“You aren’t supposed to,” Talia said. She walked between the two statues and studied the stone wall behind them. She pointed to a rune carved into one of the stones. She created a small fireball and hit the rune stone. The rune started to glow a bright orange and then a section of the wall lifted and revealed a hidden door.
Behind the door was a narrow set of stairs which went down.
Stann looked over at Jack, who nodded at him. Stann then started down the stairs.
Jack followed him, casting an illumination spell that brightened the staircase. The illumination spell had a range of twenty feet before the light started to dim. For larger rooms he could increase the mana, but in the current situation the light was more than enough to make out where they were going.
The stairs turned but kept going down. They went down three flights of stairs before coming to another room. This room had bodies in it. But they weren’t lying on the floor. They were standing stiff in full armor. It looked like the warriors had died at their posts, two at each of the three hallways into the room and two more standing beside a large stone table in the middle of the room. It seemed strange to Jack to think that someone could die standing at attention. Perhaps some magic spell had been cast on them, freezing them in place. The skeletons were obviously old—there were no remnants of flesh, just the bones and armor. Stann walked into the middle of the room, starting to inspect the skeletons standing there.
“Creepy,” Stann said. “I wonder how long they’ve been like this. What did they die protecting?”
Suddenly, one of the skeletons moved. It raised its sword and took a swing at Stann, who was looking at the other skeleton on the other side of the table.
“Look out!” Jack yelled.
Stann turned and raised his shield, blocking the skeleton warrior’s attack. “What in the seven hells?”
“Skellies,” Jack said, remembering what Colin had told him about the undead that still roamed the Ancient Lands.
“Whatever they are, they’re all moving,” Lana said. “What do we do?”
“Fight,” Jack said.
Lana fired an arrow into one of the skellies. The arrow went right through it.
“Aim for the skulls,” Talia said. “Knock their heads off.”
Stann smashed the skellie closest to him in the head. It knocked the helmet and skull right off the animated skeleton. The rest of it collapsed to the ground.
Jack fired an ice shard into the second skellie that hit it high in the chest. The skellie slowed and it started to turn blue as ice crystals formed on its chest. Jack shot another shard at it and the skellie exploded. He then checked the health and mana of his teammates. His first instinct had been to keep attacking, but the training with Instructor Brazee was starting to kick in. His primary role was to assist his companions. He saw that Talia was using a flame attack against the animated skeletons that was reducing her magical mana reserves fast. He cast a direct spell on her to help recharge her mana. He kept a close eye on everyone else’s health. They were all in good shape so he kept charging Talia. It was draining his own mana, but not at a risky rate.
Talia hit the last skellie with a fireball and it fell to the ground, burning.
“Clear,” Stann said.
Jack glanced around the room. They’d dispatched all of the animated skeletons without taking any damage. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Talia picked up the helmet of one of the skellies and examined it. She shrugged and threw it into her satchel. Jack and the group had decided that the two magic satchels would be carried by Lana and Stann, giving them quick access to a large number of arrows and bolts for their respective weapons. As magic users, Jack and Lana relied more on potions and the bandoliers they wore carried more than enough.
“I’ve never seen an animated corpse before,” Stann said as he kicked at the piles of skeleton bones.
“Me either,” Jack said. “But Colin warned us about them. We should expect to see more like these.”
“They aren’t too bad. We beat these pretty easily.”
“If you’d bothered to look at your handbook, you’d know animated skeletons are the easiest things to defeat,” Talia said. “There are far more dangerous things we’ll need to be watching for.”
“I read some of it,” Stann said defensively.
Talia raised an eyebrow. “How much?”
“The first couple pages,” Stann mumbled.
“Oh really? What did they say?”
Stann frowned. “They said blah, blah, blah, the Ancient Lands are dangerous. I don’t need a book to tell me that.”
“No point arguing. Lana, Stann, grab whatever weapons and gear you find. Talia, you need a mana potion. You’re putting too much magic into your fireballs.”
