by Jakob Tanner
I jumped back a step.
“Kari! Debuff him as soon as possible. Everyone else dodge and stay as far away from him as you can.”
I cast shocking speed on Serena and then myself. Kari threw out a sparkling gold attack, removing one buff from Archades. He came for us and we dodged his first attack. Kari must’ve removed an agility buff from the knight. She threw out another fox’s fun shard at him. She was taking out all his passive bonus buffs he had from his armor. Nice. Without it, he was still strong but he wasn’t one-hit K.O. strong.
I clutched at the air and pulled, dragging the ground at Archades’ feet. He jumped out of the way.
“This ends now,” he said. He sheathed one of his axes and with his gauntleted fingers, cast a spell, freezing me in place.
Oh no.
A debuff loaded in my HUD.
Slow (Debuff): Slow and steady wins the race. Except when you’re fighting to the death. Movement speed decreased by 50% (Duration: 1 minute)
Sir Archades cast the spell on Kari. Then Shade, then Serena.
Crap.
Two guards ran up behind me and clutched my arms.
“The king said to arrest them on sight,” said Archades. “I’d love to kill you but then you Chosen would come back to haunt me. Better to throw you into a prison cell where you can rot away forever. Take them to the dungeon.”
Was this really it? We’d made it so far.
The soldier holding my arms turned me around, escorting me to the keep’s dungeon tower.
We were so close and yet we failed.
Fen.
Mari.
I’m sorry.
A clamor of metal echoed behind me. The guards holding me released their grip, collapsing to the ground.
I turned and clutching a syringe full of sleeping serum was none other than Sir Edward Silver. Sir Archades’ unconscious body laid fallen on the ground behind him.
“I found all this forbidden magic and unthinkable material in Bertwald’s bedroom,” explained the knight. “Corruption rots within this castle. I hope you put an end to it or I just threw away the best promotion of my life.”
A squad of Laergardian soldiers ran towards us.
“Go ahead,” yelled Sir Edward. “I’ll handle these guards. The rest of the way is clear.”
I nodded to Edward and dashed towards the keep’s large wooden doors. Shade, Serena, and Kari were all behind me.
We were so close.
Twelve minutes remained.
38
The inside of the keep was silent. Dim mana lamps glowed softly along the walls. The palace was empty. The servants had gone home or were asleep in their chambers. The guards were out defending along the wall. Stairwells and doors abounded in every direction. Shadowy passages to the unknown.
Our footsteps echoed throughout the main chamber.
Judging from the swirls of necromantic lightning outside, Bertwald was doing his operation along the eastern side of the keep on the royal airship landing bay. I led the group to the right, walking up a marble staircase and down a hall. We passed statues of lions and gargoyles. Flashes of green ghoulish thunder flickered through the mullioned windows of the vestibule.
We were almost there. Hang on Mari. Hang on Fen. We still have a soccer match to play.
Shuffling footsteps echoed behind me. I turned around. Beyond our group the hall was empty.
Weird.
We continued down the hall arriving at a spiraling stairwell leading up to the eastern airship runway.
“Alright guys,” I said. “This is it. We’ve been over the plan. Everyone know what to do?”
The group nodded. My eyes wandered over Shade’s shoulder and I swear there was movement in the shadows of the hall.
“Clay—do you see something?” asked Serena.
“I feel like the shadows are moving,” I said.
“The—”
The words were cut off by a ninja star flying through the hall. I fell to the floor. A swift swoosh of air passed an inch above my head. A silver throwing star wedged into the stone floor, cracking the surface.
We formed defensive positions.
The stairwell leading up the tower was right there, but I didn’t want to go into the fight with Bertwald dragging another enemy into the fray. The quest clock was ticking. There wasn’t any time to waste. A long drawn out battle with these attackers left open the possibility of ending the quest in a failure; leaving Fen and Mari dead, their bodies used in exchange for whatever horrible operation Bertwald had planned.
Three more ninja stars flew out from the shadows. Everyone dived. I conjured a fireball in my hands, the flame and ash brightening the dark hallway. I threw it down the passage, catching a glimpse of our attacker as the flaming ball smashed into the opposite wall. It was one person, hooded in dark black robes. Male.
