by R. A. Mejia
There was a crack of air as Evanora tapped her walking stick on the ground, took a step forward, and answered, “I am Evanora Everwoods, Keeper of the Light of Cybellie, Goddess of Growth, Nature, and the Wild.” She took another step forward, tapped her walking stick again, and sparks of electricity leapt from the ground. “I have fought more battles than you have lived days of your life, and if you do not let these people go and flee, I will burn you to cinders, troll.”
I heard the Scavengers laugh, and then Kenny said, “The Everwoods Witch? She’s a healer, not a fighter.”
Another of the goblin Scavengers looked frightened, though. “No, she’s not just a healer. When I broke one of her windows on a dare, my grandpa beat me to high hells. He said that he fought with her in the last great war and saw her break Three-Tusk Tennen at the Battle of High Ridge Hill.”
Another of the Scavengers shook his head and added, “I don’t want nothing to do with the Witch of Everwoods. I heard she cursed a goblin’s junk to fall off once.”
The Scavengers edged away from the troll who growled and said, “I don’t care who you are. I’ve fought powerful paladins and wise old wizards. None have survived my skills and abilities.” He raised the two-handed sword up and cut his own left hand. Blood poured from the wound then slowed to a dribble and stopped. The troll held out his left hand, and while there was still blood on it, his palm was fully healed. “No old lady’s gonna scare Terrance the Terrible!”
The witch blinked hard, and then a small smile broke out and she sniggered. “I acknowledge that your regeneration abilities do your race credit, but is your name really Terrance the Troll? You sound more like an accountant than a warrior.”
The troll’s blue skin turned purple with embarrassment, and he said, “I’ll show you who’s an accountant.” Then he raised his two-handed sword above his head and charged. A faint green aura formed around the knobby top of Evanora’s walking cane, but she stood stock-still as he approached. I was almost certain that she would get split in two as the glowing red sword came down, but there was only the ring of metal on stone as the witch carefully stepped just enough to the side for the blade to pass by harmlessly. The troll looked stunned that his powerful attack had missed and instead split the stone floor. While he tugged on the embedded weapon, Evanora stepped into the troll and lightly tapped the blue warrior in the chest with the top of her cane. Terrance went flying backward with enough force to send him all the way across the room, leaving his sword stuck firmly planted in the floor.
The troll crashed into the stone wall and then the floor. He howled in pain, slapping at his chest. The chainmail armor was glowing a bright red the witch had touched with her walking stick, almost like it was fresh from the forge. Terrance pulled and tugged at the armor until it came off, exposing his bare blue chest, which was now covered with a severe burn where the hot metal came in contact with his skin. Unlike the earlier self-inflicted sword wound, it did not seem to heal.
“Now that you see the difference in our experience, do you want to continue this fight, Terrance?”
The troll got to his feet and gnashed his teeth together in response. He started to glow red, and the muscles in his chest and arms swelled till they were twice their normal size. The Everwoods Witch shook her head, tsked, and said, “Berserker's Rage? That won’t help you, I’m afraid.”
The troll growled wordlessly and rushed the witch. He moved twice as fast as he had before, and his arms and legs seemed to blur as he clawed, punched, and kicked at Evanora. Each strike was powerful enough to crush stone, and a few did, but the witch almost lazily stepped back, to the side, and ducked out of the way of each of his attacks. His blows never hit anything but air or stone.
The troll grew increasingly frustrated as his attacks failed to kill the old witch until he finally got lucky and saw her stumble over a bit of rock he’d knocked loose with one of his punches. The troll stuck out like a viper and grabbed the off-balance Evanora by the throat, raising her up into the air contemptuously.
“I have you now, old woman!” he declared triumphantly.
Despite the fact that the troll’s fingers were around her throat, the witch did not look concerned. She smiled at him, showing her needle-sharp teeth and said, “No, it is I who has you.”
At that moment, Evanora Everwoods tapped the top of Terrance the Troll’s head with the top of her walking stick. The green charge surrounding the cane had grown as the witch dodged attack after attack until it glowed like a miniature star. All the built-up energy that had gathered there poured into the troll’s skull and exploded. The attack was so powerful that bits of burning skull and brain matter went flying across the room along with a bone and muscle from the upper part of the troll’s chest. The remainder of his body stood in place for a moment as if it hadn’t registered that he was dead before suddenly collapsing, dropping the Everwoods Witch to the ground.
She pried the troll’s hand off of her throat, and there was visible bruising around her neck from where Terrance had grabbed her as she got to her feet. Evanora flicked bits of bone and flesh from her green robes and out of her hair as she shook her head. She then slowly walked towards me and said, “I’m getting too old for these kinds of fights, Metalman. I didn’t think that troll would ever get around to grabbing me. I don’t think I could have reached his head with my walking stick otherwise.”
She pulled a small knife from her belt and cut the rope tying my hands behind my back. I felt Parker shift as he began to move again without me pressing against him. I said the command for the mechanical spider to fully activate, and he crawled off my back with all his eight legs clicking against the stone floor as he got down to it.
