The three of us make a run for it, and we manage to get back to our original position right in the nick of time. Illuna, who wasn’t completely convinced, waited until the very last moment, and then she jumped on a wall, using it to propel herself to our position before the floor crumbled beneath her feet.
“Well, what do you know,” she says. “You were actually right.”
“Daren!” Rose shouts, while looking down inside the chasm that had formed in the middle of the room.
Looking inside the pit, I see that Daren is hanging from a wooden beam which is beginning to crack under his weight. I had completely forgotten that he got thrown into a wall at the beginning of the fight. He must have still been in a dazed state when the floor started crumbling. As I look below to see if there are any footholds I could use to get to him, I realize that even if I managed to somehow reach his position, there’s just no way that I could climb back up. The wooden scaffolding is practically unusable at this point. All that’s left of it are some support pillars and a few beams here and there that look like they could break any second.
“Stay where you are!” Daren shouts at us. “Whatever you do, don’t come down here! Don’t worry, I have everything under control!”
He’s lying. At most, he’s got half a minute before that beam breaks under his weight, and he has no way of climbing back up. He must be trying to protect us.
“You bastard!” Hadrik shouts at the ogre captain, as he clashes with him once again. “You were the one who told the ogres that the middle of the room was a safe area, weren’t you? Were those soldiers’ lives worth nothing to you?”
“Hah!” the captain says. “Those weren’t my finest warriors. They were just cannon fodder. All of them replaceable. I alone strong enough to deal with the lot of you. Look below! One of your friends already at end of his rope. The rest of you are going follow him soon.”
The beam that Daren is holding onto cracks loudly. He doesn’t have much time left. Completely out of the blue, Illuna jumps past us and into the pit. She uses one of the wooden pillars to propel herself back towards the cave’s wall, which she then uses to push herself further down into the pit, and back towards the wooden pillar. She jumps back and forth between the pillar and the wall a few times, until she finally reaches Daren’s level. She then grabs the cave’s wall with her left hand, and she extends her right hand towards Daren.
“Healer, grab my hand!” Illuna says.
“Like hell, I will!” Daren says.
The wooden beam cracks again. This time it looks like it’s about to break.
“Healer, there’s no time!” Illuna shouts. “Grab my damn hand!”
Daren looks at her hesitantly for a few seconds, but he doesn’t get the time to think on it any further, because the wooden beam finally cracks under his weight, and he starts falling into the chasm. Illuna pushes herself into the wall with all her strength and jumps towards Daren, grabbing him with her right hand. As the two of them fall into the pit, they start shining brightly, and right before they reach the ground, they disappear and then reappear on the floor in front of us, safe and sound.
“No!” the ogre captain shouts, as he tries to smash Hadrik with his club again.
“What’s the matter?” Hadrik asks him, as he blocks his strike yet again. “Didn’t you say that you’d easily deal with the lot of us by yourself? You should be glad that you’ve been granted the opportunity to finish us all with your own hands!”
“Illuna, can’t you help him?” Rose asks. “I don’t know how much longer Hadrik can keep this up…”
“The ogre is wearing anti-magic armor from head to toe,” Illuna says. “This means that I can’t make my water sharp against him, so my regular whip attacks and my water arrows are out of the question. Normally, I’d use one of my whips to pull him into the chasm, but he’s just too big and heavy for me to move with the amount of magical energy I have at my disposal. My stronger spells would probably penetrate his defenses, but they aren’t designed to hit a single target, so I’d risk hitting the dwarf along with the ogre captain if I used them.”
“There must be something we can do…” Rose says.
“Hey, dwarf!” Arraka shouts loudly. “Remember how I told you that the ogres’ weak spot is at the base of their necks? It’s time for you to put that secret technique I taught you to good use!”
Hadrik laughs.
“Aye!” he says, grinning widely. “I suppose it’s time for me to stop fooling around!”
