The Eternal: A Boxed Set (World of Ga'em Book 6)

by Dhayaa Anbajagane

  A gust of dusty wind hit us, and I looked up, shielding my eyes with my hand. The sky peeked through the gaps in my fingers, colored a midnight blue. “Oh, wait.” The good thing about trigger barriers, I realized, was that they were cylindrical, not hemispherical.

  “What?” Freya asked, as the wind stopped.

  “We’re taking a different route,” I said, stepping forward and grabbing Freya by the waist. “Hold on tight.”

  “What are you—”

  I surged off the ground, shooting high up into the air. The angle of the jump took us over the top of the barrier, and that was all I needed.

  “Wind Arts, please.” I chuckled.

  Freya hastily cast a spell, summoning a gust of wind from her palm and using it to ease our landing.

  We touched the ground softly, and suddenly the images around us folded, as though they were shifting. One moment we were on the edge of the camps, and the next we were inside some room. I immediately looked up, noticing there was an open roof that let in the air.

  “What the heck?” Nyx muttered.

  “We were tricked,” I realized, panic setting in.

  “Who would dare do such a thing?” a voice chuckled. A familiar one.

  I turned around, and there stood the old sage I’d seen before. A grin spread across his face, his arms crossed in front of his body.

  “Nice of you to drop in, Phantom Lord.”

  ***

  CHAPTER SIX

  Okay, first things first.

  That was one hell of a pun. “Drop in”? After we’d come crashing down from the sky? Had to admit, that was pretty good, intentional or not.

  Other than that, I was definitely not okay with what had just happened.

  “I must say, Diablo,” the sage said. “I did not think you would actually fall for my illusions just like that.”

  That’s what happened? I blinked.

  “We fell for an illusion?” Nyx asked, just as astounded. We both knew that could mean only one thing. The man in front of us was way more powerful than we’d anticipated. I was tempted to use Analyze on him, but I knew it wasn’t the time to do that. If he knew I was trying to scope out how strong he was, he’d know he had me rattled.

  “What do you want?” I asked, going with the classic questions to ask to ask a villain.

  “What do I want?” He chuckled. “I might be wrong, but weren’t you the ones who came barging in? Quite an irresponsible thing to do, Phantom Lord, especially considering your betrayal of the Kingdom of Aingard.”

  “I betrayed no one,” I muttered.

  “That is questionable.”

  Who is this guy? His confidence made him seem a lot stronger than I’d expected him to be. “Okay, I’m doing it,” I thought. “Can you grab the numbers?”

  “Yeah,” Nyx said.

  Analyze, I thought, summoning the skill.

  DING!

  I immediately swished my hand across the still-forming screen, hoping the old sage didn’t realize what I’d just done.

  “Did you get that info?” I asked, my eyes on the sage.

  “Got it,” Nyx said and gave me a mental image of the information the Analyze skill had brought up.

  Name

  Gorias Orken

  Race

  Human Sage

  Level

  489

  What the heck? I blinked. He was much stronger than I’d anticipated. Hell, he was quite close in level to me, and I was the goddamn Phantom Lord.

  “He seems to have been specially trained as well,” Nyx said. “Those stats seem much higher than his level should have been. It might be that the sage profession gives him a lot of boosts.”

  “That’s possible,” I thought, recalling that professions gave one a lot of very specific, and very strong, advantages.

  “What’s the matter, Diablo?” Sage Gorias chuckled.

  He thinks he’s still got the surprise factor, I realized, immediately trying to think of how I could take advantage of the fact that he didn’t. But since Freya was also here, it seemed likely the sage would go after her to maintain his advantage over me. She was definitely not strong enough to hold him off on her own—unless she broke into her original form, and I wasn’t sure if she could do that right now.

  “What are the Lumina Knights doing here?” I asked the sage, careful not to use his name. If I did, he’d immediately realize I’d used Analyze on him.

  “I should ask you the same question, Phantom Lord,” he said. “What is a man such as yourself doing meddling in the affairs of a people you do not care about?”

  “When a Knight faction is constructing a massive machine in the middle of deserted land, it piques my curiosity,” I said.

  He chuckled in amusement. “Of course,” he said. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid this is where the niceties of our meeting end.”

  “What?” I blinked.

  Sage Gorias snapped his fingers, and I felt an invisible wave of energy pass through me. I stood confused for a second, and then it happened.

  Pain burst through my chest, traveling along my nerves faster than lightning across the sky. I felt like my blood was boiling, like my flesh was swelling up.

  “Zoran!” Freya rushed to me.

  I collapsed onto my knees, my hand on the floor for support. My breathing was labored, sounding like gusts of wind on a stormy day. I glared at the sage, anger coursing through me. “What did you do to me?”

  A calm smile spread across his face. “The Seal of the Eternal,” he chuckled.

  Nyx, what the hell did he do to me? I asked.

  Silence.

  “Nyx!” I yelled, overcome by panic.

  “You seem quite had shaken.” The old man hunched before me, a smirk on his lips.

  “I don’t want to fight you,” I said, my voice calm. “Don’t turn this into a battle.”

