by John Bierce
Even with all of Tarik’s might, and the power Hugh and Godrick could add, they hadn’t been able to keep the magma underground, and they’d barely held back Abyla’s magmatic assault.
It wasn’t just that Abyla had the affinity advantage— though she certainly had more control over magma than they did— it was her sheer skill at manipulating it. Abyla wasn’t just pushing at the magma, she was building currents in it, transferring the heat to the stone around it in an effort to generate more, hurling lava bombs in high arcs at the others, and even shaping disruptive glyphs on the crust of the magma.
On top of that, the heat from the magma was truly punishing, even from cross the circle of thrones. It felt like he was standing inches away from a forge fire, and he was having trouble catching his breath.
Abyla still might have won if the other mages on the council hadn’t stepped up. Sabae hadn’t counted on them intervening, but it was a good thing they had. They were, one and all, archmages or the next best thing to it. Perhaps not on the level of the great powers, but none of them were weak enough to be dismissed by the great powers.
Anders sent a cloud of silk ribbons fluttering towards Abyla. Most of them burnt to a crisp in the heat of the magma, but enough approached Abyla to divide her attention and make her fight back.
Yves simply hammered force against the magma. Cunning illusions wouldn’t do anything against molten rock— though Godrick was sure that the Yves he could see was an illusion, and that she’d already moved elsewhere— and Abyla was somehow standing on the surface of a patch of brightly glowing magma, meaning she didn’t have a shadow for Yves to work with.
Dyne increased the pull of gravity on the magma, and tilted it back towards Abyla. They also launched lightning bolts and clouds of toxic gas, but the latter just dissolved in the heat. As for the lightning bolts, Abyla somehow drew up rods of molten metal from the magma to divert the lightning.
There shouldn’t be any metal in granite, so Godrick suspected that she’d smuggled metal ore up here in the past— most likely hidden in the base of her throne.
Even Sabae was hitting the magma with gust strikes and bursts of water, the latter of which just erupted into steam.
Godrick was happy to see that their guess about the seal had been correct, though— the splatters of magma bounced off a dome rising up from the metal. Whatever was under there was well defended.
If it wasn’t for Rutliss, though, Abyla still might have won.
Water rose up in spouts from Rutliss’ pool, and spun towards the magma. Godrick would have sworn there wasn’t enough water in the pool to make a difference, but as it approached, he could feel an impossible chill emanating from it. When the water struck the magma, the magma almost immediately began hardening into rock— obsidian, ironically, given the speed of cooling.
The water barely even steamed.
Godrick and Tarik immediately began applying pressure to the obsidian. Abyla was on better than even footing with them when it came to obsidian, but that was a lot better foothold than they’d had before.
“How are you doing that?” Abyla screamed at Rutliss. “You’re supposed to be useless in combat! You never should have been accepted as a vault guardian!”
Godrick made a mental note to ask Alustin what a vault guardian was at some point.
Rutliss laughed. “Everyone assumes I have a saltwater affinity. I don’t. I have salt and water affinities.”
“What does that matter?” Abyla screamed.
“A fun little side effect of mixing salt in with water,” Rutliss said, “is that it drops the freezing point considerably. Having separate water and salt affinities lets me increase the salt concentrations to otherwise impossible levels, and lets me supercool the water faster than the magma can heat it. You’ll note that my throne is dissolving— it’s fashioned of sylvite, a naturally red variety of salt.”
Godrick had never even met Rutliss, but he was already forming a strong dislike of the academy’s bursar. What kind of pompous ass lectured on their magical techniques in the middle of a fight? For that matter, what kind of idiot talked during a fight more than they had to at all? It was a great way to distract yourself.
Still, their combined efforts were working.
Slowly but surely, the magma started retreating, leaving huge gouges where Abyla had melted the stone. Godrick’s stone mana was running perilously low— and, for that matter, probably would have run out already if not for the mana efficiency techniques Tarik had taught him earlier in the year.
