As Volinette listened to Baris describe Adamon’s office and desk in vivid detail, she wondered if the girl would have been so eager to help if she knew that the item she was summoning was on the Grand Inquisitor’s desk.
The dark-haired girl sat down on the floor, folding one leg over the other. She turned her palms skyward, closed her eyes, and said words of power, enticing the Quintessential Sphere to allow Baris’s crystal cube to traverse the boundaries of time and space.
A soft pop, like a stopper being pulled from a bottle, was the only indication that the spell had been completed successfully. Looking down, Volinette saw the Seer’s Cube resting in the palm of the girl’s hand.
Baris took it, offering his profuse thanks and swearing to return the favor in the future. He tossed it back and forth from one hand to the other as he grinned at Volinette.
“Alright, let’s see what we can see.”
Chapter Eighteen
Channeling her essence through the Seer’s Cube was unlike anything Volinette had ever experienced. Where normal sphere sight washed the color out of the physical realm, leaving it a pale, washed out echo, the Seer’s Cube showed them the world as their eyes would see it. In fact, she’d almost panicked when Baris had cast the spell. Seeing herself sitting cross-legged across from Baris was disorienting.
“You’re sure I can return to my body?” she asked for the third time.
“Oh for crying out loud,” he said. “Just try it already. Concentrate on being back in your body and open your eyes.”
She did as she was told and found that she was, indeed, back in her body, sitting cross-legged on the floor across from Baris, who still had his eyes closed.
“Okay, so how do I get back in?”
“Close your eyes and concentrate on the cube, I’ll do the rest.”
Volinette did as she was told. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the cube, waiting for something to happen. Baris muttered something under his breath, and suddenly she was hovering over her body again. It was still weird, but having rejoined her body and come back into the cube, she felt better about it.
“Can we go now?”
“If you tell me how. You’ve done this before, Baris. I haven’t.”
“Okay, okay. It’s dead easy. Just think what you want to do. Think forward, float forward. Think backward, float backward. Think about your body and you can hear what’s going on around you. Think about your…uh…spirit, for lack of a better word, and you’ll hear what’s going on around your spirit.”
“I can hear you and I wasn’t thinking about hearing you.”
“We’re both inside the cube, silly. Of course we can hear each other.”
“Oh.” His matter of fact tone of voice told her she was worrying too much, so she quashed the voice in the back of her head that wanted to ask more questions.
“Come on.”
Baris’s spirit floated across the room, passing through chairs, tables, and a group of students who appeared to be none the wiser. He passed the journeymen who were standing guard at the door and stopped on the landing, waiting for her to catch up. Volinette thought of following Baris and her spirit body followed the same path he’d taken, passing through the same objects and people that he’d passed through.
“See? I told you. Simple. If you can kill a demon, you can master the Seer’s Cube.”
“I guess.”
“Well, it beats sitting around not doing anything. At least this way we can see what’s going on.”
“And nobody can see us?”
“Ugh! Stop worrying! There are demons on the loose. Do you really think the Masters are going to be looking for a couple kids using a harmless bauble to see outside the room they’re trapped in? Let it go, Volinette.”
“Alright. Alright.”
“Besides, we’re not doing anything wrong. The cube is mine. Adamon just hadn’t gotten around to returning it yet. I did him a favor by getting it myself. I didn’t even go in his office.”
Volinette wasn’t sure that Adamon would see it that way when he found out, but she wasn’t going to argue about it. By the time things were returned to normal on the Academy grounds, maybe he’d be too tired to be upset at Baris. Though, he didn’t seem like someone who would take too kindly to having things removed from his space. Not even if the item in question did, in fact, belong to someone else.
Gliding toward the stairs, Volinette heard Baris laugh.
“What are you doing?”
“Going downstairs. I want to see what’s happening in the entrance hall.”
“Just think where you want to go. You can go anywhere you’ve been before. Sometimes you can even think yourself some place you’ve never been, if you get a good enough description that the Seer’s Cube can figure it out. Otherwise, you just end up in a void.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun.”
“It’s no big deal. You just think yourself back to your body and try again.”
“Can you get trapped outside your body?”
“Nah. It’s just a projection. You’re still you, you’re just looking at the world through spirit eyes. It takes some getting used to. Fun once you get hang of it, though.”
Volinette wasn’t sure she’d ever get the hang of it. It felt weird and it made her uncomfortable on a level she couldn’t quite explain. It wasn’t just the uneasiness of the Baris’s sly appropriation of the cube. It was something deeper. Something about the process itself. As uneasy as it made her, it was the only way they’d see what was going on outside their room, so she’d deal with it.
Taking Baris’s advice, she thought of the spot in the entrance hall where they’d been standing earlier. It was just across from the big double doors that led out onto the path. Without warning, she was there, hovering inches over the floor. Baris arrived a moment later.
“Well, you’re getting the hang of it,” he said, spinning in a slow circle to take in the entirety of the room. “Guess they’ve moved the wounded to somewhere better.”
