by Steve McHugh
“It’s the name of the demon,” Brigg said without looking over at us, totally ignoring Remy’s comment.
I put the scroll into the trunk. “I think the rest of it’s probably best left unread, then.”
As we finished, Brigg was drawing runes on the wall in charcoal. “I know what they did to seal the room. I’m going to unseal it, which will cause the wall to open. They actually used alchemy to create this room, so I’m going to use the same method to destroy it.”
“Just do it,” I said.
Brigg placed his hand on the wall and it shimmered golden before parting to show the hallway beyond.
“Simple,” Brigg said with a level of smug satisfaction.
I dragged the trunk out of the room and dropped it on the floor.
“An elf exploded,” Diane said. “It just appeared out of nowhere, spread all over the place. I assume you did that.”
I noticed the fresh blood spray and lumps of unpleasant-looking meat that had once been an elven commander spattered all over. I guess my assumption had been correct.
“Sorry about that. Not quite used to the new magic.”
“Do you want to call the rest of your troops back?” I said to Brigg. “We can get going.”
Brigg walked off without another word.
“What’s wrong with him?” Remy asked.
“He was expecting more fighting,” Adam explained. “I think he’s disappointed that there hasn’t been more bloodshed.”
“He’ll get his chance, I’m sure of that,” Diane told him. “So how do we get out of here with a trunk full of scrolls? The way we came in through the top of the building isn’t exactly friendly anymore.”
“We need to get those addresses first,” Adam said. “And then we’ll figure something out, I guess.”
“There’s another way,” Brigg said as he returned with the dwarves. “On the floor below us, part of the floor is built into the mountain itself. We could use our alchemy to tunnel through it, creating a way to escape, but there’s going to be a lot of noise, and that means a lot of blood elves to clear out first. There’s a good reason we haven’t done this before.”
“I’d better go for those addresses then,” Adam said.
“We’ll wait here for you,” I told him. “But be quick: we can’t afford to hang around.”
Irkalla, Zamek, and Adam ran off together, and I was pretty certain that whatever they ran into they’d be able to deal with. The remainder of us took a few moments to rest before the eventual fighting. If Brigg wanted more elves to kill, I was certain he was about to get his wish.
CHAPTER 32
Adam, Zamek, and Irkalla returned after only a few minutes. “There was nothing there,” Adam told us. “The runes were on a locked room. Zamek managed to disarm the runes, but we got inside and it was all gone. At some point there might have been something, but the runes had been created to destroy whatever was inside.”
“Whoever had done it really hadn’t wanted those addresses in elven hands,” Zamek said. “There’s no way to salvage anything.”
“Any chance there are more elsewhere?” Remy asked.
“If there are, they’re either hidden from my power somehow, or it’s not a scroll. Something outside of what I’ve been thinking those realm-gate tablet addresses would be on.”
It was a crushing blow, but something to work on when we were safely back in the city.
We dragged the trunk all the way across to the east wing. The few blood elves we saw ran rather than fought, something everyone who had been around them for a lot longer than I had found strange.
I placed the trunk near to where the dwarves were going to work, in a quickly emptied room. Brigg wasn’t thrilled about being separated from the scrolls, but it was either that or risk the possibility of them being destroyed by the shifting walls and rock beyond.
The sound was deafening, and those who weren’t helping to tunnel out of the library quickly left the room and prepared for whatever might come our way. Diane, Irkalla, Remy, Zamek, Birik, Udthulo, and I made quite the dangerous team. Even Adam stood alongside us, and while I didn’t think finding an item was going to come in too handy in a fight, I was grateful for any help we could get.
When the blood elves came, it started with a rumble of the ground that intensified, and I rolled my shoulders in preparation. The rumble grew in strength, and I noticed everyone else in the group flexing their shoulders or bouncing from foot to foot. Armored boots landed on the stairs, and I was ready for what was about to happen. The elves spilled out of the stairwell like soldier ants leaving their nest.
