by Jez Cajiao
“Come on, Oracle!”
“I’m trying! They kinda don’t want people playing with these things, okay? I’ve never seen so many clips and chains!”
“Sounds like one of my ex’s bedrooms…”
“What?”
“Dammit. Forget I said anything. Just get it open!”
“It’s…almost…there! Its open! The fourth engine is powering down now…so what did you mean about…”
“No time! See if you can get any other engines they have left down! Make sure they can’t lift off!”
I took a deep breath and started to whisper the incantation I needed, my hands moving in a pattern as the spell began to form. The light caused by its creation was thankfully blanketed by the bright white glare of the Light mage’s staff as he strode in.
“Spread out! Find the crew and bring that goddamn rogue Lucius to me!” he snarled at the soldiers as they huddled together, practically blind inside the Tower. They slowly started to spread out, splashing through the standing water as they headed deeper into small maze I had created. The walls were only six or seven feet tall at the highest, though most were only two or three feet. The piles of debris blocked their vision of each other as they began the search.
“Engine five is down, and Bob is climbing up the rear of the ship now. He’s ready to start whenever you are!”
“Count to five, then go!”
I compressed my hands tighter and tighter, feeling the spell resist as I pushed more and more mana into it, until it felt like the spellform was bucking and thrashing in my grasp. I slowly curled my lower fingers in tight, standing up and flicking both sets of upper fingers forward and creating an opening in the compression. The spell burst free, flashing across the intervening distance to hammer into the nearest heavy soldier. I’d wanted to get the mage, but thanks to Murphy’s Law, he was on the far side.
The heavy soldier was staring in shock at the roughly-cut edge of Oren’s ship, his brain working to make sense of it, when my lightning bolt slammed into him from behind. He was smashed into the frame with enough force to make his armor ring like a bell. His screams came out more like a high-pitched whine as his muscles and teeth locked in place. As the spell flowed through him, it was conducted down his armor and into the standing water to spread out to all of those standing around him.
The mage disappeared as a barrier flared to life. All but a tiny fraction of the spell I’d cast was deflected, but even that small amount that was carried through the standing water to him was enough to momentarily freeze him in place with pain and shock.
The second heavy soldier had just stepped from the water, and received a much less powerful impact, but it was still enough to make him grunt in pain. Lesser soldiers still in the water thrashed around and collapsed as the spell worked its way through them.
It was all over in less than five heartbeats, but the change to the room was immense. The first heavy soldier had collapsed to the floor in a heap of metal, small wisps of smoke rising from him. Of the dozen soldiers that were inside the hall already, five were killed outright. Two were so heavily injured, they were effectively out of the fight as well. That left seven, in various states, that rushed back to the mage and formed up in a protective ring around him.
The second heavy soldier was already thundering toward me, as the mage behind him stepped out of the pool and began to cast.
“Check on Rolk!” the heavy soldier shouted over his shoulder as he came closer. I took a deep breath and swept up my weapon before activating ‘Child of the Night.’
As soon as it activated, I felt the pain of my health being drained, but as the world around me seemed to slow down, I grinned. My body had become as smoke, and as I flowed back into the shadows, I disappeared from the soldiers’ sight.
The heavy stumbled to a halt, his large kite shield sagging slightly as his eyes opened wide. His sword point flicked nervously from side to side as he tried to spot me.
I moved about a dozen feet to the left and the same back, flowing to a halt behind a low wall to become solid flesh and blood again. As soon as I became fully corporeal, a wave of nausea washed through me, making me stumble and grit my teeth. A debuff flashing up in my vision informed me that I was suffering from using a Darkness aligned spell next to a Consecrated Light Magi.
Warning! Attempting to use a Darkness related ability inside the Area Of Effect (AOE) of ‘Light’s Chosen’ will do significant damage to the user unless your Darkness alignment is higher than the caster’s Light alignment.