She’d been too involved with her own discomfort to notice that the scurrying healers, clerics, and their patients were gone. Litter was strewn about the normally pristine hall. Jugs of water, discarded bandages, and pieces of healer equipment were scattered about. They’d apparently left in a hurry, not willing to stop to pick up after themselves. That alone was enough to send a chill up her spine.
If that wasn’t enough, Volinette caught movement out of the corner of her eye. When she turned to get a better look, she screamed. There was a demon coming through the doors. Its shape was roughly that of a man standing between seven and eight feet tall. Three legs, each ending in a pod that secreted green mucus as it walked, moved it forward. The trunk was humanoid, but four arms sprouted from the sides where two were the standard. A misshapen head topped off the monstrosity, a mouthful of rotting yellow teeth that jutted from between twisted lips. Huge, fiery orange eyes that took up more than half the face swiveled to and fro in their sockets, taking measure of the entrance hall.
Then she was back in the temporary dorm, Baris’s hand clapped over her mouth. She ignored the pain that coursed through her from that simple touch, more concerned by the look in her friend’s eyes.
“Quiet!” He glanced over to the journeymen by the door who were watching them. He nodded to them and took his hand away from her mouth. “It’s in the tower. I saw it too. The last thing you need to do is touch off a panic with your screaming.”
“You’re right. It just surprised me.”
“You and me both, but we need to go get a better look.”
She shuddered again.
“Why? And do we have to? And why?”
“We need to know where it’s going. If it’s coming up here, we need to tell the journeymen, and we all need to get out of here.”
“Okay. Hurry.”
Baris spoke the words of the spell so quickly that Volinette could only just make out his intonation. She floated free of her body once again. This time, she ignored
the discomfort altogether. There was too much at stake. She willed herself to be in the entrance hall and appeared there a split-second later.
The demon was still there. She fought against the irrational urge to start laughing. There was a demon in the Great Tower, and the only thing she could think was how happy she was that it hadn’t moved. Baris’s spirit form appeared beside her.
“Good. It doesn’t seem to be interested in the higher floors. At least, not yet.”
As they watched, the demon settled back onto its legs, planting the mucus pods on floor. Each huge hand moved in the air, tracing intricate symbols that glowed with faint emerald luminescence. The ragged lips and jagged yellow teeth parted, allowing the thing’s long black tongue to snake out of the maw as if it had a life of its own. The sounds it produced couldn’t be called speech by any definition Volinette had ever heard. It was a series of grunts, screeches, and howls that sounded as inhuman as it looked.
No matter how it sounded, it was clear that the demon was calling on the power of the Quintessential Sphere. A purple and black mass began to swirl into existence on the floor of the chamber. It faded in from the edges of reality, spreading until it was almost twenty feet across.
“What is that?” she whispered to Baris, aware that they were still safe in the Seer’s Cube and waiting for his snide remark.
“No idea,” he whispered back. “But there’s no way it’s good.”
Baris was right. It wasn’t good. As they watched, a flood of smaller demons climbed, slithered, and flew through the open portal. Each one was more horrific than the last. Volinette had thought that the things they’d seen had been the worst, but she’d been mistaken. The monsters that were pouring into the tower were almost indescribable masses of fangs, claws, and appendages. Some of them went out the doors, some fell down the lift shaft that led to the bottom floors of the tower, and still more sought out the stairs, moving their way upward.
“Baris,” she hissed, realizing that they were out of time.
No answer.
“Baris!” she said louder.
No answer.
“BARIS!” she shouted, snapping them both out of commune with the Seer’s Cube.
He looked back at her, his eyes wide and haunted.
“I know. We need to tell them, now.”
Baris snatched the cube off the floor between them and leapt to his feet. Volinette was only a moment behind. Most of the room was looking at them since they hadn’t been subtle about their outburst. It didn’t matter. Right now, the only thing that mattered was warning the journeymen that they were about to come under siege. It wouldn’t take long for the second floor of the tower to be overrun. They’d seen no sign of the Masters during their exploration, but there was little hope that they were all waiting just one floor below. They were probably still investigating the first portal, not realizing what was happening inside the tower.
“What are the two of you going on about?” one of the journeyman, an older boy with a swarthy complexion, demanded as they ran up.
“There are demons in the tower,” Volinette blurted, her heart pounding frantically against her ribs. “They’re coming and will be here any minute.”
“Demons inside the tower?” the young man barked laughter. “You must be mistaken.”
Baris thrust his hand under the journeyman’s nose, the cube sitting on his palm.
“Know what this is? Seer’s Cube. We saw them. The demons are coming, and coming fast.”
Two things happened almost simultaneously. First, the look on the journeyman’s face changed from disbelief to fear. Second, a small, winged demon with a wedge-shaped black body and glowing green eyes streaked into the corridor from the direction of the stairs.
The other journeyman standing by the door reacted to the threat quicker than the one who’d been talking to Volinette and Baris. He rattled of a string of words that Volinette only vaguely identified as magic. A howling gale filled the corridor, dagger sharp shards of ice formed in mid-air and shredded the flying demon. Its scream of pain echoed into the room and touched off a panic among the apprentices like lightning to dry grassland.
