
Clarke shouted and they charged, surrounding empty space as he had only needed that time to stand where they had been.
“How in the world did you do that?”
He looked around, reaching out and calling the things to him, the dozen or so remaining in the area shambling over to block any access to him.
He can control it!
Alouella thought.
Twin shocked cries came from behind as Wade and Gwen felt twin piercing bolts.
Wormwood smiled behind them, posing on the carriage he'd been bringing for his master's escape.
“And that's the bruisers. Your little group is already falling apart.”
Gwen snatched the channeled bolt from her side and tossed it on the ground.
“Thought you liked being rich, Wormwood?”
She yelled, charging at him. He dodged every punch she threw, smirking as he danced backward, Wade following her up.
“Could always be a little richer. Might own a city at this rate. Might own this one after we deal with your instant death monsters.”
The team separated in that few seconds and Clarke knew they had lost the initiative, playing to the enemy plan. Ghouls circled around behind he and Alouella.
“Going to reach for your book now, Mr. Script?”
Whilaway asked. He made eye contact with him, rolled his fingers and the group around them burst into movement as he swiped the book up.
Spells shot off, fire and ice, wind and earth erupting. Clarke dodged left and right, leaping out of the enclosed group and Alouella teleporting away to safety on the opposite side of the group.
And Wormwood's eyes still followed Clarke.
I'm his target. He knows what I could do to him.
“You thought I'd just let you write me out of existence!? Just disappear like a mote of dust inside the book of history!?”
Whilaway was not an attack wizard but the spell he unleashed boomed, the way his hands pointed the only clue that let Clarke dodge as a blade of air exploded the ground where he'd been.
It had caught his book in the jump, slicing the pages in half and letting them flutter into the air. A simple manipulation of the air sent them floating higher and higher, out of reach.
Alouella unleashed a blade of lightning that jumped between the ghouls, cracking their bones and sizzling their crystalline flesh but the main target disappeared from existence and the lightning tore into a home, splinters of wood showering the air and fire burning up from the hole.
“Thought I'd forgotten you, didn't you?”
He spoke from behind her and she leapt forward on her lightning jump spell, spinning quickly.
“You forget I've been developing spells for watching and recording and seeing my whole life. Nothing here escapes me.”
He pointed to small blue orbs that hovered high above the battlefield.
He gloated no further, now filling the air with deadly gusts of wind that sliced at both of them, closer and closer as he wore them down.
For a moment Clarke saw the others, still going after a laughing Wormwood, their bodies slowing too with every movement from the poison. He had the barest hint of a plan but it started in the worst way.
He steeled his body and let one of the air blades hit him. The air sucked out of him and he knew he'd let it go a little too deep, the air touching things it wasn't meant to touch as he flew back through the air from the tremendous speed of the blow.
He almost lost the few seconds he'd bought but he had his pen and he had his arm and he wrote as fast as he could.
If this kills me I have to thank Inksmith.
He hit the ground and groaned, mandala rolling off his skin. Alouella rushed to his side, Whilaway gloating with a moment to catch his breath as he'd killed one of the single greatest threats to him.
“Clarke!”
She'd yelled as she got to him, but he quickly stopped her, whispering as fast as he could even as his lungs ached and his vision blurred in agony. Alouella cringed, her eyes almost hurting as new information poured into them.
“Making it too easy.”
Whilaway grinned, calling up a last blade.
Clarke threw the bottle into the air.
Whilaway fired the spell, the air booming and the scream of it slicing into the space where Clarke had been, where Alouella had lightning jumped away from.
Clarke was gone.
Alouella panted, multicasting two very complicated spells at once tearing into her already taxed brain. Gwen teleported into the air above Whilaway, the bottle smashing into her face and a sip of the contents making it into her mouth and down her throat. As she fell her punch swung down, half strength as exhausted as she was, and tore chips of crystal from Whilaway's face.
He stumbled back, shock on his face.
At the same moment Clarke appeared in the air where Gwen had been, knife flashing out much faster than Gwen's fist had been, the reach and angle all wrong for what Wormwood had been dodging. He twisted and only took a deep cut to his shoulder, blood slinging off the edge of the knife as Clarke hit the dirt.
“And...and that's the rogue. You're not the only one with poison around here.”
Clarke smirked. Wade looked from the unexpected help to Wormwood whose face contorted angrily.
“This just got a lot more fair, huh?”
It may have been Whilaway who was more furious of the two. Everywhere he teleported Alouella countered, teleporting Gwen just after him, her fist swinging out to smash at him over and over. He stumbled back, his skull exposed as crystal skin fell away like plaster.
“H-how!?”
He roared. Alouella breathed hard, her head aching.
“Little gift from Clarke.”
She took in every mandala around her, could see everywhere Whilaway cast his movement point. She could read the formula of magic.