Talia nodded. “I may have gotten a little excited.” She took one of the glass vials from her bandolier and downed it.
Jack kept an eye on her mana numbers as she took the potion. They spiked back to one hundred percent. It was good to see the immediate mana recovery.
“Which way should we go now?” Lana asked once they’d recovered all of the weapons from the skellies.
Jack looked at the two hallways out of the room. He couldn’t see any difference between the two. “Let’s start with the left hallway.”
Stann took the lead. Despite his claims about the skellies being easy, he had his shield held up and was moving forward cautiously.
Jack was glad to see that his actions didn’t match the cavalier attitude he’d shown when talking about the dangers of the Ancient Lands. Stann might not have read the Adventurer’s Guide to the Ancient Lands, but he understood that danger was around every corner.
They went down the hallway until it led into another large room. Stann scanned the room before walking in. Jack also looked around; he didn’t see any skellies, or other potential enemies.
On one wall of the room was a long bench. It had a few glass bottles and vials, along with mortars and pestles. The opposite side of the room was all shelving, three rows that went all the way to the ceiling.
“A potion-making room,” Talia said as she inspected the work bench.
“What’s that smell?” Stann asked. He started walking down one of the rows of storage.
A brown furry mass flew off of one of the shelves and landed on Stann’s face. It started to scratch and bite him.
“Ack,” Stann yelled as he tried to grab the creature.
Jack was watching Stann’s struggles when he spotted a shadow moving on another shelf, and then another. The shelving was full of the little brown creatures.
Stann finally got ahold of the creature and crushed it with his powerful hands. He threw the carcass into the middle of the room, narrowly missing Jack’s head.
“Bolgan rats,” Talia said in disgust.
“There’s a lot more of them,” Jack yelled. “Look out.”
The bolgan rats started flying off of the shelves. Jack retreated towards the other side of the room, swatting aside rats with his sword as they flew towards his face.
Still in the row of shelving, Stann was covered in the beasts. He was trying to throw them off. Meanwhile, even more of the creatures were charging towards Talia and Lana. Lana was slicing them with her sword while Talia used small fireballs to defend herself.
“Get back in middle of the room,” Jack yelled towards Stann.
Stann ran towards them. “Get them off me.”
“Roll on the ground,” Jack said.
As Stann dropped and rolled, Jack lit his sword with magical flames. He started striking the bolgan rats that were jumping off of Stann. But more rats kept coming and Jack had to fend them off of himself, forcing him to abandon Stann.
The creatures were far bigger than any rats Jack had ever seen before; they were the size of a cat or a small dog, and their bites were dangerous. Stann was already down to half health and it was dropping fast.
While he swatted away rats as they tried to jump on him, Jack used his free ha
nd to cast a healing spell on Stann.
More and more rats jumped onto Stann. Suddenly Lord Scratches flew down and landed on Stann. The little dragon was a flurry of movement. It was snatching up the rats in his maw, snapping their necks and throwing them aside. Several of the rats on Stann retreated away from the dragon while Stann got up.
Now that he was standing and had room to swing his war hammer, Stann started smashing.
A bolgan rat bit Talia and she let out a cry of anger, and increased the amount of energy she was putting into her fire magic. Instead of bursts of flame, she created a wave of magical flame the enveloped the bolgan rats on the floor around her. The flames were hot and forced Jack and Stann to move towards Talia and away from the flames, but she was torching the rats who were still trying to attack them.
The fight kept going as more and more rats kept coming out of the storage area towards them. But now that they were working together, Jack and the others were able to defend themselves, keeping the bolgan rats at a distance. Lord Scratches was now jumping from rat to rat, his jaws snapping at their necks.
Finally, there were no more bolgan rats coming and they finished off the ones in the room.
Jack checked the health of the group. Talia and Lana had sustained injuries and their health was slowly going down. He cast a group healing spell and then handed Stann a healing potion. “Drink this.”