Mortally wounded, the demon flopped to the floor of the corridor, a pulpy mass of blood and tissue. A number of calls from further down the hall told them that the flying sentry had been the least of their concerns.
The second journeyman committed to his role as guardian. He pushed Volinette and Baris away from the door.
“Get back, both of you.” To the room, he yelled, “Everyone stay back away from the door. Prepare your spells and cantrips if you know them, and if you can control them well enough to only kill the demons and not your fellow students.”
Volinette switched into sphere sight, casting down along the hall to the stairs where a handful of pitch black shapes were clawing their way toward them. Sphere sight was the most basic of all spellcraft. It wasn’t even a cantrip, rather it was an innate ability for all Quintessentialists. That innate ability made her head feel as if it was going to split down the center. She couldn’t imagine how painful it would be to actually use real, destructive magic.
Dropping out of the Sphere, she looked at Baris. His eyes glowed white with harnessed power. His fingers twitched, holding tight to bolts of energy he’d summoned. Magic missiles were his weapon of choice and these were a class above and beyond even what he’d used in the courtyard. He was learning through experience, that much was certain.
“Ready?” he asked, his voice throbbing with the strange vibration that accompanied the power of the sphere.
“No, but I’ll do the best I can.”
She called on the power of the Quintessential Sphere, coaxing memories of fire and destruction, of savage winds and lightning. No single element would save them from the onslaught of darkness that was about to sweep down upon them like a storm-tossed wave.
No matter how much it hurt, she would channel the primal forces of magic until the pain was so great she could no longer hold on to the tenuous link between her soul and the Ethereal Realm. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and felt the power of the Sphere react to that instinct. It wanted her to sing again. She would sing, she promised, but not yet. Not until they were joined in battle against the foes that were probably, even now, still pouring into the tower from the portal below.
Bolts of white streaked past her. Baris had thrown his first missiles into the corridor, sending them racing toward targets that either deflected them with dark magic of their own or roared in pain as they were hit. The journeyman unleashed their spells next, filling the corridor with summoned ice and magical fire. Electricity crackled in the air. She could feel it dancing on her skin. Several Acolytes stepped forward, adding their own spells to the tumult. One of the demons fell and the others scrambled over it, ignoring its death throes.
A writhing green missile, a mutated mimic of the same spell Baris was using, split the air, shooting into the room and hitting the dark-haired girl who had summoned the cube for them squarely in the chest. Her anguished cry turned into a sickly burble as her skin bubbled, the flesh and muscle melting away from gore stained bones, which collapsed in a haphazard pile.
Full blooded panic swept through the room like a dark tide, and Volinette waded into the fray.
Chapter Nineteen
“Look out!”
Volinette’s shout only just kept Baris from being skewered by the razor sharp claws of the demon that towered over him. Baris brought both his hands together, as if he were applauding their performance. Instead, the magic missiles he had summoned merged with each other, becoming a single massive bolt. He twisted his hands and thrust them forward. The missile flew straight and true, slamming into the demon waist high. It burned a hole through flesh and bone, letting them see straight through to the battle raging on the other side.
Bodies littered the floor. Half a dozen apprentices had fallen to claw, fang, or spell. In places, the floor was slick with blood, and they had to be careful not to slip, lest
the demons take advantage of the temporary weakness. Though they’d lost a few of their force, Volinette was impressed with how well the students were working together against a threat that never seemed to ease.
The apprentices who couldn’t concentrate enough to cast, or who didn’t have the confidence to add their spellcraft to the battle, had been shoving cots, tables, and chairs up to the doorway, creating a waist high barricade that the demons were throwing themselves against with undiminished fervor.
Volinette and Baris crouched down behind the barricade now. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will away the pain that burned in her chest and made her head feel like it was going to explode. She’d taken a nasty knock to the ribs while the barricade was going up, and that made it hard to inhale, much less sustain a proper note. Still, the Quintessential Sphere was singing through her, and as long as it continued to whisper the words, she would give them a voice.
“You alright?” Baris spared her a quick glance, but his attention was on the barrier and the journeymen standing guard. There had been a few of these brief lulls in the battle, just enough time for them to catch their breath. Baris had guessed that it was the time it took for another wave of demons to come through the portal. That, or the growing pile of otherworldly bodies stacking up outside the barricade had given the demons cause to think twice.
“I’ll be fine. How is it out there?”
“Juicy. We’re gonna need to find a way to close that portal. I don’t think we can wait for the Masters to rescue us. I think they’ve got their hands full.”
“What about the cube? Maybe we can figure out how long it’ll be before we can count on reinforcements.”
Baris rummaged around in his pocket and tossed her the Seer’s Cube.
“You heard the cantrip it requires, it’s pretty simple. Don’t be long though. We really need you here fighting.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
He ducked suddenly as something struck the other side of the makeshift barricade. Wood splintered. Baris shook his head.
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