I finished engraving another coin, passing the symbol straight through the center, carefully carving it out before grabbing another.
“And that annoyance makes you think…what, exactly?” I pressed my mana forth and smiled at my work. “Do you feel a kindred spirit in Lilith? Do you hate her for turning you and your people down? Do you wish ill on them?”
“She did the smart thing.” Maebe actually grinned, her smile turning into a smirk. “If she were to join me and mine, she would have been hunted by the Seelie. If she had chosen them over me, then they would have had to die as well. Neutrality was the only way her people could prosper best. Though her using us makes me wonder if she had tried the same of the Seelie first and they failed. No matter. We will move on.”
I finished another coin and set it onto the handkerchief in front of me.
“Tell me, husband, do you agree with my analysis?” I paused, looking back at her to find her sitting before me with her eyes staring into mine.
“I do, but I also believe that the Fae in all their iterations are fickle and unpredictable creatures.” Her face was a mask of perfect neutrality as I made my remarks. “Like you, for example. I never thought you would propose to me. Never in my wildest dreams. Titania has been playing her games and was knowingly, or unwittingly, supporting War by having his minion among her advisors and used the Wild Hunt to hunt down things for fun. Servant? Just decided that he liked me and chose not to almost kill me when summoned. That healer, whatever the fuck he was, has his own plots and plans.”
“It makes sense to me that she would too, and if she does—I know for damned sure you do.” She smiled proudly for a moment before I continued, “Then there’s this new King of the Seelie sending his minions into this realm to try and kidnap people? Just to try and thwart you? All of you are nuts. The Fae, all of them, are the way they are, and that will not change. You may sway her eventually, but it will take time and something extreme.”
She nodded slowly. “An apt assessment, my king. You are learning, and I am proud of you for it.” She lifted a hand and caressed my cheek. “Does it bother you that I can be fickle and ever-changing at times? Does it bother you when I revert to my training as royalty? When I need to be harsh?”
“Not nearly so jarring as it used to be.” I shrugged, finishing yet another coin and collecting the next. “I’ll be honest, the first time we met, you were terrifying, and you kept proving yourself to be. But those times we would speak earnestly and honestly gave me glimpses into the depth of you, surrounded by this façade of cold, calculating cruelty, showed me there was more. Something I wanted to find, because I could feel a loneliness in you that seemed to mirror my own. That could very well have been me projecting onto you, and I apologize if it sounds that way. I mean no disrespect.”
“I know, and in some ways, I was. At the time I do not think that I realized how true that was until all of you were gone.” She picked up a coin, eyeing it in the dim glow of my mana. “I found myself wondering if you were well. How your fight had fared. If you had all survived. At first, I attributed it to my drive for this endeavor to succeed. But then we spoke again, and I knew it was that I wanted to see you again. To be there for my friend. My friends.”
“I’m glad that we found each other.” I smiled at her, finishing the last coin.
“I am glad I did not kill you.” She leaned closer to kiss me on my nose. The contact made me laugh, and she shoved me playfully. “We have much to do, King of the Unseelie. Attend your craft.”
“Yes, your Majesty.” I winked at her roguishly and snorted at her when she tried to do it back, her eyelid flickering and a look of concern passing over her features.
I dove into myself, the depths of my magic and thought about what I wanted the coins to do. The goal that was their design.
I would need to bring quite a few different ideals into this. First, to stop the scrying in a way that would make it look not only necessary but be painful, just to slide the point home. And since the drow were cool with the shadows and darkness, a little light was in order.
I felt a spell like the one I had created in the dungeon, Exposing Flames, was the opposite of what I needed for this. I needed light so bright it would obscure things.
I focused on that part of me that communed with the elementals and reached to the light. Can you hear me?
I am with you always mote, you have found my champion, why have you not obtained him for me? Her tone was more curious than angry, and I could navigate that one.
