A Traitor in Skyhold: Mage Errant Book 3

by John Bierce

  It did quite a bit worse to the imps. The vast majority collapsed on the ground writhing, save for a few of the odd white furred ones and one larger imp with four extra-long tails and proportionally bigger stingers.

  Then Emmenson rounded the corner into the hall.

  As the spellcrafting instructor stepped forwards, his metallic tattoos glimmering, the imps nearest to him began to vibrate harder and harder, until they simply… exploded. As Emmenson strode confidently but unhurried through the room, he was accompanied by a wave of ichor and bits of imp.

  Hugh couldn’t help but notice that none of it landed on Emmenson. He quickly crafted a variant on a levitation cantrip and began channeling mana into it. As Emmenson approached them, the exploding ichor hit Hugh’s levitation cantrip and was levitated not upwards, but away from the three of them.

  Emmenson had stopped next to them.

  “A clever use for a levitation cantrip,” he said, “though I’m using a cleaning cantrip instead to keep the gore off me.”

  “I thought about using a filth-repelling ward,” Hugh admitted, “but this was faster to put up, and I have almost as many wards layered here as it’s safe to use. Besides, levitation spells are one of my specialties.”

  Emmenson nodded at that. “It’s good to know your strengths, but also good to know when not to depend too heavily on any one of them. Will you be needing any assistance?”

  “We’re trying to get to the council chamber,” Sabae said. “We need to let them know there’s a traitor among them who is working alongside the demon that broke out of the labyrinth.”

  For the first time that Hugh could recall, Emmenson actually looked shocked. He’d seen Emmenson mildly startled before, but the only strong emotion he’d seen from the instructor otherwise had been irritation.

  “Best you get on that, then,” Emmenson said. “I’d offer to accompany you, but I’ve been sent to rescue a large group of first year apprentices besieged in a cafeteria where they’d been eating breakfast before their labyrinth final.”

  “Also,” Emmenson added, almost as an afterthought, “the council chamber is warded quite thoroughly against sound magic. Quite sensibly so, if you ask me, but I’d be of limited help. And I’d keep that news to yourselves, if I were you— if there’s a traitor at the highest level, there are almost certainly more wandering the halls right now.”

  Emmenson turned to go. With a casual wave of his arm, the small number of imps that were still standing exploded.

  As the sound mage walked away, they just stared after him.

  “Why would the council chamber be warded against sound magic?” Sabae asked.

  “There’s no better affinity for ward-breaking,” Hugh said. “A sound mage can shake most wards apart with little difficulty. It’s also one of the most difficult affinities to ward against. I’d bet they have some wards that they really, really want to stay intact up there.”

  “Remind me,” Godrick said, “never ta’ pick a fight with a sound mage. Bloody terrifyin’.”

  “Good plan,” Emmenson’s voice said from the air next to them, despite him already having passed out of sight around a corner.

  Even with the impressive feats of magecraft they encountered, however, there were still more than a few non-demon bodies littering the halls. No matter how weak most imps were individually, numbers still counted for a lot.

  Even if a mage could kill hundreds of imps on their own, that wasn’t much good against thousands.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Confrontations

  The entrance to the council chamber was in a broad, circular chamber, with a massive stone spiral staircase in the center leading up to and through the roof. The room was normally full of functionaries, clerks, and scribes, tending to the massive amount of paperwork generated every day by Skyhold. Offices normally full of clerks branched off from the chamber, along with hallways leading to the councilors’ chambers and offices. Even when the council wasn’t in session, this hall was usually packed.

  It was even busier than usual today, but not with clerks and scribes.

  The chamber was a battlefield. Dozens of battle mages held a fortified circle around the base of the stairs, while a sea of imps battered against the defensive ward they’d established around themselves. They’d had a windshield earlier as well, but it had already collapsed.

  Sabae stared out into the hall from her concealed perch. She could spot at least a dozen different types of imp, everything from armored imps to thorned imps to types of imps she hadn’t even seen before.

