Arcane Transmogrification

by Robert Harper

  Behind him, Danny ignored the screams of pain a few of the female goblins made, as they were hit by a few poorly directed spells.

  Before Danny could move into position, Bozhidar's ritual spell completed, and the six goblins assisting him fell to the ground, dead. The spell shot forward and struck Danny, surrounding him in a swirling mass of black energy.

  Panting, Bozhidar started to laugh as he caught his breath, but then, he froze in confusion as the black mass of entropy magic began to swirl in a tight orb. The blackness of the spell started to take on other darker colors. Then, those colors became lighter until the whole spell became as bright a small sun.

  The shamans all shielded their eyes in an attempt to keep up with what was happening. The blinding light receded, and they could only look up in shock to find Danny hovering directly above them.

  “Thanks for refilling a good bit of my mana,” Danny said with a smirk.

  Not waiting any longer, Danny focused on each and every one of them. Reaching out with his mana, every hobgoblin still standing fell to the ground as Danny removed their connections to the source. Only dark voids now existed where they had once received their power.

  CHAPTER 30

  The muted sounds of battle continued outside, but for Danny, there was only the goblin in front of him and the answers only Bozhidar could provide. Danny didn’t have time to wait for the wretched creature to wake up so that he could torture the information out of him.

  Danny placed his hands on either side of the still unconscious Bozhidar. Activating Nature Aspect, Danny's features turned into those of an elve’s. Focusing, Danny did what he promised himself he would never do to another creature; he forced his way into Bozhidar's mind.

  There was token resistance at first, but Danny's mind was an unstoppable force by this point. His high intelligence quickly analyzed any resistance and, with Cranny’s assistance, effectively countered it with little effort. The mass of memories of the hobgoblin's past flooded Danny's mind like a burst dam.

  Bozhidar grew up in a brutal world where only the strong were kept and the weak thrown away. Growing up under the shadow of his two older brothers had made him strive to prove himself to his seemingly deranged father. Danny now realized that the hobgoblins who had surrounded Bozhidar were his brothers or half brothers, all direct offspring of Bozhidar’s father.

  By the time Bozhidar was born, all the female goblins had already been turned over to the baby goblin making industrial complex engineered by his father. Every goblin male sired by Bozhidar’s father had been tested with the key that he had stolen from the humans. Those of his brothers who had failed to unlock their mana with the key were turned into slaves and used as entropy fodder in the war.

  Moving back to Bozhidar’s father, Danny learned that he was called Hadrian and had insisted that he was the true ruler of Diadem. In one drunken evening, Bozhidar had heard his father muttering about his birthright and about his younger sister stealing the throne that rightfully belonged to him. Danny also learned that Bozhidar had received a second primary target, or targets. The current ruler of Diadem and the entire Diadem family.

  Connecting the dots, Danny knew that if this was true, it explained why the Diadem family would want to keep Hadrian’s actions such a national secret. Plus, this whole mind and soul transference magic, whatever it was called, could not be allowed into the wrong hands.

  Danny dug through the rest of Bozhidar's mind but didn't find much of a spell-related nature, besides learning the few offensive entropy spells Hadrian Diadem had taught the goblins. This included the ritual spell which would consume everything in a specific radius depending on the “souls” it consumed.

  Danny was frustrated to find that Hadrian had conducted a transfer ritual in weeks past and had made sure the ritual of placing him and his sons into their new bodies had been private. Bozhidar had followed his father’s orders and had waited outside the large chamber until an attendant had opened the door again to report that the ritual was finished. Then, at his father’s last instructions, Bozhidar had killed those goblins left in the great hall.

  A pregnant orc, dwarf, and beastwoman, who looked similar to a wolf, had been captured. Three infants were born shortly afterward and were taken away in the care of a female goblin nursemaid and a pair of trusted hobgoblins. They would make sure the infants made it to their respective species in secret. Even Bozhidar didn't know which child was now his father’s new body, but Danny noted the orc infant had suspiciously been given the ancient key to take with it.

