by Kyle Johnson
The pulses of magic faded as Aranos unwound the Spell, and it only took him a minute to do the same for the others. “Can I ask what, exactly, that was?” the Rogue McBane asked curiously. “It kind of tickled.”
“You’d all tripped a tracking Spell,” Aranos explained. “They’re all over the forest, here. You were pulsing a signal out to whoever cast the Spell telling them where you’re at.”
“Won’t we just trip another?” Meridian pointed out. “Not that I’m complaining about being tickled or anything.”
“My Oathbinder has been dealing with them before we encounter them,” Geltheriel told the others. “You can tell when he does if you watch his eyes. By my count, he has removed four as we have traveled.”
“Five,” Aranos corrected absently. “What I need to do is give everyone a Charm like Silma has, so you can undo them yourself. I’ll work on that once we’re settled.”
“Whatever you say,” Phil chuckled. “Should we go take a peek at that tower, now?”
Aranos nodded at the Spellsword with a smile; he could usually rely on Phil to keep him on track. It was one of the reasons he counted the man a dear friend. The party set off once more, racing through the forest toward the tower, albeit this time in Stealth. Aranos was surprised that all of the humans knew the Skill, although only the Archer and Rogue were any good at it. Still, Singularity didn’t make it easy to pick up new Skills like that; you had to have some idea of what you were doing. That probably meant that the others had taken the time to learn from the Rogue or Archer, which was smart.
As they drew closer to the tower, Meridian held up a hand, signaling a halt. “I can feel them from here,” she spoke softly to the others. “Feels like there’s about twenty creatures in there. One of them feels different from the others, too. Nastier, if you know what I mean.”
Aranos nodded at the woman; whatever Skill or Ability she had, her range obviously vastly exceeded his. He reached out mentally to his Companion, communicating silently with her. “Okay, Silma’s got eyes on the tower now. She says there’s one normal-sized entrance with no door blocking it.
“Now, we could probably hold that door,” he continued. “The problem with that is that it’s possible the creature that feels ‘different’ to Meridian is a caster, which means that they might be able to get a message out and have more undead hit us from behind. If we’re tied up at the door for a while and get hit from the other side, we might be in trouble. To be safe, we’ll need to finish this fairly quickly.”
Phil frowned. “If there are twenty of them, I don’t think we want to fight them out on open ground, though, do we? That’s still two to one, and we could get swarmed.”
“Fighting them in the tower limits us, however, Spellsword,” Saphielle pointed out. “We can likely fight two abreast, at best, and our ranged attackers must fire over us to reach their targets.”
“You’re both right,” Aranos nodded with a grin. “We need them to come out of the tower, but not so far out they can flank us. Fortunately, I think I know a way we can do that.”
“That is an evil-looking smile,” Longfellow murmured. “This promises to be fun!”
The tower that they approached had been heavily damaged. From the shattered pieces on the ground, Aranos guessed that it had probably risen four or five stories when it was whole. Now, the walls ended abruptly after two, the stones were ash-grey and cracked, and the entire structure was covered with thick, black vines. Tumbled piles of stone surrounded the tower, all overgrown with scraggly, dark-leafed bushes or more of the climbing vines. The main portal, just wide enough for two people to enter, was dark and had stones missing at the periphery, making it almost look like a yawning mouth with ragged teeth.
Aranos was excited and nervous as he gave the signal for the assault to start as he hurriedly activated his Inspection Skill. This was the first time the two groups would be working together, and there were a lot of ways it could go wrong. The two groups were different races, but they were also a mix of players and NPCs…and the NPCs had the greater skill and experience in battle. If the players refused to heed them, this could go badly. If they were willing to work together, then hopefully taking the tower would be a simple thing.
