----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
-
-
The golem protected the wizard. It had to, since the wizard sustained its existence. Each of its movements radiated calculated foresight, amplified by force and agility. And yet, instead of retreating to preserve the life force to which it was bound, the golem charged toward the orich —
It did not know. The golem did not know where the orich was. No, not only that. There was more, more than ignorance — there was strategy. With a sudden rush of clarity, Midnight realised that from the very first volley of ice, every single attack had been a ruse. Every shard, every spear of frost that had rained down upon the fighting party, had been deliberately angled either from directly above or from a position higher up the trail. The orich had purposely directed the ice to strike as if coming from the opposite direction — shards not originating from his true perch but flying towards him.
The storm-cloaked battlefield had masked the deception perfectly. To those unable to pierce through the chaos, the natural conclusion was to assume the orich’s position aligned with the trajectory’s starting point. Just as a warrior traces an arrow back to its unseen archer, the golem had been tricked into chasing a phantom. Midnight had not noticed this pattern earlier, for she had discovered the orich long ago through her darkness, perceiving him hidden behind the thick veil of ice and snow. She needed no physical clues to find him. But the golem, lacking such an advantage, had fallen prey to the orich’s deliberate misdirection.
And it was falling for it still. As the golem charged along the Snowtrail, the ice attacks changed gradually. The once-lethal spears of frost became weaker, their power dissipating. Shards thinned, reduced to harmless splinters, before failing to reach and ceasing altogether. This, too, was part of the orich’s deception. He lured the golem closer with calculated restraint, giving the impression that his power was waning and his range had been exhausted.
When the golem reached the path beneath the orich’s actual perch, the orich’s attacks ceased completely, but his gnarled hands remained raised, not in aggression, but in preparation. Midnight, her darkness flowing through the storm, touched upon him. She recognised that he was speaking.
The ambient noise of the Albweiss was muted to her. The howling winds, the grinding of the mountain — none of it reached Midnight in the way it once might have. Her transformation had rendered her senses alien to the world of the living. Yet through her darkness, she had learned to make sense of it anew. What she could not hear, she could perceive. While she had failed to grasp Rothar or matter, she could touch upon the everything that lay outside of her own nothingness to such degree, that she recognised sound — distortions of the almost nothing that was air; swirling waves that created an echo, not unlike the ripples of darkness that had defined the existence of the shadebeast.
With the sprites, communication had been instinctual, a shared understanding of the dark. Midnight had simply understood them, because they had known how to speak the language of darkness itself, how to convey meaning to nothing. But with the orich, his words were beyond her grasp, their meaning lost to her transformed senses. And yet, she felt their weight, the sheer gravity of each syllable. His voice, though inaudible to her, radiated power. Midnight recognised the gravity of what must be incantations, a slow and methodical rhythm building into something grand.
This was not right. What was he drawing from? Her darkness swept across the Snowtrail like a searching tide. It seeped into the mountain’s every crack and crevice, probing the ground around the orich for any hidden frosthearts or other potential conduits. Orichs, she had been told, were shackled to the materials they manipulated. Unlike wizards, they could not channel magic through their own bodies. Their magic was a parasite, utterly reliant on artefacts like frosthearts to function.
Yet the frosthearts embedded in the orich’s staff and belt were almost entirely drained, their faint glow reduced to a dying flicker. Midnight had watched him deplete them drastically during his earlier assaults, expending their power with unrestrained abandon. Now, only two shards retained the faintest glimmers of residual energy. From what she had observed, they could sustain no more than a few fleeting ice shards or spears. He should not be able to conjure anything substantial, let alone the scale of magic she could sense building around him.
Despite the rising tension, Midnight did not intervene, yet she also did not turn away. Her loyalty to her wizard, the failed pursuit of the fiator, and the continuous erosion of her essence by the light clawed at her thoughts, yet she stayed. There was too much to unravel here.
