The Orb of Wrath (The Merchant's Destiny Book 1)

by Nic Weissman

  “Right. You were lucky not to have taken a direct hit. It would have killed you in less than three seconds. I've done everything I could for you. We can only wait and cross our fingers. If the poison did not penetrate into your bloodstream, you'll find yourself perfectly well in a few minutes,” the cleric explained.

  “And otherwise?” Erion asked worried.

  “Well, let’s not think of that scenario,” Ithelas said.

  It was the longest ten minutes of Mithir's life. He couldn't imagine what he'd do without his brother. In the last six years they had faced some important dangers together. But he could not remember ever having such a critical situation.

  Thost and Samar tried to make conversation, talking about what they would do with their share of the treasure when they were back at home. There was still much to do, but it was the way they believed they could distract the others, especially Erion. However, the young man did not think anything of it. In fact, for some reason, he wasn't worried. He sensed that his end had not arrived; he still had plenty to do.

  Time passed, and the pain in his leg was subsiding. Finally, he stood. The ten minutes had expired. Mithir snorted very relieved. Ithelas separated the bandage again and found that the wound had improved dramatically. Now it looked like a common scratch and the blackened color of the skin had disappeared. Everything was fine; they could continue.

  Erion demanded he continue leading the group, despite the insistent complaints from the others, especially Mithir. No one could convince him. He returned to the hatch and pulled the arrows out, one by one. He didn't want anyone to get scratched by them accidentally. Then he opened the hatch and used a small hand mirror to see what was in the room. The spiral staircase continued to the lower level, and there it ended. The room had no furniture but several statues. It was dark and Erion could barely make out the shapes, with the little light that came from the lab.

  “Ithelas, light a torch,” he requested.

  The cleric did as he was told and passed the torch to Erion. The young man approached the opening of the hatch and could see that the room had only one door, which was locked. He dropped the torch to the lower room and was able to verify that there was nobody there. The entire group descended after Erion. They placed a torch in a holder on a wall. That seemed the only way out, and they wanted to ensure they could return to it fast. The strange room was virtually empty. The only furniture that was in it was a wooden chair with thin legs. Probably it wouldn't hold the weight of one of them, though perhaps maybe the magician's or the elf's.

  Erion reviewed the door and tried to open it. It was locked, but only with a conventional lock that did not prove to be a problem. By opening it, he saw that it led to a dark hallway. Mithir cast a spell on his cane and held it to Erion, who used it to illuminate for just a moment. After checking it out, he came back into the room and closed the door.

  “It's a hallway. It has five other doors on this side, four on the opposite side and a larger one at the bottom. Everything seems to be completely dark at this level, so we need light,” he explained.

  “It's time to do a quick recognition work,” Ithelas said, invoking a new enchantment.

  “I can help,” Mithir said, as he cast another spell.

  They both left the hall and stopped only briefly in front of each door and then they returned. Ithelas came in pale.

  “The two middle doors on the other side of the aisle have a magical protection,” the magician said. “I have not detected other auras.”

  “Behind these two doors there are several undead, maybe four or five. They are powerful, especially one. Behind the door down the hall there are many, many undead. They aren't so powerful, but there may be more than thirty of them,” he said very seriously.

  “Ok. I'll try to check the other rooms, avoiding what you have seen. Wait here and stay tuned for if I call you,” Erion said.

  Nobody wanted to let him go alone. They all insisted on going together but Erion's arguments weighed heavily.

  “The best way to avoid the danger is to find the box without waking the vampires,” the young man said, assuming that they would find more than one, after what they had learned in the bestiary. “Now we have daylight, and they should be resting. No one can move as silently as me and, if you come with me, we run the risk of being heard. You will cause problems instead of helping,” insisted Erion.

  In the end they had to give in, and Erion left alone. They left the door ajar and Samar waited, her ears tuned, very attentively. Erion checked the four rooms that were on that side of the aisle. The first was a kind of study devoted to astronomy. The furnishings were similar to the ones upstairs. On the walls different nocturnal maps were hung, representing different stars and constellations. There were a couple of well-lit tables and, on one of them, various types of telescopes and other astronomical tools. There was also a small bookcase full of books exclusively on constellations and stars, all much worn.

  After looking for the box unsuccessfully, Erion moved to the next room. It was like a small museum. The hall was crowded with display cases of various sizes in which coins, seal rings and a small scale were exhibited. Most of the coins were silver or bronze. Erion realized that the gold coins he had seen in the library upstairs should belong to the same collection and were probably the most valuable objects of it. These downstairs ones had a much lower economic value. It was obvious that there lived or had lived, someone with great passion for numismatics.

  The young man went to the next room. It was a study. There were two tables on opposite corners of the room that would have been ideal to write letters or read. The rest of the walls of the room were covered with large shelves almost completely filled with books of all kinds. It was like a subsection of the library upstairs. He also didn't find the box here, nor anything that seemed of particular value.

  The next door led to a map room. It had maps of all types and colors, all carefully framed. Most of them were hanging on the walls. In the center of the room there were a couple of display cases containing some particularly old ones. There was a table in a corner to check maps, with magnifying lenses of different kinds and scales. Erion opened the display cases in the center of the room, and after folding carefully what was in there, placed it in his bag and left the place.

