God of Magic 5

by Logan Jacobs

  The explosion threw everyone off their feet. Aerin and Lena scrambled backwards, trying to avoid the acid that now dripped from the top of the cave, right below where the two lizards had stood, but the remaining lizards bellowed angrily.

  Dehn whooped in reply and charged forward again, Yvaine only a step behind. I threw up my hand and sent my mana out to the weapons of my teammates. I saw their weapons glow in response, and suddenly the hits they made were inflicting real damage. Yvaine and Dehn finished off the pair they had been battling, while Lavinia’s arrows pierced the skull of another.

  I saw one of the lizards start down the tunnel, in the direction we needed to go. I charged after it, winding my way between the legs of those few that were still standing. The monster I was chasing was easily the biggest of the group, and it swung on me when it realized it was being followed. I saw the glow of mana that indicated it was getting ready to release a stream of acid, and I threw up a shield. The lizard stopped, apparently having learned its lesson from the fate of its fellows. It roared, and lunged forward, looking to grab me in its jaws. I pulled my mana knife from my belt and dove under the beast’s head. In a flash, I was up and plunged the knife as deep as I could. The lizard trembled and made one more bellow before collapsing on its side. I stepped out of the way, careful to avoid the smoking liquid that oozed from its jaws.

  “You okay?” Aerin asked. She and Lena were heading towards me, weapons at the ready.

  “I am,” I said with a nod. “You?”

  “We’re good,” Aerin replied.

  “I should get a sample of that,” Lena said thoughtfully. “It would probably do wonders as a cleaning agent.” She stepped carefully towards the head of the lizard and examined the acid that was still trailing from its mouth.

  “Do you have anything that will hold it?” I asked curiously.

  “I think so,” she replied. She studied the acid some more, then rooted through her pack. She pulled out what looked like an ordinary brown vial, and very, very carefully, dipped it into the acid. The vial shimmered for a moment, and then Lena stood back up and replaced the stopper.

  “Okay, then,” Aerin said with an amused glint. “I can think of a few useful things for that.”

  “It will make a wonderful silver polish,” Lena agreed. She tucked the small vial back into her bag and then leaned over the mouth of the stegosaur. She pulled a small pair of pliers from her bag and set to work on extracting a pair of teeth.

  “Yes!” Dehn called out as he joined us. He was covered in blood and gore and seemed inordinately happy. He held up one of the spinal plates that he had apparently lopped off the body of a lizard. “This will look good over the mantel.”

  “I hope you don’t mean the mantel in the salon,” Maruk sniffed as he, Lavinia, Yvaine, and Emeline walked in behind Dehn.

  “It would clash with the sofa,” Yvaine agreed. “Not to mention the drapes that we’re having delivered next week.”

  “It needs to be where everyone can see it,” Dehn replied. “So we can tell the story behind how we took it.”

  “I agree,” Lavinia said with a nod.

  “It just won’t do,” Yvaine insisted as Maruk shuddered. Maruk turned to Emeline and Aerin, who had yet to express an opinion on the scale.

  “Um,” Emeline hesitated as she looked back and forth between Maruk and Dehn, “Maybe in the practice room would be good. You know, so you can demonstrate how you killed the… whatever that was.”

  “Oooh, I like that idea,” Dehn said with a nod.

  “We need to keep going,” I interrupted. “We still don’t have the chalice.”

  “Maybe there’s more of these things,” Dehn chortled. He ran off down the tunnel, and the rest of us followed at a fast trot. Emeline’s ball bounced ahead, showing the way in a tunnel that never seemed to end. We were moving down a slope now, and the air was noticeably cooler.

  “I think we’re at the end,” Dehn called out. We trotted in behind him, panting slightly. Spread out before us was a massive cavern. After the darkness of the tunnel, it was a shock to walk into this room, where an eerie blue light glowed from the rocks. I realized the light was from a spell, and I signalled the team to get ready. We moved slowly into the room, spreading out into a defensive formation as we did so.

