by Rick Field
What she rode through now was a perversion. For a moment, she entertained the idea of riding to her home and checking on her people. She ignored it almost as fast as it had arisen. The Pillar had no time to waste. She had to get to the Palace and stop Danulia and her people from taking control over Kiria.
The Lower City gave way to the Upper City, the roads widening as the palatial homes of the Nobility replaced the stately homes of the upper class Commoners. Her horse cantered easily, and Liane rode it without conscious thought. Her mind was elsewhere, focusing on what she would find, what she could find, and what to do once she found what she was going to find.
She tied the animal in the stable of the Imperial Palace, and regretted having to leave it without brushing it down or taking down its tack. Time was of the essence, and she hoped that she would either have a chance to do it herself, or if one of the stable hands would be able to do it for her.
The palace wasn't as empty as the streets had been. Those that had been about on nightly duties now lay where they had fallen, in corridors and rooms, as if they had simply gone to sleep in the middle of their shift. She checked a few, they were weakened, yet firmly asleep. Vaguely, a plan started to form on how to wake a person from the sleep of the Tax Wards, yet she realized as well that the procedure would take time and a considerable amount of magical energy.
Energy she couldn't spare, if she were to do battle with Danulia of the Runes.
She stopped, and changed directions. If there were one person she should have to wake, it would be either the Emperor or his son. Whoever she found first, she decided. Milor's office was closer, and despite everything, she preferred talking to her childhood friend rather than to his father. Her decision made, she strode urgently along.
Rounding a corner, she received a flash of warning from Lucifer, right before her world exploded in a raging inferno of reds, blues, and yellows, a thunderous noise filling her ears. Pain seemed all-encompassing, and she wasn't sure whether she remained conscious or not.
One thing she did know was that she blinked her eyes open while lying on the ground, curled into a fetal position. When trying to untangle herself, pain burned across her entire body. Slowly, she looked at herself, managing to raise her head and behold her body.
Smoke curled from her Pillar's robes, her Magic Sight immediately telling her that they had expanded a vast amount of stored energy in protecting her. Her exposed skin was red and blistered, her body covered by what felt like a combination of pulled muscles and deep tissue bruises. Lucifer lay not far away, and she managed to grab hold of it to push herself to her feet. Her blistered hands had trouble holding the weapon, and even more trouble supporting her weight.
And yet, she had to continue. Closing her eyes, she whispered the words to invoke a shield of hardened air in front of her, then cautiously glanced around the corner. Her Sight still running, she studied the corridor, and found a ward of some kind had been anchored to the ceiling. Studying it for a few precious minutes gave her both a chance to recover some energy and the opportunity to figure out how the ward worked and what it did.
Based upon an esoteric application of Runes that was completely new to Liane, the protective ward wasn't anchored. Instead, it seemed to convert energy directly, and reacted to motion beyond a threshold. Liane frowned; she herself had developed miniature anchor stones that continuously charged off the environment as a way to power non-permanent enchantments. It seemed Danulia had found an alternative way – rather than providing perpetual power tokens, she had developed enchantments and charms that powered themselves off the environment directly.
It was something she hadn't yet contemplated, and its evidence in front of her was unnerving. If Danulia could convert energy from one form to another this easily, what else would she be capable of?
She stepped halfway around the corner, then hurriedly yanked herself behind it when her Sight warned her to the ward's attention being focused on her. The air grew cold as the ward drew in the ambient heat, immediately followed by the detonation of fire and energy unleashed at the corner. The whole process answered a few of Liane's lingering questions. It wasn't the attack that was loud; it had been her own blood pounding in her ears that had sounded like thunderous noise.
That was good, it meant nobody could have heard what had happened and come to investigate. On the other hand, the attack was powerful, far more powerful than what her shield would be able to handle. In fact, the one attack that she had sustained had drained her robes of their reserves, and had overwhelmed her innate resistance to magic.
She glanced at her hands, and the blisters upon them. Maybe she should abandon her idea of waking Milor, and wake up a Healer instead. She shook her head at her own silliness; Kiria was at stake and it was far more important than some blisters and some pain.
Liane drew a deep breath and gathered her magic. Invoking Lucifer, she prepared herself. She built her spell meticulously, making sure all the details were taken care of.
She stepped around the corner, immediately jumping to the other side, no matter how undignified it made her look. The ward had tripped at her entrance, and unleashed its attack against the location of her first appearance. It missed her by a good meter and a half, yet Liane could feel the heat and potential for destruction scour her exposed skin and tug at her blistered hands.
She unleashed her own spell, something based around the principles of entropy that could target magic and reduce it to its component elements. The ward unraveled quickly, and Liane stared at it while it did so. It taught her a lot, and she worried about what other traps may have been left behind.
