BT - Book 1 - Chapter 89

Green flames crackled, consuming the reagents carefully placed in a wide circle around Micah as he sat with his legs crossed in its center.  One by one, he recited the eldritch phrases from the Ageless Folio, taking note of the inflection marks over each syllable as the power of Elsewhere swirled and built around him.

Drekt and Trevor looked agitated as they nervously patrolled the grove starlit grove.  Micah didn’t blame them.  If their enemies had found the house and the cave, they almost certainly had been able to trace the teleportation formation to the general location of the giant trees.  Unfortunately, he needed temporal energy or a serious sacrifice in order to power the enchantment he was working on, and that meant either hunting for an appropriate monster or risking another voyage to the grove.

Jo and Sarah were still back at the lake, guarding Trevor and his parents.  It was only a couple days since they pulled the two of them out of Basil’s Cove, and Micah hoped that they would recover from the shock of their relocation and settle in soon, but he didn’t have time for those concerns.

The ritual reached a crescendo, the green flames around him licking high into the night sky as they consumed the last of their reagents.  Micah snapped the Folio shut, willing it to disappear as he switched from the active spell to a simple repetitive chant.

He picked up the silver hairpin he’d retrieved from Esther’s room, bathing it in the unnatural light of the spell as he rolled it in his hand.  Then, as the fires began to burn lower he began winding a single strand of his sister’s hair, stolen from a hairbrush.  Each iteration of the incantation turned into one series of tight rings stretching the length of the pin.

Every ten seconds he completed another circuit of the pin, the fires burnt down at an unnatural rate, alien energies pouring from them and into the silver rod in Micah’s hands.  Once, twice, four times, ten.

Abruptly the fires guttered out, leaving Micah gasping and sweating in the center of the ritual circle he’d seared into the forest floor.  In his hand, the pin glowed faintly, lit by the power of the enchantments that he’d hastily drilled into it.

Quickly, Micah placed it in a glass jar that he’d already prepared.  The container itself was etched with a number of weak enchantments, already empowered in a ritual that had cost the life of a particularly large fish from the lake.  The jar was filled with purified spring water, kept pristine by those enchantments.

For a second, the pin gleamed.  Then the water began to hiss and bubble, as if it were boiling, while the glow from the hairpin increased.  For a moment, the jar glowed like the moon as it hissed and shook.  Micah barely held it still, focusing what remained of his mental energy on smoothing the interference between the two sets of enchantments.

Then, the shaking disappeared like it had never been, leaving the water of the jar perfectly still.  The hairpin spun once and then stopped, quivering as it pointed to the left.

He stood up, holding the glass container up to the moonlight as he turned around.  No matter which directly Micah faced, the sliver of metal pointed always toward the same spot.  Micah sighed in relief.

“Did it work?” Trevor asked urgently from his position about twenty paces from Micah.  “Are we going to be able to find her?”

“I think so,” Micah replied, “Did either of you see anything?  The last thing we want is to get jumped by a bunch of camouflaged goons in our moment of triumph.”

“Ankros hasn’t blessed us with any excitement so far tonight,” Drekt walked up to the two of them, his eyes still scouring the edges of the grove.

“Well,” Micah chuckled without any real warmth, “I don’t know how long that is going to last.  The odds of us retrieving Esther without some sort of fight are almost zero.”

“That’s a problem for when we find her,” Trevor’s voice was grim, much more serious than Micah was used to hearing.  “Drekt and I might not be able to match you in a fight, but both of us have our first specialization now.  We should at least be able to help out.”

“Just remember to leave most of the fighting to the Luoca,” Micah glanced up to the sky where the daemon blotted out the stars as it circled restlessly.  “I doubt that I’m a match for her, but at least I’m strong enough that the sorceress won’t be able to kill me out of hand.  Our only real chance is to have me support the daemon while it does the dirty work.”

“I guess,” Trevor let out a shuddering breath.  He bit his lower lip, chewing on it slightly before he continued.  “Do you think it will be enough?  Last time, when you and Jo came back it was pretty beat up.”