Parker reached up with its two forelegs, and I petted the mechanical spider’s back and said, “Parker, go cut the ropes tying up the other goblins.” The spider seemed to nod once and then went off to obey the command.
I looked around the room and saw the Scavengers huddled in the corner farthest from the Everwoods Witch, a pool of liquid around their feet. The witch noticed them too and turned toward them. She raised her walking stick and said, “Do the lot of you want to fight too?” She apparently took their quivering silence as an answer. “Then shoo before I decide to kill you all.”
The Scavengers scrambled over one another in their haste to flee the room, and not a single one looked back as I heard their steps fade into the distance. The witch leaned on me, and as I stood up, her expression looked drawn and exhausted. “Are you ok, Evanora?” I asked.
She took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes, Repair. I’m unhurt, just a bit tired. It took a lot of energy and mana out of me to fight that troll.” She straightened up and continued, “I’m not as young as I once was, but I still have my spells to help quicken my movements when I need them.” She looked around the room and asked, “Did you call me here just to save you, or was there some progress in the quest I’d given you?”
I walked over to the wooden barrels in the corner and carefully pried the lids off two of them. “The Infernal Crystals I gave you were only the tip of the iceberg. The troll and the mage were using them to make this.” I gestured to the barrels. “Infernal Powder.”
Evanora Everwoods shuffled to the barrels and examined their contents. She turned to me and said, “How did they do this? I’ve never heard of an Infernal Crystal being made into this. It explodes and curses the holder if the crystal is broken at all.”
“I don’t know, but Harrison Freud probably does.”
“Who?”
I explained our dealings with the mage and how he was behind one of the doors with some spell that stopped all sound from entering the room.
“He also killed our friend, and we’ll see him dead,” Frak spit. The other goblins, who had all been freed by Parker and reclaimed their weapons, nodded their heads in agreement.
The Everwoods Witch looked down at the goblins with pity in her expression. “I’m sorry for your loss, but we cannot kill the mage. Not yet. He is our
best lead to understanding what is at play here. How did this Aeromancer learn how to refine the Infernal Crystals, and what does he plan to do with them? If we don’t learn the answers to these questions, more people like your friend may suffer.”
The twins looked to Greebo for direction, but despite his dark expression and clenched fists, he nodded. The Witch accepted his agreement and continued, “I will bring down the spell that protects his door, but you four will have to be the first in. If the mage has a chance to cast his spells, it will make the fight harder. Bring him down quickly.”
She looked at each of us in turn, and we nodded in agreement. Then she raised her walking stick and started to chant. A white glow surrounded the door, and the glow surrounding the door began to flicker, almost as if the two spells were fighting with one another. Then with a flash of light the magical shimmer covering it disappeared and the door opened to reveal a room covered in carved-out symbols. A circle had been drawn in the center of the room on the floor in what looked like blood, and the corpse of a Yettaur with its chest ripped open had been placed there. In the center of its chest cavity, right where I’d have expected to see a heart, there was a group of fist-sized Infernal Crystal being bathed in blood by two large shadowy hands.
Harrison sat in the corner of the room with his eyes closed, and there was a dark aura surrounding him despite the glowing mage’s circle in the center of the room. The dark hands extended from him, and lifted the crystals from the body of the Yettaur. He turned surprised and the mage was barely able to utter a word of surprise before Greebo and the twins charged across the room. The goblins reacted faster than me, but I was only a few steps behind them. I dared not risk using the rifle in such a confined space full of unknown magic, so I activated my integrated Blacksmith Hammer and my right arm transformed. I raised my hammer hand above my head, intending to bring it down on the mage’s legs when the two shadow hands moved. They swept across the room and knocked the goblins away like they were bowling pins. They barely missed me as well, but they came close enough to stop me from rushing forward.
Harrison stood up and pointed a finger at me, muttered an arcane phrase, and a black bolt of energy shot from his finger. It hit me square in the chest, I froze and for a moment I felt the dark energy course through by frame, seeking to destroy. My vision dimmed, and I fell to my knees as my body seized. I felt the wooden fibers of my frame crack and decay and the stone and metal age and warp as the energy corrupted them. Distantly, I heard Harrison laughing, and then something stirred inside of me. Some other force thrummed from the center of my chest, and with each pulse, the darkness was pushed back until it was purged from my frame. My vision cleared, and I was able to stand once more.
“No! That’s impossible!” was all that Harrison could say before I swung the hammer at him. The look of surprise turned to pain and fear as the flat side of the hammer slammed into his side, throwing him against the wall. The shadowy hands disappeared when the mage’s concentration was broken along with his ribs.
I heard Evanora chanting behind me, and I turned in time to see her wave her glowing walking stick, prompting the ropes she carried to leap from her other hand and fly across the room. They wrapped around the fallen mage, binding and gagging him.
Groans from the goblins grabbed my attention, and I turned to see that their skin had turned to a motley grey, and they were writing in pain.
“What is happening to them?” I asked.
