“Illuna, can you move?” Daren asks.
“No,” Illuna says. “The girl pushed her body way beyond its limits while we were in the illusion. I can feel an ache coming from every single bone and muscle, and I can’t even manage to move one finger. Her body is bruised all over, her clothes are a mess, and Arraka’s amulet is…”
She pauses for a moment, and all of a sudden, we hear a crack coming from the amulet around her neck.
“Oh…” Illuna says. “Oh, no…”
“Aha- Ahahaha—”
The amulet cracks again, this time a lot more violently than before, and Arraka’s laughter intensifies even further.
“Ahahahahaha!”
Suddenly, the amulet breaks completely, and a dark aura envelops Illuna, as the girl’s body slowly raises itself into the air, in an upright position. A very powerful wind is now blowing in our faces, pushing us all away from her, while the sky is becoming darker and darker by the second. The girl’s eyes are now slowly turning from bright blue to pitch black, as she grins widely, while looking at each of us in turn.
“So this is what you all look like in the flesh!” Arraka says. “It was kind of hard to tell from inside the amulet, going by magical sense alone. How you people can get by every day without being mistaken for a circus troupe is beyond me.”
“You’re one to talk,” Hadrik says. “You do realize that you are literally dressed like a clown right now, don’t you?”
Arraka grins evilly at Hadrik.
“Dwarf,” she says. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to be standing there, cracking jokes? Shouldn’t you rather be buying me that beer you owe me? I could really go for a drink right about now. That and mass murder. I’m still not sure which one I should be starting with!”
“Flower…” Kate says, weakly. “What happened to Flower? Where are Flower and Illuna?”
“Oh, they’re dead,” Arraka says. “Or should I rather say… ‘absorbed’? What happened is that I merged with their souls when I took over their body. They’re both part of me, now.”
“So, they’re both still in there… somewhere?” Kate asks.
“Well, I guess you could say that,” Arraka says, “if you want to be all technical about it, but the fact of the matter is—”
“Monster!” Zack shouts, all of a sudden, while pointing towards Arraka. “Abomination! Begone, foul demon!”
Suddenly, the skeletal dragon, which had not moved an inch since we escaped the illusion, flaps its wings and rushes towards Arraka, roaring loudly. Just as it reaches her, the dragon explodes into a thousand tiny pieces that get scattered throughout the whole area around us.
“Really, now…” Arraka says.
As the dragon’s bones fly in all directions, the ground begins to shake, and several skeletons start to slowly rise from it. It doesn’t take me long to realize that this is the necromancer’s doing, and that all of the skeletons standing in front of us are stillwaters.
“Do you understand now, banshee?” Zack says. “Do you understand who you are facing against? This is the true power of the God of Death! If you get on your knees now and beg for Ulruk’s forgiveness, he might just see fit to grant you a quick and painless death.”
Arraka ignores the mage completely, choosing instead to stare intently at one of the skeletons that have risen from the ground.
“Wait a minute!” Arraka says. “I know you! You’re Vallen, right? Short-legs Vallen who couldn’t hold a tune to save his life! You’re not going to hurt me, are you? Remember all of those fun times we’ve had during the still winter? Remember that time when we had to fish you out of a pond because you fell in while you were practicing your flying spell and you suddenly remembered that you couldn’t swim? Remember how we used to make fun of you because you always walked funny after you expended all your magical energy? Remember when I tied you to a tree and forced you to watch me slowly murder all of your friends until you could manage to hit all the notes in that kiddy song about the lion and the lamb? Those were the days, huh? Now, how did that song go again?”
Arraka clears her throat and she begins to sing.
“Oh, there was a lamb, a lamb, a lamb,” she sings. “And that lamb had such bright white wool!”
As Arraka sings the song, the skeleton named Vallen starts to shake uncontrollably, and it puts both its hands on its head, as if it were having an intense headache. Eventually, its pain turns into rage, and it roars loudly, as it starts shooting fire out of its hands. The fire simply brushes off Arraka’s magical shield, and she acts as if nothing happened, continuing to sing her song.