I blinked and tried again to keep my breakfast down, before I checked my HP bar. It had taken me maybe six seconds to shift to the area where I now crouched. I had figured that I should have lost sixty, maybe seventy HP of my four hundred and eighty total. I hadn’t. I’d lost over two hundred! My greatest advantages in this fight were always going to be the facts that I could flit back and forth, and heal myself whenever I wanted. I was going to be the stealthy, backstabbing type of mofo, despite my hatred of that kind of thing, because it meant I’d win easily, but now? Dammit. I didn’t want to have to fight fair!
I quickly cast a healing spell on myself, feeling my HP start to inch its way back up, even as a voice shouted out from ahead.
“Over there! To the right, he’s hiding behind there!” I swore under my breath as I realized that the mage must have sensed me using magic, and he jumped even higher up my ‘fuck up his Tuesday’ list. I swallowed hard, the nausea still making my stomach roil as I moved as fast as I could, keeping my head down. I managed three steps before something bright white smashed through the wall where I’d been crouching.
It looked like a baseball, but it had moved so fast, it left a solid bar of an afterimage before it exploded and sent me flying end over end to splash down headfirst in a puddle.
As I landed, my internal monologue spoke up from the back of my mind and informed me calmly that it had moved the mage all the way to the top of the list and added ‘Burn him to death and piss on the ashes.’
I was blinking and trying to figure out what had just happened when I saw my HP slowly lowering further. I quickly discovered a white tendril that had latched onto my leg and begun to suck the very life out of me.
I reacted instinctively. I’d spent hours upon hours practicing channeling into my naginata. As flames illuminated its length, I slashed down, cutting the tendril loose and rolling to my feet before letting the channeled spell die. I was left with less than half of my health, and a third of my mana, and as I looked between the low walls I’d made all those plans for, I saw the mage casting healing spells on the few soldiers I’d thought were out of the fight, but not dead.
“Okay, Seneschal, plans A through Y are fucked. Tell Oren to get his arse in here with his men. It’s gonna get messy!”
“Yes, Jax. I will pass your message on.”
All the sneaky plans I’d made, all the fallbacks and ways to slowly bleed the group, all of it left my mind in an instant. I spat blood on the floor and set off running at them. The mage was backing away toward the choke point to get back onto the marshalling yard, screaming for more troops, while the soldiers already inside were preparing to hunt me down. I needed that fucker dead. The rest of the soldiers were neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things. I could fight them head on, or use magic, or whatever, but the mage was the real threat.
The soldiers were spreading out, searching in twos and threes through the gloomy interior to try to find me, while I dove behind one of my rubble walls and began to creep forward. The mage might be able to sense magic, but he clearly couldn’t see any better than his men, and the light he’d brought on his staff only illuminated so far.
Their first trap loss was to the tripwire one of Oren’s men had made. The man stumbled, falling full length into a puddle with a great splash. He made a sound of annoyance that soon changed to a short, quickly cut off scream as a nearby wall fell onto him. Blocks too heavy for anything other than a golem to move made short work of the soldier, an
d his friends backed away in horror. Another man stumbled in the darkness, screaming as he frantically tried to stop himself on the sides of the hole that dropped through to the next floor.
“No, no, noooo…!” he managed to get out before he fell through. The sides had been deliberately smoothed to prevent any grip. He fell about fifty feet or so, landing on a stone floor below in full armor with a fatal crash. The final trap victim was a woman who’d tried to climb to the top of the rubble to get a better view, triggering the trap needle. I couldn’t see any details from where I hid. I just heard a scream and then a thud as she fell, then silence as the paralysis trap drowned her in the few inches of water she’d fallen into.
It was now or never. I’d managed to cut them down quite a bit from the soldiers, the two elites, and the mage. I was left to contend with just the mage, one elite, and four soldiers. I couldn’t risk losing the advantage of momentum.
