Advent (Red Mage Book 1)

by Xander Boyce

  Drew watched the wall, and when he saw the first cockroaches begin to crawl over, he cast a cone of frost, which encased some of the bugs in ice along with the top of the wall but didn’t seem to do any damage. Another cone of frostfire added a little damage and more slick ice. Drew angled a fireball to explode on the other side of the wall, hoping the kinetic energy of the explosion would keep them from making their way over the top of the wall. His spells damage didn’t appear to be affecting the cockroaches, but their secondary effects had made scaling the wall difficult. With the seconds that bought him, he began casting ice storm, centered as far as he could see down the hallway.

  Mitch had cracked most of the underbelly of the bug and blue ichor was leaking out of it slowly, but it had taken a dozen heavy swings. He switched to the sharp side of the axe now that the shell had been cracked and began cutting deep impacts into its flesh. The bug was mostly dead, which gave Sarah a chance to back up and cast a heal. Katie glanced behind her, and seeing Drew in the process of casting storm, prepared to cast another wall on top of the current one as soon as she felt the wind.

  The storm exploded around them, the small confines of the hallway channeling it beyond its normal radius, and Sarah ducked an ice chuck that bounced off the wall above her and sent razor-sharp shards of concrete and ice raining down around her. Katie threw the prepared wall spell out and the impact of the storm lessened, although they could still feel and hear its fury through the small gap at the top of the ceiling.

  Mitch finally killed the one cockroach he had been hitting for the last minute straight and grunted, his breath short. “Back to the stairwell, we can’t fight these things,” Drew said as he pushed the cart back the thirty feet they had managed to come down the hallway. Everyone else following behind him, casting glances behind them to ensure that none of the cockroaches managed to climb the wall and make it through the two-foot gap left at the top. Once back in the stairwell, Katie created a wall behind the door to prevent it from opening. Mitch and Sarah collapsed on the floor, the adrenaline wiping their energy reserves out.

  The short fight and retreat from the cockroaches had taken a lot out of them mentally. Drew cast refresh on himself and kept watch while the other three slumped against walls.

  “So, what do we do now?” Sarah asked, looking towards Drew while carefully picking ice and concrete out of her hair.

  “We have a couple of options,” Drew said after a few seconds of thought. Ticking his fingers down, he listed them for the group. “First, we can head back to the ambush spot and use the main staircase. We’ve already cleared the path, and with the walls in place, it should be relatively safe until we get there…” He trailed off, everyone filling in that they had been ambushed by the orcs there once already and would have to deal with whatever else they had prepared for them. “Two, we could go up to the second floor and head over to the western stairs and head down those.”

  “We’d have to break through the clinic, and even then, I’m not sure there’s an exit to the far side of the stairwell. I tried coming up that way to get to the clinic once and got stuck behind it,” Mitch offered. And everyone groaned, the joke before the building had turned into a dungeon was that whoever had designed it was trying to make a maze. It was clear that it was working against them now. The building was massive, meant to be the headquarters of the entire Department of Homeland Security. Movement through the building was far more complicated than it needed to be.

  “Might not be a bad idea, might be able to grab some medical supplies while we’re up there.” Katie offered.

  “But probably not worth getting stuck if there isn’t a back door, especially since we have healing magic.” Drew said with a shrug, “Anyway, our last option is going up to one and trying to make our way down the hill. Either way with options two and three we run the chance of running into more cockroaches or something worse.”

  The group considered their options in silence. “I think we need to do option one,” Mitch offered, “We’ve already cleared that path, and with OS1’s walls still in place, it’s going to be the safest trip we have, and it gets us to where we really want to be. The other options are potentially riskier for worse results.”

  Sarah nodded her head in agreement with Mitch, “I agree, we could run into another bunch of cockroaches the other two ways and end up having to do option one anyway.”

  Everyone looked at Katie, “I don’t really want to go back that way, but I guess it’s better than the other options we have.”

  “Alright, back the way we came then,” Drew said with a shrug, giving Katie a hand up while Mitch and Sarah picked up their weapons.

