Magium

by Chris Michael Wilson

  “Well, it wouldn’t be much of a trap if you could just detect it before you walked into it, now, would it?” the soft-spoken lessathi says.

  “Wait, who are you talking to?” says the lessathi that agreed to speak in Common. “Where did that voice come from?”

  “I’m talking to the banshee in the amulet, of course,” the soft-spoken lessathi says. “Arraka, I believe, is her name. I heard that she was trapped in there by a rogue group of lessathi some twenty years ago. At any rate, the banshee is not the one that I’m interested in talking to.”

  He then walks towards me, getting within range of the electrical shock spell, but he doesn’t seem to be affected by it. Could he be using some trinket that gives him protection against electricity?

  “This is the one that I’m interested in talking to,” the lessathi says, as he gets closer to me. “I honestly wasn’t expecting to see you again, fellow lessathi. You are tenacious, I’ll give you that. Well, no matter. This isn’t important. What’s important is how you managed to reach our location in one piece. Tell me, was it Golmyck that gave you the map of the underground tunnels? How were you able to avoid the explosion trap?”

  “You know, I was thinking…” says the lessathi wielding the scythes, who has been notably silent until now. “We don’t really need to have both of the lessathi alive for an interrogation, do we?”

  As he talks, he slowly approaches Leila, who is lying on the ground, facing down, with her head towards him.

  “What are you talking about?” the soft-spoken lessathi says, as he takes his eyes off me and turns to face his comrade. “Of course we need them both alive!”

  “Yeah, but you see…” the scythes-wielding lessathi says, as he grabs Leila by the hair, and he lifts her head, so she can get a direct look at his face. “I’ve been itching to kill this little half-breed for a very long time. And I just don’t think I can restrain myself much longer.”

  “Control yourself!” the soft-spoken lessathi says. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Control myself?” the scythes-wielding lessathi says. “That’s easy for you to say. You weren’t there, at the Beacon. The very thought that I had to share the same room for extended periods of time with this abomination makes me want to puke. And to make matters worse, there was also that idiot caretaker who used to treat her like she was an actual lessathi. Disgusting.”

  He then turns towards Leila, when he sees the expression in her eyes change.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, are you upset because I’m bad-mouthing your ‘father’?” the lessathi says. “Well, you know what? Your stupid father deserved much worse than the fate that he got. Parasites like him should be happy that they are even allowed to live as slaves. They have no place in our society. You may have freed him for now, but we’ll get him back, don’t worry. And when we do, we are going to give him the fate he truly deserves. The fate of a useless piece of trash.”

  As Leila’s eyes fill with rage, she completely forgets about the signal, and she jumps on the lessathi in front of her, thrusting one of her knives directly into his heart. I quickly take advantage of this opportunity, and I also jump to my feet, aiming my dagger at the throat of the lessathi that was closest to me. The soft-spoken lessathi was not looking at me, and my attack takes him completely by surprise. He tries to jump backwards, but it’s too late, and I manage to slit his throat in one single movement.

  “Damn it!” one of the other lessathi says, as he sticks a trident-like weapon into a wall.

  About a second later, a very large hand made of stone comes out of the wall behind me, and it closes its fist around me, attempting to crush me. I try to break free, but I simply do not have any room to move my arms. Luckily for me, my toughness stat is high enough that the stone hand does not manage to crush me, no matter how hard it tightens its grip.

  While I am still unable to move, Kate manages to free herself from the paralysis spell, by jumping backwards, out of its range, and at a relatively safe distance from the lessathi. She then extends one of her arms towards the trident-wielding lessathi, with the palm of her hand facing him, and an ice cone shoots out of it, impaling him in the head. As soon as he dies, the stone hand that was gripping me quickly crumbles to dust.

