Unsure of what to do, I used my crayon to retrace the lines of my Sword Storm II rune. I was running low on offensive spells, and didn’t fancy losing another. The result was akin to the rune carved into my mind. Where ever my wax passed, the rune began to glow with a soft blue light. Unlike the runes, my hand or the page of the book could cover it, my ring sight didn’t even see it. It was for my soul and soul alone. Curious, I dropped my wax partway through and began tracing with my finger instead. The glowing lines continued to spread. It took the full hour, but once it was done the lines slowly turned from blue to gold, like the sky at sunset.
_☼Sword Storm II☼_
The spell was safe now. It was one of those things I knew, deep in my soul. Safe as it could be. Nothing was ever truly safe. Nature’s great blessing and curse was that there was always another way. I closed my spellbook. I could still see the rune with my ring, but no longer notice its glow.
I wonder...
It was as easy as thinking it. My soul sight, mine, that which allowed a soul to see those things bound to it. That which allowed my soul to see what was bound to it. And there the rune was, glowing gold. And there the rune carved into my brain, glowing blu—
I shut off the sight. That was unfortunate. I’d found a way to cast a subset of my spells without keeping my ring-sight active, which would allow me to not be distracted by spiders, lungs, and bodily functions, but if I could see the runes in my brain they would be far more distracting.
That said, I could see them always without the ring. It was a matter of keeping them at the periphery, ignoring them. Perhaps with the ring it wasn’t so different?
I activated the soul sense again, and this time I was ready for it. Barely. My ‘vision’ snapped to the rune the instant it appeared ‘again’—it was weird seeing an imaginary object from more than one perspective. From infinite perspectives even. My mind reasserted itself before I could be drawn in, and then it was as easy as ignoring the rune as it always was.
So it was just when it appeared I was at risk. I could work with that. But if I could see my mind rune I had to wonder. If the ring allowed insight into a unique set of senses (my own), did that mean I could see another Magus’s? I might not be able to read them, runes were personal, especially those rare few carved on the mind, but knowing they had them could be a boon in of itself. I could see what my old master had been lying to me about never doing for one thing. After seeing the utility of my back up teleport spells I found it hard to believe it was as taboo as he’d suggested. Then again, not all Magi lived as interesting a life in total as my last month had been.
☼Sword Storm II☼
I cast the spell using my ring’s soul sight without a hitch. My book stayed closed the entire time.
A thousand flowers blooming at midnight.
If I protected all my spells my book would never need to leave my pouch.
I sent my newly summoned swords upstream to the point where the tunnel narrowed. The doors beyond the statue and the rune held some promise, but they weren’t heading in the direction I wanted to go... probably. I wasn’t about to cast North Star until I protected it. Besides, they were beyond both the statue and the rune and I didn’t want to risk it. For all I knew they set off a second volcanic eruption.
The stone did not yield easily. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Even if I weren’t trying to carve through bedrock beneath an active volcano it would have been hard. The stone had the weight of mountains and countless millennia pressing down on it. Hardening it.
For the first time in weeks—or had the rats only been a few days ago? It seemed impossible to believe—for the first time in days my ministrations did not go unnoticed. As my task was nearing its completion they came screeching and hollering through the unopened door furthest from the tunnel.
They were like humans but unlike humans. They had all the same limbs in the same order. Teeth and ears and toes and hair. But their skin was pale. Paler than a corpse’s belly, paler than a mushroom’s roots. And their eyes were missing. They didn’t even have sockets. Just smooth skin to either side of their otherwise normal noses.
Trogodytes. A rare breed of people from the south. The few accounts I’d heard of them had been conflicting, some even were said to have brown skin rather than white, but all agreed upon their strange, batlike language, and all agreed upon their eyeless faces.
There was five of them. Four women and a single man. All of them were naked. I might have been more shocked if I hadn’t already met the headless giants. Now I was simply surprised they weren’t shivering. The fifth floor was warmer than most of the others, volcano excepted, but it was still nowhere as warm as the lands across the south sea.
They were hunched over as I was, given the short ceiling. Less short for me standing in the stream, less short for them because they were women. The hunch managed to make them look even more inhuman then they already did.
Further dehumanizing them was the way their hair blew out behind them when they were still and pressed against their heads when they moved. My ring also sensed the dust in the room pulling toward the feet of the lead Trogodyte as she drew within its range. It wasn’t a magic I’d seen before.
The spears in their hands didn’t help make them look friendly either.
“Halt!” I called, raising my own short spear to the ceiling, “Come no closer and I’ll do you no harm.”
The lead woman let out a peculiar clicking screech, and thumped the butt of her spear into the ground. Her companions followed suite a moment later. My ring couldn’t help but notice dust gathered around the spear as well, and my spider-sense revealed air currents flowing toward the woman rather than away. Like she was gathering the whole world into herself.
I lowered my own spear.
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“Do any of you speak English?”
I received blank stares from the Trogodytes. Not that they could do anything other than blankly stare, but their empty eyed gaze felt even emptier in the moment.
“milás ti glóssa ton theón?”
The Trogodytes flinched at my words. The lead woman went so far as to bare her teeth and briefly raise her spear before catching herself. The Language of the Gods could have that effect on some people. Especially those who dwelled so far from the heavens.