  They made their way back to the central atrium, Katie unsummoning the walls as they went to clear the path. As they got closer everyone fell silent, the site of the ambush weighing on their psyches. When the last wall came down, Drew held up a hand. A faint thumping could be heard echoing through the space.

  “What is that?” Sarah whispered. She was near the back, behind the cart. Mitch and Drew were in the front, Drew holding the rope of the cart, since it was the easiest for him to drop if they got into combat because everyone else carried a two-handed weapon.

  “No idea,” Drew motioned for Mitch to check it out. Mitch peered out and then looked back shrugging, “Nothing out there.”

  They left the cart there, no one wanting to drag it around when there might be a fight pending. The pounding echoed through the room, making it difficult to tell the source. “I think it’s coming from…” Drew frowned, advancing on the tomb they had made for Juan. Sure enough, the pounding got louder as he put a hand on the wall. He could feel the faint vibrations as something pounded a dull rhythm against the inside.

  “It’s Juan,” Sarah said, her voice tight and shrill.

  Katie moved to dispel the walls and Drew raised a hand to stop her, “That can’t be Juan. There’s no air in there. The pounding is constant, no breaks for rest.” Realization blanched everyone’s faces as they stared, horrified, at the tomb.

  “What do we do?” Katie asked the silence.

  “Leave it,” Drew said with a shudder, tearing his eyes away from the tomb to glance around the room. He hissed; there at the edge of the light were three forms. Impossibly tall, bipedal and covered in thick fur. The others looked up at Drew’s wordless alarm and raised their weapons, backing up reflexively. The light shifted with them and the figures advanced, seemingly unwilling to come into the light, they nevertheless stalked forward as the light allowed. They appeared menacing, but not overtly hostile.

  “Hello?” Drew called out, his fingers pointing at the figures ready to cast fireballs.

  The biggest of the three walked slowly into the light, nearly eight feet tall and covered in thick black fur. Scraps of clothing seemed to cling to its torso, stretched near to the breaking point. One hand was shriveled and small, like you see in movies when something has been cut off and is slowly growing back, the last clue to its identity was the name tag, “Omondi” on the ripped ODU scraps still clinging to the body.

  “Rob?” Drew asked, backing up with the others as the big figure approached. “Rob? Is that you?” The creature was taller than Rob by several feet, and Rob had been a larger guy already. The creature growled at him, baring fangs the size of Drew’s fingers. Sarah let out a soft scream, dropping her spear. The group continued to back up until the light barely illuminated the tomb, where the thing that had been Rob stopped and pounded on the tomb’s wall. Shards of concrete went flying from the impact. He continued to hit the surface until he had chipped away enough mass for a hole to appear.

  Sticking the fingers of his good hand into the hole, the creature roared and with a loud crack more concrete went flying. The walls Katie had made apparently didn’t have rebar support within them, as he was able to tear out chunks of the stuff. Feral light shone in Rob’s eyes.

  The group watched stunned as it dug Juan out, but what emerged from the tomb wasn’t the Juan they had interred. Juan ha
d been short, at five and a half feet. The thing that stood up in its place was just under seven feet, similarly covered in thick brown hair and powerfully built, his clothing shredded to account for the increase in size. The newly risen beast shrank away from the light of the glowstones. All four of the creatures retreated away from Drew’s group, dragging the two orc bodies with them as they disappeared into the gloom of the hallway from where Drew had originally come.

  “What the fuck?” Mitch asked after the strange scene had ended.

  “Another ‘gift’ from the Advent,” Drew said shakily. “Looks like human corpses turn into…” He paused, searching for the right words, “Wereghouls.”

  “What the fuck is a wereghoul?” Sarah asked, picking up her spear now that the threat was diminished. No one thought it unusual for the normally clean mouthed officer to curse; what they had just seen warranted the profanity.

  “Nothing. Nothing that should exist. A lycanthrope like a werewolf but combined with a form of intelligent undead called a ghoul.” Drew answered, his mind coming up with a solution from his days of playing Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons.