  All of a sudden, the last remaining lessathi raises the emerald encrusted shield he was holding in the air, and a powerful flash of light fills the room, blinding us all for a few seconds. As my eyes re-adjust, I see that there has been a clash between Leila and the lessathi while we were blinded, which has led to both of them dropping their weapons. Leila is on the ground, with her back against the wall, and the lessathi is now bending over to pick up one of her knives, in order to finish her off.

  “Help me, Barry!” a big blue text appears in front of me, as Leila looks at the lessathi with a terrified look in her eyes.

  As Leila is desperately calling for my help, I just stand there and look at her, trying to figure out why this whole situations seems completely off, to me. There’s just something about what’s happening here that feels very out of place, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

  “Barry, please!” Leila writes, again, as the lessathi closes in on her with the dagger in his hand, while struggling to find his way towards her due to the lingering effects of the blinding flash from earlier.

  Damn, it… I guess I’ll go immobilize the lessathi for now, and I’ll figure out what’s wrong later.

  Just as I’m about to reach the lessathi, Kate suddenly shoots three ice cones into Leila’s waist, causing her to scream in pain. Wait… Scream? Since when can Leila scream?

  My question soon gets answered, as the Leila that was on the ground slowly fades into thin air, and she is replaced by the lessathi from before, who is clutching at his abdomen, trying desperately to stop the bleeding. At the same time, the lessathi that was in front of me turns into Leila, who is now staring at the screaming lessathi in front of her, with her dagger still in her hand.

  An illusion? It was an illusion all along? How did I not figure this out sooner?

  While I’m busy questioning myself, Kate wastes no time, and she finishes off the last remaining lessathi by sending an ice dagger flying into his head. She then turns to look at me, and she shakes her head in disapproval.

  “ ‘Help me, Barry’ ?” she says. “Seriously? When’s the last time you’ve seen Leila play the damsel in distress? Especially against a weakling such as this?”

  “Wait a minute,” I say. “You’re not going to tell me that Leila’s call for help was the only thing that led you to believe that she was in fact the lessathi, are you?”

  “Actually, that is exactly what I’m going to tell you,” Kate says.

  “But what if you were wrong?” I ask her, shocked.

  “Then Daren would have had to cast an extra healing spell,” Kate says. “I made sure to not hit any vital spots with my first few cones, just in case, so there would have been no lasting damage.”

  “Wow…” I say. “Uh… I’m not sure how to react to this.”

  “Just react like you always do,” Kate says. “With a quip.”

  She pauses, as she sees Daren and the others starting to free themselves from the effects of the paralysis trap.

  “Come on,” Kate says. “We should search their headquarters and see if we can find anything useful. With a little luck, I might find some information about Diane.”

  “That was way too close!” Daren says, as we all begin to enter the headquarters. “We really need to do something about our vulnerability to electricity.”

  “Yeah,” Hadrik says. “I don’t think I’ve felt like having so little control of a situation since that time we got shocked by Kate’s elementalist friend. If Barry hadn’t figured out how this spell worked before we got here, we would have been goners.”

  “Well, I guess It’s a good thing that you have a friend who spent his life nerding it up in libraries,” I say. “Isn’t that right, Daren?”

  “Yeah, yeah…” Daren sa
ys, and we all begin to search the desks in the lessathi’s room.

  It takes us a few minutes of searching, but we eventually realize that every single drawer is completely empty.

  “Damn…” Daren says. “Not even a single document. Do you think that they may have emptied out their headquarters before this meeting, as a precautionary measure, on the off-chance that they actually got defeated?”

  “They may have done it way before that,” I say. “If they were already suspecting that the king’s servant got followed here, they probably considered this location to be compromised, so they made sure to not leave anything of value in this place.”

  “I guess you’re right…” Daren says. “So, I suppose we should be getting back to the castle, then?”

  “Yes,” Kate says. “I’m definitely not going to find out any information about Diane from this place. Let’s go back.”

  “You know…” I tell Kate, as we prepare to exit the headquarters. “You could have left that last lessathi alive, in order to interrogate him. You already had him more or less immobilized, with that first set of ice cones that you shot in his abdomen, so he shouldn’t have been much of a threat.”