That was, unfortunately, when Godrick realized that his spellforms were decaying rapidly, and when he felt Yves’ force spell pressing against the magma vanish.
Godrick whipped his head around to see Bakori ascending the staircase up to the council chamber, carrying an impaled Yves on his tail. Imps flooded up the stairs past Bakori’s feet.
“I’d like to request an audience with the Council, if I may,” Bakori said, chuckling.
That was why Sabae’s plan had worked almost perfectly instead of perfectly.
They were supposed to have subdued Abyla before Bakori arrived, not after.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Bakori Ascends
Hugh’s crystal reservoirs were almost completely tapped out by the time Bakori arrived. He’d been pushing them hard since he’d first entered the labyrinth, and he had hardly given them enough time to recover. They felt scraped raw from the heavy use he’d put them through today, and keeping the pressure up on the few mineral crystals he could find floating in Abyla’s magma was exhausting.
Not to mention the fact that the heat from the magma was literally cooking Hugh’s skin. He hadn’t gotten closer to it than twenty feet, and it still hurt worse than any sunburn he’d ever had.
So when Hugh saw Bakori again, his instinctive response was to reach for his only full mana reservoir— his stellar affinity. He dropped his already decaying spellform pushing against the magma, and constructed the starbolt spellform in his mind’s eye.
The spellform collapsed instantly, but his stellar mana reservoir still drained as though he’d cast the spell.
Bakori chuckled, even as one of Dyne’s lightning bolts hammered into him. It tore open his arm, exposing and burning bone and muscle, and boiling the ichor in the demon’s veins.
“I felt that, Hugh. I’ve battled your master before, and she used more than her share of starbolts on me. That trick’s never going to work on me again.”
Nearly a dozen imps near Bakori simply dissolved. Streamers of vomit-hued energy flowed from their dust into Bakori, and his arm knit itself back together as though it had never been injured in the first place.
Bakori whipped his tail, sending Yves’ corpse flying at Tarik. The headmaster tore a boulder out of the ground and blocked the corpse with it, but at a cost— the magma had begun to creep forward again.
Hugh was frantically wracking his mind for ideas when Godrick wrapped an arm around Hugh’s waist. “Hold on tight,” the big apprentice said. “All that magma is about to break loose in a moment.”
It was barely a fraction of a moment. With Yves dead, Hugh and Godrick running out of mana, and the other councilors distracted, the magma exploded outwards.
At the same moment, though, the stone underneath Hugh and Godrick erupted, sending them flying backwards towards the edge of the mountain.
Hugh barely caught them with a levitation spell before they crashed down. At least his stellar mana was still useful for this.
Hugh had several smoldering patches in his clothes from the close escape, and he could feel one especially bad burn on his back.
The levitation spell had just barely managed to set them down when the spellform Hugh was visualizing simply dissolved.
The council chamber had erupted into complete chaos. Dyne was floating fifty feet above the floor, cycling through lightning and venom spells as fast as they could. They’d even drawn out the venom from Bakori’s tail to launch at Abyla, which mostly seemed to
amuse the demon. Dyne’s aim, however, was being thrown off by dozens of lava bombs shooting up at them.
Tarik had given up on trying to hold off the magma. She’d lifted herself and the throne on a massive column of granite over the battlefield, and was levitating and dropping immense boulders. Bakori caught one boulder twice his size with his hands, and then simply shredded it like fresh-baked bread. Abyla deflected several boulders with magma and simply surfed out of the way of others atop a current of magma.
Rutliss had just surrounded himself with a sphere of super-cooled saltwater and was rolling it off the side of the mountain to escape.
Which, given what Hugh knew of Rutliss, didn’t surprise him at all.
Most of the thrones had already been destroyed or melted, several detonating in magical explosions.