Because if I took him now, many lives would be in danger. Light formed behind my eyes as I finished that, so I continued quickly, I have a plan to acquire him, though, so that I can bring him into your embrace. But I need assistance to do it, first. He needs something to obscure him, and us with him, so that he is hidden from a spell called Scrying. Can I use your light?
The bright light behind my eyes ebbed and flowed around my mind, then blinked out.
You have the ability to create one spell so that you might bring my champion to me. Use it wisely. There will be more to come upon completion of your task.
The Light Primoidial’s voice faded from my mind, the warmth of her presence still lingering as I set to work.
Focus. Intent. Build these things together to make a source of light so bright that it burned.
Man, I can be really dense, can’t I?
I focused on bringing light and flame together and making them bind and become one around Purify like it was a small ball of holy energy that would radiate throughout it.
I drained everything I had into the spell, then dipped into Mage’s Well, stopping at 1,245 MP. But it was worth it.
Solar Flare – The caster summons a miniature sun to blind and torment their foes with radiant flames for a short time. Cost: 300 MP. Range: 200 ft radius. Duration: 30 Seconds. Cooldown: 1 minute.
That would do us well, though it would likely kill Yohsuke if he was in the blast radius of it. I’d have to enchant his cloak for him to try and protect him from the sun and my magic.
I wiped some of the sweat from my brow and focused on feeling the ambient mana in the air around me, what thickened the shadows around us, and pulled it inward.
This was the first time I had done so, but the idea was fairly common in a lot of the books I’d read and games I had played. I had secretly tried it before above ground but never had any success. Meditation seemed to help a little bit, but here? Here I could pull the mana in faster, if only minutely.
Once the ring and I were topped off, I began to apply my intent and focus to the coins with that spell in mind to assist, then cast the spell on it to add strength. Total, each coin cost 1,000 MP, and the component I used to fill them was powdered diamond.
I had carved an eye into the middle of each of them with a crystal ball in the center that had an X going through it so that it all stayed together. The intent was obviously to cause pain or extreme discomfort to those who tried to spy on us using Scrying magics. It could even blind them. Hopefully.
It took a while for each coin, and I was intent on ensuring each one was perfect, my focus slipping near the end of them, so I had to sacrifice a coin of my own to redo it. Once they had been finished, I poked my head out of the dome and tossed one to each of my friends so they could admire my handy-work.
Anti-eye coin
When the bearer of this coin is spied upon by magical means, such as Scrying, Farsighted, and other Divination-type magics, the caster is accosted by a magical counter in the form of a sun-like obstruction that blocks the vision. This item may sap mana from the bearer if the caster is persistent.
Coin enchanted by Adept Enchanter Zekiel Erebos.
It was nice to get that one out of me, though there was no telling how much of a mana drain it would be. I had also gained a level putting me up to Level 46 Enchanting. More than halfway to master, woo!
“Nice, man!” Yohsuke smiled. “And I didn’t catch fire when you threw it at me, so there’s that.”
<
br /> “I will glare at you and your dickish behavior later, gimme your cloak, I need to enchant it.” He seemed to hesitate for a moment, “What, you got a better one?”
“No, but how are we going to test it?”
“That’s a good idea, slowly at first?” I shrugged. “Maebe and I can pack some serious magic into it if needed. The design is going to be for it to make shadows that keep you safe from the sun while the hood is up.”
He seemed to think about it for a moment, then nodded. “That would be useful, especially since I almost always have my hood up, anyway. Thanks, man.”
“Yeah, yeah, quit your blubbering,” I teased him, and he started forward. “Bye!”
I pulled myself through the dome where Maebe and I set to work and then failed. Miserably. The quality of the cloak was nice, but it had seen a lot of action, and it was highly damaged from the fighting we had been doing lately.
I rummaged through my inventory to no avail, and so did Maebe. I poked my head back out into the room with the others. “Anybody have a cloak with good quality that is not too damaged?”