“Why are you just standing there, you fools?!” Zack asks the other skeletons. “Attack her! Kill her!”
The skeletons all start flinging spells at Arraka, attacking her with all types of elemental magic simultaneously, while also using spells to weaken her defenses. Arraka acts as if she doesn’t even notice the onslaught of spells that are being cast upon her, and she continues to sing without any interruptions.
“You can stop your little act now, banshee,” Zack says. “I can see right through you. Even if you are acting calm and collected, the reality is that you can barely even withstand the barrage of attacks that are being flung against you, and that you have no means of fighting back. Since my skeletons are now fully protected against sonic attacks, you could say that they have become near indestructible! There’s nothing you can do to hurt them.”
Arraka stops singing, and she smiles wickedly at the necromancer.
“Oh, they are protected from sonic attacks, you say?” she says, with a mocking tone, as the skeletons continue to attack her with everything they’ve got. “How impressive! Truly, you are a mage among mages. But tell me, necromancer, did you consider shielding your puppets from pebbles as well?”
“What kind of a question is that, you little—” Zack starts to say, but Arraka doesn’t give him a chance to finish his question.
While the necromancer was talking, Arraka made a few pebbles from the ground float into her hand, and then she started flinging them with her fingers towards each of the skeletons. When the pebbles reached them, the skeletons exploded, but this time into pieces so small that they could very well be confused with specks of dust.
When the necromancer saw what happened, his jaw dropped, and he couldn’t bring himself to utter another word. He was in too great of a shock.
“Yeah, you go ahead and wrap that up and then send it to old Ulruk as a present,” Arraka says, as she gestures towards the piles of dust on the ground. “Tell him it’s from Arraka. Tell him that he should be expecting many more presents from me in the near future. Tell him that once I’m done with the earthen plane, I’ll be paying him a visit. I’ll visit him, I’ll visit Memphir, I’ll visit every single one of the so-called gods that thought it would be a good joke to have me banned from the magical plane along with every other banshee in existence. And then we can all have a party together, while we reminisce over times long forgotten!”
“Shut up!” Daren says to Arraka all of a sudden, as he starts walking towards her, with a furious look on his face. “I couldn’t care less about your past or your personal vendettas. You bring them back, you hear me?! You bring them both back this instant!”
“Excuse me?” Arraka says.
“You know what I’m talking about!” Daren shouts. “Flower and Illuna. You bring them both back right now!”
“What, are you ugly and stupid?” Arraka says. “Didn’t I just tell you that I absorbed their souls when I took over the body? What do you expect me to do, cut them out of me with a meat cleaver?”
“If you’re not going to let them go, then I’ll force you to do it!” Daren says, as he pulls out his sword. “Prepare yourself, banshee!”
“So, mass murder it is, then,” Arraka says, with a grin, as Daren rushes towards her.
Before he even takes three steps, Daren suddenly starts to wither like a plant, at an incredibly rapid pace. Within seconds, the only thing that�
��s left of him is his armor, as the rest of his body had been completely turned into dust.
“No…” Kate says, as she places her hand on her mouth. “No!”
She conjures a hundred icicles that she aims towards Arraka, but before she gets to attack her with them, she withers just like Daren, and within seconds, nothing is left of her except a pile of dust.
“No!” Rose shouts, as she starts to cry. “Please, stop! Please!”
“What’s the matter, Hadrik?” Arraka says, as she grins wickedly. “Aren’t you going to show me that giant’s fighting spirit of yours that you like to brag about so much? I’m right here! What are you waiting for?”
“I’ll show you fighting spirit, you arrogant old hag,” Hadrik says, as a trickle of sweat runs down the side of his forehead, and he rushes towards Arraka, with his fists at the ready.
Just like the two before him, Hadrik quickly turns into dust, and all that remains of him is his leather armor and boots.
