The old mage responded with a horrified, almost reflexive scowl, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“By Mother Gaia, no!” Corvus Gavrus said. “My friends, while you are always welcome here, I’d rather you tell everyone that I’m a frothing-at-the-mouth insane person. I don’t need every slobbering noble to come sniffing around my woods just because they need help using camouflage spells to hide their gold from the tax collectors!”
I laughed, agreed with him, and shook his hand. Though he by no means was guarding his home with a horde of blood ghouls, he did remind me quite a bit of Aegis Winterhollow.
I told him this and he laughed heartily.
“Maybe crotchety old bastards like me and Aegis prefer invisibility spells for a reason, lad,” he said. “Now do old Corvus a favor and run a blade through Lord Necromorph’s heart!”
“That’s exactly what I plan on doing,” I said, then me and Pandora got to work.
Pandora’s daggers were sharpened. I’d strapped on my leather armor, then gifted my silver longsword to Corvus Gavrus as a thank-you for helping us out. We gathered our supplies from the horse – which we were also gifting to Corvus, as we couldn’t bring her with us – and I donned my Dayfire blade, with my orcish war axe tied to my back as a secondary weapon.
Our mana was topped off. Our enchanted weapons were charged. I double-checked to make sure that elixir that would cure Bella was secure in my pack.
“Are you ready to go save your sister?” I asked Pandora.
Her vicious, battle-ready smirk was equal parts intimidating and beautiful. That was all the answer I needed.
I opened the scroll that Corvus had given me and read the words.
Then we were gone.
Chapter Eight
We stood maybe a hundred yards away from the lich lord’s towering citadel, jutting up through the ground like a big black fang. The soil was bright purple, the sky an endless, pulsating shade of black that gave me vertigo to look upon it.
Here and there, bolts of lightning flashed through the darkness, like someone was sparking a lighter in a pitch black room. Just standing there made me dizzy. The very ground we stood on had a very acute wrongness about it, something inherently off about the entire landscape that mere words couldn’t verbalize.
The lightning was silent, with no thunder coming after it. The only sound was the man-made pocket universe churning around us, like holding a sea shell up to your ear, but increased a hundred-fold.
“This place sounds like emptiness,” Pandora whispered.
“Yeah, I don’t like it,” I said. “So let’s just get this over with.” I unsheathed the Dayfire blade. Its muted red-green shimmer stood in stark contrast to the swirling, purple-tinged darkness of the landscape.
Wherever Lord Ephemera’s forces had gone, they sure as hell left in a hurry. The gates to the citadel were wide open, with no one even bothering to shut them on the way out. Just inside, I saw hundreds of torches lining a circular great hall. It seemed as though each lich lord’s citadel was almost identical in shape, though I wasn’t sure if that would always be the case.
Yet, the moment we crossed the threshold into the great hall, the world shimmered and came apart. It was dizzying, disorienting, and the great hall burst into a panoply of landscapes and cities, of vast swaths of the universe cut apart and shrunk small enough to fit in your hand.
I grabbed Pandora’s hand tight. “Stay close to me,” I said.
“I’m not going anywhere without you, Earthman,” Pandora said, then drew her daggers and we continued on.
Pushing through the kaleidoscopic display around us – full of rushing crowds, placid lakes, bustling cities and dying stars – the vivid chaos gave way to a simple, peaceful meadow.
We paused, both shocked and relieved at the sudden change in the environment. When I looked back the way that we’d come, I saw no evidence whatsoever of the cosmic displays we’d just seen.
“Alright, so I guess this is going to be a giant pain in the ass,” I said.
Pandora was about to answer when she caught sight of something ahead of us, across the gently rolling hills covered in grass that came up to our knees. Her dark eyes went wide, and all she could do was thrust a finger in the general direction of the thing that had caught her attention.
When I looked, I could barely believe it.
It was Bella, lying motionless, save for the delicate rise and fall of her chest with every breath. Just like her sisters, she was shockingly beautiful.