I ducked a spear slash and drove one of my swords up into the blood elf’s gut, twisting it and pulling the sword out, then taking the elf’s head before he hit the floor. A second and third elf tried to pin me in the stairwell, so I turned and leapt down the first part of the stairs to the landing just below. The elves followed me, but one of them got reckless and tried to leap for me. He was dead before he’d hit the floor. Another used my diverted attention to throw a hatchet at me, which I only just avoided in time. But I couldn’t avoid the third elf’s sword as it cut across my arm.
I sliced through the elf’s leg just above the knee and stabbed him in the neck as he fell. I was about to run back up the stairs when three more elves appeared at the mouth of the stairwell. Two came up from below. I was trapped, and really didn’t want to fight so many elves in such a small place, so I jumped down on the two below me, surprising them and knocking them to the ground, a sword in each of their chests.
I rolled off the elves, dodging a knife that whistled past my head, and kept moving until I was around the corner of the stairwell. I waited until I saw the first elf and rammed my sword into his throat, killing him instantly, then kicked him back into his two comrades. They pushed the body aside and came toward me.
I parried the first attack with ease, punching the elf in the face and pushing him into a group of his allies. Two more elves took his place to fight me, the attacks flowing quickly, forcing me to block and parry between them. I jumped back, swirling the shadows beneath their feet, then impaling the two elves with hundreds of spikes.
I removed the magic and the two bodies fell back to the ground with a dull thud. I took a moment to rest against a nearby pillar before heading for the stairs.
“Funny seeing you here.”
I turned and sprinted at the voice, the need to kill enraging me. “Kay!” I screamed as I closed the gap between us.
A sword of blood magic appeared in Kay’s hand, and he parried my strike, then punched me in the ribs with his free hand.
The blood magic that encased his fist caused me to cry out in pain.
“Did you miss me, Nate?” He smiled. “I knew you’d survived, and that you’d been transported here. Shame that, unlike me, you don’t have a means to get home. I’ll think about your death occasionally when I need to smile.”
“Think on this!” Shadow poured out of the ground, slamming into Kay, and threw him back against the nearest wall. I stood and looked over at one of the men responsible for my being here.
“How long have you been working with Mara?” I asked.
“You know about the witch?” Kay said. He spat blood onto the floor. “I’m impressed. You should have died back at the house. I got into trouble for failing that task.”
“Who are you working for?”
“If you want that information, you’ll have to catch me.”
He turned to run, but I tripped him with shadow. “Yeah, I don’t see the problem there.”
“I see you’ve learned some new tricks.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve learned, Kay. I’ve learned that you are a nasty, traitorous piece of filth. I’ve learned that you’ve allied yourself with Hera.” I took a shot at the last sentence, wondering if I was right.
His laughter told me I wasn’t.
“Hera? Oh, Nate, I don’t work for Hera. Nice try, though. You really think Hera, of all people, is the
top of the food chain? She would have tried to crush Avalon a thousand times over if she’d been in charge.”
His words just confirmed what Brigg had told me. Hera was working for someone else. Someone even more powerful, with even more influence.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m not about to tell you anything, Nathan.”
I wrapped shadows around Kay and tried pulling him down into my shadow realm, but my magic wouldn’t take him. “You don’t even understand how your magic works, do you?” he mocked. “You can’t take a sorcerer into a shadow realm, Nathan. You really should learn how to use it before trying things like that.”
I wrapped the shadows tighter squeezing the life out of Kay. “That works, though.”
“I’m just the go-between,” he wheezed, struggling for a second, a look of panic in his eyes. “I bring messages from Hera here to this realm, and take them back to her. That’s it.”
“How do you jump between realms? By tablet, by any chance?”
He nodded.
“I thought you don’t work for Hera?”
“I don’t, but after you managed to disrupt our plans in Avalon, I was punished for my failure. You can gloat now.”
