by Jez Cajiao
“Stay down, thief!” I heard a voice whisper in my ear. I coughed blood and convulsed against the wall. The bastard had stabbed me in the back!
I growled and twisted my fingers into the needed forms, and with a few words muttered under my breath, I cast ‘Weak Lightning Bolt’. I couldn’t see my attacker, but I didn’t need to. I’d spared the time to tell Oracle to heal me through our link, and then grabbed blindly behind me, flooding the body I felt with the magic.
As we both collapsed spasming on the stairs, we twitched apart and began to slide down. I felt the dagger ripped from my back, and then the glorious feeling of healing magic flooding my body. A few feet away, I could see a dark blur rolling down the stairs. As the lightning faded, I saw the dark shape flow to one side, trying to disappear again. Whoever they were, they were much better at stealth than I was!
I heard a clattering noise from below and knew Bob was on his way, and I grinned. All I had to do was hold this asshole here for a few minutes and I’d have backup. In the meantime, Oracle was keeping as high as she could, and I was trying to look everywhere and nowhere. I blinked and realized the blur was gone, and I heard a chuckle from the other side of the stairwell. I spun around reflexively, looking to see where he was and how he’d gotten around me, when I felt a searing pain as a knife cut deep into my left leg, bypassing my armor. I cried out in pain and tried to turn around, only to have the leg give out as I collapsed to the ground. I grabbed at the knife with my left hand, drawing a sword with my right and lashing out aimlessly in circles as I tried to drive my attacker back.
“Really, boy? Is that the best you can do? I expected more from someone that dared trespass in my Lord’s Great Tower!” The voice came from my right, and I looked in that direction again before I could stop myself. My eyes widened at the last second as I realized I’d felt this trick before. I rolled to the right, bouncing down first one, then another, and finally a half dozen steps.
I heard metal hitting stone behind me, and low laughter filled the stairwell.
“Well done. You dodged my dagger, and probably caused yourself more damage in the act!”
I growled, biting my lip to prevent a moan from escaping, then gasped in relief as Oracle’s next healing spell took hold. I rolled to my feet, drawing my second sword with my left hand and set myself with my back against one wall, trying to spot any telltale sign of movement.
“Well, speak up, boy. Last chance to do so; your little pet can’t heal you all day!” The voice came from my left, higher up the stairwell again, and this time I was ready. I crouched low, both swords flashing out in upward overlapping arcs and spiraling over my head. The left blade flashed through the air unobstructed, but the right snagged on something and I felt resistance, hearing an indrawn breath and a hiss of pain followed by the feeling of someone jumping away.
I remembered the arena, fighting against that bastard rogue. Although those tactics might work, the third fight had gone better. I grinned to myself as I dropped my left sword, summoning a fountain of clear water off to one side. I made sure to cause the water to splash down on steps higher up than the ones I stood on. Oracle repeated the spell three more times, until a veritable small flood of water flowed down the stairs. All I needed to do was distract him long enough, and I was going to fry him in the water with my Lightning spell…Let’s see you hide from that, asshole!
I felt a sudden pain as a small dagger sprouted from my left shoulder, ending my spell casting with that hand, just as Bob came bounding into sight further down the stairwell. I swore as I heard laughter.
“What, you think one of her servants would dare attack me? Watch and learn!” The darkness a few steps further down the stairs suddenly seemed to flow apart and a man appeared, wrapped in dark leathers, a hood covering his face and daggers protruding from sheaths all over his body. The only sign of me fighting so desperately for my life was a short tear in his cloak and a thin line of blood dripping from his side.
He held out a small stone in his left hand and it began to emit a weak red light, which quickly grew stronger, illuminating the stair well around us.
“I am Lucius, and I serve Barabarattas, your new lord. You will detain this thief for me and carry him up to our ship. Once I’m done questioning him, your mistress can have what’s left, as per the agreement.” He spoke with confidence, obviously used to commanding the dead and diseased things that resided in the Tower. What he didn’t consider was if Bob was one of those, until it was too late. Shame for him, really, as he received a terrible shock when Bob lashed out with the mace he held in his upper right hand and crushed his opponent’s skull with a sickening meaty crunch.
The freshly-made corpse stood for half a second, as though unable to understand his orders hadn’t been obeyed, before his bones seemed to liquify and he collapsed to the floor.
I let out a gasp of relief and slipped down to join him on the floor as Oracle stopped casting her fountain spells, and used the last of the mana to heal me fully.
I laid back on the stairs for a couple of seconds to catch my breath before forcing myself to my feet. I clapped one hand on Bob’s bony shoulder and looked him in the glowing red flare that served as an eye.
“Thanks, man,” I said simply. “I don’t want to know if I would have won without you intervening. Thank you. You too, Oracle; thank you both.” She flitted down out of the darkness and sat on my shoulder, leaning in and giving me a hug that I assumed was meant to be reassuring. In actuality, it probably could have killed me, given her impressive chest and the fact that she was perched on my shoulder. She’d somehow shifted her size again, growing to nearly two feet. I resisted the instinctual male urge to bury my face deeper in the cleavage that was threatening to cut off my air and held my breath until she moved back.
“You scared me there, Jax!” she scolded, stroking my hair. Mixed messages all the damn day, I thought.