  “Fuck, you’re telling me that these things are intelligent undead werewolves?” Mitch asked, and Drew simply nodded his head.

  “Why intelligent? They could be zombies?” Katie interjected.

  “No, if they were zombies they would have attacked us. They were just coming to gather their new packmate and had plenty of food with the two orcs. We weren’t worth the risk. They seem to be photosensitive. Although the one I saw earlier didn’t seem to mind my torch, maybe just mana created light?” Drew mused, glancing around, “We should move, I don’t really want to be here if they come back hungry.” Drew nodded towards the stairs they had been too afraid to go down last time. It now seemed like a much better option than dealing with these wereghouls.

  The group followed him, staying closer together than they had before--no one wanted to be near the edge of the light. Katie blocked up the door to the stairwell after they got in. It had taken the wereghoul that had been Rob several minutes of pounding to break through. It hadn’t been quiet or quick, and all of them were happy with a little bit of time and warning before having to deal with the wereghouls again.

  They descended two flights of stairs, ending up on the sixth floor. Only a few hallways and they would be out.

  Drew sensed that it wouldn’t be that easy though, and as soon as they exited the stairs he looked around. The coast guard paraphernalia that had decorated the floor had been trashed. In its place, scrawled on the walls in what looked to be blue blood, were strange symbols, angular and harsh with difficult to read words intermixed.

  “Shit,” Katie said when she saw them. “We’re so fucked.”

  Chapter Thirteen — Deathweaver

  They had only traveled about 60 feet before they heard the clapping. From somewhere up ahead in the darkness, the sound of a slow and heavy clap rang out. Everyone pointed their weapons towards the sound and halted, focusing their eyes on the edge of the light. The voice that followed was rough and guttural.

  The words had a strange guttural quality to them as if English was not his native tongue, “Congratulations. You almost made it out of the dungeon alive. I was surprised that you were able to defeat ten of the brethren we sent to kill you, but the survivor informed us that their mission was successful, your Deathweaver is dead. It is no wonder you could not progress through the other paths. Without his aid, you are clearly lost.”

  The speaker came into view midway through the speech, an orc that was nearly a foot taller than the ones they had killed before. He wore what appeared to be cockroach chitin plates that covered the vital areas of his body and wielded a massive battle axe made from scavenged spider parts.

  On either side of the tall orc stood two massive beasts. They had the same basic shape as a dog, except without any fur. Thick grey skin covered their sides, while the ridge along their spine sported thick red spikes and skin the color of rusty iron. Their ears were pointed and large, reminiscent of a bat’s, framing an angular face with small eyes that glowed red in the reflected light. Sharp fangs protruded from a heavy underbite in an elongated muzzle, while each foot contained four toes that were topped with an inch and a half long claws.

  Behind the two beasts and the lead Go’rai stood another dozen Go’rai like the ones they had seen earlier, all armed with bone javelins and atlatls, as well as bone clubs. Several of these smaller Go’rai also wore armor made from cockroach chitin, although of inferior quality.

  “Put down your crude spears. You are no match for the Go’rai. This is a new world; I can sense the mana is raw and primal. Your Deathweaver was potent but inexperienced. His life would not have been risked with so few defenders otherwise. Still, for your victory, I, Chakri of the Go’rai, give my word that my brethren will let you pass. Just leave the females here and we will not harm you until you return again to our land.”

  “I don’t think we can do that,” Mitch said, his grip shifting on his own axe.

  Chakri gave a short barking laugh, “Of course not, you humans.” He spat on the ground next to him, “You think yourselves better than us because of your Deathweavers. You are all the same, weak hangers-on that ride the coattails of your War Gods. But we have killed your mage, and you are not a match for the lowliest Go’rai bloodling. Leave now before I rescind my offer.” The Go’rai behind Chakri had chuckled with him but were now fitting javelins to their atlatl.