I ran as fast as I could, my newly overpowered Agility coming to the fore as I splashed through the puddles and leapt over small walls. As I barreled toward them, I felt Oracle channeling. I recognized the spell she was working on as she hurried to me, entering through a small hole Seneschal had made yesterday in the wall for her.
I covered the last few feet to emerge into the light cast from the mage’s staff and heard the soldiers cry out in warning. Several more were wriggling through the gap to help their fellows and quickly formed up in a second row. The first few hesitated for a second before stepping forward. Their rank was made up of two swordsmen in the middle, each of whom had a small shield, and two men with spears flanked them on the outsides. Behind them, the others were pushing in, their drawn weapons causing the mage to shout in fury as he tried to get past them in an effort to get back outside.
The heavy soldier was stolidly backing away, making sure he kept between his charge and me.
As the first men closed the distance, I jumped to my left. Planting my foot firmly, I kicked off, lashing down with my naginata. I transformed the spear to my right into a thin quarterstaff as I sliced the metal point away. The severed spearhead flashed in the dim light as it was flung into the darkness. I landed and spun, sweeping the blade low and arcing back up. The motion pushed aside the shield of the swordsman from the right. The point of my naginata flicked out, barely kissing the inside of his throat, but as it came away, I was rewarded with a gurgle. Bright arterial blood sprayed forth as his hands flew to his neck in panic.
I moved into the middle of the pack, my naginata flowing around, up, and down, sweeping from one side to the other in a veritable dance of death. I batted aside the remaining sword and spear until I could land another blow, this time slicing deep into the leg of a man on the left, his scream of pain barely registering with me as I frantically tried to keep up with all of them.
I could feel sweat pouring down my back. My hands grew clammy, and a droplet flew from the tip of my nose as I tried to remember forms I’d practiced with West and the others in training sessions that felt like years ago. The only thing keeping me alive was the twenty points I’d dumped into my Agility.
The naginata seemed to spin and move almost of its own volition as I tried to watch everywhere, until a blade got through. A sword glanced off my left bracer, pushing my hand slightly out of alignment, and then another bounced off my right greave, stabbing down too quickly. Neither one did any real damage, but as another and another hit me, forcing me back step by step, I felt myself losing control.
More men were joining the fight, the second rank pushing forward to join the first even as I felled another of them. The swordsman barely had time to hit the ground before he was enveloped in white light, and as I lost sight of him behind the advancing troops, I realized that the bastard mage had stopped fleeing. He was healing the men I was fighting!
I stabbed out frantically, overextending in my desire to make sure of the hit, and was rewarded with a stab to my left leg that went through the armor, cutting deep into the flesh and muscles before bouncing off the bone. I groaned in pain and half hopped, half fell back, waving my weapon threateningly.
It had worked, though; they’d all stayed clustered up around the choke point, and just when it felt like I couldn’t keep going any longer, Oracle’s spell flared to life. ‘Cleansing Fire’ roared out, centered on me as it flooded the group of soldiers with flames that immediately began burning into them. The momentary distraction alone allowed me to step back, and I felt the flames climb up my legs. The healing aspect of the spell was almost as welcome as the damage it was doing to the soldiers, as small wounds began to seal themselves up. My HP slowly climbed while the soldiers fought amongst themselves to back away. Most importantly, my leg no longer felt like it wasn’t going to hold my weight.
I resolved not to give them a second chance and lunged forward, stabbing the blade of my naginata up to pierce one man under his chin. The crunch as it broke through his jaw and speared his brain let me know that the mage wasn’t going to be getting this guy back on his feet.
I was wading in amongst them, striking for all I was worth. Weapons shone in what little reflected light there was. Pain flared along my side as a lucky hit got in between the plates of my armor, scoring across the top of my hip. The world devolved into a mess of pain, flashing weapons, screams, and blood, until finally I was standing there alone. ‘Cleansing Fire’ had dissipated, and still I stood, clinging onto my naginata as I heaved in exerted breaths and waited for my mana to refill.