“Please…” Rose says again, this time with a much weaker voice than before.
They’re dead. They all died right in front of me. How can this be? Is this another illusion? It has to be! That’s right! This must be an illusion!
I close my eyes and try to visualize the real world in my mind. I try to make the image as clear as possible, and I try to throw myself into it, just like I did before, but nothing’s happening. Nothing’s happening…
“You’re not seriously going to close your eyes and pretend that I’m not here, are you?” Arraka tells me. “Come on, take out your dagger. It’s no fun killing you if you don’t even put up a fight.”
After hearing Arraka’s provocation, I take out my dagger, and I look her straight in the eye.
“Alright, then!” Arraka says, grinning. “This is it, Barry. An epic duel of the ages in the making. Hero versus villain. Banshee versus lessathi. The bards will be singing songs of us for thousands of years to come. Let’s do this, come on!”
I’m not going to fix anything if I just stand here moping about. She doesn’t expect me to be a threat. She’s overconfident. Maybe I can use that against her somehow. Maybe if I kill her, everything will come back to normal. Maybe if she dies, her spells will be undone, and everyone will come back to life. I won’t know until I try.
I rush towards the banshee, but I suddenly feel a sharp pain in my stomach, as a rock flies into me and knocks me off my feet.
“Oh, I’m sorry, was that too rough?” Arraka says, as I struggle to catch back my breath. “I’m not exactly sure how much damage you can take, since I’ve never really fought against a weakling like you before!”
“Please, leave him alone!” Rose screams, while tears keep flowing from her eyes.
“I wouldn’t want to kill you right off the bat,” Arraka says. “We should enjoy ourselves to the fullest, you know what I’m saying?”
She then flings another rock right below my chest, and I can feel my breath leaving me again.
“Stop!” Rose shouts. “You’re hurting him!”
“Huh,” Arraka says. “Well, I always knew you were a weakling, but I never imagined it would be this bad. This is painful to watch, really. I think I’m just going to spare you the embarrassment and kill you right now.”
“No, don’t do it!” Rose cries as loud as she can.
“Good bye, Barry!” Arraka says, as she waves her hand towards me, and I can feel my whole body starting to quickly dry up. “It was fun while it lasted!”
“Stop!” Rose shouts again, and just as the last echoes of her words fade away, everything around me freezes in place.
My body is not drying up anymore, Arraka isn’t moving, and Rose’s tears are floating in mid-air. Is this something that normally happens when you die? Is time supposed to feel like it’s moving slower as you experience your final moments? I wouldn’t know. I’ve never died before.
All of a sudden, everything begins to move in reverse, as I find myself spectating all of the events that lead to my death. I see Arraka hitting me with the rocks, and then I see her kill Hadrik, and Kate, and then Daren. I see her killing the stillwater skeletons and then I see her breaking out of the amulet. Is this what they call one’s life flashing before their eyes?
Wow, this is actually pretty entertaining. I never knew that dying could be this fun. Hey, look, that’s Flower fighting the skeletal dragon. How the hell am I seeing this? Wasn’t I supposed to be in the illusion while all this happened? Now the craters are all disappearing one by one. Aaand, we’re back at the moment where the two mages ambushed us.
The string of events unraveling before my eyes now comes to a halt, and for a few seconds, I find myself in a frozen state yet again, at the exact moment after we’d been ambushed by the two mages. Then, all of a sudden, time starts moving again, and everyone is looking around themselves, with very confused expressions on their faces.
Wait a minute… Could this be possible? Was it not just my imagination? Are you actually telling me that I just witnessed time reversing itself and that everyone still remembers what happened?
I don’t get a lot of time to think about what happened, because my suspicions suddenly get confirmed by an enraged Arraka.