She lay there, on a stone dais erected atop one of those small hills, nearly still as a limp doll, dressed in a traditional Mananymph kimono. Her hair was a light shade of brown that covered the pretty set of fox ears resting atop her head. Then, curled up next to her, was a fox tail which was the very same color as the rest of her hair.
Her beauty was so complete that my voice got caught in my throat…until Pandora suddenly bolted toward the sleeping Mananymph.
“Pandora, wait!” I shouted, then quickly used my detect life ability.
Sure enough, ‘Bella’ gave off no aura at all.
Just as Pandora screeched to a halt, the false Bella vanished, replaced by three gray-skinned, roaring wyverns.
Pandora rolled to safety as the small-sized dragons let loose gouts of hellfire. Of course, these beasts gave off no life aura either, more illusions cast by Lord Ephemera, but that didn’t mean they were any less deadly.
Thinking quickly, I sheathed my Dayfire longsword. It was enchanted with fire damage, so I didn’t want to risk wasting the charge on the wyverns. Instead, I took the orcish war axe from my back and charged them, screaming at the top of my lungs.
The first wyvern snapped its jaws at me. I raised the Soulguard in defense and the beast’s sharp fangs shattered on the sturdy gauntlet. As it reeled back in shock, I lopped its head off with my axe, and the creature vanished in a puff of green mist.
I heard movement behind me. “Earthman!” Pandora cried out.
I turned, Soulguard raised in defense, at the exact moment the second wyvern shot hellfire from its mouth.
I grit my teeth, immediately sweating from the intense heat, but managed to absorb the brunt of the fire with the gauntlet.
Suddenly, Pandora hurled one of her dragontooth daggers, hitting the wyvern right in the eye. The creature squealed in pain. With the Soulguard glowing bright red with fire magic, I drove my fist into the wyvern’s mouth, knocking out half its teeth.
WYVERN HEALED 30HP!
MAGIC REFLECTION SKILL INCREASED +1
Ah shit! I shouldn’t have tried to use its fire magic against it. All I’d done was heal the fucking beast.
Well, no big deal, because the Wyvern was still half-blind, and it never saw me coming when I drove the blade of my war axe right between its eyes.
ONE-HANDED AXE SKILL INCREAED +1
CRITICAL STRIKE!
I yanked Pandora’s dagger free and tossed it back to her. The third wyvern had taken flight, whirling overhead. Pandora quickly shut her eyes and began sizzling with magic as she began to cast a spell, but she didn’t see the wyvern now coming straight for her.
I ran toward Pandora and pulled her out of the way right as the small dragon unleashed another gout of fire that burned the grass where she’d just been standing.
“Gotcha!” I said.
Pandora grinned, winked at me with that crackling energy in her eyes, and said, “I’ve got an idea for this beast.”
She pivoted to her feet, magic sizzling in both her fists, and waited for the wyvern to drift down overhead.
When it was close, she grit her teeth and the TK magic sparked all around her. The wyvern suddenly stopped in mid-air, as Pandora had telekinetically snagged it by the throat.
“Awesome!” I shouted, just as Pandora clenched both her fists, and the wyvern’s neck immediately snapped, killing it.
The wyvern fell dead to the ground. Me and Pandora stood, back to back, as the meadow vanished, breaking apart into a
thousand pieces like a broken mirror until, at last, we were merely standing in the middle of the great hall again.
I grinned at Pandora. She grinned back. We bumped fists.
“Something’s up with the lich lord,” I said.
“I can feel it, too,” Pandora answered. “Even without an actual army, Lord Ephemera should be powerful enough to send wave after wave of phantom enemies at us.”
She was right, and I’d been thinking the same thing. Those wyverns had gone down far too easily. So perhaps Lord Ephemera had been weakened somehow.
Or maybe he was just saving the bulk of his strength for when we met face to face.
I made a save point at a great time, because that was when we discovered that Lord Ephemera was just warming up.
High overhead, at the top of the hollow center of the citadel, I heard the lich lord laughing. Craning my neck upwards, I could just barely make out his skeletal-white face, with his smoking green eyes with a black hood pulled over his head.
“Failed Champion!” he cried out, with a voice like nails scratching a chalkboard.