  “You did that when you invaded our camp, Diablo,” he said. “However, I have an offer for you. Join the Alliance of Light. I know what the Dark Alliance did to you. We are different. I will personally put you in the good books of every single Knight in the Alliance. You will not regret it.”

  “The Alliance of Light is the one that chased me away in the first place,” I growled. “Your actions are no better than what the Dark Alliance did.”

  Sage Gorias sighed. “Very well, then,” he said. “There is a big battle coming, Eternal. You will regret not joining the winning side.”

  “I don’t care,” I said, my teeth clenched tight as a wave of pain coursed through me.

  “Zoran, we need to leave,” Freya said, her voice tense.

  I wanted to disagree with her, but I realized she was right. I was in a compromising situation. And the fact that this sage was so strong was not good for me. I could still take out quite a number of people, but I was doubtful whether the old sage was one of them, and that meant taking him on wasn’t a good idea.

  I reached out to Nyx, but silence was still the only reply I got. Fine, I’ll have to go solo, then, I thought.

  I grabbed Freya’s hand. “Until next time, sage.” I glared at him and pushed off the ground. I picked the elven lady up in my arms and surged ahead, battering through the stone walls and out into the open. The illusion from before had disappeared now, and I saw in front of me not a small camp, but a big battalion of soldiers marching through their base.

  Eyes landed on me as I dropped to the ground, the walls behind me crumbling as I did. I surged to the right, but pain shot down my leg, numbing it and sending me to the ground.

  Damn, I cursed, kneeling on the ground.

  “Zoran, let me down!” Freya said, but I held her tight.

  “Get the Phantom Lord!” the men around me yelled, surging at me.

  In an act of desperation, I pushed myself up with my good leg, and we shot into the sky. I don’t know how high we went, but when we came back down, we were quite a ways from the Lumina Knights’ base.

  I landed hard on the ground this time, no Wind Arts to br
eak my fall. My feet struck the sand, and a big chunk of the ground flew away from the sheer impact. I set Freya down and collapsed to the sand, my chest heaving. Shooting bursts of pain still flowed through me, rendering parts of my limbs numb.

  Freya opened up her inventory screen, and a second later, she handed me some berries. I took them without prompting, chewing them fast.

  “Rest,” she said quietly, putting her hand on my forehead. Her palm was cool and smooth, a welcome contrast to the hot, coarse sand beneath my body.

  “Diablo! Are you okay?” Nyx finally spoke to me.

  I think so, I said. Where the hell did you go?

  The spirit kept quiet for a second. “That man knows more than he’s supposed to.”

  What? I asked.

  “Your Seal of the Eternal limits the powers you are allowed to use. If, somehow, you ever force the use of powers the seal does not allow you to use, you get a response reaction similar to what you’re experiencing now.”

  “Wait, so what does this have to do with what he did to me?” I asked, confused.

  “I don’t know how, but he forced the exact same reaction to occur. I have no clue what he’s doing, or how he’s doing it.”

  I stayed silent, contemplating what had just been said. I will say, I felt a little fear on hearing that. Sage Gorias had already bothered me quite a bit just because of how strong he was, and the fact that he now knew things he wasn’t supposed to only made that feeling turn into fear.

  Seconds later, I was distracted from those thoughts when I realized that the pain in my body had lessened. I wasn’t sure whether it was because of whatever Freya had given me or because the rebound effect from the Seal of the Eternal had worn off, but I was too busy to think about that for now.

  “What happened?” Freya asked as I sat up. I could see the Lumina Knights’ base from where we were. It was at least four times as big as what I’d perceived before. Which meant Sage Gorias had cast a field-size illusion, which worried me even more.

  “Zoran?” the elf asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, turning to Freya. I explained to her what Nyx had told me, and how we didn’t really have any clue how the sage had set off the rebound reaction. She listened to me patiently, but a few words in, she began to claw at the sand, fidgeting with chunks of it. It was clear that she too was worried about what had happened.

  “We still don’t know what that machine was, or what the Lumina Knights were using it for,” I said.

  “Those Knights I followed said it was to find something,” she said.

  “But we don’t know if that’s true. And if it is, what are they searching for?” I said. “And why do they need so many people for it? You saw that base. They had nearly a thousand people in there.”

  “True. The fact that so many of their ranks are here is worrying,” Freya said. “This is easily half the entire faction within that base, and if they’re devoting that many resources, it can’t be something small.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “The presence of a powerful man like Sage Gorias supports that idea.”

  “Speaking of that man, he’s given us the only clue we have for the moment.”

  “Ah, you mean his statement at the end?”

  She nodded.

  There is a big battle coming, Eternal, he had said. That couldn’t be a good thing, no matter the context.

  “What unnecessary conflicts are the Alliances stirring up this time?” Nyx asked.

  “I have no idea,” I sighed, slowly standing myself up. “I don’t expect it to be something good.”

  My legs were a little sore from the pain they’d endured, but other than that, I seemed fine.

  “What should we do now?” Freya asked.

