Delvers LLC: Obligations Incurred
Page 12
“Uh, yeah. That makes sense,” Jason responded lamely.
“Fine, follow me closely. Pay attention.” Keeja floated to the ground and began slowly walking toward the mountain.
Jason cautiously followed. He had no idea what to expect, and kept a hand on his sword hilt. He also mentally prepared to throw up a null-time shield. He still wasn’t entirely sure how powerful Keeja really was, or how dangerous this dungeon could be, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
Suddenly, the Areva woman held out a hand. “Stop here. Actually, wait a moment.” Keeja took a couple steps towards Jason, reached up, and slapped him on the side of the head.
“Oww, what was that for?” Jason was tired of being confused and getting such cryptic information from the ancient little woman. The side of his face stung too. “Why the hell did you just hit me?”
“Now you’ll be able to hear my voice if I need to talk to you. Teleport back as far as you can while still seeing me so I can keep an eye on you in turn. I’m not sure what other dangers are around here. I’ll let you know when to meet up with me again.”
Jason scowled, but he had no way to test the accuracy of what she had just said. Either way, it wasn’t like he could do anything about it. He sucked up his pride and did as the High Priestess had instructed, teleporting about half a mile back to a handy outcropping of rock he’d seen.
As he stood staring at Keeja in the distance, he decided to try one of his new abilities he’d been practicing. With a small flex of his magic, he bypassed the distance to Keeja so he could watch her as if he were only twenty feet away. He didn’t use this technique very often because it could be so disconcerting to see two perspectives at once. The effect was not at all like using a telescope. It seemed as if he were actually there near Keeja, but also seeing his normal view from where he was standing. It took concentration to maintain the effect and not get a headache.
He figured he should probably just trust Keeja. She was acting like something big was going to happen any minute, so Jason also slowed down his perception of time. He hadn’t felt any danger yet, but he knew from his time on Ludus that shit could go sideways at the drop of a hat.
With no warning, the dungeon itself seemed to attack Keeja.
In a split second, shimmering shields of energy appeared around the demigoddess, her hand held out before her. The shields barely formed in time to turn aside the barrage of destruction from several origin points on the mountain, the projectiles slamming into the barriers and glancing off to drive deep, smoking furrows into the ground. Keeja seemed to glide to the side and her other hand flicked out, sparks dancing from her fingers and shooting out in several directions, resulting in muted explosions on the mountainside.
As Jason watched Keeja using her power, he began hearing music in his head just like he had when she’d shot a beam into the sky over a month before.
Another barrage of fire lanced out, but was stopped by Keeja’s shields. She flicked her hand and more explosive sparks lashed out. Torn ground extended in two long furrows to either side of the Areva demigoddess; a small clump of grass had caught on fire. Trees were shattered, their entire trunks reduced to splinters.
On the mountainside, the explosion from one of Keeja’s attacks started a landslide that Jason could feel through his feet. The violence that the High Priestess had casually unleashed in a few seconds was astounding. Without warning, Jason heard Keeja’s voice say,
It sounded like Keeja was talking softly, directly into his ears. The sensation was weird, but he had to admit the communication method was handy. He mentally nodded and snapped his vision back to normal. His perception of time was still slowed down, though. He figured it was better to be safe than sorry.
Jason was still watching Keeja when the mountain attacked. He would have entirely missed the danger if he hadn’t been watching with his altered perception of time. Jason saw movement out of the corner of his eye and didn’t waste time turning his head for a better look. He immediately teleported away. From the new hillside he stood on, he glanced back and gasped. A huge fist was buried into the ground where he’d just been standing. A giant rock man climbed straight out of the stony outcropping.
The creature seemed entirely made of stone. Its mouth and eyes were just dark pits. Its form was rough, like a child’s block drawing of a person. It only had two fingers and a thumb.
“What in the hell…elementals?” The creature jogged Jason’s memory of games he’d played in the past.
Keeja could obviously hear him, so Jason acknowledged her out loud. “Okay.” He bounced on his toes, ready for anything. He wondered what the High Priestess would do. Elementals in games were usually more easily destroyed using an opposing element that varied per game. Like in some games, earth was super effective versus air, while in other games it was completely ineffective.
Keeja obviously didn’t care either way. She just used brute force. She came flying up to the giant rock monster and obliterated it in a single punch. The explosive force of the strike blew the elemental into pieces. As before, every time Jason looked at her, he could hear the unfamiliar music in his head.
Keeja reached sideways and her hand disappeared before pulling a huge halberd out of thin air. Jason watched curiously as she put the weapon away back wherever it had come from, brushed her hands off, and pulled it out again. She looked directly at Jason the last time she withdrew it.
What the hell is she doing? Jason asked himself. He kept an eye out for more elementals while he pondered Keeja’s strange behavior, and eventually deduced his answer. She was probably trying to show him something. Pocket dimensions…no way! Jason felt a flash of insight. This was probably one reason Keeja had brought him along.