The ogre captain suddenly stops attacking Hadrik, and he uses his club to guard his neck. Hadrik focuses all of his aura in his right fist, and he punches a hole through the ogre’s chest armor, making the captain fall on his knees, drop his club, and start coughing up blood. Hadrik quickly seizes the opportunity, by grabbing the ogre’s club and throwing it inside the chasm.
“Why?” the ogre asks, as he coughs up more blood. “Why did go for chest instead of neck?! Wasn’t secret technique supposed to aimed for weak point?”
Hadrik and Arraka both start laughing simultaneously.
“There was no secret technique, you moron!” Arraka says. “I only said that to make you panic and focus all of your defense on a single point.”
“I guess it only took two of us to defeat you after all,” Hadrik says, grinning. “Maybe you should have brought some real soldiers with you, instead of small fries.”
“This not over yet, dwarf,” the ogre says, and he coughs some more. “I’m going to crush your puny head, and—”
Hadrik doesn’t let the ogre finish his threat, and he crushes his head between his hands. As the ogre’s lifeless body drops to the ground, the dwarf jumps over to our side of the room, and he grins at Arraka.
“That wasn’t half bad for a spirit of joy and laughter,” he tells her. “You’ve certainly earned your quota for the day for making me laugh to my heart’s content.”
“Well, seriously now,” Arraka says, “I couldn’t let them kill the only person in this entire group who laughs at my jokes. You can buy me a beer when I get out of this amulet. I’m not sure how that’s gonna work, though, since I’ll probably kill you all within seconds of escaping. Aha- Ahahahahaha!”
“Have you gone out of your mind, banshee?!” Daren shouts, furiously, all of a sudden.
“Who, me?” Arraka asks.
“Not you!” Daren says. “The other banshee!”
“Why, because I teleported you out of the pit?” Illuna says. “You’re not seriously going to start claiming that you could have gotten out of there by yourself, are you?”
“Of course not!” Daren says. “I was about to die, and then you saved me! Why would you save me? My death would have benefited you in every way, and no one could have blamed you if you left me to die! What could you possibly have hoped to achieve from this?”
“I see no reason to justify my actions to you,” Illuna says. “Figure it out yourself.”
Daren’s face is so red with anger that he looks like he might explode any second.
“We’ve got no time for this,” Kate says. “Look at the map. All of the ogres that were sleeping are waking up and taking their stations. The others are frantically patrolling the halls, as if they were looking for something. They must have discovered one of the dead bodies and raised the alarm. The shaman has just left his quarters and he’s now assembling a team to follow him.”
“That means we won’t be able to sneak out of the fort through the front gate anymore,” Illuna says. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to fight all of these ogres head on. Luckily for us, the room we are in right now isn’t marked in any of the building plans, so most patrols aren’t very likely to come searching for us here. Our best bet is to descend into the caverns below us, and then to follow the underground tunnels until we reach the exit at the base of the hill.”
“How do you know that the caverns below us won’t lead to a dead end?” I say.
“We found a pretty detailed map of the tunnels in the ogr
es’ library,” Illuna says. “Arraka, do you think you can add it to the map of the fort?”
“Yeah, give me a second,” Arraka says.
A few moments later, a new level gets added to the fort’s hologram, showing us the layout of the underground tunnels in detail. The caverns appear indeed to have an exit, but there are several ogre mages stationed right in front of it.
“There are guards at the exit,” Illuna says. “Good. That means that the tunnels are still being used to a certain extent, so there should be no cave-ins blocking our path.”
“But how will we get down there with the scaffolding broken?” Kate asks.
“While I was falling earlier, I saw that there was another scaffolding right below the room beyond the wall on our right,” Illuna says. “It appeared to be in good condition, so there should be no problem in climbing all the way down to the bottom of the mines.”
“Can’t you just cast your teleportation spell from earlier?” Hadrik asks. “You know, the one you used to rescue Daren from the pit?”