“Who are you?” I yelled. “Show yourself.”
The hooded figure replied with another throwing knife. It flew past me into the wall, way off the mark.
“Ahh!”
Another shuriken flew through the air and blasted right into Kari’s stomach. She fell backwards, slamming onto the floor. The bastard. He threw the first knife as a distraction. A psych-out. Misdirection before the deadly blow.
“Serena cover me!” I said, diving across the floor to Kari. The blow had almost killed her. She shivered, her chest palpitating as she hovered at 4% HP. I hugged her diminutive fox body and cast healing mist, making sure she received as much of the healing vapor as I did.
Shurikens clanged against Serena’s sword. She held it up in sword shield, keeping the incoming attacks from reaching us.
“Kari, can you get up?” I asked.
Her body laid frozen in my arms. She gulped and said. “The throwing knives, they’re coated with some kind of venom. I'm paralyzed.”
Shit. The ninja stars were even deadlier than I realized.
I stretched my fingers over Kari, casting status cure. Crystal shards emerged from my hands and glowed around Kari’s body. Life returned to her limbs and she was able to move again.
“Okay everybody,” I said. “Kari and I are the only two available to cure paralysis debuffs. So we have to make sure neither one of us gets hit. If one of us does then top priority is making sure the other one doesn’t get hit until the other has been debuffed. Got it?”
Everyone nodded.
A shuriken smacked into the ceiling, ricocheting off the corner and flying right for us, bypassing Serena’s sword shield. Shade jumped in the air and twirled, knocking back the flying blade with his two daggers.
“Serena, push ahead,” I said. “We’ll follow behind. Let’s close the gap between us and the attacker.”
We headed back down the hall. We hugged the wall, using it as protection against one angle of attack. Serena protected our front while Shade protected our rear. More throwing knives came at us, clinking and clanging off our steel defenses.
The attacks stopped by the time we reached the end of the hall.
“Wait,” I said. “He’s luring us into the center room. He’ll have more open space to run, dodge, hide, and shoot from. We can’t go in there.”
Glass from a window behind us, cracked and smashed to the floor, the hooded figure swinging through it. He wasted no time, unleashing three throwing stars. Serena spun and jumped to get in front of us, but got knocked back by the throwing star, falling to the floor paralyzed. Shade got hit in the shoulder as well.
Kari and I both dived out of the way, but one knife grazed Kari’s leg, enough to unleash the paralyzing serum into her veins.
I stretched out my arm to cast status cure. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. My hands glowed with golden light. A ninja star flew right into my casting arm, disabling the attack. The blade sliced through my flesh, wedging itself into the bone beneath my skin. Blood shot out of my arm as the shocking pain rippled from my arm and into the rest of my body. The golden light of my spell faded from my fingers and I slid back a step until I too w
as frozen in paralysis.
The message flickered in my HUD.
Paralyzed (Debuff): You’re temporarily unable to move. I’d say run away, but well, you know (duration: 5 minutes).
The gentle footsteps of the attacker whispered from down the hall. His steps were so quiet you didn’t even hear the crunch of the broken glass. What class and abilities were these? Emerging from the shadows was a hooded figure dressed in a light cloth black armor with a leather harness with multiple blades and throwing ninja stars sheathed along it for easy reach. In the figure’s right hand was a vial of pink serum. He held it and shook it gently.
“Paralyzing serum,” said the hooded figure. I recognized the voice. “Bertwald showed me how to make it.”
The figure removed his hood and standing in front of us was the king’s younger brother, Prince Fergus. His dopey-eyed innocence from before had all but disappeared as he stood in front of us in his full ninja-class gear.
“Prince Fergus,” I gasped, surprised at my own ability to talk. “Wait, I thought I was—”
“Paralyzed?” said the prince. “You are, but this serum lets the afflicted person talk. It’s used in all sorts of military scenarios. Battles. Interrogations. Torture.”
I balked. Who was this kid?
“You’re surprised? I guess nobody outside my immediate family knows of my training. It’s a tradition: non-heirs of the royal family train to be guardians for the king. Shy and quiet, the ninja class suited me.”