Coming down the center of the citadel was, just like in Lord Necromorph’s hideout, a cage elevator operated by a winch and chain. We dashed out of the great hall, toward the cage, but Lord Ephemera launched a globular blast of green energy down at us.
It didn’t strike us, but landed, sizzling on the obsidian floor, and a great cloud of green illusion magic mist suddenly surrounded us.
“He’s not weak at all,” Pandora said.
“No, he’s just trying to lure us into a false sense of security,” I answered.
We heard some strange hissing noises in that green mist, and as the thick emerald fog began to clear, we could make out the dark silhouettes of giant humanoid spiders.
Pandora growled. “Demon spiders, Earthman,” she said.
They were as disgusting as they were terrifying. Their bottom, bulbous halves were shaped like a giant black widow. But almost like a minotaur, at the waist sprouted the muscular upper bodies of pale-skinned demons. Their muscly, sinewy builds were beastlike, asexual, and they bared long sharp fangs from their dripping demonic maws.
The more the mist cleared, the more demon spiders we saw. Dozens upon dozens.
“Fuck me,” I said, gripping the orcish war axe tightly. I would have preferred to use the Dayfire blade, but by the time I could switch weapons, they’d already be charging me.
But Pandora had an idea. Already, the mysticism magic was sizzling around her. “Buy me a minute or two, Earthman!” she said.
I winked at her. “You got it!” I shouted, then hurdled myself into the ranks of the demon spiders, hacking away and crunching their faces with the Soulguard.
Quickly, I cast a fortify strength spell, because I knew instinctively that they’d try to trap me in their webs. I wasn’t wrong. From their spinnerets on their underbellies, the demonic spiders launched silver spider-silk at me.
With my strength fortified, I was able to rip free of it fairly easily, but I had to move quickly. If I stayed in one spot too long, they’d overwhelm me with their webs.
RESTORATION SKILL INCREASED +1
I was nearing my next level up. Knowing this, I tapped into my mysticism skill and hurled a TK blast right down their center mass. Though it all but drained my mana, it split their numbers, at least temporarily.
MYSTICISM SKILL INCREASED +1
One more skill increase and my health, fatigue, and mana would restore. I finally hit Level 23 a moment later, when one unlucky spider tried to come at me from behind.
I heard the ugly fucker, spun around, and bashed its face in with the Soulguard, closed in a fist.
HAND-TO-HAND SKILL INCREASED +1
LEVEL 23 REACHED!
Rejuvenated with a second wind, I shouted at the demon spider horde. “Is that all you got, fuckers!”
It was, I shortly discovered, not all they had.
There was another blast of green mist. Now, behind that first horde of spiders, came a second, at least two-hundred strong.
“Shit…” I whispered, gritting my teeth and preparing to be overwhelmed.
However, just before I could charge them, Pandora leaped in front of me. Now, the mysticism magic was wafting off her like little bolts of lightning. I stood back, damn impressed by her power, as she cast a mass dispel spell that immediately negated Lord Ephemera’s illusion-born horde.
“AAARGH!” Pandora wailed as that powerful spell drained her mana. She fell to one knee, sweat dripping from her face, but smiled when she saw the spider horde vanishing.
I helped her up, tossed her a restore mana potion from my pack, and she quickly drank it as we hustled onto the cage. I hit the switch and the chain began to rattle and clink as we began our ascent.
After stashing away my orcish war axe, I drew my Dayfire longsword. I looked up, saw Lord Ephemera’s skeletal visage staring down at us from overhead. “I’m coming for you, motherfucker!” I shouted.
The lich lord huffed in frustration, snapped his fingers, and at once, three more wyverns began flapping their dark wings above us, with more than enough room in the hollowed out center of the citadel to fly freely.
They snapped their sharp jaws at the chain pulling the cage upward, trying to cut us off.
“These little dragon bastards are annoying as shit,” I said, then I remembered how Pandora had handled that last wyvern back in the great hall.
I tapped into my mysticism magic again, squinted at one wyvern's throat, and focused all my energy into it.