The only other language I knew was that of the birds, and that was not for communication. For listening and secrets, yes, but nothing so crude as a conversation.
The woman screeched at me in her language joined by a number of her companions. It was nearly unpleasant for me as the Language of the Gods had been for her. It felt like a thousand little fingers plucking at every fibre of my body with every shrill click. My ears were going to start ringing if she kept it up.
I pointed at the door they’d come through, “Go back.”
I pointed at the ground then myself, “This room is mine.”
It was only when I’d finished gesturing that I remembered they couldn’t see me. Not unless they had sense-rings of their own. At least they also couldn’t see me making a fool of myself.
The lead Trogodyte let out another war cry. Or maybe she was asking me about the weather down the hall. I’d have to find a bat to translate for me.
I didn’t need to translate what she did next as her and her companions raised their spears once more. As one, they took a creeping step forward.
My swords down the hall were only three quarters down carving out the path, and even if I could retreat now, the point had been to secure a path all the way back to the fourth floor. Avoiding conflict was one thing, but I wasn’t about to retreat from those who brought it on themselves. Time for a warning.
Fireball
My new fireball joined the one which I’d summoned with ☼Sword Storm II☼, then both of the flaming balls flew until they were only an inch away from the leader’s face and abdomen. I began to slowly inch them forward.
She hissed like oil spitting in a pan and took a step back. The fireballs followed—
—and then they didn’t.
The fireballs stopped. They began inching back towards me. Then footing. Then yarding—I dived to the side as one fireball went streaking back to the entrance of the tunnel and the other stopped just in front of where I’d been standing.
Magic Swords III
Four blades appeared in circle around the leader. They struck inward in the same instant.
I winced as blood spurted from eight wounds at once. It was the dark elves all over again. She’d been helpless, completely impaled. Killing the soldiers hadn’t been as disturbing. I’d been more desperate and they my torturers. Part of it was her nakedness. It made her appear—no not appear—it made her more vulnerable. And I wasn’t thinking of her lack of armour.
The fireball in front of me vanished.
That was concerning. Were they like the ogre—my swords tugged free from the lead Trogodytes body. I hadn’t told them to do that. The wounds on her body began to close. Ogre indeed.
Four spears launched toward me. Each of the Trogodytes had two: one long, presumably for melee combat, and one short, for throwing, as demonstrated.
They threw in a strange manner, like a child skipping a stone. Probably developed for the caverns and the reason their spears were so short in the first place.
I tried to tug my swords around to block the spears, but my swords didn’t obey me. All moved in a different direction than I’d ordered them to go. It was like trying to push a chain by lining up the links.
All but three of my swords vanished.
Those that remained were too far away to be of any use, still carving the tunnel. I started bringing them back anyway.
Three spears struck home. Two were only glancing blows which my armour turned aside, the third landed directly in the hole above my heart, admittedly a slight weak point in the over all design of my armour.
It felt like I’d been kicked by a very small horse, but my skin turned aside the spear. The spears clattered to the fl—two of the spears rose up from the floor, slid along my chest and then flew back toward those who had thrown them. The third spear, the one which had struck me in the hole in my armour instead flew back about a hands width away, and then launched forward as though freshly thrown.
This time the spear pierced both armour and skin. The wound was shallow, but “shallow for a spear wound” was of little comfort. I’d just spent a week repairing the last hole in my chest. I stumbled back with a hand clutched to the wound as the spear reared back for a third strike.
I was too slow to get out of the way, but I got lucky with the torn fabric of my gambeson. It tangled the spear the same instant it struck home, tearing it off course with little more than a bruise to my upper ribs.
Regenerate
I didn’t want to risk the spell before I’d used the protection ritual on it, but it was hard to pick in choose in the midst of combat with a bleeding wound above my heart.
The wound clotted at once, and rapidly became tight and more painful, which was not what I wanted while a fifth wave of spears was being thrown at me. The others had recovered their spears and their leader had joined them.
Only two of the five bypassed my armour, and a single my skin, but the one that made it was a doozy. It pierced my left shoulder nearly clean through, only stopping because of my armour on the other side.
I screamed in pain. My own short spear dropped from my right hand’s fingers as I desperately tried to pull the spear free from my flesh. At first my superior strength made quick work of the task, even with the muscles bunched and healing around the spear, but then the spear itself resisted me, started pulling itself deeper.
Shatter the heavens, that hurt.
It was worse than being stabbed in the first place. The slow tug-of-war ground against bone and knotted muscle in a way that ached to my core. The shaft of the spear was growing slippery with blood which further weakened my grip. All the while the Trogodytes were preparing a yet another wave of spears. I needed to deal with them and their strange powers before I could fix this spear.
But if they could heal their wounds and their—
Four spears flew towards me.
Push II
Magic Swords II
Two spears were deflected by the push. The swords only managed to catch a third. The fourth pierced my gambeson and bounced off with a hefty bruise.
They were going to kill me.
I jumped backward towards the princess’s accoutrements. Let them chase me. Let them chase me straight into those traps.
I hit the floor on my back and skidded until my head was nearly resting against the far wall. The spear was still in me. Let them all die. And if not—
Fast Teleport