“I’ll gloat when you’re dead. Which will be in about thirty seconds.” I removed the shadow magic and stepped away. “You think you have the guts to fight me, Kay?”
“I am unarmed.”
“You’re a sorcerer; you’re never unarmed. But if you really need to feel better—” I picked up one of the blood-elf swords and tossed it over to him. “—pick it up.”
“You trust me not to use magic? How sporting.”
“Not really, but here’s the thing: I’m more powerful than you. We both know it, especially now, with my shadow magic. You can use your blood magic, or try to use anything else you’ve learned, but I’ll still kill you. At least with a sword you have a chance. Even a slim one.”
“You hate me so much that you want to watch me die, don’t you?”
“Yes.” It was an easy thing to admit. “I hate you, Kay. I’ve always disliked you, but you threatened my friends and those I love. And for that I’m going to cut you into tiny pieces and nail the rest of you to the wall.”
Kay picked up the sword and threw a fireball at my face at the same time, followed by a plume of flame that I didn’t even bother to avoid. I just wrapped myself in the shadows, and walked through the shadow realm. A second later I came out just a few feet behind Kay. The bolt of lightning that left my hand skewered him through the back, sending him flying across the room.
He hit the floor and spun, throwing lumps of rock at me, collapsing the wall beside me. My air magic caused the rock to fall away and I dove back into the shadows again. But this time I felt sluggish, as if walking at half-speed, and I came out of a shadow nowhere near where I wanted to be, only a foot away from where I’d entered. Apparently there was a finite amount of times I could access the realm without causing myself serious problems.
“Interesting fighting technique,” Kay taunted as he threw blades of blood magic at me.
I deflected them with a shield of air, and created a sphere of air in my hand. I ran toward Kay, who used the stone of the library to put up his own shield. At the last second, I ignited the lightning magic, and poured it into the sphere, causing it to crackle as I drove it into the rock. The rock shield exploded.
At the same moment, I wrapped myself in air, ignoring the shards of rock that bounced off it, and kept on moving forward, creating a second sphere, this one of pure air, and slammed it into Kay as the dust and debris rained around us.
Kay flew back into the window, which splintered, the sounds of the blood elves far below streaming through the small cracks in the glass. I wrapped air around Kay and squeezed it tightly, before throwing him behind me. He bounced along the ground, until he collided with one of the pillars. The dark-blue shirt he’d been wearing was torn to pieces, and his chest was one large, bloody, open wound. It was a shame I hadn’t been able to hit him with the lightning sphere as it probably would have torn him in half.
I stalked over to Kay as he threw out weak blood-magic blades again, easily avoided, and countered with a whip of lightning that tore across his back and legs.
Kay screamed out in pain, and rolled onto his back. “Please!”
I created a blade of fire and stood above him. “‘Please?’ How many times have you heard that word and still killed? Still hurt people? How many people have begged you to stop?”
His eyes moved slightly to look at something behind me, but the fear remained. I turned to fight the newcomer, but was struck in the chest by an open palm. I had never been hit so hard in my life. A few ribs broke from the blow as my feet left the floor and I flew back into the furthest wall, my head striking the brick and causing me to see spots.
“Kay, get up,” the hooded man said.
“You’re the one the dwarves have been talking about,” I said. I tried to stand up, but he kicked me in the chest, and almost broke every bone in there. “Who are you?” I eventually managed to gasp, while my magic tried to knit my bones back together.
Kay launched himself toward me, and the hooded man grabbed him by the neck and lifted him from the ground. “I can see why you don’t like Kay,” he said to me, barely acknowledging that he was one-handedly holding a fully grown human male two feet off the ground.
“He’s . . . an . . . asshole,” I eventually managed. Just breathing hurt; speaking wasn’t something I could do a lot of.
“Can’t stay—sorry.” He tossed Kay to the floor. “Get going, Kay.”
