“Get them!” Master Porthos yelled, tears streaming down his face. Under the pressure and aided power of the newcomers, Mallagan was forced to retreat, Drek hovering by her side.
“There’s too many of them!” Mallagan warned. “We have to retreat for now. Mallagan hastily summoned a portal and the two Drakaran fled before their shields were destroyed.
A few arrows narrowly missed the retreating Drakaran. Drek looked back with a look of disappointment. He was bred for killing, and there was a lot of killing to be had here. It was a shame they had to leave. They jumped through the portal.
Arrows and spells whizzed past where they had just been standing. The portal closed with a snap, leaving dozens dead and many others wounded behind.
Chapter 12
The funeral for Master Sellius was held in the Royal Palace Courtyard. King Triton and his counsel were in attendance as well as half the city, if not more. Master Sellius was well-liked by most and respected by even his political foes. The weather echoed the sadness permeating throughout the city, hail-like rain peppering the hundreds mourning the loss of a great man.
Master Sellius was buried in a gold-plated coffin inscribed by the city’s most renowned scribe. Charlotte stood next to Lance, her hand gently holding his, her eyes downcast in sorrow. Lance wanted to comfort her, but he could not come up with the appropriate words. Everyone felt the loss of master Sellius. He was the glue that kept the mage quarter running so smoothly together with the palace and the city.
With the absence of Master Sellius, Master Porthos temporarily filled in as the highest ranking member. His speech was heartfelt and moving, highlighting the amazing contributions the late Master had made throughout his life. Lance was shocked at all of the accomplishments Sellius made that Lance had not even heard about, things that made the world a much safer and better place for it.
Toward the end there was not a person in attendance that did not shed a tear.
“I won’t pretend that I could ever fill master Sellius’ shoes. I won’t pretend that things will go back to normal. What I can promise you is that he will not have died in vain. We will gather with our allies and stop the Drakaran. We will never let them open the portal, and with our allies by our side, we may even bring the war to them.”
After a few more words from Porthos, King Triton stepped forward to make an announcement. His face was solemn, the bags under his eyes evidence that he had not slept well in some time.
“My people,” King Triton announced in a voice only a king could make. “With the death of so many good men as of late, our kingdom grieves. We can no longer stay hidden behind our high walls. I promise you that we will take every action necessary to secure our kingdom, our borders, our people, and our world. Today we mourn. Tomorrow we take action!
Cheers erupted throughout the entire city in one unanimous voice that said we have had enough, that humanity would stand together against all odds. Not only were the citizens of Delvin there, but many of the surrounding kingdoms sent representatives. The representatives were there for more than just mourning. King Triton made the call and summoned all banners from all over to come together and come up with a plan. It wasn’t just the fate of Delvin at stake. It was the fate of the entire world.
* * *
The meeting took place in the Great Hall, a room designed to house hundreds with giant columns holding up a high vaulted ceiling and decorated with colorful tapestries. Marble statues lined the walls, carved into the likeliness of rulers and nobles, legends and heroes from the past. King Triton sat at the head of the long wooden table, a mug of ale in one hand and a clenched fist resting across a sprawled out map. Hours of planning and discussions about allocation of resources was starting to wear on all of them. What started off as a friendly endeavor turned into a shouting match. A coordination on this scale had never been attempted before. While the rulers bickered back and forth, mages from all of the surrounding kingdoms convened in the Great Library, searching for anything that would lead them to discover how to get to the world of the Drakaran. They searched through large tomes written ages ago by those with wisdom and knowledge long ago lost. Master Porthos had relayed Lance’s suggestion to destroy the crystals. Although they could be broken, it proved impossible to completely destroy them. It also wasn’t possible to completely remove all the crystals from the cave. In addition, hiding the entrance or sealing it would most likely only stall the inevitable. The only way to truly end this war was to destroy the Drakaran forever. Lance was brought in to give his account and update everyone on the Drakaran world. They asked him questions about its people, its defenses and pulled everything he could remember that might prove useful.
A search party was sent to look for Mallagan and Drek. By using a portal, a magic no one knew much about, it was nearly impossible to find any trace of them. It was uncertain whether or not they still remained on this world or if they went back their own. The only thing that was certain was that they would be back.
“You’re telling me that there are creatures larger than elephants that breathe fire and all sorts of other hellish monsters? If you had so much trouble with just two of the Drakaran, how are we expected to take on an entire planet of them?” The king of Maliak asked. He was a small man, but what he lacked in size he more than made up in a powerful and commanding voice.
“We may not have to take on the entire planet,” King Triton explained. From what Lance was able to discern, it seems like there is one main city that has its eyes set on our planet. Yes there are a lot of them and they are remarkably powerful, and yes there are a lot of dangerous creatures we have never faced, but if we can destroy the city, we can end this with one decisive strike.”
“If we can somehow manage to open a portal large enough to send troops through, won’t we open ourselves up for an attack from them?” The king from Atrion asked. “Logic would dictate that the portal would go both ways, would it not? Don’t get me wrong. I see the importance of working together on this, but could we be opening a can of worms?”