  “I didn’t want to risk it,” Kate says. “That lessathi was practically the illusionist of their group, and he may well have had other tricks up his sleeve. It’s never a good idea to leave illusionists alive after a fight.”

  “What do you guys think… should we take these weapons with us?” Hadrik says, as we pass the lessathi’s corpses.

  “Oh, we definitely should be taking them,” I say. “I could totally use one of these!”

  I then take the emerald encrusted shield from the ground and I start swinging it up and down, in an attempt to cast a spell with it.

  “Hmm…” I say. “I don’t recall that lessathi uttering any incantations before he cast his illusion spell or before casting the flash of light that he used to hide the illusion from us. Maybe there’s a hidden button or something I’m missing?”

  “Let’s take these to king Golmyck,” Daren says. “He’s a tinkerer. He should be able to make sense of how these weapons work.”

  “Whoa!” Hadrik says, and he jumps back three feet, after having taken only one step forward. “I almost forgot about that electric trap from earlier.”

  “Relax!” I say. “That spell deactivates automatically as soon as everyone in its range leaves the area.”

  I then go past the area where the trap had been activated before, and I turn around, to face Hadrik.

  “See?” I say. “Nothing to worry about. Let’s get out of here.”

  We grab the lessathi weapons, and we begin to head back, following the exact same route that we took on our way here. As soon as we reach the corridor below the king’s basement, Hadrik starts throwing rocks at the trapdoor above us, in order to get the king’s attention. A few seconds later, the trapdoor opens up, and the extensive ladder drops all the way down, just like before.

  “It’s going to be a bit difficult to climb this ladder while carrying these lessathi weapons,” Daren says.

  “Can’t you somehow strap them to your back like you did with your shield?” I say.

  “Well, the shield is made to be strapped to your back when you travel for extended periods of time,” Daren says. “These weapons don’t have any straps, and the shield strap is not designed to hold any other weapons on it.”

  “You’re both making this sound way more complicated than it really is,” Hadrik says, as he picks up the lessathi trident. “There’s no need to carry these all the way up with us. I can just throw them through the hatch.”

  He then shouts loudly, to make sure that Golmyck can hear him.

  “Hey, Golmyck!” Hadrik shouts. “I’m going to throw some things your way! Some of them have pointy ends. Make sure you stay away from the trapdoor!”

  The gnome gives us an okay sign with his hand, and then Hadrik starts tossing all of the weapons through the hatch. As soon as he’s done, we all climb the extensive ladder, one by one, and once we reach the king’s basement, the trapdoor closes itself back up, behind us.

  “Should I take it that the lessathi are all dead?” the king asks us.

  “Yeah, we took them all out,” I say.

  “Extraordinary,” Golmyck says. “And not a single scratch on any of you, either. I’ll admit that I’m impressed.”

  “Just make sure to keep up your end of the bargain,” Daren says. “We don’t want to see any more slaves on the streets when we come back to this city.”

  “Of course!” Golmyck says. “I will begin making preparations for the abolition of slavery first thing tomorrow morning. I only wish there were something else I could repay you with, for your help. Given that the mission I’ve sent you on is a secret, I cannot give any official reason to the treasurer that would justify offering you a reward.”

  “Hey, there’s no need,” I say. “We’re the ones who volunteered for the mission in the first place. If we wanted payment, we would have asked for it from the get-go.”

  “Still… I wouldn’t want you to leave empty-handed,” the king says. “Hold on, I think I’ve got something that might be of use to you.”

  He then disappears under his workbench, and he reappears ten seconds later with a small device in his hand, which only has a screen and a button.

  “This device will help you find out if someone is a lessathi or a human,” Golmyck says. “You simply need to press this button while aiming the device at someone, and the writing that will appear on the screen will tell you whether they are a lessathi or not. I made it a long time ago, back when I couldn’t differentiate between the auras of humans and lessathi with my magical sense. I haven’t really used it in years, so you can have it if you want it.”

