Tim helped the older sister down to join her brother.
“I’m going to play double agent,” Dryfu said and zipped off Tim’s shoulder.
Danger Sense flared where Tonda and Dryfu met a soldier in the cracks between hovels. The interior passage was a tight maze cluttered by generational belongings and stains. Worn over and filthy twine wrapped elbows along bamboo ladders and thatched rooftops and awnings.
The mother hopped out the window and scaled the siding in worn sandals tied with rope around her ankles, similar to the design keeping her children’s feet protected. She hopped down with the stun baton and hot peppers for eyes. Arcane wonder swirled in her pupils, ticking down the seconds to burning whatever spell possessed her.
She mumbled a phrase as though to explain away his concerns then commanded her kids to flee. Sister took brother’s hand and ran. Tim cast Keeper on both and wished them well. For now, trusting their mother had to be the best plan. Tim pointed to the road where they’d come from. “Squire’s Castle is home. Safe.”
Sister turned back, then her mother’s interpretation prepared her with a heavy burden. She accepted with a doe’s glance at Tim and then her mother, whose blurt sent the girl running.
Tim realized the Overwatch snipers would see them enter the intersection. Keeper and Protection had not been enough to save him. “Wait!” He took out two vials with accelerant components and tapped them over an aura arrow. She glanced back to his attention shifting from arrow to the corner of the building keeping her safe for now. He nocked his arrow and aiming high to reach a Greensight arch toward his target, let it loose. “Go!”
Tim cast Aura Light. The ingredients flared to white hot life, creating a tracer of blinding light covering the siblings in a horizon of glory. The arrow cut a short arc ahead of them. A gunshot cracked from the tower spire. Not Overwatch 1’s height, which made him wonder about Indi and what had happened to the shooter with the best angle.
His arrow planted in a wall on the other side and flared, filling the intersection in glory. Trailing off in the distance was the dim shadow of the girl running free with her brother toward the fields.
“Ranger Priest,” the mother said and jerked her head at the aisle between hovels.
Clothing kept the middle of the passage blind to where Dryfu and Tonda went. Tim sent a Danger Sense ping.
Tonda and Dryfu were at the end, shepherding Crimoans under Dryfu’s lead. His species of stykillers were known companions of the Crimoan, and he’d somehow convinced them to retreat from the hovels to join the others at the bridge.
Tim pointed into the passage and its second story. “Can you get us to a shot on the tower through there?”
She nodded and stroked her hand with a burst of speed.
Alright, then, Tim thought and sprinted after. “Come on, donkey!”
Eeeeeagh, Murphy growl-brayed like a wardonkey and scooted into his best gallop.
Tim would have to get him a helmet to cover that silly tattoo. He felt worse about it now, especially with him charging into the fight so willingly.
Eeeeaawww, Murphy brayed back, as though understanding while also being a bit busy for wardrobe questions.
Hot Pepper called out and a door slid open where he didn’t see one, opening into a hallway lined with people holding makeshift tools encrusted in glowing blue gem dust.
Hot Pepper wasn’t the only one with arcane eyesight.
That’s what I’m talking about, Tim thought.
Their doorkeepers pushed the heavy barrier back into place, closing them in darkness. Tim released a trickle of Aura Light into his axe blade, fanning a spotlight through the crowd of shielding onlookers. Warriors worn into character. Their scent emanated grief born over decades. Their eyes drilled an impression of how well they learned to endure.
Tim beat a report on his chest. “I honor your path,” he said into their mutterings. They repeated a phrase, “Kavodi”
Hot Pepper caught his interest, translated, “White Fire,” she said, exposing a gap and a broken tooth as she grinned.
They muttered something similar to what Hot Pepper had said earlier. She said, “White Fire” then another said, “Kavodish!”
Tim nodded, thinking of his wife and her Irish complexion and flowing red hair. He’d married White Fire, and still kept that jewel in place, an added heart of strength in his soul. They kept chanting it even though he shook them off. Soon their persistence wore out his resistance. He marched through the patting hands, turning his thoughts to his spell tree and the MP just over a hundred points. That gave him some room to work.
They chanted Kavodish as he worked his way up the ladder to an upstairs closet and hole burrowed into an apartment missing most of its floor. The wood rotted and fat bricks nearly as old, formed pillars to keep the roof. Hot Pepper pointed to a walkway hidden along the side and its exit to daylight, an opening partially covered in torn sheets stained with mildew and spiderweb cocoons. Tim scaled the horizontal ladder using Flee and his rock-climbing experience to reach the end.
Murphy climbed over the scalped brick to the slow creak of the warped wood.
“Darn it, Donkey. Stay there.”