“Honestly?” Micah shrugged. “I don’t know.  It’s going to depend if Esther is around the sorceress.  She overpowered it last time, but she also had help.  If she’s on her own? Maybe the Luoca would be enough to take her.  Hells, I might be enough to tip the balance.  There are just too many variables to know for sure.  Really, the only thing I’m certain of is that we need to try.”

Trevor nodded silently as Drekt put his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder, giving it a quick, comforting squeeze.

“I don’t mean to be alarmist,” he rumbled, hand still resting on his boyfriend, “but I’m not sure how well we’ve thought this through.  This woman, when taken by surprise, fought the Luoca to a standstill.  By all appearances, she is a resourceful and fearsome foe.  What makes us think that she won’t have made preparations for the daemon.  Surely she knows that we will bring it.”

“What else am I supposed to do Drekt?” Micah asked, turning to the big man with pleading eyes.  “I have some tricks up my sleeve that the two of you haven’t even seen yet, but I can’t look you in the eye and say that I can assure victory.  If you want to head back to the lake you can, but this is my sister.”

“Sorry,” Trevor, smiled back at Drekt, putting his hand on top of the warrior’s massive black mitt.  “This is something the two of us have to do.  There’s no easy way out of this one.”

“I simply wanted to make sure you were aware of the situation,” Drekt chuckled.  “A servant of Ankros is never afraid to die.  The lord of night and struggle asks us to test ourselves, and sometimes those tests end in failure.  There is no shame in dying to a superior foe.  It is simply the way of things.”

“That was… bleak,” Micah flashed a smile back, “I’d prefer to avoid dying valiantly in combat, but the sentiment is appreciated.”

“Maybe next time,” Drekt nodded agreeably.

He just turned to stare at the huge warrior as the man smiled amiably back at him.  Even Trevor twisted around and shot Drekt a perplexed look as the brothers tried to figure out whether their friend was being genuine or displaying some strange brand of dry humor.

“Regardless,” Micah shook his head, still undecided, “the dowsing needle will only have a couple days worth of charge before the needle melts under the enchantment’s stress.  It will tell us where Esther is, but it won’t give us any sort of hints as to how far we’ll need to travel.  Unless there is something pressing, we might as well head out now.  The sooner we find her, the sooner we can make our escape and hopefully disappear into the night.”

Then they walked, stopping at daybreak for a brief meal and later around noon to sleep.  Even Trevor, usually an unending font of complaints managed to hike for hours in grim silence.  By the time they started making their camp beneath a copse of trees, the tension was almost electric.

The three of them divided up watch shifts before lapsing into silence and trying to rest.  Even when it was Micah’s turn to make sure that no wandering animal happened upon the three of them, Drekt simply shook him awake before nodding brusquely and setting up his own bedroll.

Around six in the afternoon, they began walking again.  None of them had slept well, but the stress of the situation kept them jumpy and awake as they continued to follow the guidance of the tiny glowing needle suspended in water.

Finally, just after dusk Micah raised his hand to stop the party.  The Luoca warbled incoherently, slurring nonsense words together as he peered through the fading light at a two story wood building with a guard standing out front.

There wasn’t a question.  No matter how they circumnavigated the clearing, the needle consistently pointed at the unpainted wood planks of the two story building.

Micah chewed his lip.  The structure was fairly rough construction, but practically a palace compared to their compound by the lake.  The ground floor was about four to five times the size of his parents house, and although it didn’t have any windows or ornamentation, the construction appeared to be sturdy and watertight.

The guard out front didn’t look particularly menacing, but she was hardly a push over.  About half a head taller than Micah, she wore a complete suit of plate mail minus the helmet.  At her side, a large mace was strapped to her hip by a strip of leather, and even from the edge of the clearing, even from the edge of the clearing, Micah could feel the faint tingle of magic from the weapon.

Unfortunately, as much as Micah wanted to unleash a truly high power spell and simply eliminate all of the potential threats in the building in one go, Esther was inside.  That meant that Temporal Vortex and Poison Fog weren’t an option.

He tapped Trevor on his shoulder before pointing at his brother’s spear.  Then he pointed at the woman before raising five fingers.  A second later he lowered one, drawing a nod from Trevor.

