“Dear gods!” said Sari to her companion, the pistol-wielding lady Jay, as they disembarked alongside Crusher and Dean.
“Hurry up now – I’m not stopping, not after the journey we’ve had!” barked captain Helath, ushering the foursome off of her boat. “I think you’re all crazy,” she muttered under her breath as she pulled up the wooden boards back to the side of the carriage once more and knocked on the wood to signal to her crew to fire the engines.
“Thanks for the ride!” Dean waved at her, but she only scowled at them as the balloon-carriage floated sedately back up into the air, turned, and sped away over the dark forest. In just the blink of an eye, their transport was nothing but a speck in the sky.
“Uh, Crusher? Should we have booked a return passage, do you think?” Dean frowned.
“Ah – we’ll be alright, harpy-killer,” the dwarf blustered, although the mage could tell he was anxious - he kept on twiddling with his beard.
“Lady Jay?” Sari said, hiking her skirts about her as she picked her way to the broken hole that had been the front gates. “I’m not sure that we’re going to find anyone here alive – let alone Lord Fabrio…”
“Orc-warts!” her green-clad companion cursed, taking out her pistol and advancing to the side of her friend. “Well, let’s see if there is any good we can get out of this mess. Are you ready?” Sari nodded.
“What are you going to do?” Dean asked, alarm suddenly filling him as he realized their mission of finding out what happened here might directly conflict with his and Crusher’s. The Ambassador told us to keep it a secret… he thought in alarm, sharing a warning glance with the dwarf.
“Just watch, Winters – you’re not the only mage in these parts.” Lady Jay nodded at her debutante friend, who was swaying on her feet with glazed eyes. Slowly, her hands started to raise, and a distant spectral light started to shimmer and play over them.
“What’s she doing?” Crusher said in alarm.
“Shhh!” from Lady Jay.
It was too late for either of them to do anything to stop them, anyway, as the magic the Enchanter Sari had summoned was even now spilling from her outstretched arms and into the ruined fort. The white-blue, sparkling light touched everything there, laying over it like a fine mist.
“Now we’ll see who we’ve got to kill for this massacre…” Lady Jay muttered, as shapes started to coalesce out of the misty light; figures, running and crouching, as if in battle.
“Oh no…” Dean thought in alarm, as he worked out just what it was he was looking at.
Enchanter Sari knew some sort of spell to summon the past. She could allow a ghostly image of the past to replay itself again, even though the events must be days old.
These eldritch figures were dressed in human guard uniforms, with small helmets, carrying spears or bows as they ran back into the compound, some climbing now non-existent stairs to get up to the battlements. But something was attacking them. Dean flinched when he saw one of them who had just managed to stand over the gate and raise his bow suddenly fly backwards, smacking into the dirt and fading into nothingness. It hadn’t looked like he had been hit by anything, Dean thought in alarm.
Then, suddenly, a whole group of the figures around the gate fell backwards as the gate itself appeared to be blown open. The guards here tried to run for the tower, but something was picking them off, shooting them down with strange bolts of power as quickly as a six-gun shooter.
And that something was coming.
“Sari! See who it is – turn around!” Lady Jay yelled, and her friend slowly shuffled on her feet, still swaying, and the white, spectral light washed over the clearing in front of the fort.
Behind her, the vision of the courtyard battle faded, but in front of them was now something much more threatening (to Dean and Crusher’s eyes, anyway).
It was the white, misty phantasm of the Lady of Efen, and she was floating towards and through the open gate, flinging her hands about her as she fired bolts of energy at the humans.
“But why is she doing this? Why!?” Dean gasped. When he had released her, she had been cruel and scary, yes, but she seemed thankful for being rescued. She didn’t show that she had any psychopathic hatred for humanity, as Winters the mage himself was a human.
“Where is it!” the lady demi-god screeched, her words just an echo of what they must have been, but still with the power to chill Dean’s blood. Blast. Another hand wave, another human guard flung against a wall like he was a plaything.