Murphy stared through Tim to the dead soul he wrung with a growling bray. His tattoo all… there.
“You see the sign, don’t ya?” Tim asked.
Murphy navigated the narrow ladder rungs with expert patience and precision. One cracked and he galloped off the next rung—it snapped—he leapt, donkey legs stretching for their draft day best long jump.
Tim’s back was against the molded curtain and a fifty-foot hole into a sink well. No one seemed inclined to clean up the rubble that stripped this side of the building, so if he fell it would be a fun trick to not impale himself on the stalks of buried timber. No thanks.
Back to the donkey flying at him and one solid option—not that he’d done this type of Mist before—Tim cast Mist and spun, one-eighty like back in the day board flips, what what? Ohio Surf and Skate for liiife! And like usual, back in the day style, he landed elsewhere than fantasy land, bucked off the donkey’s touché and rebounded off the wall. He found his seat the second time with his grip around Murphy’s throat and a hard Hello! to his nethers. That saddle shipment couldn’t be farther away.
Murphy landed front legs first, tipping him forward enough to right his balance on the donkey’s back, then they rested on the hind legs and creaked a long one.
“Our time’s limited here,” Tim said to Hot Pepper.
She pointed at the castle and a hole in the tunnel worn through dirt and erosion. This place was a few decades behind on a maintenance check. Tim didn’t need any more guidance than that, and reached back to slap donkey’s rear when Hot Pepper halted him. She twisted her hand and opened her fingers to present a blue gem gripped in polished gold. The nugget in back had a knuckle shape and a seal flush with the bottom. She handed it to Tim. “Peel that off when you are ready for the hawk’s hold. A two-minute magic shield wide enough to cover you and your ass.”
Tim didn’t know if she was getting cheeky or if she just meant the donkey. Either way he took the gift, said “thanks and a gitty up little donkey, away!”
Murph being Murph, he farted and leapt simultaneously. The distance and oatiness of the trail they left impressed him. They made it a good ten feet from the ledge. Pink aura whooshed from their launch point and slammed the ground into submission, pressing the timber stakes into mush and a not so bad landing for donkey airlines maiden flight.
“Damn right, ya damn human.”
Tim about choked, almost as much to hear a talking donkey as the perfect cowboy accent. “Watch your mouth. I’m a priest don’t you know.” Tim played along, gripping the donkey’s tuft for stability. Had he not seen plenty of magic already, the talking part would have been more surprising.
“I’m tired of hearing you try to interpret my brays,” Murphy said and climbed the sinkhole, his aura firming the ground and pressing the wall into a manageable incline. The heat and pleasant burning smell of his aura opened his pores to soak in the regen.
The two made a good pair. Don’t tell Tonda. Indi and Dryfu could care less.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” Murphy said.
Speaking of Indi. His Danger Ping captured enough of a match on a patch of essence below the castle to activate Aura Hunt and cast it on the next ring. It rode the signal back to the spot and pinged out a certain match. Indi was unconscious and inside a rectangular prison made of yellow beams and a crystal foundation to keep the bars going indefinitely. Super. Cupcakes.
Meanwhile, riding a donkey, Tim’s nocked arrow slipped out of his grip, again. The funny thing about Murphy’s aura incline trick—
“It’s a skill,” Murphy said back, tough guy all of a sudden, like a fricken Don Winslow mobster. Not whiny like you might expect because of all the braying, but like the smooth roller, home in time for dinner and warm buttered rolls he could bounce off his wife’s, well, you know.
“As I was thinking, man you and Dryfu, Indi, all totally up my schnoz. The aura—”
“Ramp. The skill is called Aura Ramp. I’m tired of you trying to trademark a lame name.”
“How’d you start talking like me? “
“I’m tied to you. You warded me. I’ve been in your head, listening to you talk, which is rare, loser. Ehem.”
“Hilarious. I admired how your aura ramp was so silent, and all the enemy would hear was the excited braying of a donkey on the loose. Big deal. Not. Ha. Take that L.”
While conversing along that intellectual high road, Tim scoped out the scene of the crime. Overwatch 2 had moved up to help with the massacre at the bridge. Go good guys! That left Overwatch 3 on the second floor, scanning the smoke rising from the hovels Tim left. He suspected it was part of a decoy plan. Clever. With no one else coming from that direction, Overwatch 3 might think his path was clear until further notice. The other benefit to riding a warded creature was the evasion benefits from his Ranger class kept them hidden on their approach to the tunnel fissure.
At a glance back, Dryfu and Tonda were ruffing it up back alley style and curb stomping the snot out of the cartel thugs. Talk about well managed aggression. He almost felt bad to have let them loose. The XP back at the inn would be nice.