  I looked at the base ahead. I could feel the battalion of Knights swarming in there. I was confident I could take them all out, but Sage Gorias would probably cause the rebound effect in me once again if I stepped inside the place, and I was quite certain I was not going to be able to defeat all those Knights if I had to take them on with that kind of a handicap.

  “We should head back to Ikarius and regroup,” I said. “We need more info on what’s going on before we decide to do anything.”

  “Oh,” Freya said, sounding a bit surprised. Maybe she’d expected us to charge in blindly, which was honestly what most of my plans sounded like. But this time I had to be careful about what I was doing.

  “If the machine from before is not guarded, then the least we can do is see what it is before we head back to the village,” Nyx said.

  That’s actually a really smart idea.

  “Why do you sound like I only say stupid things all the time?”

  Well, not allll the time I smiled.

  I turned to Freya. “It’d probably be a good idea to go check out that machine the Knights were using,” I said. “What do you think?”

  She laughed. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “That works out, then.” I grinned.

  We set off, heading back to where we’d been before. I didn’t use my super speed this time but walked at my own pace. It wasn’t like we weren’t in a rush. The faster we did this, the better, but I think we also understood the necessity of taking our time to think about what was going on here, and what it could lead to. And what better time to think about things than when taking a walk?

  Granted, it was a walk in a desertlike land under a pretty intense sun, so not the most ideal conditions.

  Of everything that had just happened, one thing bothered me the most. The machine and the seal rebound effect were worrying, but definitely not as disturbing as the fact that Sage Gorias had nonchalantly told me there was a big battle coming. That meant he thought I’d find about it on my own anyway, which meant this battle was coming up very soon and might involve me. However, if there was going to be a battle soon, I’d have expected some kind of tension between the Alliances, and so far, I hadn’t really seen or heard of anything like that.

  “He never said it was a battle between the Alliances, did he?” Nyx asked.

  Oh, I realized. But if it isn’t a battle between them, then who’s it between?

  “Hey, I have no idea. I was just pointing out that he never mentioned Alliances.”

  Yeah, you have a point.

  My train of thought was soon cut short when the top of the tall tower peeked beyond the hot sands. We walked up to the rim of the pit, and a breeze fanned our faces, warm air coating our skins. The lanky tower stood tall from the bottom of the pit, reflecting the bright light. I glanced around for a bit but saw no one guarding the thing.

  I didn’t really think that was suspicious. Rather, its lack of security meant this tower probably had its own defense mechanisms.

  “Be on alert,” I said, taking a step down the incline. “We don’t know how this thing can attack us, and we don’t want—”

  A blaring sound hit the air, like an emergency alarm, and the top of the white tower turned red almost immediately.

  “Duck!” I yelled, throwing myself back up the incline and down to the sand. A blast of energy surged above me, the heat from the attack singeing my back.

  Dammit, dammit, dammit, I cursed as I picked myself up. I saw Freya ahead of me, her feet racing across the surface. I saw a second energy beam shoot from behind me, and the moment I caught sight of it, I could immediately tell.

  It was going to hit Freya.

  I stacked on my speed boosts and surged ahead, a sonic boom sounding behind me. I slid for half a second as I approached Freya, and put my arms around her, tugging her to the side. We crashed to the sand, missing the beam by a few feet. Instead, the attack crunched into the ground next to us, and all of a sudden, the sand started vibrating, as though an earthquake was happening.

  I quickly stood, but it was too late.

  A vortex opened up a few feet ahead, and the sand around us swirled in. It all happened so fast that I didn’t even have a chance to try and free myself from the flow of san
d. I took one deep breath of air just as we sank into the vortex. I felt a thump against my back a few seconds later, and sand sprayed into my face.

  I rolled over onto my side and slid down the mound of sand that had collected where I’d dropped. I looked up, seeing darkness around me. I focused a bit more, activating my Night Vision skill, and the objects around me slowly appeared within my sight. I could immediately tell we were in some kind of underground cavern, but other than that, I had no clue.

  I looked for Freya first and found the elven assassin lying on the floor a few feet away from me, trying to get the annoying sand out of her hair. I walked up to her. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  She nodded. “Where are we?”

  “No idea,” I said. “We have to—”

  A scream ruptured the walls, echoing through the stone. I could almost feel the pain and helplessness behind it, the tone sending my heart racing.

  “Come on.” Freya stood up immediately and strode forward, her hand hovering over her longsword.

  I walked beside her, my eyes sticking to the walls around me. A small opening stood ahead of us, a dull light coming from within. As we neared the entrance, I gripped Freya’s hand and tugged her back.

  “What?” She jerked her head back at me.

  “Your emotions are getting the better of you,” I said. “We need to be strategic about this.”

  I knew she was focused on nothing but saving the victim, but I still had to make sure we were safe before we did anything. For all we knew, this was just a trap.

  “Zoran, we need to go in,” she argued. “Whoever is in there is being—”

  Another scream echoed, this one more pained than the last. I could hear sobs ahead of me, and at this point, I knew we had to charge in.

  I pushed forward, heading through the entrance with Freya by my side. I saw a form standing ahead of me, a shadowy silhouette illuminated by a dull blue light. At first glance, I immediately knew what creature this was.