“No, I can only cast that spell once a day,” Illuna says. “It’s the same for the golden cage spell I used to trap you when we entered the fort. That’s why I didn’t use it on those ogres while I was fighting them.”
“So you could have still cast the teleportation spell now, if not for me…” Daren says.
“Yes, but the spell only allows me to teleport one other person with me so it wouldn’t have been of much use to us here,” Illuna says. “Plus, it has very limited range, so it’s not like I can use it for travel either. I rarely get the chance to use that spell, to be honest.”
“Alright, then,” Hadrik says. “I’m gonna go smash through that wall so we can get to the other room.”
After Hadrik destroys the wall, we see that the floor in the middle of the adjacent room had also crumbled after the ogre’s smash. The cave wall from our side of the pit and the one on the opposite side seem to extend all the way to the end of the other room, and probably beyond it as well. Just as Illuna said, the scaffolding below the other room seems to be mostly intact, and it shouldn’t be too risky to climb down the wooden ladders until we reach the bottom.
“Let’s get going,” Daren says. “Before the ogres find this room or the shaman tells them about it.”
It takes us a few minutes to climb down all of the ladders, but there are no incidents, and we all arrive safely at the bottom of the mines. The only source of light that we have at the moment is Arraka’s hologram, but it’s shining brighter than a torch, and the map of the tunnels is very exact, so there’s no danger of us getting lost.
“I think one of the ogre mages that were accompanying the shaman just teleported near the ones guarding the tunnel exit,” Kate says. “I saw one of the blue dots disappearing from above and another one appearing below.”
“He was probably sent as a messenger to tell the other ogres to be on their guard,” Illuna says.
“Yeah, they’re turning invisible as we speak,” Arraka says. “A lot of good that will do them!”
“But won’t it be hard to fight them even with the map, while they are invisible?” Rose asks.
“The invisibility spell they are using cannot be maintained during combat,” Illuna says. “They’re only using it for the element of surprise. They’ll be forced to reveal themselves once the fight begins. Arraka’s right. This spell will do them no good whatsoever.”
As we get closer to the exit, we see that the ogres in the fort are starting to flock towards the secret room, and some of them have already reached the scaffolding. The shaman’s group seems to be heading that way as well.
“Damn it!” Hadrik says. “The shaman must have tipped them off about the secret room. If we don’t pick up our pace, we’ll end up getting surrounded.”
“Wait, don’t move!” Arraka says. “Something’s wrong. I can feel it. Give me a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute!” Daren says. “The shaman and his ogres are breathing down our necks. Why would there be something wrong?”
“I don’t know yet!” Arraka says. “That’s why I said I need a minute!”
“Maybe there are traps ahead of us?” Rose asks.
“I doubt it,” Hadrik says. “Given that there are guards stationed at the exit, I’m guessing that these tunnels are still being used as a potential escape route in case the fort is under siege. I don’t see why they would want to risk running into their own traps while they’re in a hurry to abandon the stronghold. Those guards should be enough to keep any unwanted outsiders away from the tunnels.”
“Yeah,” Daren says. “And there was no way they would’ve had enough time to set up a trap in the few minutes they had at their disposal since they’ve been announced of our escape. The only kind of trap they might have placed is a magical one, but those can be easily detected by anyone with a decent magical sense.”
“Some of the ogres are already halfway down the scaffolding,” Kate says. “We don’t have much time.”
“We could at least wait until the ogres reach the cave floor,” I say. “They’ll still need another five minutes to catch up to us after that, so we’ll have plenty of time left to finish off the guards and exit the tunnels. Remember… the last time we ignored Arraka, we ended up getting ambushed by a bunch of invisible ogres.”
“Fine,” Daren says. “But if she doesn’t have an answer until the ogres reach our level, we’re making a run for it.”
“I’ve got it!” Arraka says, after a while. “There’s a very powerful magical explosion trap some two hundred feet ahead of our position. Keep going, I’ll tell you when to stop.”