Tim didn’t feel bad for the Crimoan goons. These guys had no doubt been part of the bruised faces and bone protruding ribs back there. Tim had given them their chance, now it was time to get his and see what’s what with Feranand.
He recognized the warlord’s essence from before when he laid the hate on his Krow friends. Brother’s Keeper had a bonus for making Feranand pay.
Murphy climbed into the tunnel through the broken entry, pressing it open a couple yards with his Aura Ramp.
Before going into the tunnel, Tim rested a hand on Murph’s neck to stall him. One sec. I’m gonna clear a path for our friends to join us.
The path Murphy made allowed them to decline from the window escarpment down the valley and up to where they waited behind new-green branches sprouting trees from a trunk. Ranger evasion wasn’t exactly invisibility; you still had to utilize your surroundings, but when done well, it may as well be invisibility to lower classed enemies.
Tim lifted the ring and pulled out Aura Bow. The arrow would have to be full aura to remain stealth. Feranand was too high to even guess his level, and Overwatch 3 was high enough to sniff. That’s why he’s taking him out first. He perfected his form, leveling the arrow and then arched up to the second-floor window. Maybe 75 yards, with the wind in his favor, gusting with the smoke from fires along the bridge fight and to his right. The result left Overwatch straining his attention between both and not even looking as Tim lined him up with Greensight.
The arrow sung, its afterburn glow shimmering into the ozone tunnel it carved straight into Overwatch’s ribs. Up into his heart. Crit shot.
Tim turned and waved Hot Pepper and her crew to descend. His gentle strokes advised them to still kept quiet. The thud of Overwatch and his gun clacking on the stone floor drew the ears of Feranand and one of his acolytes.
The shrouded figure palmed an orb and hurled it at a wall. A blob swallowed the orb, puckered—blue lightning and flashes of white sprang from corner to corner. The orb fractured and a magnetic charge sucked the fragments into equidistant points inside the hidden room. Black suns spun solar systems contained within cylindrical containers, sprouting brains and flesh like toothpaste squeezed by each rotation.
Humanoid if you didn’t count the head and long arms. Horns like unkempt bushes sizzled in purple-red aura, hardening to tips and storing immense concentration of power drawn from the sun now rotating inside its chest, and shielded by diamond armor. Their arms equipped organic hooks and footlong thumbs with talons nearly as long.
One last defense to go out with a bang.
Dryfu, Tonda, to me! Tim rocked in his seat in a gitty up donkey, motion, pointing for the room of black suns before the creatures were set loose. The horn energy was enough to make him dread letting one out. He doubted Feranand would have set them free now if he weren’t confident in the outcome. Closer, Murph. Tim needed another fifty yards to get in range for Battleground, and that was just the first spell.
At the rate of their growth, they’d have armor and organs finished before they’d make it down the stairs. XP released from the suns in currency of levels and skills, building tiers, already to three of the five.
Tim could spend everything to Peel and hope donkey donk’s booty bounce with a casting of Ward might trap these hooligans before they could get out in full armor.
Dryfu wasn’t around yet either.
Tonda’s barks echoed off the castle bricks. Desperate and afraid.
Tim felt it. The presence below them was like opening Door Number 3 to discover you’re nose to nose with the freaking sun. Dust to dust.
The Furious Five reached Tier IV. Left to right, their classes were Storm Season, a land and amphibious creature, with tropical storm attacks and defenses to go with its martial artist forms. Tim didn’t need to see more than that. He had another floor to go and the third warrior, a Black Hole creature with advanced trapping skills, was ninety percent complete.
Murph, I’m going to Peel. You slap that donkey butt and crush them in their can.
And how, was the tune he heard in Murphy’s bray.
He galvinized all his c-mana and unleashed Peel with AF in the sixties. The flash of strength sealed in his short sword. He slashed it around to their front, carving a Peel tunnel—zap! The brick walls shocked him silly, bouncing him on the tail of a lightning bolt. His AF at 0 and pulsing red along his HUD. A new notification appeared:
Aura Frozen for 2 minutes.
Regen limited by half.
Oh, swell, Tim thought. He craned his neck through a sharp pain seizing him from skull to upper spine. “Okay. That sucked.”
The fifth warrior raised its completion percent to a hundred.
The electric charge bled away, leaving their 36th chamber ready for some Wu Tang Clan and for Tim and his friends to bring the everloving ruckus on this warlord’s head. Anyone hire a hearse? Tim’s here with a verse, and a curse. White Fire don’t leave it in his purse. He brings the everloving ruckus. Everloving, everloving ruckus. It’s the everloving ruckus. So bring it on, he rhymed, willing his AF to break the spell as he worked up to standing. The old Wu Tang track played in his memories while Party Oversight showed his friends on the run.