  Nothing had been written down or saved that hadn't been carved into the flesh of the captured women. Bozhidar saw and memorized the rune that had been carved into each pregnant woman’s lower abdomen. Hadrian had made sure that there was little to follow him with, giving the explicit order to dispose of the new mothers’ bodies. The young hobgoblin had fortunately chosen to preserve and revere the image carved into the women’s flesh, and he made the goblin artisan’s crude attempts to replicate the rune that had been carved into their flesh a symbol for his growing nation.

  The battles on the surface were a distraction to what the goblins were really working on. The mass of tunnels Danny had sensed when under the ground were just the tip of the iceberg. The goblins had grown and spread out toward the human and elven lands. They purposely had used the fortress as a distracting focal point. By the time the two countries realized what was really going on, there would be nothing they could do to stop the coming goblin tsunami.

  All of this new information seemed to flow through Danny’s mind like water coming out of a high pressure hose. Danny struggled to process it all and fought to slow the force at which the memories invaded his mind. Losing the fight against the seemingly insurmountable amount of information, Danny passed out.

  ***

  Pain. It spread across Danny’s head and down to his face, causing him to double up and curl into a ball. He was unable to contain the groan that escaped his lips at the intensity of the excruciating throbbing in his skull. He could have sworn that his heart had switched places with his brain and was now in the middle of an extensive demolition in preparation for remodelling its new home.

  Cracking an eye open, Danny found that he had either moved or been moved against a far wall. Something relatively soft lay under his head like a pillow. In the middle of the room lay the bodies of the hobgoblin shamans. Pools of drying blood that now lay under the hobgoblin’s bodies spoke of some end Danny hadn’t been conscious for.

  As if registering for the first time the sounds of metal striking metal and the screaming in different languages, Danny managed to push through the grinding pain in his skull. Lifting his head toward the great hall’s former entrance, he had to reorient himself since everything was sideways. Fortunately, that didn’t prevent him from recognizing Ivy, Brooke, and Jade fighting alongside Dain against the teams of cursed goblins trying to force their way through a large hole in the wall leading from the fortress’s courtyard. The hole was larger in size than that of the previous entrance. It took Danny a moment to realize that only a majority of the goblins heading through the hole were cursed with entropy magic. Their deep pitch black eyes and total disregard for their own well-being gave them away. While the cursed goblins were harder to kill, these were not as impressive as the ones who had attacked the caravan in the great forest. Their movements were jerky and uncoordinated. Danny didn’t have any clues as to why this was, but he was definitely glad of the fact.

  *Easy for me to say as I take it easy back here on the floor,* Danny thought to himself as he chuckled, before he immediately winced in pain as a new wave of pounding rose in his aching brain. Danny peeked back in concern as his friends continued to fight for their lives.

  Brooke held the center with her large tower shield. With it, she would lash out with her large one-handed mace at any opportunity. The short goblins’ bodies would go flying back through the hole, many striking their allies before hitting the ground.

  Ice fl
ooded one side of the hole from one outstretched hand as Ivy fired her crossbow at a goblin trying to flank Brooke’s position. The icy floor had the the goblins tripping and falling on each other in their hard press to get inside.

  A ball of dark energy shot out of the opening to strike Brooke on her head. Before Brooke could react, Phantom appeared at her side, and a pure white aura extended out of the cat to envelope the girl. Brooke shook her head and turned back to her work.

  “Jade,” Ivy yelled to be heard over the noise.

  Jade’s tall form grew faint, and she disappeared from where she had been engaging a few uncursed goblins with her short swords. The two goblins lowered their weapons and looked around in confusion. There was a flash of light from outside that forced Danny to close his eyes just before the air pressure rose sharply, and then Danny’s ears popped. When Danny opened them again, Jade was already back at her previous position, her blades buried in the necks of the goblins. The flow of goblins entering then noticeably came to an end.