The Pillar continued down the hall, keeping Lucifer in both her hands, holding it vertically in front of her as if it were a shield she could hide behind. In a way, it was, and it made her feel more protected. She stepped forward at about half her usual pace, before stopping at the next corner. Her mind's eye conjured it into a potential death trap, and Liane spent precious minutes trying to find spells that were not there.
Her heart pounded in her chest, and sweat pearled on her forehead. She was scared now, she realized. That ward had been beyond anything she could have made or designed, and its abilities to function without an anchor stone had such broad implications that it unsettled her to the depths of her mind.
Liane crept up to the next corner, once more expending precious magic and time to ensure it wasn't trapped. Her pace was slow, and her sense of urgency battled with her drive for safety. After the fifth clear corner, her heart's rate slowed and the adrenaline started to fade. Maybe that had been the only trap. After all, everyone was down and asleep, so the palatial invaders probably hadn't spent a lot of time setting up traps.
If that was so, then their hubris would be their undoing. Liane would make sure of that.
She had reached the administrative section of the palace, and pushed the door open. As it did, Lucifer yanked to one side.
A dozen somethings fell from the newly exposed ceiling, only one of which managed to reach her. The large and wormlike creatures hissed and spat at her, and the one that had clipped her shoulder left an acidic residue that burnt, even through her protective robes. Letting loose a cry of pain and dismay, Liane channeled power through her staff, before being forced to abandon her spellcasting when the creatures leapt at her.
Her combat spell changed for the acceleration spell, and she barely managed to dodge the dozen worms. They landed harshly, spitting and hissing once more, giving her time to bring fire magic into the equation. The fireball exploded amidst the chimeras; the creatures hissed louder as they disintegrated. Whatever materials they had been created from, they had woefully low protection.
Liane drew in a sharp breath, and used her handkerchief to wipe at her injured shoulder. The creature's slime hadn't done deep damage, but the surface damage to her skin made it a task to use the arm. With her burnt hands, and now her acid-burnt shoulder, the Pillar realized that she was in quite a bad shape. She had started to feel safe after
that fire-ward, and now yet another trap had been sprung at her. For close to ten minutes, she hid in an empty corner, cloaked in darkness, both trying to catch her breath, and lying in wait for anyone to come and investigate the hissing and the spitting of the chimera-creatures. Her heart pounding, she waited, ready to kill the first person to ease themselves around the corner.
Slowly, she edged forward, Lucifer in front of her, a fire spell kept at the ready and in stasis. As she shuffled, she kept an eye on the ceiling for more falling creatures. She had just three more corners to go before she was in Milor's outer office.
She turned the corner; it was safe. The ceiling was empty. She edged forward. The next corner she had to turn was a T-section, and something drew the attention of her Magic Sight. Under normal vision, the strange runic circle written on the wall would have been invisible, but the activated sequence stood out like a lantern to her special senses.
The Pillar leaned to examine it, and it was only the slow way in which she did so that saved her. Her skin tingled and the follicles of her hair hurt, making her jerk back just in time to avoid a flash of lightning that exploded out of the side hallway, slamming into the strange runic construct Liane had wanted to examine. Fear and shock overrode her senses, and Liane stood there, staring. The attack had been true lightning, not the conjured-up approximation that was used by Lightningmasters throughout the island. This was true lightning, the lightning that fell from the skies – the stuff that burnt the air and caused thunder, the noise of which was still reverberating through Liane's ears, as well as rolling along the hallways.
Her entire body hurt with ice-cold adrenaline as Liane realized that it was impossible to miss that kind of noise. She withdrew to the other side of the T-section, and wrapped herself in the shadows. She swore she would kill the next person that showed their face.
To her surprise, two men came from the hallway that held the trap. Liane's eyes tightened. It meant that they had come from the area that held Milor's office, and that they had a way to deactivate the trap. Neither of them was Danulia, it meant that Danulia had built an off-switch into her traps. Good. An off-switch meant a weakness.
Liane kept silent, studying the men as they puttered about the area, trying to find out what had set off their trap.
“Something set it off,” the short and skinny man said to his taller and broader companion.
“Maybe it was a rat,” the larger man replied.
“I hope not,” the first man answered, shuddering. “I hate rats. They don't even taste all that good, either.” The two continued their conversation about the cause of the trap's firing, but Liane ignored them. They obviously weren't that bright, or that skilled, and she was reasonably safe behind her shadows. Focusing, she studied the two men, and the magic they carried. Maybe she would find...
A small pulse of magic was coming from the two of them. It seemed focused on their chests, perhaps an amulet or necklace of some sort. It was unusual magic, not something Liane had seen before.