  Drew realized that these atlatls were what the orcs above had used to pelt the party in their first encounter. He took a step behind Katie, attempting to hide his hands as he began casting a frostfire storm. The Mitch held the Go’rai’s attention by responding to Chakri’s taunting with one of his own. Drew paid little attention to his words, focusing on his spell as Katie moved to shield him with her body. “Get ready to cast a wall,” he whispered.

  The whisper was a mistake. One of the lesser Go’rai looked in his direction and could see enough of his hands to know he was casting a spell. “Mage!” It shouted as it moved to launch its spear at Drew. Sarah jumped, pushing Drew down just as he completed his last gesture. The storm went off behind the main line of the Go’rai, only catching half their number in its wrath. An instant later Katie’s wall went up, just in time to block half a dozen javelins aimed at the trio.

  They weren’t the only targets though; Mitch, who had been standing just far enough away from Drew and Katie that he wasn’t immediately behind the wall, took a glancing blow from a javelin that hit his shields and then deflected off, shattering against the wall to his right.

  Chakri shouted, “Ravagers, attack!” The clack of javelins breaking did little to drown the sound of claws ripping carpet or the beast’s shrill growls of excitement.

  Drew looked up from where he lay on the floor, Sarah’s slight frame on top of him, and pointed his finger at the edge of the wall, waiting for the lanky beasts to come into view. Katie meanwhile commanded the knight to assist Mitch on the far side while she waited impatiently for the five seconds to be over, so she could create another wall. The first ravager beat the cooldown and got a face full of fireball for its efforts.

  Scorching heat ate away at half its face before consuming the grey flesh of its shoulder and half its chest. It lay whimpering on the floor, Drew wasn’t sure if it was dead or not, but it didn’t get up before a new wall blocked his vision of it. Sarah had been trying to extricate herself from around Drew. Her spear was tangled in his legs, making the process more difficult, and she elbowed Drew’s sternum in her haste to rise. The blow momentarily dazed Drew, but she managed to stand up and retrieve her spear.

  Mitch and the knight were trying to fend off the other Ravager, but not having anywhere near as easy a time of it; the limited space behind the wall made maneuvering difficult as he ducked under the airflow of another javelin launched at him. The relatively short range of his axe was somewhat remedied by using his wind slash power, but he was only j
ust keeping the beast away from him.

  Drew, finally recovering his breath and standing, poked a finger over the six-and-a-half-foot tall wall and launched a cone of frostfire down towards where the ravager had been. Its shrill cry of pain was expected, but the orcish cries were not. “They’re coming around!” Drew shouted.

  Sarah had gone to help Mitch, her longer spear allowing her to score several hits on the beast while Mitch and the knight protected her from retaliation. The ravager’s blood was the same green as the orcs they had killed and began to cover the floor around them, soaking into the carpet.

  Katie created another wall behind them, enclosing the group on three sides, narrowing the approach paths, but also trapping them inside.

  “Don’t kill them; I don’t want to deal with the wereghasts!” Chakri shouted from somewhere on the other side of the wall.

  Drew launched a shocking bolt and an acid dart at the ravager, neither of which did much damage. He cursed under his breath. He couldn’t risk a fireball; the chance of hitting one of his allies was too high, and the space was far too small for a storm. He considered casting Dancing Blade, but he was too far away from the front line for it to be effective.

  The walls were six and a half feet tall, but to get that height, Katie had needed to sacrifice length. They were only about nine feet wide, which meant that the group had three melee fighters in a space slightly wider than the radius of his fireball spell. The distance to the wall they had funneled their enemies into was only another 10 feet. He couldn’t cast anywhere near the frontline without risk of hurting his allies.

  Drew jumped up, thinking he could cast a fireball at some of the approaching Go’rai.

  Javelins whistled past his head, impacting behind him and shattering against the inside wall of their U. He ducked back, poked a finger over the wall and shot off a fireball blindly. Drew wasn’t sure if the lack of screams meant he had killed them immediately or missed completely. He hopped up again and saw the three orcs he had targeted were still standing. More javelins rained down and Sarah cried out in pain as one of the fragments buried itself in her shoulder.