  Phantom turned and was the first to notice that Danny was awake. Running over, the cat surrounded him in her white aura, but it did no good for whatever was wrong with his head. Danny pushed though his pain so that he could reach up and rubbed the cat’s ears.

  Brooke looked back when she noticed Phantom’s absence, yelling “Danny’s awake!” Brooke turned back to crush one of the last cursed goblins which had reached her. The others looked back briefly but didn’t have the luxury to leave the opening unguarded.

  Ivy yelled, “Dwarf, go check on Danny!”

  The dwarf glared across the room, growling, “The name is Dain, little human!” Ivy ignored him and flung her sword outward. Blades of ice flew off her sword to bury themselves into a few remaining goblins’ bodies.

  As Phantom ran back over to help the girls, Danny tried to sit up. His careful movements were hindered when he realized that a root sticking up from the ground beneath him was wrapped tightly around his wrist.

  *Cranny, what’s going on?* Danny asked as he looked down in confusion at his restraint.

  Danny waited a bit before asking again, *Cranny?*

  “You alright there, Danny boy?” Dain asked as he knelt down next to him.

  Danny sighed in frustration, “I don’t know… What happened while I was out?”

  Dain stroked his beard as he replied, “I gave up waiting on you and snuck out to find you and those shaman bastards all taking a nap. Well, all except that one in the black duster you were talking about. He looked like he had taken one too many blows to the head; he was all foaming at the mouth and mumbling. I didn’t know when you were going to wake up, and so I found a sword nearby and slit their throats. Nasty work, but I wasn’t going to wait for them to wake up.”

  Danny glanced over to where the girls were still trying to stop the last few goblins. Reaching out, Danny tried to use Earth Affinity to close up the hole. Instead, he felt immediately faint, and the pain in his head spiked.

  Crying out, Danny heard a familiar voice in his head, *Stop that Danny! I am busy, and we are going to have to depend on the girls for a bit longer. I am almost done, and then you can use all the magic you want. Stay out there, and make sure nothing happens to our body. Also, whatever you do, don’t remove that root around your wrist!*

  *Cranny, what are you talking about?* Danny replied in confusion.

  There wasn’t a response from Cranny, and after a few more tries, Danny eventually gave up trying to contact him. Danny was halfway tempted to head into his sanctuary and give Cranny a piece of his mind when the activity by the opening stopped altogether.

  Jade, Ivy, and Brooke all looked between one another before Ivy called back, “Dain, come watch the entrance with Phantom while we talk with Danny.”

  Dain stood up grumbling, “Blasted females…to be her father…stick my boot up her…,” as he headed back over to guard the opening.

  The three teenage girls walked over to Danny with varying looks of displeasure. Danny couldn’t help note a strong sense of déjà vu, but he couldn’t remember when this situation had ever happened before. He figured it was just his headache.

  “Danny, you are going…,” Ivy started in that tone Danny was all too familiar with, but Danny interrupted her, saying, “Ivy, I was here to stop the one who hurt my mother--your uncle, Hadrian.”

  Ivy froze and didn’t say anything at first. Her brain was trying to catch up with what he had just said.

  Danny continued on, saying, “Your mother threatened my parents, and then later myself, that if we told anyone what your uncle had done, that we and anyone they told would die. I saw an opportunity to kill Hadrian myself and to do it without anyone else being aware. I didn’t want you three to get involved, even though you are her daughter. I didn’t know how far she would take her threat. Unfortunately, your uncle got away.”

  Ivy regained her voice, saying, “Wait, Danny, what exactly did my uncle…”

  The ground shook, and dust fell from the ceiling, covering everything in a faint layer.

  “What was that?” Brooke asked. Everyone waited with baited breath, but nothing else happened.

  Danny urgently whispered, “How did y’all get in here with all those goblins outside?”