All around me were the bodies of dead and dying soldiers, but the mage and his guard had escaped. As I tried to catch my breath, I stared at the small choke point, and I just knew it was going to suck climbing out there to attack him.
A new sound finally registered over my thundering heartbeat, and I looked to my left, watching the stairwell as Oren and his men ran around the corner. They slowed down, having as much difficulty seeing in the dark as the soldiers had. To their benefit, they’d helped me in here for days, so they soon picked their way across to where I leaned against my weapon. Oren was the first to speak.
“So, laddie, wha’ happened t’ drawin’ ‘em t’ us? And stealthily killin’ ‘em all? You’re a wee bit crap at battle plans; ya know this, aye?”
I just snorted at him and breathed out a sigh of relief as Oracle hit me with a heal. I straightened up and faced the team. Oren, Barrett, Trin, Rikka, and Jian stood around me, weapons at the ready. They nearly began shitting themselves as I tried to come up with a sneaky way to get outside without us all being murdered in the first few seconds, when, wonder of wonders, it stomped into view.
The golem, the next one that had been due to be finished! I’d forgotten about it in the heat of battle and everything else. I’d just told Heph to get it finished and send it to me when it was done! It took less than a minute to give the thing its orders, and then it was off, smashing up the remnants of the ship until there was no choke point left, and instead, Oren and his team were all shielded behind a mobile wall that was carried by the golem. Bob was in place, sending a mental acknowledgement as he clung to the outside of the captain’s quarters just out of sight of the crew.
All that was left was me, and my raging stupidity.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I ran as fast as my limited stamina and wounds would allow. Healing myself as I went, I dashed up the stairs to the next level. As I hurried to gain the next floor, I explained my plan to Seneschal, then attached a length of rope from my inventory to a nearby boulder.
“So, this rope is definitely long enough, right?”
“No. I told you it was as long as we had on hand, and you’d probably survive the fall… it’s not long enough at all.”
“Oh, fuck my life!”
I muttered as I studied the window he’d directed me to. It was small, still blackened by Sporeling crap, and it happened to be the best one for positioning. It also was slowly becoming more and more unsteady as Seneschal removed the stone around it. If it fell outward, there was my last sneaky trick,
wasted.
I took a last breath and checked on Oracle. She’d stayed with Oren and was helping to heal them as the team distracted the remaining guards on the ship. Oren and company had marched out behind the golem and the huge hunk of the ship it carried as a shield. Rikka was firing crossbow bolts at the crew, who were firing back with bows and arrows while the mage was using light-based spells, so they were basically at a standoff. The other crew members on the ship were frantically trying to get its engines back online, or its cannons to bear, and neither was having any kind of success. Every so often, the mage would nail someone with that explosive ball spell he had, and then Oracle would heal everyone, or Rikka would hit one of the crew and the mage would do healing. They were locked into an unsteady tie for now, but I’d called in reinforcements in the shape of the second squad, and they were nearly in place. In the time it had taken me to get to this floor, secure the rope, and finish healing myself, they’d gotten close to the entrance as well.
“They’re here, Jax!”
“Go, go, go!”
As soon as Arrin began slinging Firebolts, I started moving, the end of the rope in one hand and a very urgent need to use the toilet filling my mind. I clambered up onto the ledge, and began prying at the window, digging my fingers in around the edges until I felt it give. I yanked it back and dropped it on the floor inside the tower, making a loud crash and tinkle of breaking glass. I just knew Seneschal disapproved intensely.
Then I looped the rope around me, and using a belay technique, my belt, a bit of metal handily bent by a golem, and a sheer excess of balls, I stepped out to fast walk down the side of the building. Seneschal was right as well, I saw. I was directly over the Airship, facing down.
I slowly let the rope out in my left hand, trying frantically not to slip or let out too much, but equally not able to go too slow at the risk of falling off or dangling, rather than practically jogging as I was.