  The last door on the left side of the aisle was made of very resistant steel. It had a small rectangular window with a grille. This allowed him to look out to see what was on the other side without opening it. It was a dirty, dank hallway without any ornamentation. It seemed as if a completely different area of the building started there. Erion didn't think that the treasure was that way. It didn't seem a very suitable area to preserve valuable objects for a long time.

  "However it would be better to go and check," the young man thought.

  Erion abandoned the idea after checking the hinges. They were pretty rusty. If he tried to open, although doing so with the utmost care, it would make a lot of noise. It didn't seem to be the wisest course of action. He crossed the hall back toward the other end. He avoided the rooms where they expected to find enemies and headed towards the last one he had yet to check. It was almost opposite the room where the rest of the group waited.

  The door had a beautiful design mixing wooden pieces of different shades; it was very elegant. It didn't have any traps, nor was closed. He went inside. He was in a beautiful and cozy lounge, with multiple artworks. It seemed like the room they had found on the top floor and Erion thought that they had probably taken some of the upstairs furniture to decorate it, because they were of the same type. The room also had paintings of a similar quality but these had darker themes, such as landscapes at night, a black dragon attacking a city or a battlefield strewn with corpses. Although the scenes were less gentle, the quality of the paintings was remarkable and he could get good money for them.

  He returned to the room in which the group waited impatiently and told them everything he had seen; no sign of the treasure, no trace of the box.

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nbsp; “We still have to explore the last door; the hallway you talked about,” Ithelas said.

  “I seriously doubt that the treasure is there,” Erion said. “Trust me.”

  “But then, where is it?” Samar asked.

  “We have to face the inevitable,” Thost said. “The vampire may have saved the treasure near the crypt, where he can better protect it.”

  “It's possible,” Erion confirmed. “In any case, we have explored all the other options that make sense. We're assaulting his crypt.”

  The young man's words were ringing in the air. It was the moment everyone had feared and they were now about to have to face it. They began to prepare. Ithelas had made a kind of porridge in the valley by crushing several garlic and mixing it with a little flour and oil. They rubbed their bodies with it, especially in the neck. Samar checked her arrows and left them separated in two different groups. Everyone had a small wooden stake at hand on their belt.

  They quietly left the room and went to the first door. Erion began checking it, while Ithelas put a string of garlic hanging in the other two. The young man confirmed that there weren't any traps and that it was not closed, but he still couldn't open it. As Mithir had stated, the door was sealed with magic. The young magician used the same spell that he had needed some time before to open the lab and pounded it with his cane, rattling the wall slightly. The crypt was open.

  They were in a stone room in the middle of which there were five large sarcophagi arranged like the vertex of a pentagon. Long candelabra that reached the ground lit the four corners of the room with a dim yellow light.

  Without wasting any time, Mithir and Erion went ahead to the first sarcophagus followed by the others. Each one took an end of the lid that covered it and started to move it sideways, slowly. It was really heavy. When they had had uncovered half of it, they saw that a beautiful girl around her low thirties was lying there. Her skin had a strange and unnatural color. Thost, who awaited the opening of the lid, did not hesitate a moment and thrust the wooden stake in his hand in the heart of the girl. She suddenly opened her eyes. They were terrible eyes, full of fury. She opened her mouth and muffled a groan and that was when they saw two huge fangs sticking out. The vampire reached up, as if trying to grab them, and then fell limp in the coffin.

  They moved to the second sarcophagus. Mithir and Erion repeated the maneuver with the lid but, as they displaced it slightly, a hand with slender fingers grabbed the wrist of the looter from the inside. The hand was ice cold and left Erion stunned for a moment. The young man pulled hard on the lid and the monstrous creature stood up immediately. Fortunately Thost was ready with his stake and drove it furiously on the chest of the vampire, which was destroyed instantly.

  While this was happening, the lids of the other three coffins opened at the same time and three wrathful vampires were coming out of them. The first approached Samar and gave her a tremendous slap in the face. The elf stumbled and fell down a couple of steps back, bleeding from her sore mouth. The second vampire moved decisively towards Ithelas, while the third had grabbed Thost from behind. They moved very fast, with great agility. The knight tried to escape but the vampire was stronger. The beast opened her impious mouth showing her fangs and nearly drove them hard in Thost's neck. At the last moment she withdrew her mouth as she smelled the garlic cream, but without releasing the knight.

  The situation seemed hopeless when Ithelas cast his spell. The whole room lit up with a bright light as if they were on the coast of Bor on a summer afternoon. The contrast with the poor lighting in the cellar had blinded them for a moment. Thost noticed as the beast released him. The three vampires threw the most horrifying screams they had ever heard. A horrible fishy stench filled the room.

  Thost saw enough to guess the position of his opponent and nailed the stake urgently. Mithir rushed to Samar's aid, who had been in a bad position. Erion took his hand crossbow, and raised it pointing to where he had seen the vampire running toward the cleric. He blinked constantly, trying to get used to the light. He could make out the silhouette of the undead trying to cover her face with her hands. Erion saw his chance and shot. The arrow buried itself in the chest of the vampire, who fell to her knees. But he wasn't finished with her. She still moved.

