Double Charisma
Master
Double your Charisma
Fire Damage increased by 50%
Legendary
Fire damage increased by 50%
Frost Damage increased by 50%
Legendary
Frost damage increased by 50%
Regeneration of MP times 3
Legendary
Regeneration of MP times 3
Regeneration of HP times 3
Legendary
Regeneration of HP times 3
Character Name:
Ceras
1st Class
Wizard
Character Total Level*
53
Major
Strength
Fortitude
Agility
Number
246
246
246
Major
Intelligence
Charisma
Knowledge
Number
902
60
242
Minor
HP
MP
Stamina
Carry Limit
Number
1064
9440
1240
502
Regen Sec
73.8
542.2
25.6
N/A
When Ceras left the grassy plain and dropped out of his magical vision, the first thing he saw was the now clothed Master Phoxas wearing an elegant wizard’s robe that he seemed pleased with. The robe had an image of a starlit sky, indicating that Hidden-Caverns had made it magically which Ceras thought accounted for the smile on the old wizard’s face.
“Good selection. I do think we lucked out with the combined effect of the fire and frost spell increase,” Phoxas said.
“The king’s messenger was just here, and you’re required at the palace as soon as you’re finished,” said Hidden-Caverns. “We had to convince him that it was a bad idea to break you out of the spell, so you’d better run off now. The king’s not in the best of moods, the messenger said.”
“I wonder why,” said Ceras sarcastically as he headed for the door.
Chapter 7 The Hunt
Ceras rushed into a large assembly room in the palace that was full of soldiers, servants and champions of the king, all putting on armor or talking to each other about what was happening. He immediately felt the excited buzz of everybody present, and in the center of it all was the tall, armored king sitting at a table surrounded by his people.
The people at the table were taking messages and reading the information. Every now and then one of them would interrupt the king with a short message, to receive a set of instructions from him in a loud voice. The king would then go back to what he had been discussing with somebody else as if he had not been interrupted.
Ceras saw several messengers around the king’s table, ready to take any orders as soon as they were handed to them. He found that he had to weave through the people going in and out of the room so it took him a while to reach the table and be noticed by the king. The busy king broke off a conversation he was having with a hooded figure when he saw Ceras for the first time.
“Ah, there you are. I thought I would have to send a more forceful messenger this time. We have a possible lead, and I want you go along with the investigator to provide some magical muscles in case they have the staff. This is one of my agents who is in charge of what you're going to be investigating.”
The king pointed to the hooded figure whose face was in darkness, but Ceras could see the person was a woman. The agent just nodded to Ceras but no face appeared in the hood; it was as if there was a mist of darkness surrounding her face, preventing it from being seen.
“Please try not to damage too much of my city if you do get into a fight, but it is essential that you get the staff by any means possible. Follow the agent’s instructions as they know best what to do,” said the king as his gaze focused intently on Ceras, before somebody interrupted him again and he had yet another issue to deal with.
The hooded agent stood up and indicated for Ceras to follow her through the crowds to the rear of the hall, through a back door that led out into the palace complex. When the two were alone, walking through the carpeted hallways of the palace, the agent slowed down to walk next to Ceras.
“Keep up, will you? And do exactly what I say at all times, but stay out of my way if I don’t need your help at any point,” said the indistinguishable woman in a voice that seemed to have been magically modified, as Ceras could feel the presence of magic leaking from the hood of the cloak.
“OK, but where are we going and what are we doing?” asked Ceras as he increased his pace to match the agent’s.
“No time to explain. Just do what I say.”
Ceras felt that he had been put in his place as merely the heavy muscle for this quest, so did not ask any more questions of the woman as she led them into the courtyard of the palace and toward the main gate across the grass.
The large gates were open with messengers and soldiers running through the castle’s fortified gatehouse and across a deep pit in front of the thick stone castle wall. There were many defenders on top of the walls of the castle keeping a lookout for any sign of trouble.
The castle guards were checking everybody entering or leaving the castle by the use of amulets or spells. All of the guards had serious expressions on their faces as if their lives depended on the events that were taking place.
When the hooded agent approached the checkpoint to leave the castle, she pulled an amulet from a pocket in the black cloak that covered the whole of her body like a mist of concealment. When she showed the amulet to the guard, he just glanced at it and moved out of her way quickly as if he didn't want to have any more contact with her than absolutely necessary, like he was handling a deadly snake with his bare hands.
Ceras followed her over the narrow bridge spanning the pit that seemed to drop forever into darkness. The two entered a large open area in front of the castle and Ceras saw that unlike other open areas of the city that were normally full of market stalls, this area was clear of any obstruction. Only people streaming in and out of the castle could be seen on the cobbled road and grass before the castle.