“Bolgan bites are poisonous,” Talia said. “Everyone’s health is going to keep dropping for a few minutes. Jack, you’ll need to do something about the poison before our health can fully recover.”
Jack frowned. He’d never healed poisonous wounds before. He went into his bag and found his mother’s spell book. He started flipping through it, looking for an appropriate spell.
“Those little bastards were quick,” Stann said with a scowl. “I couldn’t get them off of me. It felt like every time I threw one off of me, two more took its place.” He looked over at Lord Scratches, who was chewing on one of the dead bolgan rats. “Thanks for the help, Lord.”
Lord Scratches looked at Stann, chirped at him once and then returned to chewing on the bolgan rat.
Jack found a healing spell called poison aura that reduced the effects of poisons and curses. He wasn’t sure when the need for spell against curses would come in handy, and he didn’t want to know. Sometimes ignorance was bliss. He already had enough on his plate without worrying about that sort of thing. He cast the spell and was relieved to see everyone’s health numbers increase. The spell wasn’t an immediate fix; it was a healing-over-time spell, meaning it would last thirty seconds. If the effects of the poison weren’t gone after thirty seconds, he’d recast it, but from his mother’s notes it seemed that most poisons only needed one or two castings depending on the strength of the poison and the amount of damage done.
“Well, should we keep moving? I doubt anything in this room is worth keeping,” Talia said. “It looks like the bolgan rats ate anything of value.”
Jack sighed. “Yes. Let’s go back to the first room and try the other hallway.”
They backtracked until they were in the first room. Jack looked down at the piles of skeleton bones. He would rather face another animated corpse wielding a weapon instead of another swarm of oversized rats.
“How’s the face?” Talia asked Stann as they entered the second corridor.
“It itches,” Stann said. “Dirty little buggers.”
Jack looked at everyone’s health numbers. The girls were almost back to full health while Stann was still only at three quarters. However, it looked like the effects of the poison were almost gone. He cast a second poison aura spell, and then a direct healing spell on Stann. It wasn’t long until his numbers went back to full health.
“Thanks, Jack,” Stann said.
“Kind of handy having a healer around,” Talia said. “I’m glad I ran into you guys.”
“You mean you’re glad we rescued you?” Stann said.
“Watch it, bub,” Talia said, “rats aren’t the only thing that can claw and scratch your face.”
Jack looked over his shoulder at Talia who winked back at him. Jack bit his tongue to keep from laughing. Stann and Talia had an interesting chemistry. Jack was pretty sure they liked each other, but most of the time they were bickering and trading barbs.
They stopped talking as the corridor went down another flight of stairs. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, they were at one end of a long room with a couple doors halfway down. At the other end of the room there was another pair of statues. But what concerned Jack were the rows of skeleton warriors along both walls.
“Should I go in?” Stann whispered.
Jack shook his head. He wanted to think before entering the room. The first group of skeleton warriors they’d fought hadn’t been too difficult, but that didn’t mean these ones would be as easy, and there were more of them, and there seemed something different about some of these ones.
“We’ll have to be careful,” Talia said softly, making sure her voice didn’t carry. “Some of those are draugr, not skellies.
Stann frowned. “What’s the difference?”
Talia shook her head. “You really need to learn to read.”
“I can read. I just don’t like to,” Stann whispered. “Now are you going to keep preaching at me or tell me what the difference is?”
Talia sighed. “Fine, but you need to learn this stuff on your own.”
Stann rolled his eyes.
Talia ignored the gesture. “Draugr aren’t as decomposed as skellies. They are stronger, more powerful, more dangerous.”
Jack looked out into the room again. That’s what was different. In some of the draugr the difference was subtle, little pieces of flesh still attached to the bone—others had even more. Another difference was the armor and clothing. The skellies didn’t have much while all the draugr had some sort of armor or clothing. These were little details he should’ve noticed the first time he’d looked. “Good eye, Talia. We go in slow, just the way Instructor Brazee taught us. Stann, stop ten feet in. Girls, use the stairway walls as cover to start.” Jack cast the group healing-over-time spell on them and then nodded at Stann.