The others looked through their inventories and didn’t find anything of use. Most of them just had rain gear, and that was it.
“How about you enchant an item to shape the darkness like a cloak to the wearer?” Balmur asked helpfully. “Like a necklace or something?”
“If I were higher level, I’d try it.” I shrugged. “Even with Maebe wrangling the shadows, I would probably have to have you feed it a steady stream of mana for it to work, and that would be a terrible idea in a fight. We’ll have to see if we can either find something or buy something from around here.”
“What about if we get into a fight, and someone starts slinging daylight?” Bokaj nodded as if he knew what I had done. “Don’t look at me all confused, I know the things you can do, and this coin is way too specific. You have a vampire nuke, and you could use it to kill a good majority of them and our friend.”
“We don’t know if it will work exactly like the sun, and if it comes to that, then I’ll put his ass in my collar for safety,” I said, in a growling tone while I checked the familiar’s new collars out. They were simple designs with pouches sewn in for the coins to rest in.
“We could try it, right?” Muu took a drink from his canteen.
“In a confined space like this, it would likely nuke us all.” I shrugged, then shook my head. “Better not try it until we know we need it. We have holy weapons and abilities we can use if needs be.”
The others nodded, and I went to go check on Fainnir. His door was unlocked, but I knocked anyway. When there was no answer, I walked into the room, fearing the worst only to find him meditating.
“You okay, Fainnir?” I asked softly as his breathing continued.
Softly, he responded, “Aye.”
“You want to talk about what’s bothering you?” I sat down in front of him on the floor in a room that mirrored my own. A simple bed, no furniture, and a decent amount of space.
“Ye be bargaining’ with the enemy o’ our people.” He didn’t open his eyes, as if his meditation was all that kept him calm. “Ye did naw strike her down where she stood—ye offered aid and alliance.”
“We did.” I allowed with a nod, my heart thumping in my chest in the silence almost deafeningly loud. “And you heard the consequences of any hostility we may have offered. Any betrayal. So much as a sneeze in the wrong tone could have spelled disaster for the city of Djurn Forge and all of our people. Sometimes it’s best to deal with the enemy you can see so that they remain seen.”
“That made no sense.” Yohsuke stepped into the room and sat next to me. “Sometimes, keeping your friends close and your enemies closer works better in that instance, I think.”
Fainnir opened his eyes and narrowed them at Yohsuke, the newly-reborn vampire held his hands up as if to ward off something.
“It’s my fault, I’ll take that blame, but Zeke and Maebe were doing what they felt was best for all of us.” Yohsuke pulled a small plate out from behind us and offered it to the dwarf. “If she had agreed to ally with the Fae, then your people would have been safe from her. At least knowing that she’s neutral makes us aware that she could be a threat, and we can keep an eye on her—oh, that’s what you meant by that? It’s still weird—but that’s not all.”
Fainnir regarded the food for a moment before his stomach began to growl, then lifted it onto his lap. “What else is there?”
“Now we know that there aren’t any more drow plans to fuck with your home since they had royally screwed up their invasion force before.” Yoh smiled, and I couldn’t help my grin. “Not only that, but we can take a war hero home—isn’t that something that you want?”
He nodded, chewing thoughtfully. “The boy, the drow one, why were ye so keen to get him and use him as bait? Made it seem like ye were bad folk, and I be know’n yer nae.”
I held out the coin I had for him, hoping we had been unseen by anyone scrying in the area or on us before I answered.
“Because he’s important to our cause, like you,” I answered, honestly. “He belongs to the Light Primordial as you do to the Earth. This is our attempt to bring him into our protection so that our goals are closer to being accomplished.”
“Offering him a chance to ‘prove’ himself leaned toward what she would want of her people, the males especially,” Yohsuke explained further, adding to my thoughts. “We play to our strengths, and sometimes that requires a little bit of subterfuge to get what we want. It’s no different from a blacksmith peddling his wares to a customer who knows little of his craft. You haggle, and you up the ante by telling them what they want to hear sometimes. Do you understand, now?”