Inverting the TK blast, I instead used the telekinetic energy to wrap my invisible fingers around the wyvern’s neck. It was harder than Pandora made it look.
I jerked forward, as if I physically had the beast’s throat in my hand, but grit my teeth and squeezed anyway.
“AHHH!” I cried out as I felt the wyvern’s neck snap in my telekinetic grip.
As the small dragon plummeted past us, limp and dead, Pandora laughed. “You’re a natural mystic, Earthman!”
I looked at my stats, saw my mana had been drained again. “Yeah, not quite,” I said, then slurped down a restore mana potion.
Pandora took out a second wyvern using her TK powers, then I got the last one, and by then we were nearly at the top of the citadel.
Just before Lord Ephemera ducked out of sight, he cast another mass illusion spell, and by the time the cage reached the top floor, the hallway before us was filled with a dozen demon knights.
I sighed. These thickly-armored demon knights were larger than the one Corvus Gavrus had created. I looked to Pandora as they hissed and howled at us.
“Can you cast dispel again?” I asked.
“I can,” she said, but shook her head. “But doing that last time has weakened my mysticism skill, at least temporarily. I’ll only be able to dispel a few of them.”
I smiled then kissed her cheek. “Every little bit helps,” I said.
She grit her teeth and let loose with the spell, knocking four of the demon knights out of existence. Good enough for me. I threw the cage open, raised the Dayfire blade high overhead and charged at them with Pandora coming up behind me for support.
This time, I wasn’t screwing around. I took the war axe from my back and hurled it into the small crowd, catching one unlucky knight in the throat, taking his head off and killing him instantly.
They spread out their numbers, just seven of them now, but more than enough to surround us. With Pandora watching my back, I hit the small force with a TK blast, knocking them all back, even knocking a few off their feet.
I charged the ones still upright, while Pandora flipped and slashed, clipping the throats of the three knights that had been knocked to the floor.
MYSTICISM SKILL INCREASED +1
ONE-HANDED AXE SKILL INCREASED +1
In just a few minutes, we’d slaughtered them all. This made me appreciate taking the time to increase my skills. Just a few days ago, these bad boys would have taken me down
fairly easily. Using my magic skills to compliment my melee talents was paying off quicker than I’d thought.
Now, the path between us and Lord Ephemera’s chamber was clear. I downed another restore mana potion and Pandora did the same. I kicked open the thick wooden doors and saw the lich lord standing beside Bella, still asleep, on that stone dais.
Compared to Lord Necromorph, Lord Ephemera was small. Whereas Necromorph had been nearly ten feet tall, Lord Ephemera was only about seven feet tall. He was frailer, too, and it appeared as though burning through so much mana by throwing those hordes at us had severely weakened him.
Still, the undead mage was dangerous. I stepped slowly toward him, with Pandora once again watching my back.
The lich lord was clutching his chest, as if he were in pain. “Failed Champion,” he said in that grating voice. “You come to battle me for her,” he said, gesturing toward Bella.
“I’ve come to kill you for her,” I answered.
I made a save point and, as the world rippled, the lich lord twisted his mouth in a foul approximation of a smile. “How about we make a deal, Earthman?” Lord Ephemera said.
“I can’t imagine that I’d ever make a deal with you,” I said.
“You take the Lady Bella,” he said. “And you simply leave me be. As you see, the Dark King has stripped me of my army. I’ve got nothing left but this citadel. So I beg of you, mighty Earthman, leave this old wizard alone to die in this hovel.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what you plan on doing,” I said, then spit toward him. “You’ll be back up to your awful business in no time.”
The lich lord scowled, realizing that I’d seen through his lie. And then I heard Pandora shouting behind me.
There was a puff of green mist and, when it cleared, I saw Pandora…two of her.
They looked and sounded exactly the same. Each moved with the deadly ballerina-type motions as they hacked and slashed and parried, dagger-on-dagger.
That quickly, they’d fought to a draw, coming down on the floor, each fighting to stab the other in the throat.
“I’m Pandora,” one of them said, turning her dark eyes to me.
“She’s a fake!” the other said.
Monstergirl Quest Book Two Page 7