The agent rushed across the grass, Ceras hurrying after her toward an entrance to a street that led off the open area before the castle. The street was wide with carts deliveries moving slowly up and down the street. All the houses here were huge and well-fortified mansions, built from large stones. Ceras had seen this type of thing before, as rich people used the proximity to the king’s abode to measure their own importance.
As it was still early morning, most of the wealthy inhabitants of this area were still in bed, unaware of the drama taking place in the city. Their upper windows were all shuttered as they slept.
Taking a sudden right, the agent sped down a side alley between two large garden walls about three meters high. On the wall of the alley were several wooden doors with iron bolts that led into the mansion gardens. Ceras thought that they must be servants' entrances. Nobody was in the alley so the agent picked up the pace and started to run. With his large muscular body, Ceras followed, staff in hand. He wondered if he should put it in his bag of holding, but thought that he may need to use it soon so he kept it at the ready.
The alley twisted and turned, with trees overhanging the cobbled path and small shrubs dotted along the side of the gravel path. The agent suddenly stopped at a dark red painted door on one of the mansion walls and dug a gloved hand into one of her pockets, pulling out some thin pieces of metal that had a magical glow to them.
As the agent was picking the lock she said, “Remember what I said about doing whatever I say. I can handle everything except high-level master or legend-level, so stay out of the way unless I ask for help.”
The lock clicked and the agent pushed the door slightly open, but before she went in, the darkne
ss of her face turned toward Ceras. “There will be some deaths. Don't make a fuss about it. I don’t have to tell you how important it is to clear up this mess that you’ve created.”
Ceras nodded his head, resigned to the fact that people were going to suffer because he had not been careful enough.
The agent moved silently through the door and Ceras followed. They entered a walled garden which looked more like a park, full of grass lawns and flower beds with a tree in the center. The tree had large leaves that provided pleasant shade in the sunlight, and the garden was so beautifully maintained that it looked like somebody had spent a lot of time and money on its upkeep. A small gravel path twisted around the garden and ended at a black wooden door in the stone wall of the house.
Sitting down at the door was a guard with leather armor around his torso. He sat on a low stone wall eating a meat pie from a plate. Beside him was a tankard of beer that was half empty. To Ceras it seemed like an idyllic scene and he thought it would be a pity to disturb him.
The guard’s back was to the two intruders as they approached. Ceras stayed quiet as the agent gestured for him to stay back in the bushes. She moved across the garden without making a sound, crossing the grass rather than the gravel path. Pulling a thin dagger out of her sleeve, she approached the guard from behind just as he was taking a bite from the pie. In one swift movement the woman placed her hand across the guard's mouth, smothering it in pie, and plunged her thin dagger into his neck. The man was totally unaware of the strike until it happened, and he was already dead as she eased him to the ground.
Stepping over the body, she bounded toward the door and started to pick the lock, indicating for Ceras to approach. When she had picked the lock and opened the door, they entered a long plain corridor that appeared to be the service entrance.
Ceras could hear the sound of voices at the end of the hallway and pots and pans clashing, indicating that cooking was happening somewhere in the house. The agent closed the door quietly behind them and indicated that they needed to go up a small stairway on the right-hand side of the corridor.
Creeping as quietly as he could, Ceras followed the agent up the stairs and through several more plain hallways until they came to a solid door at the end of a landing. Slowly, the woman opened the door and they stepped quickly through. By the time Ceras was inside the room, which turned out to be a bedroom, the agent had the same dagger she had used to kill the guard against a fat man’s neck, with her hand over his mouth.
His eyes were wide with terror at the feel of the knife at his neck. Next to him was a younger woman who seemed to have been stunned with a magical spell, as her body was pulsating in shock. Slowly her movement subsided, until she fell unconscious with her eyes rolled back in her head.
The man’s eyes grew even wider with fear as blood started to flow from the side of his neck. The agent just said to Ceras, “Go back to the corridor and close the door. I need to talk to this man in private, as the staff is not here.”
Ceras quickly closed the door behind him and waited in the landing, throwing an illusion over himself so he was not visible.
From the room he heard muffled screams from the man to start with, then silence for a few minutes as he waited. He did not really have to guess what was happening in the room, but still found it disturbing. The door to the bedroom opened quietly and the agent quickly stepped out, looking to the side to see where Ceras was.
As Ceras dropped the illusion, she jerked slightly as if she was about to throw something. When she realized it was him she just said, “Follow me. We have another visit to make.”
The woman moved silently and quickly back through the corridors, out of the house and through the garden into the alleyway. As Ceras closed the red door to the walled garden behind them, he saw the agent starting to sprint down the alleyway. Running after her at full pelt, Ceras managed to catch up with her as she exited the alleyway onto a street. The two ran down the long street toward the gate tower in the distance, passing people who threw curious looks at the large warrior and cloaked woman speeding by. They kept up their fast pace, avoiding other traffic on the road and reaching the gatehouse in a short time.