The golem continued along the Snowtrail, its broad feet pounding against the frozen path in grand strides. Its advance came to an abrupt halt as the trail was completely blocked by a singular boulder. Midnight examined the obstruction. She had been too far away during the earlier chaos to perceive what had occurred here, but her senses discerned that it was fresh; shattered stone, still raw and jagged, a result of a recent avalanche. Her focus drifted alongside the golem as it reached the obstacle, though she took care to stay in motion as to not let the light catch up and reveal her presence again.
Upon reaching the boulder, the golem moved with methodical precision. It dropped the avian beast onto the ground, rotated its torso with the wizard back to its original position, and hammered away at the ice encasing the familiar. Each strike was a concussive burst of power, sending splinters of frost scattering into the air. Within moments, the avian beast was freed, its lifeless form now light enough for the golem to carry along with the lizardkind in a single massive arm.
Its other arm now unburdened, the golem began scaling the boulder. Its massive fingers clawed into the jagged surface with ease, hauling its weight upward with two powerful bursts. As soon as the golem reached the top, the boulder folded inward, collapsing like liquid beneath the its weight. What had seemed like solid rock gave way, opening a gaping cavity within itself. The illusion was seamless — Midnight’s senses faltered for a moment as she realised what had happened. It was as though the golem had leapt into water rather than against solid matter. The stone caved inward, revealing a hollow core. Grabbed by his feet, the golem was pulled into the opening.
Even as it fell, the golem reacted with startling speed. Its torso rotated violently, aiming to hurl the lizardkind and the avian beast out of the collapsing cavity. But before it could finish the motion, stone shot upward from all sides, sealing the opening in an instant. The stone snapped shut, encapsulating the golem, the avian beast, and the lizardkind within.
It was a prison filled with frosthearts. In unnaturally precise intervals, the glowing gems had been embedded deep within the stone walls from the inside. The moment the golem was entombed, before it could even land or attempt to smash its way free, spirals of energy erupted from every frostheart. Threads of magic intertwined, forming an intricate web that spread across the entire stone shell, both along its interior and through the chamber itself. This was no mere containment. It was a binding ritual — a seal of power and precision.
In the fleeting instant before the spell took full hold, the golem made one last move. It folded inwards, collapsing its torso and limbs around the lizardkind and the avian beast, creating a protective shell of its own body. The effort was final and absolute, as if the golem understood its fate and sought only to preserve what remained within its care.
The scene unfolded with a speed and complexity that defied comprehension. The eruption of magic and stone was so sudden, so precise, that Midnight felt the ripple of its power shuddering through her very essence. The magnitude of the trap was suffocating, sending a tremor through her darkness. She recoiled, her tendrils fraying as she reeled, and immediately sought the source of the stone magic.
She had been watching the orich all along. He had cast the seal, using the frosthearts embedded within the boulder from an almost unimaginable distance. But it was not him who had controlled the stone. Midnight extended her reach further, her darkness uncoiling across the Snowtrail in jagged waves, widening the net that carried her senses, and then she found him.
Perched on a narrow plateau beyond the boulder, concealed behind an impenetrable wall of ice, stood a second orich. Midnight immediately discerned the precision of their coordination. The first orich had not only manipulated the ice to attack but had also used it to shield and obscure the presence of the second. While the first had lured the golem into the trap, the second had captured the golem. While the second had closed the boulder, the first had simultaneously sealed it.
They were a terrifyingly effective combination: one manipulated stone, the other ice, and together they wielded the inexhaustible resources of the Albweiss. The mountain had become their weapon, its very bones rearranged to serve their strategy. Their frosthardened stone shell confined even a creation as powerful as the golem. And more, they used seals. Midnight had not known that orks could, but she understood without a doubt that this was advanced magic. The pulsating frosthearts embedded within the boulder fed an intricate web of energy crisscrossing through the stone, threads of magic that completely arrested the golem within the magical lattice.