The questions he asked and the thoughts that came with it brought several murmurs of agreement. King Triton consider the words.
“It is a possibility,” he admitted. “But we cannot just sit around and wait for them to come at us with attack after attack. They have shown that they will not stop until either we are dead, or they are, and I for one want to be on the offensive. We’ve fortunate enough to thwart their attacks thus far. But that luck will run out eventually.”
“Have we tried negotiating with them?” The king of Lumina asked. He was an old man with tired eyes who had seen many things in his lifetime. He appeared to be a man of patience and wisdom, watching and listening to the conversations until he had processed enough to ask questions.
“We are past the point of negotiations,” King Triton said. “They want only to open up a portal large enough to send their troops through and take our resources and enslave our people. There is no reasoning with their kind. We must prepare for war.”
Lance watched and listened intently as the discussions continued. He realized that this was only the beginning. So many good men and women had died already and many more would meet a similar fate in the coming days.
After he gave all the details he could, Lance found that he could no longer listen to the arguments. He politely excused himself and made his way toward the Great Library. Hopefully he could be more useful there. He had learned to open a portal while in the Drakaran world, but this was something entirely different. The one thing they had going for them was that they had access to the crystals needed to summon a portal of that size and power.
* * *
“Filthy humans! Mallagan yelled. “Why must they always get in the way?” She wiped dirt off of her clothes and scratched at a cut on her ankle where an arrow had snuck by her shields.
Drek shrugged. He wiped his blades on a cloth, the blood still wet in places. He would prefer to leave the blood on the blades as a reminder of the fresh kills, but a
n unfortunate side effect would be rust and Drek always kept his blades sharp and shiny. A true warrior treated weapons as an extension of themselves.
“They don’t have the skill, but they have the numbers,” Drek remarked.
The wind was brutally fast up on top of the mountain, its bitter chill digging into her flesh and seeping into her very bones. She ignored the pain. The portal spell had been done in haste, and the only place that came to her mind was where she and General Crowl had killed Lance’s father.
Mallagan was tempted to return home and seek counsel with Commander Voltross, but Mallagan knew that the only reason she was still alive was because of her rare skills. But even she could be replaced. Commander Voltross was not known for his patience and she knew she had already exceeded that limit.
“They know what we are after and they know where we are headed,” Mallagan stated. “They’ll be waiting for us again. What we need to do is draw their attention elsewhere so that we have the ability to take more crystals.”
Drek re-sheathed his swords and sat down, saving his strength. He was a warrior; a true swordsman who knew when to take advantage of a respite. He knew only to kill and to follow orders, and would wait for those orders to come even if he didn’t agree with them.
“They are expecting us to return to the crystal cave,” Mallagan finally said. “But we do not need it. They cannot destroy the crystals they seized from my last opening of the portal. They have them somewhere. We just need to find out where.”
Drek smirked. This was a plan he could easily get behind.
“Tell me who I need to interrogate,” Drek said.
Mallagan turned toward him.
“He will not be easily found alone. Find him and get your answers by whatever means necessary. Be quick about it. We cannot afford to take risks. I will open a portal close to the city of Delvin. His name is Master Porthos.”
Chapter 13
Master Porthos sighed and leaned back in his chair as a yellow robe from the neighboring kingdom of Atrion placed a pile of five large, leather-bound books covered in dust onto the table in the Great Library. The poor young man apologized to the Master as a dust cloud rose into the air.
Porthos felt like he had skimmed through hundreds of potential books already, the library’s extensive collection of thousands of books dating back hundreds of years. Master Porthos took a moment to look around him. Piles of books dotted the library tables, mages from all surrounding kingdoms working tirelessly to leaf through them all.
“I think I found something!” Lance called out from a few tables down.
Thankful for a reprieve from his own reading, Master Porthos stood up and hurried over to Lance’s table where the other mages were starting to congregate around.
“What did you find?” Master Porthos asked, bumping aside a few mages to make room by Lance’s side.
“This is a book written by the scribe of one of the founders of Delvin,” Lance explained. “It is mostly useless, if not interesting historical content. I almost put it aside until I saw this.”
Lance pointed to a hand drawn picture toward the back of the book of a crystal. Alongside it were descriptions and notes along the margins of the page.
“Apparently the founders knew about not only the crystals, but they speak of the Drakaran visiting their world and helping them build,” Lance said. “If this is true, then the Drakaran and our people worked together long ago.”
“That was a very long time ago,” Porthos noted, looking at the date of the book. “Anything is possible. Does it say anything else about the portals?”
Lance looked it over again. “There is a language, symbols I do not recognize at the bottom of the portal drawing. Could be the spell. Could be gibberish. I don’t know.”
Master Porthos sighed. He missed Master Sellius in a moment like this. He would know what to do. He always did.