  “Look at that,” Dehn whispered loudly as he pointed towards the center. A pile of gold and silver coins, jewelry, and other items filled the space. I searched the pile and spotted four chalices, but none carried the telltale sign of magic.

  “There,” Lena said softly. I followed her gaze towards a small pedestal. A gold chalice sat there, alone. It glowed with its own light, and I could see the faint outline of a shield around it.

  “Someone’s put a spell around it,” I whispered.

  “Let’s get it and go,” Emeline panted. “I feel like we’re being watched.”

  I moved over towards the chalice, with Lena and Lavinia on either side. Aerin and Dehn were filling their bags with items from the pile, while Merlin started his own pile. Aerin gave in and handed him his own bag, which he accepted gleefully.

  “Who are you?” a voice suddenly boomed out.

  I jumped, and I felt Lena do the same. Lavinia swung around, three arrows already on her bow. She fired before I even saw who had challenged us. I followed the trail of the arrows and watched as they disintegrated in mid-air.

  “You made it past my guards,” the voice continued. I found myself staring at a grizzled human, his white hair flying away from his head in all directions, and two angry gray eyes looking at us with contempt. “No matter,” he continued. “I’ll kill you myself, and then you’ll serve me.”

  “Necromancer,” Lavinia hissed.

  As if on cue, the ground around us shivered in the light, and then hands, arms, and other body parts began to emerge from the dirt. I saw humans, elves, ladonae, and even a pair of orcs. I counted twenty all together. Their skin was gray and dried like old leather. They still had eyes, but there was no light there. The weapons they carried, however, were still in good shape.

  “Emeline!” I called out. I could see her mana flowing, and then she launched a fireball into the center of the pack. Two of the zombies screeched as they disintegrated in the heat of the flames. Lena pulled two jars from her bag and threw them at the undead closest to us. Three were instantly caught in balls of lightning. They struggled against the liquid fire, and Lavinia quickly peppered them with shots to the head.

  I searched for the necromancer and saw him moving towards the chalice. His mana had a dark, polluted look as it flowed along his arm. I could see he was searching the room, and then his gaze locked onto Emeline as she threw another fireball. I saw him raise his hand, and I quickly raised mine.

  As he prepared to cast his spell, I closed my fist. I saw the light of his mana shrink in response, and the necromancer’s eyes bulged in surprise. Lavinia had seen the direction of my assault, and she fired two arrows towards the necromancer, only to be intercepted by one of the zombie orcs, who took the shots in the chest. The orc looked down at the arrows, then started moving towards us.

  “Damn,” Lavinia hissed. “I’ve used a lot of arrows already.”

  “I need to get close enough to stab him,” I said. The necromancer had recovered, and I saw him call up more zombies. Six more creatures crawled out of the earth, and then I heard a rumble from the tunnel. Four of the lizards appeared, still bloody from the earlier battle.

  Dehn seemed undecided about who he wanted to attack first, so he simply started sweeping his sword in a wide arc, hitting a lot of thighs and kneecaps in the process. Maruk was battering several of the zombies with his remaining shield, and Emeline had positioned herself behind his massive frame. Aerin was stuck at the top of the pile of gold, swinging her mace at any of the zombies who managed to climb up towards her. Merlin was with her, in the shape of a black leopard. He was doing a good job of mauling the zombies, but I wasn’t sure how long he and Aerin could hold out without some help.


  “Lena,” I said as I ducked beneath a right jab from the orc. “Do you have anything that will be bright enough to blind everyone for a few moments?”

  “I think so,” Lena replied as Lavinia and I stuck the orc at the same time. My mana knife sent a blue light sizzling through the corpse, and it crumbled into dust with a shocked look on its face.

  I saw the necromancer call up his mana again, and I moved to close the flow. This time the necromancer stopped and looked more carefully around the room. His eyes met mine, and an evil grin crept across his face.

  “Well, well, well,” he laughed. “This is unexpected. I thought your kind were extinct.”

