by A. J. Markam
When everyone’s Health had recovered and my mana was back up to full, we started off.
Stig could barely see over the top of the snow, so Krug let him sit on his shoulder again. Dorp was the unofficial hero of the Battle of the Ice Goblins – and had somehow managed not to piss everyone off since then – so he got a ride as well.
We picked our way through canyons of ice with cliffs towering a hundred feet above us. The walls glittered around us in the yellow light cast by Alaria’s and the other demons’ fire, which they held in the palms of their hands like torches.
As we trudged along, I kept summoning the All-Seeing Eye to go ahead of us and explore. The spell only lasted 60 seconds, so I sent it out as far as I could. Once it expired, I would have to wait three minutes before I cast it again, during which time we were sort of walking blindly into the unknown.
However, we were also walking slowly into the unknown, through a great deal of snow, and I was reasonably sure there was nothing out there that would attack us for at least the next thousand feet.
We had come to a wide portion of the canyon, at least 300 feet between the towering cliffs on either side, when I sent the Eye out again. As it rounded a curve, my heart stopped in my chest.
Hundreds of glowing white eyes were staring at me from out of the darkness.
The pirates and I were still 600 feet away, but I ‘saw’ what the Eye saw like it was right in front of me – and I nearly crapped my pants.
I yelped in fright and stepped back. “Stop – everybody stop,” I hissed.
The pirates all came to a halt.
“What is it?” Alaria whispered.
“I found them.”
A man’s voice spoke out from far above us: “Or perhaps they have found you.”
Everybody else in our group raised their heads towards the sky; me, I sent the Eye zooming up to find the source.
It was frost elves, all right. Three of them stood on top of the nearest 50-foot-cliff, illuminated by the moon, all of them wearing dark robes trimmed with fur.
The one in the center was a male about six feet tall. He sported the features common to all elves – pointed ears, slender build, thin face – along with the glowing white eyes that were common to most elven tribes in OtherWorld. But his skin was blue. It was hard to tell the exact hue in the dark, but it was definitely blue.
I was guessing this was Saykir.
As the Eye got closer, I could make out the details of his face. His expression was cruel and haughty, like some ancient Roman emperor accustomed to unchecked power.
He also had white hair, long and straight, spilling down his back. For a second I thought the color of his hair meant he was extremely old – but then I realized his two companions had white hair, too. They were both female, with skin tones close to the man’s – but they were very different from each other.
The female to Saykir’s right had a soft, pretty face with full lips and a gentle expression. Her silver headdress glimmered in the moonlight, and she radiated calm and benevolence.
The other woman looked even more pissed off than Saykir. She had hollow cheeks, a sharp nose, and a disapproving mouth with thin, pursed lips – but that was all I could see of her face. She wore a black hood over her head, and the only thing visible in the shadows were her glowing eyes. I only thought she was a woman because of the rounded slope of her chest beneath her robes. In her right hand she clutched a wooden staff with a small, opalescent orb set into a housing at the top.
I was guessing the kind woman was a priestess and the mean one was a mage – all topped off by an extremely powerful warlock.
Great.
“Are you finished with your magical telescope, little apprentice?” Saykir called out. “Have you had your fill of looking at our faces?”
That startled me. The Eye was invisible to everyone else – but this guy apparently knew it was there.
And then he reached out, grabbed it between his fingers, and crushed it like an eggshell.
There was a pop! and a burst of light, and my own vision abruptly returned. I saw the pirates around me rather than the three frost elves above.
Suddenly I felt very, very afraid.
“Alaria,” Saykir purred. “The wayward daughter finally returns home. Why now, I wonder?”
His voice reminded me of Salieri’s in that old movie Amadeus – aristocratic, intelligent, subtly mocking. You might think he was pleasant on the surface, but there was a subtle undercurrent of malice.
“Just wanted to pay a visit,” she said in a loud, cheerful voice.
“How nice. Too bad you came all this way for nothing, since you are not welcome.”
“I spent months here as your slave, Saykir. Can’t you show me enough hospitality to greet me as a free woman?”
“I might, if I didn’t think you would treat me the same way you did poor Jastoth and Odeon.”
Shit.
He knew about her former masters.
“To say nothing of Malfurik,” Saykir continued. “You didn’t even have a quarrel with him, and you upended all of Abaddon.”
Dorp started to speak –
“Not the time,” I hissed, and he fell silent.
Saykir shook his head. “No, I see how you treat people who open their homes to you as a guest.”
“You’re not a guest when they put a chain around your neck,” Alaria snapped. “Which Malfurik did.”
“True… but I am not Malfurik. And to prove it, I will you give you a gift: your lives. Turn around and go back the way you came, never return, and we will forget all about the past.”
“I don’t think so. I’m never going to forget the past.”
“Then you will die here in the present,” Saykir said with fake sadness. “A creature of fire, buried in the icy wastes. Destroy – ”
Before he could get out the next word, though, I whispered “Hit it!” at Shee and pointed.
The yellow demon let loose a sonic scream right at the cliff where Saykir and his two companions were standing.