At last, Midnight grasped the full depth of the orichs’ multi-layered strategy. What had seemed to be fragmented, disorganised defences had unfolded into a meticulously orchestrated trap. Every element of the orks’ tactics had been designed to lead to this moment. The front group of warrior orks had served only as a diversion. Their role had been to exhaust the beast-wizard and weaken his companions, eventually forcing him to shift into a diminished form that robbed him of his wizard senses and rendered him unable to perceive their energies. For the same reason, they must have eliminated the voltera through physical combat; to assure that his formidable senses would not discern the orich’s hidden presence. Meanwhile, the ice orich’s early attacks had been deliberately ineffective, serving only to evoke false impressions of the attacker’s location and presenting a facade of limited reach. The golem, relying on logic and the perceived trajectory of attacks, had been coaxed into the very trap the second orich had laid.
It was a cowardly deception, like luring a beast into a cage by disguising the cage as the only escape, yet it was calculated and devastating in its execution. Midnight, for all her cunning, knew she could not have devised such a ruse herself. Considering that the second orich remained hidden and unharmed until the end, Midnight realised that this battle had always been their hunt, a ploy of patience and misdirection. The orichs had weaponised the very fabric of the mountain and exploited the vulnerabilities of their enemies with chilling precision.
Despite their victory, both orichs were visibly weary. The frosthearts embedded in their staffs lay depleted. Even the frosthearts woven into the boulder were noticeably dimming, their energy steadily draining to sustain the intricate seal.
As the ice orich descended toward the Snowtrail, his exhaustion became unmistakable. He did not summon ice magic to aid his climb, relying instead on laboured movements to navigate the steep cliff. Methodically, his gnarled hands moved across the frozen rock. Whether he was conserving the last remnants of his resources or had entirely depleted his reserves was uncertain, but the strain in his movements betrayed the toll the battle had taken. His figure, hunched and deliberate, carried an unspoken urgency. Whatever strength remained, it was not limitless.
While the orich descended, another lone ork ascended. It was the grand male who had fought the voltera, fallen, and now clambered back onto the Snowtrail. He emerged far back where the warriors had fought the beast.
-
Gorak’s breath came heavy, his senses on high alert as his dark eyes swept across the snow-laden expanse, searching for enemies — or allies. He found neither. The battlefield was silent save for the distant echo of Tergak’s signalling horn, a sound that seemed to confirm the orich’s earlier proclamation of victory.
Gorak raised his own horn, its resonant call tearing through the howling wind as he signalled recognition. Nonetheless, the krag advanced cautiously, his axe ready, each step deliberate. As he moved towards Tergak, his gaze scoured the ground for signs of life. He blew his horn several more times, its mournful notes intended to stir any of his buried brethren who might yet live. But the snow remained still, the trail unbroken, its icy tombs offering no answer. His concern mounted. Though one of the orichs had proclaimed their victory, Gorak had yet to hear the horn of his brother. The krag’s horn sounded again, this time not as a signal to his warriors, but as a command to the orich and all that were with him. He demanded their presence. His command rang out two times, yet each time the orich’s response came not in compliance but in repetition, the same request echoing back at him.
Frustration simmered beneath Gorak’s skin, his tusks bared in a silent snarl. He understood, though, that there may be reason behind this refusal to obey. He did not know whether their enemies had fled, been captured or were dead. He had seen nine orks fall from the cliffs, but altogether, he did not know who among his warriors had survived, where they rested, or if they needed imminent care. Gorak’s honour demanded that he confirm the fate of every last one of them. If any of the fallen around him yet lived, if any of those buried within the snow still drew breath, they would not survive long against the cold. However, searching blindly was futile. He needed magic to clear the snow, and for that, he needed to know what was keeping Tergak from obeying.
As Gorak hastened across the Snowtrail, his path brought him near a narrow stretch of the trail where the snow had piled thick and uneven. He moved cautiously, his massive boots crunching through the hardened crust of ice and powder.
Beneath the snow, hidden amidst the corpses of three fallen ork fighters, lay the scorchborn. She had ascended shortly before him, her distorted form a grotesque tapestry of root, lichen, and fungi pressed flat against the frozen earth. Twisted and warped, her humanoid shape had unravelled into a sprawling mass, snaking through the narrow spaces between the ork bodies. There she had remained still, concealed by the layers of snow, her movements deliberate and measured to avoid detection.
