by James Hunter
“You think we really have a shot at this, Sphinx?” Dizzy didn't bother to mask her skepticism. The Infiltrator offered them a feral smile, so at odds with her sweet, school-teacher persona.
“This is what I was made for, Diz. It’s going to be dangerous, but with Sam and Bill giving us the inside scoop, I think we have a real shot. For what it’s worth, I think we should take it. Something I haven’t told anyone, but I have an outstanding quest requirement. If I can infiltrate a building or organization with a difficulty rating of Rare or higher, I’ll have a chance to advance in my specialization. The Mage’s College is a Unique organization, so this is perfect for me. Plus, if we pull this off… we save Finn. Also, we get a chance to form the first Wolfman Guild in the game. There’s a lot of risk, but the rewards are more than worth it.”
“Fine. Alright.” Dizzy sighed and rubbed at the bridge of her nose with one hand. She threw up her hands in clear exasperation. “Let’s go rob the College, I guess.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The soft splash of water and the chattering of voices echoed off the slime-coated tunnels deep in the bowels beneath the College. The voices were distorted by distance and the odd acoustics of the sewer, making it nearly impossible to tell what the speakers were saying, but they were drawing closer; that was the important part. Sam crouched in a foul-smelling nook, obscured by the shadows as he waited to trigger his carefully arranged traps which lay scattered through this section of tunnel.
Sam breathed the foul air in deeply—not to calm his nerves but rather to smooth out the jittery burst of excited adrenaline coursing through his veins. Bill thought Sam was scared, but just the opposite was true. He’d never been more excited. Were the stakes high? Sure. Was failure likely? Absolutely.
That made it all the better. This was the gameplay experience he’d come to Eternium for—sneaking through sewers—ambushing guards—raiding strongholds—fighting against the odds with friends at his back. He’d been unsure if breaking away from the College and joining with the Wolfmen had been the right call, but now he knew. This was where he belonged.
A flicker of dancing firelight bounced across the far wall, casting a long and ominous shadow across the wall adjacent to him. The shadowy form looked like some slender ghoul prowling through a graveyard, but Sam knew that was just his imagination at work.
“It’s been oddly quiet,” came the familiar and gruff voice of Geffery the Red—the beefy guard who was as broad as the side of a barn and decked out in silver-edged plate mail. “Haven’t run across a single Jelly yet.”
Sam peeked around the corner, trying to ignore the rancid, gray-green slime brushing up against his cheek. There were no Jellies because Sam and the rest of the Wolf Pack had already cleared the route, taking out the gelatinous creatures and collecting their five entire trash-tier Cores in the process. Since he’d unlocked Coreless Spell Infusion, he didn’t strictly need the cores, but they would certainly fetch a fair price on the open market. Even Cores like these were coveted by Alchemists, Mages, and Enchanters.
The *splish-splash* of feet grew louder, and Geffery came into full view. Cowering behind him was a pair of brown-robed Mages that Sam hadn’t seen before. Either new Novices or some old Apprentices that had gotten on someone’s bad side. Neither looked particularly powerful, though Sam knew from firsthand that it wasn’t wise to underestimate anyone. Ever. Especially not Mages. Underestimating people was how you ended up with a Rogue Mage-turned-Bibliomancer on your hands. Plus, Sam had seen Geffery in a fight, and the guy was as tough and as ruthless as a spool of rust-covered razor-wire.
Unfortunately, there was no sign of Finn, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. The sewer party usually split into two groups—Geffery leading one team and his taciturn partner, Karren the Blade, leading the other. Of the two guards, Karren was the tougher—and arguably the meaner—so if Finn was in her party…
“There’s something wrong in the air, here,” Geffery’s voice drew Sam from his thoughts. “Everyone stay sharp, eh? The Jellies aren’t usually smart enough to lay a trap, but it’s happened before. Once or twice, I reckon.”
There was a soft *click* a moment later as Geffery pushed forward, and Sam felt a rush of exhilaration as the water erupted beneath the guard’s feet with a thunderous roar. The geyser of water rippled in midair, sludgy, brown muck icing over in a flash of azure power. Geffery stumbled back, hollering incoherently as he fumbled for his weapon, searching for an enemy to attack… but there wasn’t one. Not yet. He’d just been unfortunate enough to trigger one of the many Book Bombs Sam had painstakingly lined the bottom of the tunnel with.
Damage dealt: 75 (70 + 5 Ice Orb) Target slowed 12%!
Before Geffery could go more than a few steps, the arctic power creeping through the air brushed icy blue fingers along his armor. A layer of crystalline hoarfrost snaked across his steel cuirass, sending icy tendrils into the pauldrons, vambraces, and greaves, locking up Geffery’s joints and imprisoning the Fighter in a cage made from his own armor. Geffery cursed and fought, raging fruitlessly against armor that now resisted any attempt at movement. One of the Novices accompanying Geffery let out a frantic squawk as he attempted to backpedal… only to step squarely on to a Book Bomb that had been infused with Weak Paralysis.