Kay stared at me for several seconds, seemingly overflowing with unbridled rage, but he left anyway. The hooded man pulled back the hood to reveal a bald head and sharp features. He had a long, almost golden beard, and blue eyes that reminded me of a Siberian husky.
“I was told that Kay and some of his friends had taken it upon themselves to kill you. Clearly they weren’t up to the task. But, if I let you live, you’re going to come after me, disrupt my plans, and generally be a pain. So, while I have nothing against you, you need to die.”
He took a few steps toward me when Brigg charged out of the stairwell, his ax raised high. The mystery man dodged the blow, grabbed hold of Brigg by the top of his head, and crushed it like a grape. He picked up the ax as Brigg’s body fell and threw it at the next dwarf to leave the stairwell. The dwarf crumpled to the floor, and I wondered how many more this murderer would kill before he was stopped.
I channeled everything I had, putting every last bit of the soul I’d taken from the blood elf into it, and blasted Brigg’s murderer with enough air to take him off his feet and out of the window. I managed to limp to the broken window despite the pain, and watched him hit the ground far below. I doubted I could have survived a headfirst drop from this high, but he was soon on his feet, albeit swaying from side to side.
Diane, Irkalla, and Remy ran down the stairwell, all three covered in blood and nursing wounds. Diane stood beside me and allowed me to lean on her.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” I told Adam and Zamek, the latter of whom was nursing a nasty cut across one eye.
“He wasn’t my friend,” Zamek said. “He was just an old man who tried to do the right thing. He deserved better.”
“The tunnel is done,” Adam told us.
“And I doubt the blood elves will let us rest for long,” Diane said. “We’ve lost a lot of people here. Let’s not add to it.”
Udthulo stood at the foot of the stairs. “I’ve finished with the wounded. Birik is hurt badly.”
Zamek closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Let’s go look at him.”
We all walked back up the stairs, Diane helping me. “Thanks,” I said when we got to the top.
“I thought we’d lost you,” she whispered.
“Not here. Not to these creatures.” I managed to force a smile, but it was soon erased when I saw the carnage. Body parts and blood saturated the w
hole area. One of Brigg’s dwarves sat slumped against a pillar, over a dozen blades in his body, and a litter of bodies at his feet. He’d gone down swinging.
Birik was laying on the floor of the room where the new tunnel had been created. He’d been hit in the chest with something heavy. His armor was badly dented, and part of it had pierced his skin. He was slipping into unconsciousness, and would die without help.
“Commander with a maul,” Udthulo said by way of explanation.
Adam kneeled beside him. “Most of his ribs are broken, but his lungs are still inflated. Chalk one up for the dwarven physiology. He’s not going to be able to walk anywhere, though.”
“We’ll carry him,” Udthulo said and after a lot of maneuvering, we managed to get Birik carried piggyback-style.
“Let’s go,” I said after feeling the ground shudder beneath my feet.
Even with the wounded, we made good time through the new tunnel, then Zamek collapsed it behind us. My magic had managed to heal my ribs enough so that I could walk and breathe without feeling like I was on fire.
We came out close to the bridge, which was empty, allowing us to cross without incident. Irkalla carried the trunk the whole way. We were all determined to get back to Sanctuary as quickly as possible. We’d lost a lot of good people in the library. I was damned if we were going to lose anyone who was already depending on us.
CHAPTER 33
We hadn’t the time for me to take the soul of any dead blood elves, so I was unable to use my necromancy to heal up. On the plus side, I heal fast, even for a sorcerer, so by the time we’d made it back to Sanctuary, my ribs were almost back to normal. They didn’t cause agony anymore, but they were sore to the touch, and would probably be that way for several hours.
Birik made it back to Sanctuary alive, but it was a close call, and as the gates were opened, there were still large numbers of dwarves at the top, just like there had been when we’d left. We saw no evidence of fighting, but from the expressions on several of the dwarves’ faces, and their inability to meet my eyes, I immediately wondered what had happened.