“Fergus, I—
“I’ll stick to the questions for now,” said the young man. His voice cracked, anger and anguish flooded from his cries: “Why have you given up on my brother’s quest for justice? Why have you become enemies of Laergard? Why have you betrayed us?”
My stomach lurched. From his perspective we had wronged his family and given up on what was right. Oh man. Fergus didn’t know. He had no idea what his older brother and Bertwald were up to. He still idealistically looked up to his big brother. I remembered the first time I realized my brother wasn’t invincible, wasn’t infallible, just another human being with his own weaknesses and strengths, his own issues and problems. It was scary. I didn’t want it to be true. If my brother wasn’t the superhero I thought he was, well, what did that mean for a minuscule speck of a person like me?
“Listen, Fergus,” I said. “I don’t believe you agree with everything your brother is doing and I don’t believe he does either. Bertwald is manipulating him and if we don’t stop them tonight, the brother you know is never coming back from this. Trust me. Let’s go together and if you agree with what you see in front of you, you can arrest us all straightaway.”
Fergus stood, contemplating my offer. I was in no position to offer anything but Fergus struck me as someone who would listen to reason. I eyed the quest timer in my HUD, dropping second by second. We really were at crunch time now. No second to waste.
Fergus nodded his head and pulled out a vial of liquid. “This is the antidote for the debuff.” He approached me and poured the vial into my mouth. The debuff disappeared and I cast status cure on Serena while Fergus fed the antidote to Kari and then Shade.
I wanted to fill Fergus in on our plan of action but there was no time. We had six minutes to save the kids.
We hurried up the stone steps of the tower and emerged onto the long runway, high above the city and walls of the castle. Right at the end of the dock on a large circular glass platform was King Jared. Green smoke swirled around his body, emanating from his entire person, an aura of dark energy surrounding him. His eyes were neon bright, oozing the same ghoulish vapor.
The two children laid on the floor in a puddle of purple globs of mana. Their HP bars hovered at 7% and were draining every passing second. Across from them was Bertwald, dead on the floor.
“What the—”
His corpse was missing a limb. The wrist with the Prophetic Seal.
King Jared laughed maniacally, holding up his two arms each with a Prophetic Seal burned onto the wrist.
“That’s—” Prince Fergus gasped. He stumbled back a step. He lifted his finger, pointing at the man in front of us. His eyes widened with fear.
“That’s not my brother.”
39
King Jared continued to laugh in our faces. The man’s face twisted and contorted. His glowing green eyes twitched and bulged. He gritted his teeth and shifted his lower jaw back and forth in a bizarre alien fashion. His cheeks bubbled and boiled, reminding me of Experiment #13. He twisted his neck, joints cracking violently.
If this wasn’t Jared—who the hell was it?
“Come to your brother, Fergus,” said the king. “Don’t you want to give your brother a hug?”
The king reached out with both his arms, the etching of each Prophetic Seal a swirling and haunting dark black. A bright flaming green aura surrounded the king’s entire person.
“Fergus?” asked the king.
I knew then why the king’s voice sounded so strange. The voice was distorted. It had an echo. Two people were talking at once. The king’s face wrinkled and boiled. Two people were fighting to occupy this very body. Jared and Bertwald.
Serena gripped her blade and shifted her feet, initiating warrior’s stance. Prince Fergus gripped his kunai and became battle ready. Shade and Kari did the same. I stretched my fingers in and out, ready to cast whatever was needed at a moment’s notice.
“Bertwald,” yelled Prince Fergus. “What have you done to my brother? Release yourself from his body.”
King Jared—or, I guess, Bertwald—grinned and shook his head. “You stupid naïve boy—why ever would I do that? Being advisor to the king provides only so much power. Being king, on the other hand, lets you have all the power.” His face contorted again, his jaw muscles stretched, not quite in full control of this new body. He continued speaking: “Jared questioned my more experimental ideas. He called them too harsh. Too cruel. This, coming from a teenage—argh, agh, gerogumada—” Foam issued from Jared’s mouth and another voice emerged, commanding us, “Stop him!”
It was the real King Jared speaking.