She couldn’t teach him any magic. She probably couldn’t even tell him certain abilities were possible. But if she actually needed to fight and he happened to see her do something that he might be able to replicate with his magic…
With Jason’s enhanced perception of time, only a few seconds actually passed while he furiously thought about pocket dimensions and ways to twist space. So it actually wasn’t very long before the very forest itself seemed to come alive.
Multiple trees slammed together, branches twisting, trunks cracking and opening in facsimiles of gaping mouths. Branches ending in wicked points formed hands with too many fingers. Most of the trees in the forest were uprooting themselves. They seemed to be moving to tear the two trespassers apart.
More rock elementals began pulling themselves out of the surrounding boulders and cliffs. Jason felt the ground below him move, so he teleported straight up into the air. The elementals began throwing things at him. He moved around randomly, teleporting from place to place. Boulders and needle-sharp spears of wood flew through the space he’d just been occupying each time he changed position. Gotta keep moving.
From high in the sky, Jason got a bird’s eye view of Keeja unleashing her power. In a flicker of motion, she moved from elemental to elemental, cutting them in half with mighty swings of her polearm. Her weapon began to glow green, and the wooden monsters burst into flame. She moved so fast, Jason would not have been able to see her strikes without having slowed down his perception of time.
She was a tiny engine of destruction. Jason watched in astonishment as she zipped from monster to monster, utterly annihilating each target with only a single strike. She wasn’t even breathing hard. She pointed her halberd at another of the rock monsters and cut it in half from crotch to head with a beam of energy from the tip of her weapon.
The elemental enemies were a mass of grasping hands and thrown projectiles, but Keeja moved around them like they were in slow
motion. A boulder got in the way of one of her dashes, so she simply smashed it aside with a tiny fist.
Jason felt a chill. If Keeja wanted to, she could wipe out him and all of his friends at once with ease. Even if all the Delvers tried to prepare for her to attack, it would be useless. The High Priestess was on another level entirely. It was humbling.
But Jason was getting seriously tired of dodging missiles thrown from elemental monsters. It was time to contribute to the fight. He needed to practice some of his new attacks anyway.
He wasn’t exactly safe while constantly dodging deadly projectiles, anyway.
Jason teleported, adjusting his vector to arc him behind a rock monster. He drew two bronze throwing knives and waited for the right moment. He needed to be fairly close for this new attack to work, the same attack he’d used to kill the flowertop popper demon. Henry is right about one thing, some of these monster names are silly.
He concentrated briefly, making the edge of a throwing knife flicker with a thin line of null-time, forming a vorpal edge. Then he concentrated again to anchor it. It was still difficult, but he was getting faster, and it wasn’t as difficult as it had been the first time he’d discovered the ability. He watched the back of the stone elemental flash by in slow motion, his slowed perception of time allowing him to perfectly time his throw.
His hand flashed forward, index finger on the handle of his throwing knife, executing a perfect no-spin throw. The distance was short enough that the attached null-time enhancement on the blade held, allowing the knife to punch through the monster like paper.
This would be a lot easier if I could teleport null-time knives, Jason idly thought has he watched the knife pass through the monster.
Luckily, he was paying attention when the creature’s arm flashed back, its hand open to crush him to death. Jason teleported away and frowned in irritation.
Jason said out loud, “Why don’t you just blow them all apart with whatever you did to the perimeter defenses?”
She truly is limiting her power right now? With stunned fascination, Jason wondered what Keeja would be like if she went HAM, all out. He decided he didn’t want to know. If he was being honest with himself, he was already intimidated enough as it was.
Keeja’s voice came to Jason’s ears again. Her tone was odd, like she was trying to call his attention to what she was saying.
Jason obeyed Keeja and observed as she dashed from elemental to elemental, more or less splitting them in half. A single tree monster managed to touch Keeja, and with an irritated wave of her hand, she generated destructive force that destroyed several of them at once. The shockwave of the attack buffeted Jason as he continued to juke around in the sky.
After the explosion cleared her some space again, Keeja went back to cutting the monsters up with her ridiculously oversized weapon. With a flash of insight, Jason realized that this was part of his training too. There was no real reason for Keeja to continue using her halberd to destroy the monsters when she could blow them apart so easily.
Jason could only think of one logical explanation. I’m being powerleveled. Powerleveling was a term Jason had used in his gaming days. The term described when a low-level player’s ability was quickly and unfairly increased by following around a much higher level player. Jason wasn’t entirely sure what to think of this new development, but he decided to make the most of it.
He wondered what other new things Keeja would try to sneakily teach him before they eventually left. They hadn’t even entered the distant dungeon yet. Apparently, Dolos wasn’t the only underhanded being on Ludus. Jason got the feeling Keeja was exploiting a number of loopholes. Keeja is a rules lawyer, Jason thought with amusement.
He closely watched Keeja, trying to glean as many new insights and techniques as he could. Strange music rang through his mind as he watched her effortlessly destroy monsters that would all be enormous threats by themselves to him and his group.