“That looks like words from the time of the founders,” a mage from the kingdom of Atrion said from behind Lance. Peering over Lance’s shoulder, the mage added, “I don’t know what the words mean myself, but I know one person who might.”
“Well? Who is it?” Master Porthos asked.
The mage from Atrion replied, “There may be at least one among the monks who live at Shatter Island. I visited there several months ago.”
“Keep searching through the books,” Master Porthos instructed the gathering of mages. “There could be more. Lance, you’ll accompany me to Shatter Island. You know more about the portals than any of us. In fact, you are the only living human I know who has been able to open a portal. I’ll ask King Triton to lend us an escort. It shouldn’t be more than a three day ride if all goes well.”
* * *
Lance held onto the side of the wagon as the wheel caught yet another large rock, threatening to slam him into the sidewall.
Master Porthos smiled. “I never said the journey wouldn’t be a bit bumpy. We have a while to go on this dirt road and then a long bridge out toward Shatter Island just off the shoreline.”
Lance peeked over the wagon walls to see the five guards riding slowly behind them. With everything Lance faced recently, the guards’ presence did little to calm his nerves. The road to Shatter Island was a boring one, as straight a road as Lance had ever been on, and little scenery to look upon.
He missed Charlotte. Even though it would only be a few days away from her, now that he was with her, he never wanted to leave her side if he didn’t have to.
Just as Lance leaned back and decided to close his eyes to get some much needed rest, a loud scream erupted from outside the wagon.
Lance sat upright and looked outside to see two knights knocked off their horses, Drek standing over them with a blade lit on fire and the other practically glowing with ice.
“Ride on,” Master Porthos told Lance. “I’ll deal with this while you get that book translated.” He pointed at the book lying next to them, its Drakaran contents waiting for interpretation.
“No,” Lance said. “That would be suicide. I’m not leaving you!”
“The book to open the portal is more important!” Master Porthos protested, but it was too late. Lance already hopped out of the wagon to face the Drakaran assassin.
Master Porthos cursed under his breath and scrambled out of the wagon to join the fray.
The remaining knights had managed to stay alive, but Drek’s whirlwind attacks with the dual blades were coming precariously close to ending their lives.
Master Porthos shot a fireball toward the Drakaran and watched in surprise as the fire blade raised at the last second and absorbed most of the flame into the sword itself. Drek then spun around, ducking simultaneously under a weak thrust, and cleaved a knight’s feet in half. The knight howled and fell to the ground.
Lance charged, shooting bolts of lightning from his outstretched hands toward the Drakaran. Drek spun his swords in a circular motion until they formed a blur of a wall, the lightning bouncing off the enchanted blades.
Whirling around, Drek struck down the last knight who came a bit too close for his liking.
“Humans are pitiful,” Drek remarked as he charged Master Porthos.
Despite wearing armor, the Drakaran was unbelievably fast, Lance’s attempts to intervene missed several times. Master Porthos raised his shields and cringed as the blades hit it, their enchantments shattering it completely. The follow through was about to slice Porthos, when Lance finally landed a blow, a gale of hurricane force wind ripping the Drakaran from the ground and tossing him backwards.
Drek landed with both heels digging into the dirt, skidding to a halt with impressive balance and coordination. Pushing off with his back leg, he propelled forward, charging at the mages with his blades out to both sides. His flame blade burned brightly, highlighting his pale face and red, Drakaran eyes.
That image, coupled with the dead knights lying about the charging assassin, brought a wave of fear down Lance’s spine. An image of Charlotte’s smiling face came and with
it the fierce realization that he had so much to lose. He didn’t want to die. Not now.
Lance glanced over to Master Porthos, who nodded and swallowed silver flakes. The two of them combined forces to shoot an energy beam at Drek. He held his swords up in time to block the attack and pressed forward. The beam succeeded in merely slowing the Drakaran. Whatever enchantments his blades possessed, they proved to be extraordinarily powerful. Nothing seemed to be able to break through.
As Drek came closer, Lance was forced to drop the attack and try to raise a shield. Unfortunately, the assassin was unbelievably fast and was on Laura before he had a chance to complete his spell. Drek crashed into Lance with such speed, a gauntleted fist striking his face with such power, that Lance instantly crumbled to the ground unconscious.
Drek came to a halt and pointed his frost blade at Master Porthos.
“You’re next.”
* * *
Master Porthos woke from the cold water splashing into his face. His eyes fluttered open to see the surprising view of smooth rocks lying at the bottom of a river. His head was yanked out of the river by an overpowering grip.
Master Porthos coughed out water as his eyes were forced to look into those of Drek.
“I hate humans,” Drek said. “You are weak, yet somehow arrogant creatures. Even your smell disturbs me. It wreaks of fear.”
Master Porthos looked around, noting that neither Lance nor the Drakaran book from the Great Library were around.
“Why haven’t you killed me?”
“Perhaps in due time,” Drek replied. “It is a thought that crossed my mind. A very tempting thought.”
Underdog Mage Chronicles_The Captive_Book Two Page 7