I was anticipating a fantastic first blow – the cliff blasting apart into chunks of ice as the warlock fell to his death, or at least a 50% drop in hit points –
Except that the sonic blast hit some sort of invisible barrier.
At the second of impact, I saw an amber-hued sphere covering the entirety of the cliff and the figures standing on it. Once the sound waves dissipated, the barrier became invisible again.
Dammit – the Mage.
A powerful one, too, to throw up such a huge shield.
We were totally screwed.
“That was… inadvisable,” Saykir said. Then his voice turned angry. “My children – ATTACK!”
There was a roar all around us, and several hundred warriors spilled out of the surrounding canyons. Half carried spears with wickedly sharp points, and the rest sported swords and shields.
“Okay,” I said to Shee as I pointed at the approaching ranks, “let’s try that again.”
Just like with the goblins in the hall of ice, Shee’s sonic scream sent dozens of elves tumbling through the air.
“Attack!” I yelled, and the demons leapt into battle.
Fireballs flew through the canyon and lit up the glittering ice around us. Electrical bolts, granite strikes, force beams, Darkbolts – we took out elf after elf, but there were too many of them. They descended on us like a wave.
As they got closer, I realized something with shock:
They were all women. Every single one of them.
Either that, or elf dudes had surprisingly full lips, dainty faces, and suspicious mounds under their leather-armored chests.
The fighting descended into hand-to-hand combat, with swords and spears clashing and ringing throughout the canyon walls.
The elves were formidable fighters – but, unlike the goblins, they didn’t have the ice golems to back them up. And their leather armor, while it made them faster and more agile, didn’t give them nearly the protection of the gob
lins’ plate armor.
My pirates were holding their own, striking down elf after elf – but every time a female warrior fell, the priestess on top of the ridge would send swirls of golden energy down into her body, bringing her back up to full Health within seconds. More than a couple elves actually died – and were immediately resurrected in shimmering clouds of light.
This was not good.
I could Soul Suck and Doomsday as much as I wanted, but if the lady up on the cliff was going to keep healing everybody, there was no way we could make any progress.
Alaria was flinging fireballs with one hand and cracking her whip with the other, and Stig was doing his part, but all to no avail.
Time to break out our secret weapon.
“Dorp,” I yelled through the clanging of blades, “what’s with the hold-up?”
“I can’t get inside Saykir’s mind, boss,” Dorp said, sounding shocked beyond belief. “I can’t see what he’s afraid of.”
Dammit, that made sense. Saykir was a Level 70 warlock, so he knew every trick I could throw at him. He probably had countermeasures in place against Jedi mind tricks.
This guy wasn’t Jastoth, who had renounced being a warlock, or Odeon, who had fled as soon as we attacked him. This bastard was the real deal.
But his soldiers weren’t warlocks, and I doubted he could protect them all.
“Then reach into the warriors’ minds and pull out whatever they’re afraid of!” I yelled.
Dorp nodded and turned his attention to the attacking hordes of blue hotties.
Suddenly inky black holes appeared in the ice all around us. For a second I thought that was all they were, just holes the warriors might fall into – and then I realized they were portals.
Because something came out of them.
Tentacles. Dozens of squid-like appendages of slimy black flesh, 20 feet long and thick as small tree trunks. They spilled out of the portals, flailing through the air and across the snow, grasping for anything within reach.
Some had claw-like digits on the edges of their arms. Some had suckers with gnashing teeth inside the rings. Others had additional tendrils sprouting out of the tentacles, and tinier ones out of those, like some biological, fractal nightmare.
The sight of them affected the elves immediately. They all shrieked and fell back – and strangely enough, they all lifted their eyes up to the cliff.
Saykir laughed. “An illusion demon. How droll.”
Then he turned his attention to his soldiers.
“Everything you see is not real, children. It is an illusion cast by the little apprentice’s minion – but now I shall show him the real thing.”
Another black portal opened up inches away from my feet. I staggered backwards as slimy black tentacles came flailing out and began grasping for anything within reach.
I wasn’t sure if this was real or an illusion – and then the tentacles grabbed one of the pirates.
The demon screamed and clawed fruitlessly at the ice as the tentacle dragged him along by his foot.
I hit the tentacle with Soul Suck, but it had next to no effect – and the pirate had almost reached the edge of the black portal.
At the last second, Krug stepped up and slashed through the tentacle with his cutlass, sending green blood spurting across the snow. He grabbed the demon pirate and threw him behind him, then slashed at the other tentacles writhing through the air.
I looked over at the elven warriors, who had all retreated fifty feet away. I was expecting them to attack – after all, now they had backup even crazier than the goblins’ ice golems.
But none of them did. They all had a look of terror on their faces, and not one of them moved a muscle.
“Look at what you made me do,” Saykir called out with mock sadness, as though he had been forced into this with a gun at his head. “I have not called on the Old Gods for years, Alaria. I am far kinder now than you once knew me to be – but not when an assassin comes knocking at my door. Your arrival is a reminder that sometimes the Old Ways… are the best ways.”
Another portal opened up to my left, and more tentacles spilled out.