  “We’ll take it,” I say. “I’m not sure how much use we’ll get out of it, but you never know!”

  “So, about these lessathi weapons that Hadrik threw into your room…” Daren says.

  “Ah, yes,” Golmyck says. “Let me have a look.”

  “I tried to get that shield to activate, but I just couldn’t find any switch on it,” I say, as the gnome studies the lessathi weapons, closely.

  “Well, it’s no wonder,” Golmyck says. “These weapons have clearly been designed to only work in the hands of the individuals that they were tailored for. If you don’t have the exact aura signatures of the lessathi who were using these devices, I doubt that you could get any use out of them. This measure was probably taken in order to avoid having their enemies use their own weapons against them.”

  “So, they are completely useless, then?” I say.

  “Not entirely,” Golmyck says. “As weapons, they have no use, but if I disassemble them, I might just find some parts that I could use on some of my other devices.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Speaking of your devices, I just remembered that I overheard the lessathi say something important about that telepathic device of yours, while they were still in the meeting. It turns out that they are the ones who sabotaged the device, in order to delay the first round of the tournament. From what I could understand, it sounded like they had some sort of a plan that they needed to carry out until the beginning of the first round, and they needed as much time as possible to get it done properly, but things didn’t really seem to work out in the end, because a lot more mages died than they were expecting, which messed up their plan, somehow.”

  “Hmm,” Golmyck says. “I definitely remember them trying to convince the other kings to insert a rule in the tournament where the participants couldn’t kill each other unless the rules explicitly required them to. So, it was sabotage, that caused the malfunction… That would explain why the device was behaving so erratically, no matter how many times I tried to tinker with it. How interesting. This information will certainly help me to fix the device faster. Thank you for letting me know!”

  “You heard what the lessathi were discussing during their meeting?” Daren asks me.

&nbs
p; “Yeah, I could hear them from far away, thanks to my hearing stat,” I tell Daren, offhandedly. “So, anyway, I guess we should be taking our backpacks, then. It’s getting late, and we still have a feast we need to attend to.”

  “Alright,” the king says. “Remember to not say anything about your secret mission while you are outside this room. The lessathi may be dead, but their spies are still alive and kicking. Many of them will probably leave the city as soon as they find out that they no longer have any employers to pay them, but some of the more loyal ones may seek revenge, and you wouldn’t want to get yourself or your friends targeted by any of these assassins. I will have my own spies and assassins deal with these more loyal followers of the lessathi in due time, but for now, we should all be careful.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be careful,” Daren says.

  “Good luck on your travels,” Golmyck says. “And remember that you will always be welcome to Thilias, should you choose to visit this city again!”

  We grab our backpacks, we wave goodbye to the king, and we go climb the stairs to the throne room. The king’s servant was still there, and he had a rather uneasy look in his eyes, when he saw us finally exit the king’s basement, after more than two hours, but he said nothing, and he led us outside, just like the last time when we came to the castle.

  About an hour and a half later, we finally reach the mansion, where Enrique was waiting for us impatiently.

  “Finally!” Enrique says. “I was almost beginning to think that you might not show up!”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Daren says. “Our meeting with the king took a bit longer than we anticipated.”

  “Well, what’s important is that you are here,” Enrique says. “The food is already done. I will tell the cooks to reheat it, and we will begin eating shortly.”

  He then goes into the kitchen, and he comes back out about fifteen minutes later, followed by five cooks, each carrying plates of food, and each of them bringing a completely different specialty dish to the table. I would not be surprised if these dishes actually tasted better than what Flower can magically conjure, given her relatively limited knowledge of the culinary arts. After the cooks are done placing all of the dishes on one of the bigger picnic tables from the yard, Ella and Rose’s siblings also join us, and we all seat ourselves at the table, getting ready for the well-earned feast.