As the two finished up their 'investigation', and turned back to where they came from, Liane had a pretty good idea of what that magic was, and how she could reasonably duplicate it. Her lips moved, and she wove her magic.
The two men never knew what hit them when their protection stopped working.
The Pillar flinched at the sound of thunder. Ten minutes of waiting assured her nobody else was coming, and she emerged from the shadows. Making sure she duplicated the protective magic as best she could, she approached the intersection. Carefully, she reached for the connecting anchor on the wall. Nothing happened.
She reached closer. And closer. Until she finally was touching the runic circle.
Nothing happened. Breathing a sigh of relief, she strode down the corridor as quickly as she could, not wanting to end up the same way as the two burnt corpses that now littered the floor of the palace. Milor's office was right around the corner.
Despite herself, she pushed the doors open to his outer office, and barely managed to avoid getting hit by more dropping worm-chimeras. Obviously, they were listening to a different magic, and had reacted to her despite the spell that stopped the lightning cannon. The Mage burnt them immediately, and cursed herself for not being more careful. Part of her had started to think of these rooms as being safe places, and she hated herself for allowing her focus to slip.
The ceiling was safe, and the Mage took a few moments to study the outer office. The doors to the inner office were wide open, and the provisions strewn about showed where the two men had come from. They had been guarding this room.
That meant there was something here worth guarding, and Liane took two long strides toward the inner office. Before crossing the threshold, she looked up. The ceiling was clear. She peaked around the corners. Nothing on the walls. The office appeared trap-free.
Liane slowly stepped inside, and kept her staff and her magic up. Nothing else flashed, burnt, or leapt at her, and finally she was standing next to Milor, slumped over his desk. A slow scan around showed no further traps were present, and she closed her eyes, reaching out with every sense of magic that she possessed.
The oppressive Tax Wards ignored her, the powerful protective barriers of the city prevented her from communicating magically, and the even more impressive protections of the palace itself were... she frowned. Where were the protections of the palace itself? Now that she had time to think about it, none of the traps she had experienced since entering the palace should have been possible – the powerful shields would have prevented anyone from harming her, an official of the Kirian Government.
Those protections were gone. They were not just dormant – they were gone, broken. She could feel their remnants as their energies dissipated harmlessly into the environment.
Her fists balled; Danulia had a lot to answer for. Coming out of her focus, Liane looked back to her childhood friend. She had hoped that he, as crown prince, would have been able to command the palace's protective shields to expel the traitors. While she should have been protected by them, he could command them. Instead, she found those protections broken.
She was out of her depth now, her lack of knowledge of the Imperial protections hampering her decisions. As good as she was with magic, enchanting, and all manners of Runes and Glyphs, she never spent a lot of time investigating the protections that were outside her routine duties. She knew the Great Barrier because she was expected to repair and maintain it, and she knew some of the Capital's protective schemes because they directly affected her. Now she wished she had taken advantage of a Pillar's access to restricted information and investigated what manner of protections were available to the Kirian Empire.
Milor would know.
For a moment, she debated on summoning an elemental spirit to revive him, and sacrifice some of her lifespan to do so. The old arguments and warnings returned, and the Pillar sighed. She couldn't summon the spirits every time she had trouble, there would come a time where she simply wouldn't be helped if she did. While her sacrifice of blood would gain their attention, every spirit could simply deny her plea afterward.
Reviving Milor was within her capabilities, it would simply take longer. And yet, she still took thirty seconds to debate the issue with herself, before sighing and making her decision. She closed the doors, and sealed them.
A small spell floated him from his slumped position to a prone position on a clear section of his office floor, before a runic circle engraved itself on the floor around him.
Kneeling down, she closed her eyes, and placed her fingertips on the engraved writing, making contact with her runic construct. Similar to her deep meditative trance used for healing her magic, the world fell away and Liane found herself in darkness. Darkness that was broken only by the magical glow of the construct in front of her, and the weakening flame of her friend's magical core.
It took her a few minutes to exempt him from the Tax Wards. His flame stopped its weakening flicker. She could feel it starting to heal and refill, slo
wly and surely. It didn't take her at all long to confirm her initial suspicion that it would take him almost a day to wake up on his own.
Looked like her runic circle was needed, then. Despite what she had seen Danulia's traps do, Liane knew of no way to filter external energy without the use of some kind of anchor, and her circle served as such now. Slowly, surely, and with increasing pace, she used her improvised anchor to filter the energy from the broken palace protections into her friend's core. She knew him and his magic well. For years, he had allowed her to experiment on him using tracking and protection spells, and it was no stretch to imagine that she probably knew his magic better than he knew it himself. She knew exactly what frequency to modulate the converted energy to, knew exactly at what pace she had to feed it to him, knew exactly which elements and properties to give it to make it completely compatible with him.