At Aranos’ signal, Phil and Saphielle rushed toward the tower, their Str and End boosted by Aranos’ Spell and their damage, Attack, and Defense heightened by Meridian’s. The Shaman had Spells that were simply better at buffing than Aranos’ were; he could give a massive boost to someone’s Stats, but she could give a larger bonus directly to things like Attack and Damage that he couldn’t specifically affect. Silma charged behind them, hanging back, while Geltheriel and McBane ranged to the sides in Stealth. At the same time, Aranos summoned void and air mana to his hands in equal measure. When he was ready, he nodded to Rhys, who fired a single Fire Bolt overhead. Instantly, the party members dropped and covered their ears just as Aranos unleashed a vacuum Ravaging Blast at the top of the tower.
The seven blasts of vacuum did no damage to the structure, as vacuum wouldn’t do direct damage to creatures or objects. However, they did suck the air from a huge disc around the top of the building; when that air rushed back in to fill the space, it rocked the crumbling tower with a massive thunderclap. The entire building shook, and more loose stones fell from the crumbling walls, forcing the cowering tanks to dodge or block the rocks with their shields. As the echoes of the explosion trailed off, Phil and Saphielle braced themselves, shields out.
“They’re coming!” Meridian shouted. Aranos nodded; his Lifesense couldn’t feel the undead directly, but it could feel a wave of what he could only describe as wrongness sweep down the stairs. Hastily, he raised a Life Wall in front of the doorway, sealing it with a glowing barrier that wouldn’t do much damage to the party members but would do enhanced damage to undead. The barrier was totally immaterial; it would let the creatures pass easily, but it would burn them as they did.
The first of the undead swept through the barrier, their pallid, scabrous flesh sizzling and smoking as they raced toward the tanks. His Inspection Skill gave him nothing relevant, but he wasn’t focused on what it showed him; his mind was busily trying to parse out the data streams, seeing if he could find the one that denoted the undead’s falling LP.
As he gazed at the wave of attackers, he involuntarily shuddered; these things looked like his idea of ghouls. The creatures resembled hunched, half-decayed elves, with long faces and wide mouths filled with jagged canines. Their eyes were pale and filmy, and their hands sported long, filthy nails. They screeched with rage as they spotted the Warriors before them and rushed at the pair in a loping gallop that was surprisingly fast.
The first creature struck Saphielle’s shield with a crash, but the Avenger held firm, shoving the monster back and stabbing with her spear, puncturing its throat. A second creature smashed into Phil’s shield with equal force, and the big man rocked back a step before pushing with his shield and slashing his blade across the creature’s face. As he did, though, his shoulder struck Saphielle’s shield, disrupting his aim and almost causing the woman to miss blocking the next creature’s attack.
“Thrust, don’t slash,” Saphielle hissed as she regained her stance and impaled another creature’s skull. Phil nodded and shifted his stance, turning his side to face the creatures and thrusting his blade into the next one’s throat.
More of the creatures spilled out of the tower, and as they began to swarm to the sides of the tanks, Saphielle and McBane appeared, each slashing and hacking into the wave of undead flesh. Neither of the Rogue-types stood their ground as the tanks did; instead, they slipped nimbly among their enemies, dodging and leaping. McBane’s twin short swords wove a deadly web of steel, while Geltheriel danced through the shadows, her sword and its shadowy clone slicing cleanly through the monsters.
Still, the wave of creatures pressed forward, and the party was inexorably forced back. Longfellow’s crossbows sang as twin bolts sped into the press of creatures, one punching
into an undead eye, the other lodging in a sunken, pale chest. More bolts flew, but still the creatures inched inexorably forward, until finally the last of them rushed from the tower, scrabbling over its allies in search of living flesh. Behind that final undead, Aranos felt tendrils of shadowy magic questing for his Life Wall, attempting to disjoin it, and he dropped it; he wanted to see what was coming. He heard Meridian hiss as a short, coal-black creature with large, bat-like ears and huge, red eyes appeared in the doorway.
“That’s it,” Meridian confirmed as she dropped another heal on Phil, while Rhys did the same for Saphielle. “That’s the thing.”