Sari the Enchanter had turned back to the courtyard again, following their enemy as she cleaned up the last of the resistance, and instead turned her powers against the tower itself.
“Where is the crystal!?” she said again, this time bringing both of her hands together to drive a line of trembling, thundering fury along one side of the tower itself. Ghost-stones and illusory windows burst and tumbled, and the ruin was complete.
The Lady of Efen, unsatisfied in her search, rose into the air, floating as easily and as securely as she had when Dean had first seen her – and then she sped away over the trees, towards the Wyvern mountains.
It was all so quick, but also so deadly, Dean thought in horror, feeling the weight of the terrible crime he had committed, just by unknowingly awakening her.
“Who was that?” the Lady Jay said, aghast. “That was no human sorcerer, and it was no human traitor to Aldaron, either!” she spat.
“I don’t know, Jay… It looked like an elf to me, but an elf witch who was more powerful than I have ever seen,” Sari the Enchanter said as she leaned back against one of the walls, rubbing her arms as if they hurt. The images and the light faded as she ended her vision.
“Here…” Jay pressed a phial of something to her friend, who drank it greedily, visibly restored.
“That spell must have cost a lot of Mana,” Dean said, trying to keep his tone light and not guilty. He could see nearby that Crusher was twiddling with his beard again, as he too must be trying to work out how much to tell the two women.
“Yeah, but it’s okay, we’ve got a load of Etheric Tincture we picked up at the Oak Shrine,” Sari said, shaking the flask she had just been given, but earning a subtle frown from the Lady Jay. I guess she doesn’t like sharing clues, then, Dean thought, not with a little wry humor.
“It must be what the High King said,” Crusher said, attempting to deflect their interest. “A powerful human sorceress working for House Gwylar?”
“Didn’t you hear my friend, short-stop?” Jay said arrogantly. “An elvish sorceress. And one that was screaming about some crystal or another…”
“Less of the sizeism, please,” Crusher grunted, tapping the pommel of his hammer distractedly as he looked over at Dean.
Yeah, the human mage thought. These guys are going to be difficult.
“What about your friends then?” Sari the Enchanter said, looking concerned. “I guess that…” Her face fell when she turned back to the devastation.
“Oh yeah, right.” Dean quickly composed a look of awful tragedy. “Terrible. I guess they must be dead.”
“Well, don’t sound too depressed about it,” Lady Jay muttered, stepping further into the ruins to kick at the stones and broken bits of wood. No bodies, thankfully, as they had been cleared away by the King’s troops when they had been attacked here.
She’s searching for clues, Dean thought in alarm, which is just what we should be doing.
“I’ll take a look at the tower,” Dean said suddenly, nodding to Crusher. “Are you okay to keep an eye on things out here?” Another sidelong look at the two women. “In case any trouble comes our way?”
“Sure thing, mage.” Crusher winked, then loudly started exclaiming about something he thought he saw in the rubble, drawing the women’s attention.
Pleased for the distraction, Dean moved quickly to the broken open doorway (with half the wall gone as well) and stepped inside.
*
It wasn’t dark in here, as large chunks of the entire building had holes blown through it, but it was a mess. There were broken tables and chairs thrown against pots and weapons stands, tapestries half-burnt, old cloaks. The tower was slim enough to only have a couple of rooms on each level, and (thankfully for Dean) the stone stairs were mostly intact to the first two. He kicked aside the wreckage, searching for anything that might give him a clue to where the Lady of Efen would have gone next – and why she had attacked here, of all places. Winters grabbed only the few things he thought might prove useful.
Repeater Crossbow and 12 bolts added to inventory.
Aldaron Guardsman’s cloak added to inventory.
“Nope, nothing at all up here…” he muttered, returning listlessly to the ground floor, where a lot of the ceiling had fallen in.
“Hang on a minute, I know…” Dean reached for his spell inventory.
Magic Scan. -3 Mana.