As Gorak drew closer, her body stirred ever so slightly, creeping with slow precision. Her gnarled limbs shifted beneath the snow, slithering between the fallen orks like roots seeking soil. She coiled tighter, her fungal mass flattening further into the frozen ground between the corpses of the fallen, so that Gorak would not trample her. The krag’s hulking form passed her by.
-
Parallel to observing the orks, Midnight’s focus lingered on the lizardkind’s convulsing form. She had found that her darkness could penetrate the seal encapsulating the golem, much like she had bypassed the ice cavern’s witch runes. The orichs’ magic, it seemed, could not bind her. Unfettered, she reached beyond the stone lattice and observed the beast-wizard.
Confined within the immobilised golem’s embrace, he was succumbing to the dual strain of poison and spell. His essence was almost entirely absorbed by the golem, which had claimed and exhausted this essence just as Midnight claimed and used darkness. Even as the golem remained frozen in place, its immobility offered no reprieve for the wizard. His essence fed the construct even in its inert state.
Midnight was acutely aware that he was close to collapse, and yet, a strange hesitation held her. Her mind was a tangled web of instincts and desires, each thread pulling her in a different direction, vying for dominance in the scant moments she had to act. Should she intervene? Orks were the common enemy among all Midland peoples, wizards included. Yet, this wizard was an unknown individual, possibly even a follower of the academy and thus an adversary of Yves. If she chose not to act, why had she approached in the first place? Her presence demanded justification. Two conflicting reasons emerged, one rooted in cold observation, the other in a darker impulse.
The first reason was straightforward: the death of a wizard was a rare phenomenon. Midnight had witnessed wizards perish before, during her travels with Yves, and even earlier, at Emery Thurm. Those deaths, however, had usually been lost amid the chaos of battle, leaving little time for reflection. In more subdued circumstances, respect had often dictated her withdrawal, leaving the wizard’s final moments to the his familiar.
But here, no such respect restrained her. The avian beast was unconscious, even closer to death than the beast-wizard himself. The wizard lay bare, alone in his struggle — No. Midnight realised that he was aware of her. The moment she had condensed her presence, drawing her perception closer to him, the encroaching light had begun to consume her darkness. It had been but the faintest of flickers, but within the confines of the golem, she believed the wizard had noticed.
The devouring light illuminated the second more unsettling reason for her approach: It was hunger. Midnight craved essence. It had surfaced and stirred during the clashes she had observed earlier; a deep, primal hunger within her, an insatiable hunger beyond her control.
In the vast expanse of her mind, the image [https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/HUNGER.png] [HUNGER] emerged, weaving its own web of want and need around the failed fiator hunt, entwining it with the knowledge that all beings held essence — beasts, orks, and wizards. The wizard’s withering form stirred a dark curiosity in her: would his essence, elusive in life, become accessible upon death? Might that which she had failed to grasp in the fiator slip from its bond to the body and Rothar when life ceased? If he but died before the golem exhausted him fully, could she claim what remained within him?
But this
-------------was
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
---------------------------a wizard.
-----It was
------------------------not
----------------------------------------her wizard.
Midnight had seen familiars consume parts of their dead wizards before. At Emery Thurm, some familiars had simply departed, leaving the wizard's remains to the Ritual of the Dead. Others had consumed a piece — a sliver of flesh, insufficient to satiate any real HUNGER serving more as a mere echo of what had once been and belonged. Some had taken a heart. Always one, never both. Midnight had never understood why. She did not know what she would do with her own wizard, what she would feel compelled to do. Would she feel the same image [https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/HUNGER.png] [HUNGER] she felt now?
image [https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/The-Glass-Wizard-by-The-Duckman_Fantasy-Adventure-Magic-Webnovel_Depressed-Wizard-Webseries_B1.C13_P70.1.png]
.
image [https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/The-Glass-Wizard-by-The-Duckman_Fantasy-Adventure-Magic-Webnovel_Depressed-Wizard-Webseries_B1.C13_P70.2.png]
.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------