The guard at the gate was about to stop the two runners until the agent flashed her amulet, and he moved quickly out of the way to allow them to bound down the stairs to the level below.
Ceras found himself taking the steps three at a time to keep up with the agent. At the bottom of the steps they ran into a maze of streets where people were out doing their shopping or taking goods up to the richer levels. Ceras noticed that the people of this level did not look as well-off as those above, but the streets seemed to be filled with food stalls and other shops catered to the higher level’s wealth.
The roads and houses they passed became a blur as he continued to run behind the woman in her measured rush. At the end of a long street was a solid-looking wooden door in a thick brick wall. The agent turned toward Ceras as they approached it.
“No time for subtlety - just blast that door open for me.”
Ceras pointed his staff and cast a fully-powered ‘Temperature Extreme’ spell on the doorway. Thousands of white and dark balls shot out of the end of the staff in a spray of power. This time Ceras had controlled the focus of his spell to only affect the spot he wanted, so the spray of balls only hit the wooden door and with a flash and a loud bang, it disintegrated into vapor as if it had never existed.
The scene beyond the wooden door was of a flagged stone courtyard, with several buildings looking out onto it. In the courtyard were tens of adventurers, all armored, just picking themselves off the ground due to the blast from Ceras’ spell on the door. Past the adventurers in the courtyard, Ceras could see a wizard with his staff running out from between two buildings.
“Take out all the adventurers, now! We must get to the wizard!” shouted the agent as she started to throw knives at the closest adventurers, hitting one right between the eyes causing him to fall back onto the ground.
Ceras moved his staff in a twisting motion, blasting tens of white-hot fireballs at the adventurers before him. He had to cast his spell so quickly that he had no time to aim, so most of the balls of energy missed. The adventurers who were hit were certainly unlucky, as the fireballs entered their bodies and exploded, taking them out of the fight for good as bits of their bodies splattered all over the square.
Before Ceras could shoot off another spray of fireballs, a large warrior with a sword and shield crashed into him. Ceras was knocked backward which gave the attacker time to stab his short sword into Ceras’ gut, taking off a tenth of Ceras’ HP in one blow. The blow made Ceras stagger back as he tried to hit the warrior with his staff, but the warrior just disappeared, and then was at his side attacking him again. This time Ceras had the sense to put up a magical shield that caused the thrust of the warrior’s sword to be deflected from Ceras’ body.
Pointing his hand at the warrior he was able to blast off a fireball spell, but this was deflected by his shield. Trying to put some distance between them so he could perform more magic, Ceras backed up a few steps as the warrior pressed forward.
Without much focus to the spell, Ceras cast ‘Temperature Extreme’ in a spray in front of him, desperate to finish the battle quickly as the wizard was getting away with his staff. Luckily, one of the balls of dark and light energy managed to clip the man's head, causing it to disappear into a mist of blood.
As Ceras was healing the hole in his belly so he could continue, he looked around to see several dead adventurers who had fallen at the spray of the ‘Temperature Extreme’ spell he had just released. Checking where the agent was so as not to kill her, he abandoned all subtlety to his spellcasting and started to release spell after spell in all directions, trying to kill as many of the enemy as possible. This resulted in a large drain on his MP as he kept up the magical bombardment, but he managed to get all of the adventurers and in the process, cause a large amount of damage to the walls and buildings of the court
yard. After he finished there was a large section of the square that looked like a knacker's yard thanks to his disregard for precision in battle.
Ceras saw the wizard leaving with the staff and ran toward the square’s exit, with the agent following him as she finished off the last of the adventurers. Jumping over some rubble his destructive spells had created, he ran through an arched gateway with vines growing along it. In the far corner of the garden was a massive bird-like creature like some kind of enlarged eagle, with two people seated in a wide leather saddle on its back.
As the wings of the bird started to flap, the backdraft knocked both Ceras and the agent backward. Steadying himself, Ceras started to blast fast, white-hot fireballs out of his staff in the direction of the ascending bird and its riders.
Each of the balls of swirling, burning energy shot up into the air and targeted the bird, only to be blocked by the blue shield that the wizard was casting around the monster. The fire washed over the shield as the wizard holding the staff was escaping, but Ceras maintained his blast of energy. However, as the distance grew greater the power of his hit depleted, until the bird started to dive down the mountainside and out of sight, gaining speed as it raced away until it appeared as a small dot in the far distance, beyond his range.
“Damn. We need to run back to the king and inform him of this,” said the agent as she sped off, with Ceras immediately behind her.
Chapter 8 A Legendary Run
The King and Ceras pulled on some master-level boots of air, as the king’s wife was saying goodbye to her husband with a hug.
“You be careful, dear. You know that the Duke of Riverwind has always wanted to overthrow you, and now he’s doubly dangerous with a legendary weapon,” said the concerned queen.
Legendary Weapons Page 7