Four seconds and some hastily mumbled words of power later, Trevor’s spear clanged off of the women’s chestplate, drawing a spray of sparks even as Micah’s spell punched through the thinner armor covering her thigh.

“Alert!” She shouted, staggering backward as blood began to pour from the hole in her leg.  “We’re under attack!”

Trevor’s spear whistled back into his hand, spinning once after it was deflected before flying through the air toward the frowning young man as he used his blessing to return it.

“Take her down!” Micah yelled, all attempts at secrecy out the window.  If Trevor’s spear couldn’t make it through her armor, that meant she was at least level thirty.  Even if she hadn’t already screamed for reinforcements, the warrior likely had enough hit points to survive any ambush, at least for a couple of seconds.

The Luoca launched itself into the air, Micah frantically casting Haste from the edge of the forest.  Drekt and Trevor sprinted past him, another thrown spear deflecting off of a shoulder pauldron.  Grimly, the woman took a hesitant step toward his companions, mace held at the ready.

His first spell done, Micah began casting Regeneration on the Luoca even as the beast swooped out of the sky toward the warrior, a step or two ahead of its two sprinting allies.

She swung her mace hard enough to powder bones only for the daemon to simply ignore the blow, its tail darting forward and plunging into her face, drawing a gurgling scream as she fell to her knees.  A moment later, its wing swept forward, severing her mangled head from her shoulders.

“Hold them off Lynn!” A muffled voice shouted from inside.  “We’re signalling the Archmagus now, it’ll only be a minute.”

“Fuck,” Micah spat the word out, before running toward the building.  Even as he ran the incantations for a second casting of Haste began to fall from his mouth as he began empowering himself in a frantic effort to increase his speed.

He blurred past the Luoca, kicking in the front door to the building, leaning his head to the side to let an arrow pass him.

Inside stood two men, one holding a bow while the other clutched a crystal in one hand and a handaxe in the other.  The crystal glowed with a light of its own, calling out to Micah’s senses with the cloying energy of Elsewhere.

Micah lunged forward, his spear sprouting from the bowman’s chest as the spearhead erupted from the mans’ back, spraying his companion with blood.  Micah ripped the weapon free, ignoring the look of shock on the axeman’s face as energy began to coalesce into a narrow but brilliant path of light stretching from the distance until it ended on a dais at the other end of the entry hall.

A Flash Step and a snap kick later, the axeman’s leg was broken.  Before the man could scream in pain, Micah’s spear gouged out his throat.

In one smooth motion he withdrew his weapon and fired a Pressure Spear into the cloud of white mist that was rapidly gathering into the shape of the Baron’s wizard on the dais.

It was too late.

His heart fell as the spell struck an invisible barrier.  Briefly, a sphere of light flashed into existence as the sorceress stumbled slightly.  A moment later she sighted Micah and a smile blossomed onto her face.

“Micah Silver!” She cooed, enchanted rings glinting with latent power on her fingers as she flexed her hands.  “That was rather unsporting of you.  Of course, I can forgive your rudeness.  Here I am, spending months trying to dig you out of your bolthole only for you to find me.  Now I won’t even have to cast a bloodline tracking ritual on that cute sister of yours.”

“You were going to do what to Esther,” Micah hissed, his knuckles turning white as his grip on his spear became painfully tight.  Vaguely behind him he could hear the sounds of Trevor, Drekt and the Luoca barging into the building’s main chamber.

“Nothing that a little therapy and healing magic couldn’t fix,” she smiled at him, drawing a short, rune encrusted baton from her hip.

Micah whistled shrilly, the Luoca springing into action at his signal and charging toward the smirking wizard.  Before it could reach her, she raised the gem encrusted length of steel in her hand and spat out a word of power.

His heart sank as a crackling red chain of burning energy spat from the metal focus, lodging itself in the daemon.  Almost immediately, he felt his connection to the beast beginning to fade.

“Silly boy,” she taunted him in a singsong voice.  “Relying on external power only works until you encounter someone able to pry your toys from you.”

“And you can be certain,” the woman purred, her voice sending a shiver down Micah’s spine, “I will pry the secret behind how you summoned such a magnificent specimen out of you.”