His surroundings started to fade into a graying transparency, like all the color and contrast had been sapped out of the room. I guess that means there’s nothing here, he thought dismally, about to turn back to the courtyard (where the brightly glowing figures of Sari and Lady Jay were being led around the wreckage by Crusher as he pointed out ever-more useless bits of detritus), when suddenly a patch of magical vision glowed a bright blue-white light.
“What’s that?” The light seemed to be coming from behind some of the piled-up junk, and he quickly got to work dismantling the tables, chairs, and broken statuary to see what they were hiding.
There on the floor was a glowing square of light, and Dean realized it was coming from a trapdoor that had been hidden by a large statue of some human lord, before the Lady of Efen’s magic had knocked two bales of crap out of this place. The light leaked from its edges, as Dean grabbed the iron ring-pull and heaved.
“Skargh!” A creature jumped out of the darkness, straight at him – all fur and fangs and pale, white eyes.
-3 Health!
-2 Health!
“Oh crap!” Dean staggered back under the assault. “Shield!” He summoned the blue-white, glittering forcefield that sat on his left arm, shoving the creature back. It was dog-like, only it was much larger, and it had six legs. From its snout sprouted a mess of ragged teeth, and on its four front paws were cruel talons that scraped along the edges of the shield in fury as it stood upright on hind legs.
“Loup-Garou!” Dean heard Crusher shout from behind him, as he batted the thing back with his quarterstaff.
3 damage!
“Fireball!” Dean roared, dropping his shield for a chance to fling the fiery missile at the creature.
25 Damage!
But even as the thing was engulfed in flames, it didn’t die, and instead jumped to one side with impossible speed, clambering up the towering wreckage inside the room, its hind legs dislodging and showering bits of wood and spear poles down on Dean.
-2 Health!
“Dammit!” Dean shouted, raising his hand for another spell, just as Crusher and the others reached the doorway.
“Cripple!” Dean said, pointing at the thing, and feeling the dark threat of the curse surge out of him.
10 damage! Loup-Garou Vanquished! 250 XP!
“Woohoo!” Dean punched the air as the thing dissipated into dark embers. “Another 250 – now all I need is 300 XP to get to Level Eight!”
“You could have left some for us.” Lady Jay had her pistol pointed at the spot where the creature had been.
“Can’t blame him, miss – he’s a noob,” Crusher said, crossing the small space to high-five Dean. “And anyway – maybe there’s more of those things down there for us to take on!”
“Sorry.” Dean shrugged a little. “You’re welcome to them, I haven’t got enough Mana for any more anyway…”
“Well, you could…” Sari opened her mouth to speak, but her partner in adventure, Jay, shook her head savagely. They aren’t going to share their magic tincture with me then, Dean sighed.
“What’s that? What did you find?” Jay was clambering over the spot to where the trapdoor was open, and now that Winters’ magic sight had receded, it looked just like any other dark hole.
“Oh – nothing, I don’t know…” Dean said quickly. Damn!
“You don’t get monsters guarding nothing, noob,” Jay said quickly, before jumping down the hole first.
“Wait – I found it!” Dean said, but it was too late.
“Woah….” They heard the woman say below them, as they all followed after her.
*
The darkness was lifted by a glowing ball of light created by Sari the Enchanter, and they saw they were in a cavern, one that was older than the Steward-Lord Fabrio’s tower, clearly.
“The tower was built on top of it,” Sari said, looking at the walls.
“That’s sculpted rock,” Crusher said, touching the gentle waves of rock, as smooth as glass, and looking like ripples across a lake, frozen in time. “This is dwarfish work.”
“But that’s not dwarfish at all, is it?” the Lady Jay pointed to the thing that stood in the center of the cavern. It was a small tree, but one without leaves. “I would bet my eye teeth that there is elvish. Just like the crazy woman who destroyed this place.”
There was no denying it – who else could get a tree to grow down here, in the dark? Even though it’s not exactly growing now, is it? Dean thought, stepping closer to look at the thing. It was wood, but it was silvery-gray, smooth, and it looked ancient. If it ever had leaves, they were long since gone, and instead its branches ended in smoothed points.