Damage dealt: 70. Target paralyzed for 0.5 seconds!
Instead of erupting in a geyser of frozen ice, this book vomited a spray of goopy, black ink which crawled over the Mage’s body in fits and starts, gumming his arms and legs to his sides, preventing the young Mage from performing the body and hand gestures necessary to cast even the most basic spells. Too bad it only lasted half a second. At least it was enough to freak the kid out. Luckily, he had been coated in a now-damaged Mage Armor, or that Book Bomb may have killed him off.
“Show yourselves,” the second Mage shrieked, lifting her hands in defense. Purple-tinged darkness pooled around her like a malevolent living shadow, which was something Sam hadn’t seen before. Kai, dressed in a sleeveless judogi, stepped from a narrow alcove adjacent Sam.
“Dudette, I’ll be your huckleberry,” his words were intentionally confusing, and he wore a grin was on his face as he charged, flowing from stance to stance.
“I don’t know who you are, but you just made a very bad choice,” the Mage snarled, thrusting one hand outward. A small forest of razor-sharp spikes exploded from nearby shadows, all trying to skewer Kai like a piece of tasty meat.
The Monk was having absolutely none of it. Kai effortlessly avoided each spike as fast as she could conjure them, flowing between the lances of shadow, closing the distance in an instant. Shock and fear flickered across her face as Kai invaded her guard, lashing out with a flurry of lightning-fast punches, knife hand attacks, and low, sweeping kicks. She was on her heels, desperately trying to bat away his strikes with a gnarled wooden staff that burned with arcane purple light, but Kai was far too fast.
Light flared around the woman as her Mage Armor absorbed a fraction of the damage; her health didn’t budge at all, but then that was simply because Kai wasn’t trying to hurt her. Sam knew he was spamming Quivering Blow over and over, hoping to stun her into inaction.
Speaking of stunning enemies into inaction, Sam had to focus on his own fight. After all, the tank, Geffery, and the ink-covered Mage were only temporarily subdued. The Ice Orb spell would only hold so long, and his Weak Paralysis had
already worn off. Thankfully, he’d come prepared for this encounter. He toggled a new book forward, this one filled with Paper Shurikens that he’d augmented with the Weak Paralysis he’d picked up. The spell, though far from perfect, had a twelve-percent chance to paralyze the target.
With a thought, Sam sent folded star after folded star slicing through the air, first peppering Geffery since he was the larger of the two threats. The Shurikens themselves cut into Geffery’s health, but the man seemed to have more constitution than you could shake a stick at. That was fine because just like Kai, Sam wasn’t going for the kill. Merely the stun. Weak Paralysis triggered with a glimmer of emerald light on the seventh hit, locking up the tank’s body for the next half-second. Unable to hold himself upright, Geffery toppled with a splash of murky water, coming to rest on his back in four inches of standing sludge.
Sam immediately turned his power on the struggling Novice Mage. He caught a lucky break, landing Weak Paralysis with his first Shuriken, sending the kid into the water beside the armor-clad guard who was struggling to his feet.
Sam couldn’t disagree with that. He pulled out his flask and retrieved the most essential item any adventurer could ever carry—heavy-duty rope. By the time he looked up, Sphinx was sitting on Geffery with her dagger a hair away from his eyes. That seemed far more effective than his paralysis.
Getting Geffery up out of viscous water so that they could bind his arms, hands, and ankles was incredibly difficult since the guard weighed about a thousand pounds. Hauling around that much dead weight was nearly impossible for someone with Sam’s level of strength and overall lackluster constitution. Despite his difficulties, Sam and the team managed. With a little expert guidance from Bill, he also tied some world-class knots that not even Geffery would be able to tear his way through. Compared to the beefy, metal-suited goon, the Novice Mage was about a thousand times easier to manhandle since he was scrawny and wore only Mage robes.
By the time Sam finished, it was too late for either of them to do anything but grunt, cuss, and wriggle vainly against their bonds. Even better, Kai had finished off the shadow-wielding Mage, somehow knocking her out cold without killing her. She was hogtied like a pig ready to go to market. As agreed upon before starting the fight, Sam and Kai stayed to secure the prisoners while the rest of the group went ahead to the next point. In what felt like next to no time, Sam and Kai had all three loaded into a dry nook, away from the main sewer line where, hopefully, they would go unnoticed until someone came down and launched a proper search for them.
Then just to be safe, Sam fished out the handful of unspent Book Bombs that hadn’t activated during their tussle with the guards and carefully laid them out across the entryway to the nook harboring the trio. Should the prisoners get loose, the books wouldn’t deter them from escaping, but that wasn’t really their purpose. Hopefully those books would fend off any wayward Jellies Sam and company might’ve missed during their initial sweep of the rancid dungeon.