Hugh caught a brief glimpse of Sabae crouching down in the center of the metal seal, which remained untouched by the violence around her. She’d spun up her water armor to protect her from the heat, but Hugh could see the surface of the spinning water starting to steam.
Bakori’s laughter seemed to hang over everything.
Hugh was desperately trying to eke his last remaining crystal mana from his reservoir to construct a ward around himself and Godrick, who was looking distinctly unsteady on his feet, when his spellbook sent him an image.
The image was vague and tinted with fear, and Hugh could actually feel the book trembling at his side, but he felt a smile creep across his face as his hand dove into his pocket for something that he always made sure to keep there.
The image had been of a piece of chalk.
Just as Hugh’s chalk touched the ground, though, Dyne’s gravity-based flight spell failed, and they plummeted. Tarik stretched out a granite fist to catch them, and streamers of silk raced towards the falling mage.
One of Abyla’s lava bombs got to Dyne first.
Then Abyla turned her gaze towards Hugh and Godrick. Even from here, Hugh could see her smile as she launched a whole barrage of lava bombs at them.
Sabae hunched down lower, focused on maintaining her water armor.
Another wave of magma crashed over the magical field surrounding the metal seal, and Sabae could feel more of her water armor flash into steam from the heat. None of the magma got through the shield, but plenty of heat did.
As the wave passed over her, Sabae realized that the metal disc was actually floating above the magma— the stone beneath it had been completely eroded away.
She huddled down lower.
She’d been so sure that she was right about Kanderon’s plan, but the longer this went on, the more and more she was becoming convinced that she’d gotten it wrong, and that the three of them were going to die up here.
At least Talia would be safe.
Hugh was convinced he was about to die. Abyla’s lava bombs were descending through the air towards him. A wave of magma was racing along behind them, even if he and Godrick could survive the lava bombs. Past all that, he could see a flood of imps flowing up Tarik’s granite column, and her spells had begun visibly failing under Bakori’s influence.
Abyla’s spells weren’t being affected by Bakori’s field at all.
Hugh wasn’t even bothering to try and finish his chalk ward. He simply wouldn’t have time. Even if he still had crystal mana available, he’d…
Next to him, Godrick bellowed, and the head of his sledgehammer cracked. It started to shake, and a brilliant white light poured out of the cracks.
Godrick threw the hammer with all the force his arm and steel magic could provide. It flew so quickly that Hugh was buffeted backward by the wind generated by the hammer’s flight.
The hammer exploded just before it reached the descending cloud of lava bombs.
A massive shockwave surged forward, catching the lava bombs in midflight, scattering them off their paths and breaking them into droplets. It actually pushed the lava wave back a few feet, and knocked Godrick and Hugh back farther towards the edge of the chamber, even though the blast was directed away from them.
It took a second for Hugh’s hearing to come back, but when it did, Godrick was laughing.
“Me da’s goin’ ta kill me fer losin another hammer,” Godrick said, then started laughing harder.
Hugh couldn’t help but chuckle too.
As Godrick and Hugh stood up, Hugh glanced behind them, looking for a way to escape. He still had stellar mana left, maybe even enough to levitate them down the mountain safely.
There were imps waiting on the edge of the mountain. Hundreds of them. They must have escaped out of Skyhold’s windows and climbed all the way up.
There’s no way the imps could get to them here— the weird distance manipulation shield Kanderon had crafted for the council chamber meant that they were effectively leagues away from the apprentices, even though they could reach the imps in just a few steps.
The imps didn’t need to get to them, though. The magma would do for them just fine.
Hugh turned back in time to see Abyla recover from the blast and launch another wave of magma in their direction, followed by another barrage of lava bombs.
He was fairly sure the back of his shirt was on fire, that spot on his back was burning so bad, but he didn’t make a move to put it out.
He opened his mouth to tell Godrick goodbye, but before he could say a word, a figure plummeted down from the air, catching themselves on extended strips of silk.