“Here, look at this!” Sari said, pointing to the center of the tree, where the trunk had formed a natural hollow, as if it wanted to hold something. As Dean stepped closer, he even saw that there were smaller, twig-like branches that had been clutched around something – holding an unmistakable void.
Sanctuary Found! +100 XP!
“Oh, that’s unexpected.” Sari shook her head, as Dean realized they all had received the experience points. “I don’t even know what story that XP is for – but we’ve unlocked it anyway! I reckon whatever was supposed to be inside that is what the woman wanted,” Sari said under her breath. “Her crystal.”
“And Lord Fabrio must have been protecting it…” Lady Jay nodded. “Only – he didn’t have it, did he? The sorceress didn’t come down here. She must have sensed that her crystal was missing, and gone on to look somewhere else.”
Dean looked at Crusher in alarm. Without saying anything, they both knew that Efen could only be looking for her Ouroborax Crystals. And the Lord Fabrio used to have one down here. Which means the humans of the Near Realms DO know about them, or did some time ago, at least…
“The High King is still claiming that the House Gwylar is responsible,” Crusher said uneasily.
“Well, the High King is clearly wrong, isn’t he?” Jay argued. “Now let me think a minute… This Sanctuary is old, really old, right? And you, Sir Dwarf, said the walls were dwarf-shaped, right?”
Crusher nodded.
“And this here can only be elfish, so unless we’re looking at some secret alliance between the Duma and the Judgment – which we all know isn’t going to happen anytime soon – then this place must date back to the times before humans colonized here, when the Near Kingdoms were the haunt of elves, dwarves, and loads of other peoples, right?”
“I guess so,” Dean heard Crusher admit.
“And this crystal the crazy woman wants must also date back to those times. So, we’re talking an epic, hero-level story going on here that we’ve stumbled into!” Jay beamed, clearly happy about the prospect of lots of experience points ahead.
“Our epic-level story,” Dean growled, unable to contain his annoyance. “No one invited you two.”
“We’re on a story anyway: Lord Fabrio’s Killers,” the Lady Jay replied tartly. “So it seems our stories have some of the same chapters and goals, r
ight?”
“Oh, great…” Crusher sighed.
“So … we might as well team up?” Sari said, smiling a little brighter than her friend was, Dean thought. But it’s still a bad idea. They might get hurt.
“Well….” Dean started to say, looking at Crusher, but the dwarf’s gaze was shadowed.
“It’s your call, Winters,” the dwarf said.
I guess it is – I am the one who started this mess after all… “Okay. Look, the thing is – there’s something weird going on with this story we’re on. It’s almost like … it shouldn’t be here or something…” Dean tried to explain.
“What?” Jay frowned.
“I told you my friend was a noob, right? Level Eight. He shouldn’t have even been able to activate this quest – and yet he did. It’s weird. Like a glitch in Aldaron.”
“Or an Easter Egg?” Sari said, cocking her head to one side, and referring to many game designers’ habits of putting secrets inside their games.
“Maybe,” Crusher shrugged. “But to me, personally? I don’t know. It’s got all the trappings of royally messing up the balance of the Three Kingdoms.”
“So what, this is a story that hasn’t been released yet? Or it’s a new expansion for the game world?” Jay pressed, with fire in her voice and in her eyes. “Either way, I want to be among the first to complete it!”
“What level are you?” Crusher said.
“Level Eleven, and Sari here is Thirteen!” Jay said proudly.
“Well, you’ve probably got a better chance of succeeding than I have…” Dean sighed, giving in. He told the two women about the Lady of Efen, and her quest to recover the ancient Ouroborax Crystals.
“But that’s terrible! What is she going to do with them when she finds them?” Sari gasped.
“Probably whatever she set out to do to begin with…” Crusher groaned heavily. “Wipe out the humans for a start, and then us dwarves, and then probably any other elf who gets in her way as well.”
“That is,” Dean pointed out, “if she doesn’t manage to completely destroy the barriers holding the Darkling realms apart from our one, just like she did last time.”
Tales of the Gemsmith Page 16