Then I realized what was happening:
Saykir was trying to cut me off from the rest of the group.
I started to run around the edge of the black pit, keeping out of reach of the tentacles –
“Keep him there, my children,” Saykir called out.
Ten spears thudded into the ice in front of me, forcing me back.
Another portal opened up, this time in the midst of the pirates. An orange, lanky demon screamed as tentacles grabbed hold of him and dragged him down into the black void.
Alright, not a problem. I just opened up my sub-menu of demons and scrolled to the orange faces –
But the lanky pirate’s icon was greyed out.
Unselectable.
I stared in confusion – and then realized in horror what it meant.
I looked over at my friends as another portal opened near them. More black tentacles burst out and flailed around blindly for whatever they could grab.
Alaria was the closest to them.
“GET BACK!” I screamed at her. “IF THEY KILL YOU, I CAN’T SUMMON YOU! GET AWAY FROM THEM!”
She looked at me in alarm, then stumbled backwards from the abyss and its writhing terrors.
Saykir wasn’t summoning these things all at once. He was managing only one every ten seconds or so, which meant he probably had a cooldown.
But if he kept summoning them at ten-second intervals, my entire group would soon be gone.
Forever.
I knew I would get out of the game if the tentacles got me – but I had no assurances I would ever see Alaria or Stig again if the tentacles got them.
So I made the only choice I could.
“KRUG!” I shouted. “TAKE ALARIA AND THE REST OF THE CREW AND GET BACK TO THE SHIP!”
The captain looked at me, and our eyes met. Then he nodded somberly, grabbed Alaria around her waist, and lifted her up into the air.
“No!” Alaria screamed, kicking and screaming in panic. “What are you doing?! Let me go – he’s in danger!”
“STIG, GO WITH THEM! PROTECT ALARIA!”
Stig looked at me in shock, unsure what the hell I was playing at.
Another black portal appeared behind him and Krug, and tentacles spilled out across the snow.
Saykir was trying to cut them off from retreat. They still had plenty of room to maneuver and run around it – if they left now.
“SHEE!” I roared, and pointed into the air. “HIT IT!”
The little yellow demon didn’t hesitate, and shot a blast of sound out of her mouth.
Not at Saykir, or the cliff beneath him, or his warriors –
But at the canyon wall to my right, the one across from Saykir – and the one most precariously laden with snow.
Shee’s sonic attack blasted the top of the cliff into foot-long shards of ice.
One second later, snow began moving like a mudslide down the mountain, then plummeted off the cliff. Thousands of tons of snow and ice spilled out into the canyon, rushing across the ground like a white tsunami, covering several of the portals –
And cutting me off from the others.
The pirates ran in fear as the snow crashed down behind them.
Krug hauled Alaria away with his arm around her waist, even though she was screaming and throwing fireballs at him. He never let go, though, as he raced back through the canyon towards the goblins’ hall.
Before he was completely cut off from view, I saw Stig give me one last mournful glance, like a dog watching its master die – and then he followed my last request and scampered off after Krug and Alaria.
I was afraid Saykir might try to open up more portals in my escaping friends’ path. The cooldown for my All-Seeing Eye was done, so I sent another one up into the air – but this time safely out of Saykir’s reach. Not that he couldn’t zap it with a spell, but at least he wouldn’t b
e able to crush it between his fingers.
The warlock just watched the pirates’ retreat with an expression of smug satisfaction.
“Master, shall I – ” the Mage began.
Saykir raised one hand to silence her.
“Let them go. They’re no further threat to us.” Then he called down to his warriors in the canyon. “Bring the human to me. I want to meet the fool who thought he could intrude upon my realm.”
Then he looked directly at the Eye – and therefore directly into my soul.
A chill ran down my spine.
“Don’t try to fight back, little apprentice. If you do, I promise it will go most unpleasantly for you… and I might have to send something absolutely horrifying after your friends.”
I let the Eye lapse and stood there, gritting my teeth, as the female warriors surrounded me. Strangely enough, they regarded me not with anger and hatred, but curiosity. And maybe even something approaching respect.
They marched me back into the canyon, up a small ravine, to the cliff where Saykir stood with his two female servants.
Then the soldiers shoved me to my knees in front of him.
I noticed they were a lot rougher with me in front of their boss.
Saykir looked at me disdainfully. “So you are Alaria’s current master.”
“I’m not her master. I freed her.”
“Then you’re even more stupid than you look. And I already thought you a monumental fool, allowing her to drag you along on these pointless crusades.”
I smirked. “Jastoth and Odeon didn’t find them so pointless.”
“You will find, my little apprentice, that I am not Jastoth or Odeon. Although I must admit, that was a stirring development right there at the end, sacrificing yourself to ensure the safety of your comrades. So selfless… so noble… I wonder, would they have done the same for you?”
I glared at him. He had a way of slowly needling you and working his way under your skin, I’d give him that.
“All that matters is it was my choice – and I made it.”
“Yes… and you will find very soon that choices have consequences.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said flippantly. “So, is this the part where you enslave me?”
Saykir put a single finger to his lips as though he were thinking. Then he smiled.