As soon as Stann stepped into the room, the nearest draugr and skellies turned their heads. They started charging towards them.
Jack stepped behind Stann. Once he was in the room, he had a better view and realized this room had two levels and there was a balcony with skellie archers. The archers turned towards them, raising their bows. “Girls, take out the archers up top first. Stann, high shield.”
Jack used his left hand to create his magic shield while aiming his sword at one of the archers. He fired an ice shard at the skeleton but missed.
The girls each took out an archer, and Stann was blocking the attacks of several of the draugr.
“We can’t hit the rest of the archers from here,” Lana said. “We have to come forward to get a better angle.”
Not wanting them all to be exposed to archer fire, Jack kept them in position. “Focus on supporting Stann, then. Make sure none of them flank him or attack me. I’ll take out the archers.”
“Got it,” Talia said as she launched a fire bolt into a skellie that was attacking Stann.
Jack turned his attention back to the balconies as an arrow bounced off of his magical shield. He went to fire another ice bolt at the skellie archer, but before he could, Lord Scratches flew through the air and slammed into the skellie archer’s head like a dragon projectile. The skellie head popped off and the rest of it fell to the ground.
Good boy, Jack thought, as he turned and fired at another of the archers. This one was a draugr from the looks of it. The ice shard struck the draugr archer but it didn’t fall. It only slowed down.
Jack fired another ice shard and then took a quick look at the ground level to assess the situation. Stann was still the main focal point of the animated corpses’ attention, but many were now ignoring him and trying to get to Jack and the girls. Howe
ver, between Lana’s arrows and Talia’s fireballs, the corpses weren’t getting very close.
Jack turned his attention back to the balcony. Lord Scratches was buzzing around one of the draugr archers. The archer was trying to fire an arrow at Lord, but wasn’t quick enough to track him. Jack sensed that Lord Scratches had it under control, and turned his attention back to the first draugr archer he’d hit. The draugr was still moving slowly, but it was getting ready to fire another arrow. Jack increased the amount of mana he focused into the sword and fired again. This time the ice shard slammed into the draugr’s chest and it collapsed to the ground.
Something went flying past Jack’s ear and then he heard Talia cry out in pain. Jack turned and looked back. She’d lost a quarter of her health from whatever had hit her.
“Draugr mages. Other end of the room,” Lana said.
“You OK?” Jack asked Talia.
She grimaced and fired another fireball at a skellie running towards Jack. “I’m fine, but we need to move forward if we can.”
“Stann, can you move forward?” Jack asked.
The large mixed-blood orc warrior used his shield to bash the dead warriors in front of him back. He stepped forward and did it again.
“Guess that answers that,” Jack said as he looked towards the balcony for more archers. He spotted one that was trying to hit Lord Scratches on the opposite balcony. He’d already fired one arrow at the little dragon, hitting the draugr Lord Scratches was attacking instead. Jack fired an ice shard at the draugr and it hit the archer high in the chest. The archer’s chest turned blue and then exploded.
There were now two draugr mages that Jack could see on the other side of the room. They were hiding behind stone columns and firing magic that looked similar to his own ice shards towards Lana and Talia.
Talia sent a large fireball over Jack’s head that arced through the air like a thrown ball. It landed at the base of one of the columns, and the draugr hiding behind it jumped away from the fire only to be hit by one of Lana’s arrows.
With the girls now focusing on the draugr mages, Jack started firing ice shards at the draugr attacking Stann. There were far fewer now; as Stann continued his push forward, he used a combination of his shield bashing technique with an overhand attack with his war hammer. The combo was proving effective. Every time he did it, he was landing heavy blows, and if Jack wasn’t mistaken, about every third blow killed a draugr—and the ones he didn’t kill were easy targets for Jack to strike down.
Menacing Misfits: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (Darkthorn Academy Book 1) Page 29
