“Ami, I don’t know what you did but it looks like it’s pissing off the ghosts.” My sister calls out to me, the sound of her swishing sword intermittently reaching my ears.
With my eyes still closed and my focus on fighting the corruption down below, I reply. “This might take a while.”
“Max, I sure hope you have the stamina left for this.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve only just started.”
While my comrades are holding off the tide, I concentrate even harder on fighting the corruption. But whatever put it there, it’s very powerful as I feel the cordon that I’m trying to create with my magic get assaulted by its force almost constantly. I am slowly but surely gaining ground but it’s not easy at all. I feel like if I break my concentration for just a bit, the corruption will just spring up back to its original size.
– Jumping to my sister’s perspective –
While they used to be rather slow and vigourless, now they are almost running at us at full speed. Their attacks are way more ferocious than before as well. The green tide of spirits now just floating into our pit like a dam had just broken. At least the one thing that is going for us is that the ghosts still only require one glancing hit from my holy sword to send them back to wherever they came from.
I sweep my sword widely in front of me, taking out 6 spirits in one go, but they quickly get replaced by 6 more with the seventh, coming from my side, lashing out to me and giving me a good old scratch on the arm, my gambeson only barely negating the ghostly claws. I quickly retaliate with a backhand blow but it’s clear that we need to fall back to Ami.
“Are you alright?” Max asks as we meet each other back to back. She’s looking worriedly at my arm.
“It’s just a flesh wound.” In fact, because of Ami’s passive healing aura, it’s even starting to heal already. “But I am regretting not putting on my armor right about now though.”
“Armor, what’s that?” Max grins and swings her axe around.
“Hehe, right. I should not let myself get outdone by a rookie.”
Max gives me a wink. “Better start now then.”
I smile and shake my head. “Just don’t let any of them touch Ami.”
With each other guarding our back and Ami in between the two of us, we attempt to repel the relentless assault. The longer Ami is taking in her zone, the more ferocious the ghosts become. What she is doing must be working, but it’s not making our job any easier. About five minutes into our guard duty, the ghosts are so numerous and fast that we have to keep swinging constantly if we want to keep up. One of the ghosts pretty much gets into a breaths length of Ami, slipping through both mine and Max’s guard. But in the middle of it’s swing, the ghost gets evaporated as a pulse of light explodes out of my sister. The accompanying forcewave almost knocking Max and I over.
As the wave of light moves outward, it’s vanishing every ghost it comes in contact with, and in the matter of a second, all the ghosts in the pit are gone and the mist that has been present all night long starts to dissipate.
Ami gets up from her kneeled down position but starts to waver. I manage to catch her just in time as her angelic armor vanishes.
-Back to Ami we go-
“Ami? Are you alright?” My sister asks as I hang in her arms.
“Mhmm.” I nod. “I just got a little dizzy.”
“Are you tired?” Max asks.
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“Yeah… It was quite something to deal with… whatever that was.” Just thinking back on the tug of war I had to play with the corruption is making my head hurt again. “I don’t know who, or what, created that but this is not just some random spell caster…”
“That doesn’t sound good.” My sister lifts me up from my feet. “But at least we vanquished this hurdle now.”
I try to wiggle a little but my sister’s hold is a bit too tight. “Sis, you don’t need to carry me, I can walk.”
“Nah, you start resting. If that powerful thing that created the corruption comes back, you will be way more useful in your top shape than any of us could ever be.”
“Your sister is right, Amicia. If you had to work that hard I don’t even want to know what we would have to do if you were out of it.”
“Running the fuck away sounds like a good plan in that case.” My sister chuckles.
“Yeah…”
As we climb out of the pit of death the rest of our group catches up to us, pretty much meeting us at the edge. It seems like all the ghosts are gone now..
“What happened to Ami?” Hilda asks, a look of concern on her face.
“She’s tired. Looks like that curse or whatever was quite chonky.” Lise replies.
“That bad?”
I nod. “That’s why it took so long.”
“Damn.” Hilda scratches her cheek. “I really don’t like the sound of that.”
“Me neither.” Sam shakes her head. “Maybe we should teleport away?”
“I don’t know if I can do that now.” I raise my hand “It didn’t work before and I don’t really have the energy right now to try…” My doggie nuzzles its nose against me, but I give her a pet on the head to tell her I’m alright.
“Then we don’t have any other choice but to continue resting here for the time being. If only just for a bit until Ami can try to teleport again. As much as I don’t like staying in this place for much longer…”
“Best case scenario we sleep through the night and nothing happens, worst case scenario at least Ami is better rested than she is now. There’s one thing I know for sure and that’s that I’m going to sleep in my armor now, as uncomfortable as that is.” My sister nods.
“Okay, let’s do that then.” Hilda agrees and looks at the rest of the group who also give affirmative nods all around.
Max and Carol take on their watch once more, it had been interrupted by the attack of the ghosts but they reassured us that they were still plenty fine to continue the rest of their shift. With the only difference being that my sister kept her holy enchantment on Max’s weapon for the rest of the night.
It was hard for me to catch sleep again after the whole encounter. The darkness that I’d seen in front of my eyes as I was fighting the corruption had been quite unsettling. Even though the mass of souls back at the Dwarger capital was all but pleasant, at least that’s something I could communicate with. I had never before seen a darkness like this that was also actively fighting back against my light.
Sam tried her best to get me to sleep, hugging me tightly against her warm body. In the end she needed the aid of my wolf to enclose me from the other side. Sandwiched in between my girlfriend and soft, warm fur. Our tent wasn’t really meant for this kind of occupancy, but at least it did help me to finally fall asleep. I just felt a bit sorry for Sam’s wolf as he couldn’t sleep with his sister… The tent definitely wasn’t big enough for two of them.
We did get through the rest of the night without any more incidents. Waking up to quite the beautiful morning with the sun peaking through the trees and over the ruins around us. No evidence at all left from our battle happening here the night before.
After a quick breakfast, with some nice warm scrambled eggs thanks to Hilda’s provisions, we pack up our gear and our tents, ready to move once more. Albeit that I need to test something first though.
“Ami, are you ready to test out your teleportation spell again?” Hilda asks while strapping the last piece of equipment on her pack.
“Yeah. I’ll try to teleport us to the edge of the wood over there.” I pointed to the edge of the wood where we had come from yesterday.
“Ready when you are, sis.”
“Wolves are ready too.” Max says as she pets both her own wolf as Carol’s.
“Okay. Gather up.” The team moves close to me like we always do when we are about to teleport after which I start to concentrate once more. The wind swirls. But to my dismay, just like yesterday evening, a purple spiral appears, followed by a very painful pang. “Fuck me.” I say as I grab my head.
“No good?” Nikki asks.
“Not at all.”
“Do you think it might be the distance?” Sam suggests.
“No, I’ve done short distances like this before like we did back in the Dwarger lands. This is something else. Something is aggressively blocking my teleportation magic…”
“Maybe something is trying to keep us in.” My sister cups her chin.
“Or something is blocking teleportation magic to avoid surprises.” Hilda comments after which the group falls silent in thought. Not a very fun silence…