I’m sure glad she’s on our side. Well, I hope she’s on our side. Keeja’s casual demonstration of power was a wake-up call. Jason had a long way to go to protect himself and the people he cared about. He needed to get stronger.
He had a long journey ahead of him if he ever wanted to get home, especially to bring his wife with him. Whether he really wanted to return to Earth anymore was something he would have to think about later when Ludus wasn’t actively trying to kill him, at least for a moment.
Not Kansas Anymore
Henry took point as he, Gonzo, and Vitaliya sped through the forest on magicycles. Every once in a while he had to dodge rotten logs, hanging creepers, or low branches. If someone forced him to be honest, he’d have to admit he’d based a lot of the magicycles’ design on speeder bikes from one of his favorite movies of all time. As he maneuvered through the forest, he could almost imagine he was on Endor.
It wasn’t like Henry was ignorant of all nerdy things.
Building the magicycles had been surprisingly easy. Henry still wasn’t sure exactly how he was making them work, powered by magic stones. When he’d started tinkering, he had just known what would work and how to convince the metal to function with power running through it. When he’d asked other Earth mages in Mirana about the process, they had had no idea what he was talking about. Henry was beginning to suspect it had something to do with who he was as much as his orb powers. Plus, the fact that his primary magic school was Metal might have had something to do with it.
He kept a careful eye on Vitaliya and Gonzo as they traveled. He still didn’t really trust them, especially Vitaliya. From what he understood, Tony had lived with her for years, being raised as de facto brother and sister, yet her job as a spy had been a shock to the young man.
Henry wasn’t sure why, but it bothered him.
He was also irritated by how badly he and Jason had fucked up with Dolos. The grinning dickhead had them over a barrel. Henry definitely needed to talk to Jason later about it. He wasn’t blaming his friend for what had happened, especially since he’d have a better chance than Henry at finding a silver lining somewhere in the situation.
The symbol on Henry’s shoulder itched when he thought about it.
Suddenly, Henry heard screaming in the distance and he focused entirely on the present. He could sense Gonzo and Vitaliya speeding up behind him, too. They burst into a clearing with a few large trees in the middle.
In the branches of the largest tree, Henry could barely spot a woman. Arranged around the tree was a pack of horned demon wolves. Fuck, these fucking things are everywhere!
Then Henry looked closer and noticed these ones looked different than the kind he’d seen before. They had some kind of scales on their body in various places instead of fur. “Armored demon wolves,” Gonzo shouted behind him. “Stay alert. Their hide is tough.”
Great, it’s always something on this planet. Henry sighed in frustration and nerves. As he got nearer, he noticed that the monsters had been chewing on the trunk of the tree. It would only be a matter of time before they brought it down.
Henry jumped off his magicycle and ran forward, noticing Gonzo and Vitaliya do the same out of his peripheral vision. He knew Gonzo was orb-Bonded, so he was sure the spy would be fine. Vitaliya, on the other hand, was just a mage. Henry was a little worried about her safety.
He really didn’t want to be responsible for getting Tony’s cousin killed. Natural mages all seemed to be fairly weak on Ludus, after all. Well, he suspected with the exception of Kinwe-na-ibbi.
Suddenly, Henry felt a bloom of heat, making his whole side uncomfortably hot. Vitaliya had w
reathed her entire body in fire. She darted forward, scorching one of the armored demon wolves with a jet of flame from the blaze covering her body.
To Henry’s other side, Gonzo gestured up, and a huge spear of ice grew from the ground before them, impaling another lupine monster. Henry blinked as he raised his strength from the earth and slapped an exogun onto his forearm. He’d thought he would have to do most of the fighting, but it turned out he wasn’t even really needed. It was a strange feeling.
The rest of the fight was sort of anticlimactic. Between Henry’s exoguns, Gonzo’s ice spears, and Vitaliya’s jets of flame, the monsters never even had a chance. In fact, they didn’t even get close. Henry’s sword was never even used the entire fight.
As he stood there, surrounded by bodies of dead monsters while the two Berber spies ensured each monster was truly dead, Henry felt a strange hollow sensation mixed with relief. On one hand, he did like a challenge. On the other hand, there was no such thing as a good fight, but he was pragmatic enough to prefer a quick victory with minimal risk.
* * *
Henry inwardly groaned. Nobody had gotten hurt killing the handful of armored demon wolves. Their steaming, ruined bodies littered the clearing where they’d fought.
However, traveling back to the Battlewagon wasn’t pleasant. The woman who’d been in the tree was still in hysterics. All they’d gotten out of her was that her name was Emilia and she was from Chile. She seemed to only speak Spanish, but Gonzo was fluent.
Gonzo trying to talk to her wasn’t doing much good since she wouldn’t stop crying and screaming, though. She also refused to get on a magicycle, which was proving to be an enormous inconvenience. Gonzo walked with Emilia as she sobbed and stumbled forward. Henry and Vitaliya kept pace on magicycles. Once they got back, one of them would have to double up and take someone back to pick up the magicycle that Gonzo had left behind.