He was right. What were we doing standing around, listening to this bullshit? We only had four minutes left. The two kids laid on the ground, unconscious at 5% HP.
“Alright guys,” I said. “We planned for this. Let’s go!”
Serena sprinted towards Bertwald. She held her arms up, gripping her massive blade behind her. The pointed metal slid through the wind making her more aerodynamic. Bertwald arced his hand and threw out a blast of ghoulish green energy at his incoming attacker. Serena jumped high in the air and shot herself back down diagonally with her charge attack, side-stepping Bertwald’s blast. He threw out another shot and Serena zigzagged across with her charge move until she was right in front of him. She wasted no time, jumping into the air, swinging her blade, and unleashing sword wheel. Her body disappeared, her blade spinning so quickly you only saw a vibrating circle of silver metal. Bertwald held up his glowing green arm and absorbed every blow of the attack. His HP barely declined.
“Give him all you got Serena,” yelled Kari, shooting out a beam of bright sparkly magic from her fox paws. The shard of light travelled across the battlefield and glowed over Serena as she swiped and slashed her sword repeatedly at the necrotician king. The Muumuu’s protection spell was enough to keep Serena alive for an extra hit or two. Next Kari crossed her arms, drawing more mana from within herself, and unleashed another blast of bright light. This time she wasn’t doing healing damage but throwing out her fox’s fun move. The light travelled across the black night sky of the battlefield and over the airship runway and smashed into Bertwald. One of the many buffs below his HP and MP bars flickered away.
I gripped my staff and conjured the biggest baddest fireball I’d ever held in my hands. The flaming molten ball of lava was as big as a basketball. I cranked my arm back, holding the staff for balance, and whipped the massive flame ball at Bertwald. It zoomed across the battlefield, cras
hing into Bertwald’s shoulder. The blast puffed into smoke upon touching him. It barely left an impact on his HP. But luckily the burn debuff flickered underneath his status bars. Feel the burn you bastard.
The green flames etching Bertwald’s body grew around his right hand. The ghoulish flames crystallized into a solid demonic hand with claws. He slashed his new crystal flame hand and the claws dug through Serena’s shoulder blade and chest. She fell to the ground, her HP dropping by 95%. Thick bloody gashes ran across her chest like trenches in mud, glinting with a horrific crimson sheen. She lifted herself up with her hands only to fall back down on the ground. Red liquid bled from her stomach.
Oh shit.
Bertwald swiped his demonic claws at Serena again. Moments away from ending her life, the attack stalled. Prince Fergus held the demonic claws in the air with his thick metal kunai.
“Leave my brother’s body Bertwald,” growled Fergus through gritted teeth. “Get out of him!”
“Your brother is dead,” said Bertwald, pulling his demonic claws back. “This body is mine now.”
“I’ll make you leave,” yelled Fergus. He jumped in the air, spinning his blades in an uppercut slash across his possessed brother’s body. As he fell from the attack, a red energy coursed around his arms and he unleashed a barrage of quick swipes. This was the prince’s ninjutsu at work, taking out 5% of Bertwald’s HP.
It was time to back our two melee fighters up. As Fergus drew Bertwald’s aggro Kari healed Serena back to full health. I focused on annoying Bertwald with more debuffs. First I cast ruptured ground, tearing up the floor at his feet. Rocks and metal jammed into his legs and he twisted a knee. The crippled debuff flickered beneath his status bars. Gotcha. Bertwald swiped his green flame claws but the attack was blocked by Serena’s sword shield. The debuff had affected his attack speed, reducing it and making it easier for Serena and Fergus to block the enemy’s blows.
I had one more spell up my sleeve. One I’d been saving since we’d formulated this plan. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Let’s do this. I swung my hand out towards Bertwald. An icy cold chill swam through my arm into my hand. A bitter cool wind blasted out from my palm, gusting across the battlefield until inches from Bertwald, it solidified into a tidal wave of ice. Every rivulet of blue frozen crystal was a sharp spiraling dagger of destruction. The green aura around him protected him from most of the damage. But a snowflake icon flickered underneath his status bar. Deep freeze. His arms and legs crinkled with a stiff layer of frost, reducing his movement speed even more.