“A time weaver?!” Arraka shouts from her amulet. “Are you kidding me right now? And it was Rose, of all people?! You bastards knew this, didn’t you? You all set me up! You knew that this would happen! You let me escape on purpose so you could laugh at me, didn’t you? Well, you know what?! I’m done being nice! Next time I get out, I’m going to rip every single bone from your bodies and I’ll make your families watch. You’re going to beg me to give you the easy deaths I gave you today. Do you hear me?! I am going to make your lives hell! Stop grinning at me, you stupid lowlife dwarf!”
“That’s enough, Arraka,” Illuna says. “I’m not sure what exactly happened after you escaped from the amulet, but I think I can get a general idea from what you just said. You lost. We won. Deal with it. If I hear any more of your whining, I’m going to close this amulet and never open it again. Do you understand?”
Arraka doesn’t say anything, but I don’t need to see her face to know that she must be fuming right now.
“I’m… alive?” the mage in green robes says. “But… how?”
“It was the wench!” Zack says, as he points towards Rose. “I saw it all happen before my eyes. She reversed time! Do you know what this means? Do you know what it would mean if any of our gods could get ahold of this kind of power?!”
Before the green robed mage gets to answer the question, a cone of ice flies straight through his head, and he dies instantly.
“Your friend really shouldn’t have told us that he canceled all of his protection spells two hours ago,” Kate tells the necromancer. “That’s just begging to be killed over and over.”
“I don’t care about that sad excuse for a mage anymore,” Zack says. “What I care about more than anything now is the woman you are travelling with. Hand her over peacefully, and I will make your deaths swift.”
“It’s a tough decision to make,” Hadrik says, with a grin, “but I’m afraid we’re going to have to turn down your generous offer.”
“So be it, then!” Zack says, and he starts summoning his stillwater skeletons again.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Hadrik says, and he rushes towards the necromancer in order to kill him before he completes the spell, but one of the skeletons, who had only gotten the upper half of its body out of the ground, casts a powerful wind spell which sends the dwarf flying back towards us.
“Rose, get to safety!” Daren says. “The necromancer and his skeletons may not be able to harm you due to the tournament’s spell, but the same can’t be said for us. If you stay too close to us you’ll risk getting caught in the crossfire.”
“Okay,” Rose says, as she heads towards the opposite end of the market square.
Once the skeletons have fully surfaced, two of them start attacking us simultaneously with a flurry of fire and water
spells, while another one creates a magical barrier around him and all the other stillwaters. Daren uses his shield to create a magical barrier of his own around us all, but it looks like he won’t be able to hold it for much longer if the stillwaters keep attacking at this rate.
“If anyone has any ideas on how we can get out of this alive, now would be a good time to let us know,” Daren says, as two newly formed walls of rock are closing in on his barrier, trying to break through it by using brute force.
“We can’t fight them head on,” Illuna says. “We need to focus on figuring out their weaknesses. They may be stillwaters, but they’re still only skeletons. If we examine them carefully, we are bound to discover a thing or two that we can use to our advantage.”
“Well, I’m not trying to rush you or anything,” Daren says, “but I doubt I can hold this barrier for another minute. Realistically, it’ll probably break a lot sooner than that. So, yeah, if you’re planning to look for weak spots, you’d better do it quick.”
Illuna is right. Even if they are stillwaters, their frail undead bodies are bound to leave them with a few exploitable weaknesses. Azarius has shown us this much. Even if the necromancer has learned from his past mistakes and shielded them against sonic attacks, there still should be something we could take advantage of. Not to mention that the necromancer’s spell only lasts five minutes and is limited to one use per day, so barring any more unexpected time reversals, we should be in the clear if we manage to hold out for the entire duration of the spell.
As I examine the skeletons carefully, I notice something peculiar about them. Even though their auras feel similar to that of Eiden, their magical energy feels as if it were leaking out of their bodies at a very fast rate. If I were to venture a guess as to why that is happening, I would say it’s most likely because their new bodies cannot keep up with the tremendous amount of energy they have at their disposal. I am honestly surprised that my stat device isn’t reacting to any of this. I would have expected it to be beeping like crazy by now.
Magium: The Mage Tournament: Book 1 Page 34