  “Lena,” I whispered urgently.

  “Here,” she said as she pulled a small metal canister from her bag. “This should do the trick.”

  “Wait,” I said as she tugged on the lid. “Lavinia, close your eyes, and be ready to start shooting as soon as the light clears.”

  She nodded, and I placed a hand on her shoulder and sent a flow of my mana along her arm.

  Then I nodded to Lena.

  The elf alchemist removed the lid and sent the cylinder sailing high overhead. I had my eyes closed and pressed against the sleeve of my shirt, bet even so, the flash was blinding. I heard Dehn scream an obscenity, and Aerin’s surprised intake of breath. And then I was running, hard, across the floor of the cavern towards the necromancer. Two of Lavinia’s arrows flew by me, and took out a human zombie in my path, and I struck one of the lizards with my mana blade as it stumbled blindly in front of me.

  The necromancer was groping blindly, trying to find the knife he’d dropped when the light had filled the room.

  I only had seconds, and I figured the zombies would probably recover before my crew did. I tackled the necromancer, and the two of us went rolling across the floor. I had my mana knife out, ready to strike, but the necromancer was fast, and I could see the massive amount of energy he was calling up. I thrust the knife into his heart, and he bucked beneath me as the blaze of mana sizzled through his body.

  He finally stilled, and I turned to look at the rest of the cavern. The zombies were frozen in place for a moment, and then, as if a great storm swept through, they crumbled into dust. The rest of the Shadow Foxes were staring at each other, trying to decipher what had happened.

  “All right!” Dehn cheered.

  “Is it over?” Emeline asked tentatively. I could see she was ready for another strike as she peeked from behind Maruk.

  “I think it is,” I replied. “The necromancer is dead and so is his army.”

  I stood up and returned to study the chalice. The spell around the stand was still active, but I cut through the shield with my mana knife. Sparks flew out in every direction for a moment, and then the spell collapsed. I reached over and picked up the chalice. It was a very simple cup, in gold, with a single blood-red stone centered on the front. There was no other design, and no inscription, but I could feel the power in the chalice as I had felt it in the other two Shodra.

  “It doesn’t seem like much,” Aerin commented as she came up behind me. She was eyeing the chalice like an appraiser, and apparently, she wasn’t impressed. “There are pieces in the pile there that will bring in a lot more money.”

  “But they don’t have the power that this one does,” I replied. “I can feel it, just like I felt it in the other two.”

  She nodded, though she didn’t look convinced. I took her hand and we rejoined the rest by the pile. Aerin and Dehn had already claimed several items of interest, including an elvish sword that glowed with its own internal light, and a pair of spiked wrist braces that Dehn was already posing with. The rest of us picked through, and we each found something. Lavinia found arrows with shafts carved from some near unbreakable substance, while Yvaine pulled out a pair of small knives that could be easily hidden up a sleeve, or in the folds of a dress. Emeline picked up a telescope, that she swore had a finer lens than any she had seen at the Academy, and Maruk found a massive shield to replace the one he had lost. Lena held up a delicate necklace with a stone that constantly changed color, and I found a small book, buried near the bottom of the stack that held a personal account of the civil wars.

  Satisfied with our haul, Aerin then added a few more items to everyone’s bags. Dehn and Lavinia protested, but Aerin insisted that the extra goods would help cover the expenditures of the bounty so far. Lavinia rolled her eyes, but Aerin would not be denied.

  Climbing back up the stairs with the added weight wasn’t easy, especially since we were all exhausted from the fighting. But Theira must have decided to help us one more time, because the wind died down and the steps seemed less slippery. We clambered back to the top of the cliff with only a few extra scratches.

  We retrieved the horses and began the ride back towards Ovrista. With no more clues to follow, I decided that we should return to the guild hall to recover and work out our next steps. We still had one more Shodra to recover, and our only chance of finding a clue to its whereabouts was probably in the library.