Aranos nodded; even without her warning, there was no mistaking the unholy aura surrounding the diminutive creature. As he watched, it lifted bony arms with incredibly long fingers and began moving its hands in the passages of a Spell. That was what Aranos had been waiting for; he quickly called up his light mana and fired a Light Barrage at the spellcaster. A wavering barrier appeared in the air, but the sparkling orbs of light streaked through it, deflecting only slightly as they passed. The creature shrieked as blasts of light exploded around it, crisping and scorching its skin. A shadowy pall of darkness surrounded it, though, and the remaining bursts washed harmlessly against that barrier.
Aranos hadn’t really expected the Light Barrage to do much, but it forced the creature to remain defensive, rather than healing its minions or debuffing his allies. He ended his first attack and instead called up twin arrows, one ice and one lava, hurling them at the caster’s barrier. He cloned the two arrows into ten as they flew, and the half-score bursts of all four elemental types churned and flexed the shield of darkness. The conflicting mana types tore destructively at the shield’s weave, finally shattering it into shards of skittering blackness. A pair of Composite Bullets that followed the arrows struck a hastily raised shield of mana, cracking it easily and streaking through to punch into the undead caster’s chest before exploding.
Aranos wasn’t watching the main battle, but his Battlesense told him all he needed to know. His party’s line had stopped retreating and now began moving forward; they’d had to back up to let the caster out where Aranos could deal with it, so that it couldn’t hide in the tower and heal its minions. Now that it had emerged, though, the party regained the initiative and slowly began pressing the undead back toward the tower. Phil and Saphielle held their ground, allowing the main rush of creatures to crash fruitlessly against them. McBane held Saphielle’s flank, carving a path toward the tower, while Geltheriel danced on Phil’s side, her blade felling undead foes with ease. Longfellow targeted the creatures engaged with Phil and Saphielle, adding his damage to theirs and keeping the pair from being swarmed, while Rhys and Meridian made sure everyone stayed healthy and on their feet.
Aranos gathered lightning mana, charging it with ten SP of soul mana and casting his Ball Lightning Spell. The first bolt struck another wavering shield of mana in front of the caster, but the soul mana empowering it shattered the shield and carried it through to the caster. The monster twitched and shook as the electricity raced through it, but to Aranos’ disappointment, it didn’t drop, paralyzed as he’d hoped. It began moving its fingers once more, and Aranos unleased two more Composite Bullets, forcing it to weave another defensive barrier that shattered beneath the twin explosions of elemental mana. At the same moment, he called another stroke of lightning on the creature, this time dropping it to the ground.
Now, he sent silently to his Companion, and the silver-furred wolf blurred and appeared directly before the fallen creature. The undead was already starting to rise, but Silma was faster; her light-enhanced teeth plunged into its throat, ripping it open and shredding its windpipe. The monster staggered to its feet, grasping its throat and beginning to wiggle its fingers, but Silma tilted her head back and unleashed her Purifying Howl. A wave of silver light swept from her, passing through the surrounding creatures, doing 240 LP damage to each of them. Some of the creatures dropped to the earth, still and unmoving, their battered bodies unable to withstand the blast of holy light, while others writhed and twisted as their flesh sizzled and burned.
The spellcaster gurgled through its ruined throat as Silma’s Howl ate at its Corrupted flesh, and Aranos used the distraction to slam another bolt of lightning into it. This last bolt proved too much for its body, and it dropped to the ground, unmoving, its flesh smoking.
Silma turned and tore into the creatures from behind, while the rest of the party continued to push forward. Aranos called his final two bolts from his Ball Lightning Spell, targeting creatures that looked less battered than the others, shattering their bodies and sending them to their final deaths. His party was too close to the monsters for any of his AOE Spells, so he focused on firing his Composite Bullets, supporting Longfellow’s ranged attacks.