“What are you talking about?” Daren says, as we all start going forward. “I’m not sensing any traps.”
“That’s because it’s really well hidden,” Arraka says. “I can barely sense any magic coming from it, but it’s there. Here, I’ll highlight the area so you know where it is.”
Soon after she’s done talking, a small area in front of us gets covered in blue light. When we get closer, Daren starts waving his sword in the air, as if he were trying to catch the light with it.
“Well, I’ll be damned…” Daren says. “Stand back. I’m going to disarm the trap.”
He then starts slicing through the air in a triangular motion, a few times in a row. Suddenly, we hear a loud popping noise, and then there’s smoke coming out of nowhere. The smoke soon disappears, and Arraka’s blue light fades along with it.
“I think that should about cover it,” Daren says.
“Yeah, the trap’s gone,” Arraka says. “Only the ogres are left. Give me a sec. I’ll highlight them too.”
“Enough!” we hear the shaman’s voice, and soon he materializes out of thin air, along with the five ogre mages accompanying him. “I don’t know how you were able to see through my trap and through my invisibility spell, but now I know why you’ve been able to avoid all of the patrols on your way to the treasure room.”
“Oh, don’t be so modest, shaman,” Arraka says, as she changes the blue dot corresponding to the shaman into a green color. “You must have had at least some idea of what was happening, otherwise you wouldn’t have purposely taken the magical signature of one of your troops when you came down here, in order to trick my magical sense. What’s that decoy that you left behind with your own magic signature, anyway? A clone?”
“No,” the shaman says. “It’s one of my followers, holding an artifact that copies my aura.”
“Fascinating,” Arraka says, as she changes the original green dot’s color into blue.
“How did you find out where we were?” Illuna says.
“The captain and I had a telepathic link, which was meant to warn me once he left the realm of the living,” the shaman says. “You’re going to pay for this, you little traitor. My followers are going to turn you all into ashes.”
He then raises his staff in the air, and the five other ogres step in front of him, casting fireballs in unison, and then th
rowing them at us. Hadrik and Daren both step in front as well, in order to form our first line of defense. The dwarf focuses his aura in his fists, and he sends two of the fireballs right back at the ogres, by punching them when they reach him. Daren places his sword in front of him, absorbing the other three fireballs within it. He then slashes his flaming sword towards the ogres, and sends a powerful fire beam at them, which burns them into a crisp.
“You’ve done it now…” the shaman says, with a dark look in his eyes, as he looks at the ashes of his five followers. “I didn’t plan to use this on you, but you leave me no choice.”
He then smacks his staff into the ground, and the whole room gets filled with a thick gray fog. As the fog clears a bit, I realize that we are no longer standing in the middle of a cavern, but on an open plain, and it appears to be… snowing?
My eyes are not deceiving me. It really is snowing. There’s a thick layer of snow on the ground, and the trees I see in the distance are all covered in snow as well. Could this be an illusion?
“Damn it!” Arraka says. “I completely lost track of him. He went invisible again, and I can’t sense his aura at all. Actually, I can’t feel any of your auras either. What the hell?”
“You aren’t the only one,” Kate says. “I’ve completely lost my magical sense as well. Could this have anything to do with the fog?”
“No,” Illuna says. “This is a shaman ritual. Basically, it’s a very advanced mind affecting spell. We’re not in the real world anymore, and thus, there are different rules. We’re not missing only our magical senses, but also our magical powers. You were already wearing collars, so you can’t tell the difference, but Arraka and I cannot cast any spells at this moment. Also, it would appear that ranged weapons are not allowed either, since Barry’s crossbow is gone. I think magical items are still functional, though, since the shaman must have used his staff in order to turn invisible.”
“So, what’s happening in the real world, right now?” I say. “Does the shaman plan to kill us while we’re trapped in here?”
Magium: The Mage Tournament: Book 1 Page 25