Fainnir seemed to think on it a bit more, longer than I would have liked, so I added, “We would no sooner see him harmed than we would you. He isn’t you, and from what we’ve heard, he’s not like some of the other drow either. We’re doing our best.”
“I understand that ye meant no harm,” he started and paused, his eyes closed in thought, tighter and tighter until I saw a tear run down his cheek. “They killed me people, and here we are. No blood shed in their honor. Not a single drop. Here we are trying to save one of them to give them power that they don’t even know to want.”
“You didn’t either, Fainnir, but you’re here with that same sort of power.” I prodded him in his chest. “Power just as unearned as his will be. You are a conduit to something greater than yourself, and he can be, too. You can be greater than you ever dreamed, and you could lead your people to do great things. And he might be able to as well. You don’t know. Neither do we. But the Light Primordial wants what she wants, and I am going to give it to her as best I can because it helps us all.”
“I understand a little more,” he stated solemnly, “I don’t get it all, because I lack the mind for it, but I thank ye for tryin’ to help me understand. I will trust that ye know what yer doin’ and support ye. I’ll be askin’ questions, though, and if we get the opportunity to avenge our kin, I trust ye’ll nae hold me back?”
“If we have to dig in, we’ll be waist-deep with you.” I grinned wolfishly, and Yohsuke punched a fist into his hand. The message got across. “We will be leaving soon to set our trap and then get back to the surface, okay?”
“I’ll be ready.” He closed his eyes and began to breathe deeply again.
Yohsuke and I stepped out of the room, I glanced at him, taking his fangs in one more time. “Thanks, man, you sure you’re okay?”
“I mean, I’m alright.” He shrugged, thinking for a bit. “It’s no longer temporary, but it just adds to my strength and dexterity. I’m pretty sure it also makes me much better with some of my draining spells. And there are things I can do as a vampire, like shapeshift into fog and a bat! Dude, we can shapeshift into things and work together!”
“We can be the monster squad.” I grinned at him, and we clasped hands, teeth flashing in the dimly lit room.
“Yeah,
yeah, monster mash-looking fuckers,” Bokaj said, then grunted. “Rub your monster-y-ness all up in our faces, why don’t you?”
I rolled my eyes, and we finished eating and preparing how we could. We had undead and a Vampire Lord to hunt down.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“The Queen wished me to inform you that she is focused on other matters of greater importance to the drow and that I am at your full disposal until such a time as your quest is completed, I die, or we all perish.”
I glanced at the others as we regarded the male drow before us. A spindly thing, with long limbs and lithe muscles, his white hair styled into a mohawk almost a foot tall. His eyes were gray and blue swirls that seemed to glow eerily as he looked over all of us. His nose was a little long, eyebrows a little high, and his thin face made the mohawk almost comical, but I wasn’t one to judge, normally. His robes of black had other colors sewn in, likely showing his rank in their culture.
“I am called, Xaenth, and I am the current Umber Wizard’s aid.” He bowed respectfully as we stood outside Lilith’s doors. “I will be your guide for this quest. Our young morsel will join us shortly. Is there anything we need to do before leaving, or are we clear to set off?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the extra coin I had made as an afterthought, then tossed it to him. His eyes grew wide as he looked back at me, but I stopped him from refusing with a raised hand and my prepared explanation.
“We have reason to believe that whoever is abducting your people could also have the ability to view others from afar, this will help us stalk them.” I nodded to my own coin that I held up in my hand, the diamond refracting a little of the now-green light filtering into the windows from the larger cavern outside. “Each of us has one, and now you and the bait will, too.”
He seemed distrustful of it for a moment, but I pocketed mine and he did the same. We walked down the spiral staircase until we reached where the kid should have been, but the little cage was empty.
Into the Darkness: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Axe Druid Book 4) Page 54