  Worst of all, Bakori was on the battlefield. He stood just outside the range of the battle mages, laughing and taunting them.

  He wasn’t making any move to attack them, but then, he didn’t need to.

  Sabae had been watching the assault for about ten minutes now. She’d stuck herself to the ceiling where a minor hallway entered the circular hall at an odd angle. Godrick had silenced her movements with his hammer from where he and Hugh waited, about fifty feet back.

  Bakori had shown up halfway through her scouting mission, and the battle had immediately turned against the mages. Ranged attack spells had started failing rapidly in Bakori’s presence— his reputed ability to decay spellforms used multiple times in his presence, apparently. The windshield had collapsed quickly, and the wards around the staircase had likewise begun to visibly decay.

  She was hoping that the fact that she used formless casting rather than spellforms would prevent Bakori’s disruptive aura from interfering with them, but she didn’t want to test that until she had to.

  Sabae, having seen enough, dropped from the ceiling. She twisted as she fell to face back down the hallway, and detonated her wind armor to send her back towards Hugh and Godrick.

  Hugh was rubbing his shoulder again. She’d done her best to heal it when they’d had a quiet moment, but he’d need a fully trained healer to look at it later on.

  After rolling to a stop, she quietly relayed her findings to the others, then told them her plan.

  “Talia,” Godrick said, “would have absolutely loved this.”

  Talia poked her head around the corner towards Hugh’s hidden room in the library. There were a good dozen bigger imps in front of the door to Hugh’s lair— mostly armored ones, with a couple thorned imps and a particularly nasty variety she’d encountered a couple times now that spat wads of caustic mucus. There were more smaller imps than Talia could count clambering over the bookshelves.

  Talia had checked Avah’s assigned room, but hadn’t found her there. She was guessing the Radhan girl had returned to Hugh’s room— probably to apologize or something after Hugh finished the test.

  The fact that there was a swarm of imps attempting to batter down the door of Hugh’s hidden room somewhat confirmed that guess. Hugh’s wards were still holding strong, and Talia could see several charred, broken imps that had clearly failed to breach the ward, but who knew how much longer the wards would last?

  Talia retreated back around the corner, then carefully sorted through the remaining bones on her necklace.

  Birdbone wouldn’t do enough damage to take down all the imps. Birdbone was for when you needed explosions fast.

  Cuttlebone would be far too likely to set the library on fire. Same with her one remaining piece of whale bone. While Talia enjoyed burning most things, books were assuredly not on the list. She was willing to sacrifice the dry legal textbooks and other boring tomes around Hugh’s room, but she didn’t want fire to spread.

  Squid bone… now that was a distinct possibility. Though it was really better for heading off pursuit or defending than attacking— she’d have to fight through the smoke as well.

  Sunmaw bone… now that was an interesting option, but she still wasn’t entirely sure what situation that would be useful in.

  Next was a fang the size of her little finger. She wasn’t entirely sure what the fang was from, but it was hollow, clearly meant to deliver massive amounts of venom. She’d plugg
ed the hole near the tip of the fang, then capped the open top, forming a convenient little bone vial.

  A vial filled with a very carefully measured mix of powdered bone of several sorts, along with a healthy dollop of powdered magnesium.

  Talia smiled, yanked it off the necklace, and began charging it with bone mana. After a couple of seconds, she hurled it around the corner, pulled back, cast a cantrip, and covered her eyes.

  Even behind a stone wall, with her arm over her eyes, a cantrip over them to shield them from light, and them simply closed as well, she could see the flash of light.

  She quickly dropped the cantrip— it worked, but it also tended to uncomfortably heat up her eyes if she left it on long, something you generally didn’t want to do.

  Talia would rather not become known as the mage who boiled her own eyeballs.

  Then she rounded the corner and got to work.

  She hadn’t had a ton of luck learning from the fire illusionist, but she had figured out one or two neat tricks.