“They are being corrupted by dark magic,” Evanora explained. She held out her walking stick, and a white glow enveloped the goblins. Slowly, their skin returned to its green hue, and when the white glow faded away, the goblins were back to their normal appearance. Slowly, they sat up and shook their heads.
The Everwoods Witch pointed at Harrison and commanded, “Bring him into the other room where I can question him.” The witch’s expression was so fierce that I wouldn’t have traded places with Harrison for all the gold in the city as he was dragged out of the room by my goblin friends.
Chapter 41 - With Great Sacrifice
The goblins muttered about not being able to take their revenge as Harrison was dragged from his sanctuary, and there were tears visible in their eyes. But they’d seen Evanora’s power, and they would not disobey her. They sat the mage on the stone floor in the middle of the large room where we had been held captive only moments ago. He glanced over at the dead body of his troll lieutenant, but unlike the goblins, he did not mourn for his comrade. Instead, his eyebrows furrowed in anger. Evanora Everwoods pulled down his gag and asked, “What is your name, mage?”
Harrison tried to mutter something, but the Witch slapped him and said, “No. You won’t be chanting any dark spells while we speak. If you try to do so again, I will have to kill you like I did your associate.”
There was a murmur of approval as the goblins took their weapons from their sheathes. Their red-rimmed eyes still spoke of their recent loss, but their angry sharp-toothed smiles longed for Harrison's death. I put myself between my goblin friends and Harrison. I understood and even shared their pain, but I knew that Evanora wouldn’t be questioning Harrison unless it was important.
Harrison didn’t seem to care that most of the people in the room wanted him dead though. He gave the goblins and me a contemptuous glance and then spoke to the Everwoods Witch. “I’ll tell you nothing. You? Threaten me with death? I’ve learned that death is only the beginning for the truly powerful.”
“Oh? What fool has taught you such an idiotic lesson?”
Harrison laughed with a tinge of madness coming through before angrily continuing. “My master knows more than all the so-called mages at the guild that kept their power from me. It was only he that understood my greatness and freely shared with me the path to true power."
I thought the mage would continue to ramble, but he suddenly stopped talking and looked off into the distance, tilting his head to the side as if he were listening to someone. He nodded once, and the mage’s eyes turned towards me. "You, Metalman. You have seen one application of the crystals. You want to know what else I can do with these crystals? Fine!"
The mage muttered a single word, and the bindings that tied his hands burst into flame and ash. Harrison jumped to his feet, and before anyone could stop him, he plunged his arms elbow-deep into the open casket of ground Infernal Crystal.
"Get back!" the Witch yelled and everyone obeyed as black flames roared from the casket.
The mage screamed in pain as his exposed skin touched the deadly Infernal Powder. But he ground his teeth and started to chant. We stared at the man, and I thought that he’d truly lost what little sanity he had as black fire crawled its way up his arms. His skin blackened and cracked, revealing the cooked flesh beneath. Someone retched from beside me, and I was once again very glad that I could not smell the cooked human flesh. The mage’s eyes turned black as he finished his chant, and he raised the now-burnt-away stubs, revealing what little remained of his arms.
I stared horrified by the pain the mage must have felt.
A voice behind me said, "Is that the power your Master promised you? I'd say it was lacking."
I turned to see the Witch shaking her head at Harrison, her hard visage unphased by the gruesome armless man.
The mage smiled at her. "Oh, no. This is just the sacrifice. And with great sacrifice comes great reward."
At those words, great pulsing black tendrils erupted from the mage's arm stubs and streamed toward the Evanora.
The suddenness surprised even the Witch who hastily raised her hands, invoked a spell, and in an instant, a translucent white shield appeared around her. Yet the tendrils did not attack her, instead veering around her and attaching themselves to the fallen troll and the remains of the Yettaur.
"No! Stop him," the Witch cried out, her hands already moving to cast another spell.
"It's too late!" The mage yelled as the tendrils quickly pulled with unnatural strength and speed and brought the corpses in contact with his b
ody. I'd expected him to be crushed underneath the sheer weight of the bodies, but the flesh flowed around him and then, sickeningly, into him.
I stared in horror as blue troll flesh and the white-furred Yettaur merged with the burnt and cracked flesh of the mage's body. The various body parts came together in some Cronenberg-esque fashion with a clawed paw growing out of the face of the troll, which was half-fused with the mage’s. One of the former troll bodyguard's arms twitched as it attached to the stubs of where the mages left arm once was, while the right stub fused with one of the furred legs of the dungeon monster. The majority of the Yettaur body merged with Harrison’s. Its lower torso engulfed the man’s burnt hips, giving him a look of a grotesque, three-legged parody of a centaur. The remaining flesh of both creatures had to go somewhere, and that somewhere became a pulsing mass of extra body parts that stuck out of the back of the mage. Bone and white fur poked through the mix of troll, human, and Yettaur skin that covered the lumpy squirming mass.
I whispered the command for Inspect again.
Harrison Freud - Mutated
Level 11 - Monster mage
HP 122/122