  After helping Samar to her feet, Mithir cast his projectiles spell, impacting with all of them the vampire who had been kneeling. After the last of them the monster fell to the ground and then went up in smoke. They knew what that meant. They had not been able to end her. The evil creature would wander in a gaseous state looking for a safe place in the castle and, hours later, recover her form and energy.

  The daylight spell was over. The last vampire stopped covering her face. Her skin, pale and smooth before, was torn as if she had leprosy in an advanced stage. It was really unpleasant. She was furious. She moved quickly to Erion when they saw an arrow nailed in the middle of her chest. She stopped, saw the arrow and then looked at them and laughed again. So the magician made a gesture that imploded the arrow, destroying much of the upper body of the monster, who also became smoke and disappeared.

  The two would not be back in at least a couple of hours. This gave them some time. Everyone looked at Samar. She still seemed dazed and blood was pouring out of the corner of her mouth because of the blow; but this had not prevented her from reaching her target. They heard a loud noise outside. They ran. There was no point staying there because neither the box nor the treasure were in that room.

  The big door down the hall, like of the other two rooms that they had avoided until now, were open. Through the front door they could hear many strange and unpleasant sounds: roars, groans, screeches, clicks. A lot of forms began to emerge over the threshold. First, four horrible corpses appeared. Their bodies were damaged, corrupted, but they had strange musculature. It was almost as if the muscles were in the air. They had no hair and their skin was very thin, almost nonexistent, and gray.

  “Kaltas!” Ithelas exclaimed. “Don't let them touch you,” he added.

  Just behind the kaltas came a large group of skeletons. They were armed with swords or axes, and most wielded shields; some also helmets. Behind the skeletons there were several zombies. Their bodies were partially decomposed. Some lacked a body part and had big tears in their flesh. They still had remnants, pure rags, of some clothing that they might have worn in life. Some were carrying sticks and others were empty-handed. In total there were about twenty five undead walking slowly towards them.

  Ithelas threw his hand to his chest and pulled out a large amulet, showing the figure of a golden sun. After removing it from his neck he held his hand in front. His face had a determination as they had never seen before. Samar, who had always regarded him as a brother, thought then that she'd never seen him so attractive. The cleric recited his prayer in a loud voice.

  “Beasts of darkness,

  Dwellers of hell,

  Worshipers of evil,

  Hear my command.

  By the power granted by Oris to the Sun God

  I command you to go back into the abyss of where you come.”

  The amulet began to flash and they heard as the undead covered their eyes and screamed. Then, most of the skeletons began collapsing, their bones breaking and separating. Soon after, their bodies had been reduced to small piles on the floor. Only two skeletons survived. The large group had been reduced by half, but they still had a dozen enemies moving towards them.

  While Ithelas said his prayer, Mithir had been preparing a spell, which he completed almost at the same moment when the cleric finished his prayer. A fireball shot out against the group of enemies and exploded, causing a huge roar that slightly shook the foundations of the building. The flames reached the entire compact group of enemies; however, they did not stop. Four of the zombies had their bodies wrapped in flames and fell to the ground. The two remaining skeletons didn't survive either.

  Samar immediately drew her bow. An arrow pierced one of the kaltas of the front line, but it didn't end it. E
rion did the same with his crossbow, but didn't reach any of his targets. Thost had advanced a step with respect to the group and waited with his sword and shield.

  Despite the slow progress, the group of gruesome enemies had covered half the distance between them. Aware of this, everyone began to take small steps backwards to gain ground and time, preserving the advantage they had with their ranged attacks, and meanwhile preparing their next shots.

  Mithir repeated a second fireball attack. The young magician knew it was time to empty their firepower if they wanted to survive. The explosion made, again, a huge roar, ending with the remaining zombies and the kaltas that Samar had attacked. They still had three kaltas left, who were very close. They saw appear in the doorway two more kaltas and, just behind them, two strange figures, like blackened silhouettes.

  Ithelas prepared a spell and as he concluded it, a huge warhammer appeared floating in the air just in front of the kaltas that were almost beside them. Samar decided to switch to a more aggressive tactic and, taking one of her special arrows, shot at close range at one of those standing next to them, blowing it up a moment later. Erion fired his crossbow on one of the kaltas and reached his target, but without finishing it off. Thost moved half a step and, being careful not to get too close, attacked the kalta with his sword, but the enemy managed to dodge the attack.

  That's when the putrid stench of kaltas hit their noses. Everyone started to feel horrible nausea. They could hardly contain their stomachs. If they had eaten something they would probably have vomited. The flying hammer hit a blow on one of the kaltas, moving it away slightly. The other, who was very close to Thost, pounced on him and managed to scratch his arm. Under normal conditions, the knight probably could have stopped the blow with his shield, but the nausea he felt had diminished his reflexes. The scratch produced an effect that surprised Erion and his brother, but not Ithelas. Thost froze, petrified. He couldn't move. Meanwhile the other two kaltas and the shadows had covered much of the distance between them. The situation was complicating.