  A spider web of purple-green dreamfire burst into existence above the main group of imps. They were all staggering about, clutching bleeding eyes, so they didn’t see it gently drifting down onto them.

  Talia didn’t waste her time watching the mad burst of colors, shapes, and bizarre dream figments erupting from the remnants of the imps, though she did have to shoo away several butterflies made of imp ichor as she hurled dreamfire bolts at the imps that had survived the blast.

  It didn’t take her long to clear the room of opposition entirely. She’d definitely have to make more of those flare teeth. So useful.

  Also, that was a great name for them, she’d have to remember that.

  She was stepping over the remnants of the bookshelf that had hidden Hugh’s door when Bakori spoke up.

  “Hello, little weapon.”

  Talia whirled, ready to hurl a bolt of dreamfire, but only a single small imp sat in the center of the room, its eyes bleeding and one leg a broken mess. It must have been trampled by a larger imp after she set off the flare tooth.

  “What do you want, demon?” Talia demanded. “And why do you keep calling me that?”

  “Because that’s what you are, little weapon. Your family started shaping you in that direction, but failed. Alustin took that failure and forged it into an even greater success. You have no other purpose but to destroy, and only at the command of others.”

  Talia glared at the imp, considering whether there was really any point to listening to Bakori.

  “The librarians have also trained your friends to be weapons, but they at least have other uses. You only exist to destroy, little weapon. You have no other use, nor will anyone ever want you for anything else,” Bakori said. “And once you’re no longer useful for that— once your edges have been dulled— you’ll be cast aside like a broken dagger. You…”

  Talia sighed, loudly. “You know, Sabae’s always telling me that real life is nothing like the novels I read, but I’ve got to be honest, you talk just like a villain from a particularly melodramatic novel.”

  “…What?” Bakori said, sounding a little confused.

  “You’re going to go through this whole, long-winded argument that tries to show why I can’t trust my friends in order to, I don’t know, try to recruit me, or sow the seeds of doubt between us, or give you information you badly need, or maybe just delay me so more of your forces get here,” Talia said. “It’s really sad, because I was hoping an actual demon would have something more interesting to offer. Like promises of otherworldy power or something.”

  “You already have plenty of power,” Bakori pointed out, seeming quite taken aback by this angle of conversation “and it’s only going to increase in the future. Besides, you’re not a warlock, so there’s less I can do.”

  “Well, sure, but it still would have been polite to offer,” Talia said. “Anyhow, you’re kind of showing your hand here, because your whole sowing doubt thing kinda shows how much you actually know about me. It’s clear you know a decent bit, but not enough to try for anything more specific or focused. Or would it be showing your talon?”

  “More specific?” Bakori said, ignoring her wordplay. “How about the fact that you’re trying to rescue the girlfriend of the boy you…”

  Talia blasted the imp with a dreamfire bolt, then turned and strode over to Hugh’s door.

  She pulled it open, and was promptly greeted by a terrified scream and a thrown knife.

  “It’s me, Avah,” Talia said, picking up the dull butter knife from where it had bounced off the doorframe. “I’ve come to rescue you.”

  Talia was, to her irritation, promptly hugged by a weeping, terrified Avah. She awkwardly patted her back.

  “Come on, let’s get you somewhere safe,” Talia said. There was a dead-end hallway full of classrooms she’d passed a ways back that a group of teachers had barricaded to guard students. It should work to keep Avah safe.

  Just in case, she’d also leave Avah the portable ward Hugh had given her for her birthday— the merchant girl would need it more than Talia.

  As she tried to convince Avah to leave Hugh’s room, a whisper drifted into Talia’s ear. A whisper from a very unexpected source.

  “I hate this plan,” Hugh whispered, from where he was lying on the ground.

  “You came up with half the details,” Sabae said, also laying on the ground.