  Ivy looked like she wanted to revisit what he previously had been saying, but she replied, “When we found you were gone, Phantom led us down here, and we used our variant abilities to fight our way over here. We wouldn’t have made it if Phantom hadn’t been there to deal with the shaman’s cursed magic. At first, they were flooding out of the hillside like ants. Then, all of sudden, they stopped coming, and a few ran back down into the ground.

  “Did you scare them off?” Danny asked in confusion.

  Jade shook her head, “No, they didn’t look scared. I think they were fighting someone or something else at the same time. When I was moving quickly around the field, I saw a bloodied shaman run up to grab a few groups of goblins and head back down, underground.”

  Brooke spoke excitedly, “It was awesome, Danny! I was melting the ground on one side, while Ivy froze the ground on the other. Jade was all over the place, taking out shamans left and right before taking out groups of spearman with a lightning strike. The whole time, Phantom was healing anyone who got hurt and killing whoever hurt them. Then, we had to run out of mana shortly before making it in here...”

  Danny glanced over to where the huge opening to the courtyard was and had to ask, “How did you get in here then?”

  Brooke smiled, bragging, “I easily smashed my way through with my raw strength.”

  “The goblins had already knocked out most of the wall already,” Jade said, smirking.

  Brooke looked put off, countering, “Well, I did smash through the front gate with one blow.”

  It was Ivy’s turn to butt in, “Yes you did but not before I froze the thing solid, first.”

  Brooke pouted and turned away from the other two girls.

  “Danny, do you think you could close the hole up now, and we could try to find a way out of here?” Ivy asked.

  Danny looked down at the root wrapped around his wrist. He could feel mana regenerating in his body then immediately flowing out of him. His mana was staying at an uncomfortable constant--right next to nil.

  Danny shifted on the hard floor, replying, “I can’t really get up right now, and I hurt my head, so I can’t…”

  There was another explosion, and not only did the ground shake but the wall leading out to the courtyard now had a large crack running from the huge opening to the ceiling.

  Dain ran over with Phantom in tow. The dwarf asked, worriedly, “What in the dark depths was that?”

  The only answer that came was a deafening crash, as a large boulder fell through the courtyard wall and landed right where Dain and Phantom had been standing not a few seconds before. Ancient stones flew across the room as the dust and mortar which had been knocked loose flooded the space like a dense morning fog. The opening that Brooke had made in the w
all was now filled with debris, but half the wall had fallen in order to cause this.

  Coughing and hacking in an attempt to clear the irritating dust from their lungs, everyone turned toward the early morning light that now streamed through a jagged gaping hole that stretched from the entirety of the courtyard wall all the way across the middle of the ceiling. Danny was at a loss as to how they all hadn’t been crushed by the massive chunks of stone that now surrounded his group where he still lay against the wall.

  The dark void-filled eyes of a cursed mountain troll looked through the opening and down right at them. With a blood curdling yell from the troll, goblins flooded over the wall and into the great hall like a floodgate thrown open.

  CHAPTER 31

  Over the top of the half-collapsed wall came little green and gray hands pulling and pushing as small feet kicked and flailed. Out of gap-toothed mouths set between long, often torn or missing ears came screams of anger, hatred, and frustration. The goblins, both cursed and not, climbed over the remains of the wall, the fallen debris, and over each other in an attempt to get inside the great hall. Each one was bristling with scavenged or crudely made weapons. The looming figure of the troll turned away to bend over, out of sight.

  Danny quickly tried to stand again, only be to jerked back as the sacred tree root reminded him that it was still wrapped around his wrist. Seeing the first goblin land, well more like tumble, onto the floor of the great hall caused Danny to give up on freeing himself from the root and look for a weapon.

  *Cranny, I am going to kill you after this! You seriously can’t give me any mana to work with!*

  Danny didn’t get a reply as Ivy rushed to his side, saying, “Danny, get us a way out of here while we defend you!”