Gwen felt her strength coming back from the potion, weakness dissipating from what Clarke had somehow thrown into her mouth from some other world.
Fear gripped him, the fear of being outmatched, of losing it all. He flashed out of sight and Gwen did too, following every teleportation he made as Alouella followed spell for spell. She rained punches into his face, breaking his body apart with blow and repeated blow the broke his skin, his scales, tore the magic from his body in the form of the crystal in his skull.
He finally hit the ground, bones shattered and unmoving. Gwen stood over him and as he turned to look up her fist came down, metal gauntlets shattering his skull like so much glass. Both stumbled to the ground, one weak and returning, one exhausted and with the biggest headache anyone in Deraforda had ever had.
In desperation Wormwood had turned to knives, swinging and slicing at Wade who had long since lost his shield from a wrist attack. His mace lay somewhere behind after he'd been disarmed. He took every cut, grabbing for the fatigued elf who now screamed at Wade.
“Why won't you go down? You ox! You bear!”
“Just too big, I guess. Takes a while to get drunk too.”
He finally caught Wormwood and it was all he needed to do. He jerked him forward by his arm, fist coming up and cracking his jaw up into his skull so hard that teeth chipped and broke loose.
Wade let him fall, the elf's eyes rolled back in his head. In all the movement he hadn't been aware that they'd moved beyond the gates, the camps torn apart, the coffee machines spitting out whatever had done this.
Clarke.
He turned and ran back to where the girls already knelt by him.
“Red! Red is always healing!”
Gwen shouted as they rifled through his jacket. A huge slice had come out of his ribs, exposed lung useless for catching as, cut open as it was. Wade looked dumbfounded, suddenly rushing to them, nothing to do except watch.
Gwen snatched one of the red ones up and forced it in Clarke's mouth while Alouella grabbed another and began dousing his wide open wound, red mucous tissue stringing inside him and snapping apart as his body flinched.
“It's not working!”
Wade yelled. He looked around. No one in sight, no cavalry coming to save the day. The town still burned in the distance.
“Saw a guy...on an adventure...punctured lung. Got a while if...you can get me to a cleric.”
Clarke coughed.
Wade nodded, carefully lifting him and cradling him like a newborn as gently as he could and walking him back through the gate. The ghouls had departed without a master to guide them, wandering the streets.
Aggatha knelt by Whilaway's broken body.
Gwen rushed to her.
“Aggatha! Clarke, he-!”
She was startled to see her coffee maker turned cage there with Aggatha, slowly loaded with the crumpled remains of the broken wizard.
Aggatha approached, her face a stone as she looked at her son, ran her face over his forehead. She whispered, words without sound as though speaking to something out of sight.
“This world...just takes and takes...”
“Mom...”
He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it. Blood sputtered out out of the gaping hole in his side.
Her face broke into wild, hysterical sobbing.
“Even when you give it does not 'accept' it 'takes'!”
“Can't you create a great doctor or a healer or someone with some medical knowledge?”
Alouella begged. Aggatha turned back, a switch flipping, her face going back to nothing, twitching and she turned away to the pile.
“This world deserves nothing from me. And it did nothing for you.”
“Aggatha, a doctor, please! Invent one!”
She didn't seem to hear as she walked away, suddenly screeching laughter as she produced a small ball from a pocket and stepped inside the glass cage.
“It'll all be over soon.”
She squeezed the ball and the entire thing disappeared leaving just the imprint in its place.
“NOOOO!”
Gwen screamed at the air.
“What the hell was that!? What's going on!?”
“You may have been right.”
Twinty walked up beside them. Despite his perfect health he looked beat, scorch marks and ice shards adorning his robe as though he'd run across errant monsters to get to them.
“She's gone down to the place we were going to use Whilaway. Plug him into the city, watch the whole thing light up. After seeing that display...that's not our Aggatha.”
Twinty swallowed.
“I don't know what's in store now.”
He reached out to Clarke who groaned every few seconds, the pain almost too much to bear.
“No.”
He answered before they even asked.
“No miracle drugs this time. I could buy them or find them if the city weren't burning and breaking and everything else around us.”
“Clarke, can't you conjure a doctor or something?”
Clarke held his fingers up, shaking far and near.
“This close to out of my god damn mind. Seeing things...seeing some crazy things...there are so many of you and you all want different things...”
He suddenly struggled, kicking to be let down and blood spattered out of him and onto the ground as he stood on shaky legs.
“Need what's left of my brain cause I'm finally seeing things...”
He looked at them, double visions and hallucinations as mandalas wrapped across every part of the world, blinking at him like the stuff of matter and creation.
“...seeing things right.”
He took a step and fell down, Gwen and Wade helping him up. He took a specific bottle, held it close to his face and poured the contents into his open wound, puffy grey foam sprouting from inside him. He winced and growled before nodding.
“Alouella, please, take us back down. Let's go see what mother's doing.”