  “It’s not so much the details I hate as the general shape of it,” Hugh said. “And how much of it relies on me. Why do so many of our plans end up relying so heavily on me?”

  “Because you’re the most versatile mage in our group,” Sabae said. “The rest of us are mostly just here to hit things.”

  Hugh was fairly sure Sabae was stretching the truth a little bit there. She had her healing affinity and her maneuverability, and Godrick had his stone and metal reshaping, and Talia…

  Well, Talia basically just hit things, yeah.

  “Yeh’ll do fine, Hugh,” Godrick said, as he laid back and set his hammer on the ground beside him. “Yeh’re sure my part will work?”

  Hugh nodded. “It should.”

  “It should?” Godrick asked. “That’s really not comfortin’. And ah wish yeh didn’t make me drop my armor for this.”

  “Too heavy,” Hugh replied.

  “On three,” Sabae whispered.

  Hugh definitely wasn’t ready for this.

  “One,” Sabae said.

  He could think of a whole long list of reasons why he wasn’t ready for this.

  “Two,” Sabae said.

  He wasn’t even sure if he had enough mana in his reservoirs for this plan.

  “Three,” Sabae said.

  Hugh prepped the spellform in his mind’s eye, then waited for Sabae to say go.

  And kept waiting.

  He realized the other two were staring at him.

  “What are you waiting for, Hugh?” Sabae whispered.

  “I thought you were going to say go,” he whispered. “You know, one, two, three, go.”

  “I said on three,” Sabae hissed, “not on go.”

  Godrick rolled his eyes. “Go,” he said.

  Hugh channeled mana into his modified levitation cantrip spellform from his spatial mana reservoir, and the three of them fell upward onto the ceiling.

  Hugh caught himself on his hands and feet. They stung with the impact, but it was better than dropping head first onto the ceiling.

  He briefly panicked that Godrick’s hammer would give away their plan, but he relaxed when he realized the hammer had made no sound whatsoever.

  Hugh was continually surprised at how useful that silence enchantment was. Though, considering it basically mimicked a sound affinity, he shouldn’t be too surprised.

  Hugh could already feel his spatial mana reservoir draining, so he clambered to his feet, trying to ignore the fact that the floor was above his head. The others did the same.

  Sabae nodded at both of them, then burst into a sprint.
>
  Godrick and Hugh followed.

  Right into the circular hall.

  It was several seconds before anyone noticed them. Several seconds of sprinting what felt like downhill, but was actually them running up the upwards curving roof. The farther down— or up, Hugh was having a lot of trouble with adjectives at the moment— they ran, the more mana it took to keep them on the ceiling.

  It was also several seconds of trying not to stare at the writhing sea of imps that looked like they were about to fall on their heads.

  When the imps did notice them, however, that started happening.

  Or, rather, the larger imps started hurling smaller imps at them.

  Hugh’s spellbook lunged off his shoulder, the strap coming loose, and battered against a shrieking imp, sending it hurtling back up against the floor. Godrick smashed another out of the air with his hammer, then a second he smashed downwards against the ceiling. When he took the hammer away, its remains dropped limply back upwards. Sabae hit a whole group of them with a gust strike uppercut, sending them flying back up.

  Quite a few reached the ceiling, however. Many dropped right back down, but a few clung to it and began crawling towards them.

  Hugh just tried to focus on his spellform and running towards the stairwell.

  “Well, well, well,” Bakori said. “Look who’s decided to join us. Kanderon’s little pet and his friends.”

  He just focused on the spellform and the running. Ignore the imps screeching above— below?— their heads. Ignore the fifteen foot demon taunting them. Ignore how quickly his spatial mana reservoir was running low.

  “I honestly thought you’d run to save the girl,” Bakori said, “not throw your life away in a useless attempt to… what? Try and better serve a master who abandoned you in your time of need? Who left Sk…”

  Bakori’s voice cut off abruptly, and Godrick chuckled.

  “Silence enchantment,” Godrick said.