The Swarm was back. Just in time for Danger Sense and the gush of warning filling the bottom floor with the release of five magical warriors brimming with a tier high enough to blind him beyond the surface.
Dar Evn and three soldiers added to Gregor, Ky and the Hot Pepper Clan.
Tim brushed brick spittle from Murphy’s forehead and face. “You ready?”
He brayed and lowered his head in an eager nod.
Tim got on with an eye on Danger Sense’s essence reading and the release of the warriors below.
His MP rose enough to cast Battleground. The stairwell was too tight to do anything but stand in their way. If Chris were here, he could use the Vine skill and clog the basement passage. Murphy was also stunned into a blank slate. The aura generator inside churned heat from friction burning its gears to draw aura from a dry well.
The Furious Five stalked into the room outside their chambers. A chill seeped the warmth from Tim’s bones, replacing strength with room to spread tendrils of arcane magic.
None of the traps he could make would slow something so strong.
A last stand in the stairwell would force them into a bottleneck. Their first wave of attack consisted of three warriors while two remained with Feranand and his acolyte. Indi watched helplessly from the box, weakened but growing increasingly aware, he groaned through the phlegm and blood in his mouth. Arcane magic gripped him like a spiderweb of steel.
I feel you, Indi, Tim sent.
The three charging for the stairs forced him to conserve his strength for now and not try freeing Indi. “I have an idea, but I’m not ready to try yet because I’d have to enter your mind completely. I’ll be here whenever,” Indi said.
Keep fighting. Tim sensed the magic drawing strength from his familiar. The same one connected to the dark lord of the pack, one of the two staying back while the three lesser warriors did his bidding.
Gotcha. Tim had suspected the dark lord acolyte next to Feranand, the one with an aura like a snake’s gaze, calm and collected, and plotting. I have an idea for you, too, Shade. The name revealed itself as though by Tim’s will, gifted by his Analyze skill’s attention on the warrior. Shade was level 31 and from every avenue Tim searched, used darkness and fear as strength; sometimes the threat of loss and always a bully when it served him. Tim’s Aura Light was not strong enough to dent the armor within. If he had to guess, he’d say Shade was waiting for him to try.
Tim needed help. He sent a Danger Ping to check on his friends who were on the way, but traps sprang along the street. Tim’s glance back witnessed one spraying green acid from a hose hidden behind a barrel. It spewed a thick stream in a rainbow to the other side.
Ky staggered under the onslaught burning dripping sections from his shield. Beneath were gaping wounds sucking his armor and flesh like spilled acid.
Gregor halted by Ky to help him up and lifted his shield against the next spray. His shield also melted in the shine of aura to magic resistance, protecting him and Ky long enough to retreat.
Dar Evn and his allies raised shields, but theirs were not as powerful as Gregor’s, and they were forced to retreat under large swaths of 3rd degree burns.
With their progress reversed, Tim switched to his local familiars. Dryfu was near to the stairs, and Tonda was already galloping to meet Tim.
Murphy, we’re staying.
With Chris, Tim had drawn from the other class’s vine ability and repurposed it to feel like an addition to his skill of Protection; Chris provided the vine while he the defensive bonus. He cast Draw into the aura generation along with Healing. The cast felt like it fell into an endless well. Meanwhile, the first prison defender rounded the stairwell toward Tim. Static energy clung to Tim’s bones with greater effect as the warrior charged up the stairwell.
Spasms in Tim’s jaw forced his neck clenched, severing him from skills requiring movement below. Heat spread into his cheeks and made his face sweat while his eyes dried out in the wind.
Murphy was also stunned. The aura generator inside churned a burning wheel against the well the magic spell was keeping dry.
Tim spent precious MP on Magic Hunt to find the source of impact where the spell kept it locked.
Pressure in his ears made the drums pop. The pain made him scream.
Holas held his pulsar bracer to continue pumping Tim with his magic.
Tim realized he was watching from Murphy’s lower viewpoint. Holas aimed his fist and bracer at Tim, and while the grip on Murphy was still strong, Tim’s Magic Hunt was on the trail to the spell locking Murphy’s aura gen. The pressure favored restraining Tim.
Holas drew a war hammer and swung it at Tim’s face. Diamond spikes glistened with teal aura, blurred by the speed to leave a tracer arc in its wake.
Magic Hunt hadn’t found its answer yet. Tim dared not let it go until it did. His protection spell held enough to keep him alive. He hoped.
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