In theory, the Jellies wouldn’t respawn for a day or more, but Sam still didn’t relish the idea of Geffery and the two Mages dying a slow death at the merciless hands of the slimy creatures. True, Sam had sided with the monsters fighting humanity, but that didn’t mean he had to act like a monster. Task complete, the duo set off at a quick double time, heading toward the planned area where—if things had gone well—they would capture Finn.
As the duo trekked in silence, Sam couldn’t shake the feeling that the other shoe was going to drop any second. This was the Mage’s College. Surely it wouldn’t be so easy to break in, right? True, he’d robbed the Sage’s Section of the library and gotten away scot-free, but that had to be a fluke. Right? The Mage’s College was one of the most powerful and dastardly organizations in Eternium. After what had happened in the library, Sam had to imagine they would be on high alert. Yet he found no traps, no extra patrols, no alarms bells shrieking… nothing out of the ordinary.
The rest of the trek was made in contemplative silence. They found Dizzy and the others waiting at the rendezvous, no sign of Karren the Blade—Geffery’s counterpart—or the other enemy Mage, but Sam broke out into a manic grin when he caught sight of one new addition to the party—a gangly boy with a wiry frame, an unruly head of corn-silk hair, and a set of glasses perched on a hawkish nose. Finn! The other boy had his back turned toward Sam, hands folded behind him as he talked with Dizzy. He was none the wiser when Sam sacked him from behind like a linebacker, then lifted him up, squeezing him in a bearhug.
“Gah! I’m being attacked! Someone help me!” The ice Mage flapped and flailed his legs wildly. Sam set him down and spun him around, his grin widening.
“Sam! I can’t believe it’s really you!” Finn yelled, a smile, equal parts shock and joy, working its way across his face. “I mean… when Dizzy told me you were here, I just couldn’t believe it. I’m touched, truly, that you’d come back for me. But I have to ask—are you mad? Honestly, you shouldn’t be in a ten-mile radius of this place or even in the city if you had any sense at all. Instead, I find out you’re waging a personal war against the College itself. It’s certainly bold, I’ll give you that, but what would possess you to do something like this? What are you thinking? You can't go against the College! I… I can't let you.”
“What am I thinking?” Sam stepped back, holding Finn at arm’s length. He studied the other boy’s face. This close in, it was easy to see the puffy, purple bags hanging like plums beneath Finn’s eyes. The crack splitting his bottom lip. How pale and waxy his skin was. “I’m thinking that I don’t leave friends behind. I’m thinking that I don’t let bullies walk all over me. Not anymore. Back before Eternium, there was a guy I knew… He was a petty jerk, a bully who treated me like a welcome mat for most of my life. I didn’t stand up to him, but I’ve decided that I won’t let anyone treat me that way again. What is the Mage’s College if not a giant, institutionalized version of a bully?”
“I’m done letting them have their way. I might lose, but I’m going to fight back no matter what. I also happen to think that you’re thinking too small, Finn. Me? I’m not just waging war against the College. I’m waging war against humanity itself. The College didn’t get this way without a lot of other people being complicit, allowing it to happen under their noses. There’s a war coming—if it’s not already here—and me and the rest of the Wolf Pack have decided we’re going to be on team Wolfman.”
“The Wolfmen?” Finn visibly blanched. He muttered un
der his breath while running a grimy hand through his hair. “But that’s treason, Sam. Do you understand? Treason. With a capital ‘T’. We could all be executed for even having this conversation.”
“You’re right. Which is why you still have a choice, Finn. You didn’t agree to this. Not to any of it. Eternium is your home, your world, your life. So, if you don’t want to join us, I’ll tie you up with the others. You’ll get another slap on the wrist for failing to stop us, but you won’t hang by the neck in the town square.”
Finn faltered, pondering. “But why? Why the Wolfmen of all people?”
Sam smiled. “Why not? I mean, they showed me more mercy than the College ever has, and all they’re trying to do is survive. They don’t want to subjugate us; they want to be free. That’s something I can get on board with. Plus, they’ve offered us a place, Finn. A guild. A charter. Access to books, knowledge, and resources that not even the Mage’s College can get their dirty hands on. Best of all, no Accords. It’s a risk, but one that lets us be on the ground floor of something epic.”
Finn stepped away, crossing his arms across his chest. Clearly, Finn was uncomfortable with this, and Sam couldn’t blame him. He was asking Finn to throw everything away, not just to stand up to a bully but to turn his back on his whole life.
“You mentioned The Accords,” Finn spoke after a time. “Even if the Wolfmen don’t have The Accords, I’ve already signed them once. I can’t just leave the College. The Accords give us reason, structure. We can't just throw them away. I can’t let that happen.”