Anders glanced back at them and smiled. “It looks like my lessons came in handy for you three, doesn’t it?”
Anders’ robe exploded outwards into a massive cloud of silk.
Everywhere Godrick looked, streamers of silk danced in the air. Dozens of them shot up towards the descending lava bombs, embroidered glyphs flaring to life along their length. Lava bombs froze and shattered in midair or were thrown off course.
More silk streamers wrapped themselves around Hugh and Godrick’s legs and waists, then lifted them into the air fast enough that Godrick felt slightly nauseous. The wave of molten rock crested only a few feet below them, but Godrick didn’t feel any heat at all as more silk streamers hovered between them and the magma, glyphs glowing brightly even compared to the magma, creating a visible heat shield between them.
The streamers creating the heat shield quickly smoldered and burst into flame, but by the time the heat shield dissolved, they were already far above it.
Imps screamed as the wave of magma poured over the edge of the mountain.
Tarik’s granite column collapsed completely, but she had already been borne aloft by more silk streamers.
Abyla and Bakori were suddenly dealing with a plague of magical attacks from silk glyphs. Firebolts, ball lightning, frost spikes, and at least half a dozen other types of energy attacks bombarded them. None of the attacks were especially powerful, but there were enough of them that Abyla had raised a shield of magma to protect herself, while imps were dissolving at an astounding rate around Bakori as he drained their essence to regenerate his wounds.
“It turns out Bakori doesn’t decay glyphs or enchantments,” Anders shouted back at them, “but I don’t have enough silk to keep this up for much longer! I’m going to try and rescue Sabae, then we’re retreating!”
More streamers were trying to reach Sabae, but most of them were simply bursting into flame in the heat from the magma.
A web of silk threads descended towards Bakori, then simply passed through him. The demon collapsed into a pile of what Godrick could only describe as chunks, none bigger than Godrick’s fist.
Within seconds, half the imps in the council chamber dissolved, and Bakori was already climbing back to his feet, looking unamused.
Godrick glanced over at Hugh, only to see Hugh pawing at his back urgently, muttering “ow” over and over again. Finally, Hugh’s hands closed around something in his shirt, and he yanked it loose.
Hugh spent a moment looking at it, then began to chuckle. He opened his hands to show the object to Godrick,
not dropping it even though it was visibly burning his hands.
When Godrick saw it, he started laughing too. Not the despairing laugh from earlier, but a genuine laugh this time.
It was a metal pin covered in spellforms.
Talia’s tracking pin.
A massive explosion tore out of the stairwell, sending imps and chunks of imps flying through the air. Through the smoke, Godrick could see flashes of purple-green dreamfire.
Talia fired a couple more dreamfire bolts at imps that hadn’t died in the blast. At the same time, she pumped mana into her dragonbone dagger and charged through the scattered corpses her bonefire blast had left. Nothing fancy this time, just regular mammal bone. Cow, she thought. Sometimes all you wanted was a good old-fashioned big explosion.
Well, a lot of explosions, really. She’d burned through the majority of her bones fighting her way through the hall below.
The magma raining down through the ceiling of the big circular hall hadn’t made things easier in the slightest.
When her dragonbone dagger was charged enough, Talia hurled it towards Bakori, who had just recovered from the blast and was turning to face her.
Unlike her other enchanted dagger, this one was weighted for throwing.
It sunk deep into Bakori’s side, and immediately began to cook a sizeable chunk of Bakori’s torso. Imps simply started dissolving around Bakori, erupting into weird vomit energy and flowing into the demon. His flesh started to heal as fast as the dagger could burn it, and Bakori laughed as he stepped towards her.
Talia had wondered why imps had kept doing that down below.
She ignored Bakori striding towards her as she searched for her friends.
There was Sabae, sitting on some sort of hovering magical disc over a lake of lava, wearing a thin, visibly evaporating suit of water armor.
Headmaster Tarik was floating through the air, borne by silk streamers.