At last, the final creature fell beneath McBane’s swords, and silence descended over the clearing. Aranos glanced around at the shattered mounds of undead flesh that surrounded them, reaching out with his Lifesense Skill to see if he could gain any Soul Points, but the remains felt empty and vacant, devoid of the dark energy that had been sustaining them and lacking any sort of living soul. That is, all of them did…except for one.
He stepped past the tanks, patting Silma absently as he walked over to the fallen caster. Streams of metadata radiated from the creature, shifting and changing, but one of the streams was static, as if it had been locked in place. “This thing’s not dead,” he muttered as he reached out with his Lifesense Skill. “I think it’s stuck at a single LP.”
“That is a vangolor, Oathbinder,” Geltheriel spoke up. “They can be killed only by decapitation or destruction of their bodies. Fire should be sufficient.”
“Yeah,” Aranos said absently, his Lifesense still lingering on the creature; something was tickling his mind, and he had a feeling it was important. “I think there might be another way, though.”
He knelt beside the immobile creature, activating his Soulmending Skill. As it had been with the Evolved kerruk, his Skill was violently rebuffed, but this time, Aranos had a better guess as to what was happening. This thing’s being animated with Enhanced mana, he realized. I should be able to drain that away, at least theoretically.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, reaching out not with his Soulmending Skill this time but with his Mana Vampire Perk. His questing tendril of mana slid across the vangolor, sensing a twisted knot of dark energy wrapped deep within the creature. The power felt vile and repellent in his mind; whatever this was, it was definitely Corrupted, and even the idea of taking it into himself made him nauseated. Not that it mattered; the knot was far too dense and complex for him to untangle, at least not without hours of work, but that wasn’t the only way to undo an impossible knot. At least, not if you take a page from Alexander the Great, he thought with an inward smile.
Rather than attempting to drain mana from the creature, Aranos channeled a trickle of soul mana into the creature. He focused the mana, condensing it into a slim blade of blazing light. Hesitantly, he reached out with the blade, touched the tangle of mana gently…and sliced. The foul energy resisted for a moment, but he pressed with his will, and suddenly, the blade of light slipped through the tangled knot, severing it cleanly.
The cut ends of the tangle of mana whipped about, fraying and decaying. As his mind watched in mingled awe and horror, the twisted mana split into two threads that had been tightly woven together; one of soul mana, and one of death energy. Aranos grasped the frayed edges and pulled, tearing the strands of mana apart and reducing them to their component parts. It’s some kind of weird Composite mana, he realized. Soul and death magic woven together to trap a soul within and animate the body.
As the last of the mana dissipated, Aranos reached back out with his Soulmending Skill; the soul he encountered was torn, ravaged, and shredded horrifically. Its agony swept through him; the magic that had bound it had ripped at the soul and forcibly attached it to its body, damaging it almost
beyond repair. Aranos sent thoughts of healing and comfort, but it was like whistling in a windstorm; his thoughts were drowned out by the soul’s shrieks of agony.
Aranos tried again, this time reaching out his mana tendril as he held the soul with his Skill. He once again tapped his precious well of soul mana and fed it into the soul, trying to empower his Skill somehow. As the energy flowed into the soul, it spread out, filling in the tears in the soul and layering across the gaps. The mana flowed into the soul, easing its pain, quieting its silent cries until Aranos’ feelings of warmth and calm could reach it, easing its passage. Energy rushed back into him, and with a sigh he released the soul and opened his eyes.
The first thing he noticed is that all four of the humans were staring at him, while the elves and Silma were watching the perimeter and standing guard. He rose to his feet a bit awkwardly and smiled at the players. “Sorry, I have a Skill that lets me ease a soul’s passage into the afterlife in return for some bonuses to my Spells and Mental Stats. I was figuring out how to use it on an undead.”
“You laid the vangolor’s soul to rest, Oathbinder?” Geltheriel spoke, her voice sounding only slightly surprised. “That was well done; can you do the same for other undead?”
“Probably,” he nodded, noticing his blinking notifications. “I’ll look into it and let you know how it works. For now, let’s check the tower and make sure it’s clear.”