  Chapter 16

  We’d been back in Ovrista for three days, and we still hadn’t found any decent clues about where to find the final Shodra. Emeline had immersed herself in the Academy library and only appeared at the hall long enough to eat and snatch some sleep. Aerin prowled through the black market and returned with little to show for her effort besides sore feet and a bruised ego after a disgruntled dwarf accused her of cheating at cards.

  Yvaine didn’t have much luck among her friends either. One princeling from a foreign land claimed he knew of such a magical device, but it quickly became clear that his only real interest was Yvaine. Pressed for details, he admitted that he’d never heard of the Shodra, much less a magically endowed candle.

  Even Dehn tried his hand at looking for clues, once Maruk pointed out that we wouldn’t be hunting any more monsters until we knew where we were going. Dehn cozied up to a female dwarf who worked in the city records department. Dehn shared stories of his exploits with the Shadow Foxes, while his lady friend picked through files that apparently dated back thousands of years. She did find references to the Shodra, but nothing that would lead us to the current whereabouts of the candle.

  I spent most of my time in my room, reading through the book collection I was starting to build. As I skimmed through Professor Hayle’s book, I found an odd entry scratched in at the very bottom of a page. It looked like it had been hastily added by the original author some time after he’d finished writing the book. It was a reference to the Shodra, according to Hayle’s translation, and it claimed that the Shodra had been given to the Oracles to conceal. The Oracles had consulted with Evarun and hidden the Shodra in Evarun’s belt. Hayle had placed belt in quotation marks and added a question mark. I guessed she wasn’t certain about the translation, but hadn’t been able to find anything better.

  I heard the front door open, followed a few moments later by the sound of metal bouncing off the floor. Maruk had hung a shield embossed with the guild’s sigil in the main hall, a move which we’d all agreed looked impressive. That is, until Emeline had knocked it off the wall while trying to collect her books, and put a small dent in the corner. That had been followed by Emeline knocking it down when she tripped over a pair of Dehn’s boots and Emeline accidentally hitting it with a bit of mage fire.

  I grinned at Merlin, who had been jolted from his nap by the thud, and decided a consultation with our resident scholar might be in order. I hopped down the stairs and found a flustered panthera trying to place the shield back on its hook.

  “I’ll do that,” I offered.

  “Thank you,” Emeline replied gratefully.

  “Was that my shield I heard?” Maruk’s voice called from the back of the building.

  “No,” Emeline and I both yelled back.

  “No one appreciates a liar,” Maruk warned.

  I smiled at Emeline as we set the shield back in place, and then I pulled her towards the kitchen. Ma
ruk was there, standing over a steaming pot. He had a flour-splattered apron on, and a very determined look on his face.

  “What are you working on?” I asked.

  “Turlaric dumplings,” the orc replied as he eyed the two of us suspiciously. “I better not find a new dent in that shield.”

  “It’s fine,” I assured him. “Besides, the dents give it an air of authenticity. You know, like it’s one we actually carried into battle.”

  The orc shook his head and returned his attention to the dumplings. I grabbed some cheese and bread, and Emeline found some leftover meat from the night before, and we ventured into the dining hall.

  “I have a passage I want to show you,” I said as I stacked my sandwich. “It’s from Professor Hayle’s book. It’s about the Shodra, and where they were hidden, but it looks like she wasn’t certain about the best way to translate it.”

  “I don’t think I can do any better,” Emeline said as she bit into her own thick creation.

  “Maybe not,” I sighed. “But we haven’t found anything else.”

  “That’s true,” Emeline agreed. “I thought I’d stay here this afternoon and just pull out my maps. Maybe one of the older ones will have something.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” I replied.

  We finished our lunch and then returned to the map room that Emeline had created. She pulled out several maps and spread them across the table. I realized the maps were meant to be placed together. The map with Ovrista went in the center, and then the other maps went around it, giving a fantastic view of the surrounding area. Emeline had lightly marked where we had found the other three pieces of the Shodra, along with notes on what we saw at each site.