“Scared me too, Oracle. That fucker was terrifying,” I said, bringing up a new notification.
Congratulations! You have defeated a Level Nineteen Rogue! You have gained 290 Exp. Progress to Level Seven stands at 7040/14000 Exp. Your Minion receives additional experience.
“A fucking rogue. Damn, I hate fighting those sneaky twats…” I muttered to myself as I stretched. I was fully healed; I could see my HP was full and everything, but I still felt wrong. I shrugged, knowing it was most likely the disconnect between the knowledge that I should still be injured, and the reality of healing magic. I’d get over it.
I took a deep breath and hunted around quickly, gathering up my weapons and resolving to come back and loot the corpse later. I could still hear the sounds from the level above, and the thought of more of these cocksuckers had me on edge.
I gave my mana a few more minutes to refill, then started sneaking again. As soon as the doorway from the stairs onto the main floor appeared, I cast ‘Chameleon’ and gave a little sigh in relief when I didn’t get any warnings about my sneak level increasing. I decided that was because there was nobody around, not at all that they were watching me and about to stab me…definitely not that…
I’d ordered Bob to come up behind me very slowly, like one-step-at-a-time slowly, to minimize the noise. Now that I was there, though, something else was making a hell of a racket.
It was a mixture of sounds; clattering metal, muffled shouts, and occasional banging, filled in by a deep underlying ‘thrummm,’ like an engine whirring away.
I made my way onto the floor, seeing what I’d ignored in my earlier haste to reach the lower floors. This entire floor was split in two. One side held the stairwells, a large balcony with an area I’d taken for a scoured clean garden, and a huge amount of rubble cutting off the view to the other side. Once I looked closer, it became clear that the rubble was mostly made up of destroyed golems, bits of corpses, and what looked like a collapsed wall.
I took all of it in with a single glance, now that I knew what I was looking at from digging through the piles of golems downstairs.
The thing that really caught my eye was in the space I’d taken for a garden, but now recognized as a marshalling yard. It was a ship, an honest to god ship-looking thing that hovered a few feet off the ground! It had a broad hull, a long gangplank lowered to the ground, and four large cylinders attached to the sides of the ship. Each cylinder was pulsing with a blue light that flared from pale to deep indigo and back again. As the light cycled to the paler end of the spectrum, the ship would slowly sink, then, as the color deepened, it would rise again, giving an impression of bobbing in the wind, as though at sea. With each rise and fall, the wood creaked, the sails that were furled above the deck and to either side flapped and rattled, and the clatter of people walking up the gangplank increased.
I stared in shock, the ship distracting me from realizing what they were doing at first. A dozen or more figures of different races and species were stomping up and down, carrying weapons and armor! There were piles of both set off to one side, and as one group loaded up from them, I heard the stomp and jingle of heavily laden boots coming from behind!
Bob darted back out of sight on the stairwell before I could order him, Oracle riding his skull as she often did, and I took a few quick steps to the side and dove behind some rubble. I laid on my back, as still as possible, well aware that the rubble was barely high enough to hide me from an inquisitive toddler, never mind anyone looking properly. As a Chameleon spell rippled into place, I allowed a very quiet sigh of relief. Glancing to the stairwell, I saw Oracle watching me. She’d cast it before I could, bless her! I quickly told her and Bob to stay hidden and wait, and she melted back into the shadows.
The sounds came closer; the jingle of chainmail, clinking of armor plates, and clatter of metal on metal, until I could see figures walking past out of the corner of my eye. I shifted slowly, moving as carefully as I could to get an unobstructed view, and felt my blood run cold.
A huge figure stopped with its back to me, clad in heavy armor, a spear in one hand and a large triangular heater shield strapped to his back. Before him, a line staggered past, headed towards the marshalling yard. The men, women, and children that stumbled and limped under pounds of equipment were of many species: human, dwarves, and some kind of cat person I spotted immediately, but the thing that really stood out were the chains.
They were chained together by their necks, a tight collar linked to the chains leading from one to another. Every single one them looked half dead from starvation, struggling under what had to be dozens, if not hundreds, of pounds of equipment. Piles of swords, armfuls of axes, and mounds of rotted leather and metal armor weighed down people that looked like they should be starring in a famine aid commercial. The fact that the figure with his back to me seemed utterly unconcerned that his slaves carried weapons told me volumes as well. Combined with the defeated look in their eyes, I knew these people were broken, mentally more than physically.
“Please, sir…” I heard a weak voice whisper, as a dirty, blonde elven girl that looked to be six or seven turned to the figure as the line moved past. “Please…some water…a rest...I beg…”
With a growl, the figure lifted one steel-gauntleted fist and backhanded her, knocking her from her feet with a cry of pain.
As she fell, others connected to her on either side were jerked from their feet and the line came to a halt, equipment falling everywhere as a shout came from deeper into the hall.
“Esold! Ye gods be damned, fool! Ye damage the merchandise, and who’ll replace it? W’ barely got enough crew to keep my damn ship afloat! The SporeMother’ll be pissed!”
“It’ll keep its mouth shut, or Lord Barabarattas’ll gut it! And you’ll keep your mouth shut, worm, or I’ll shut it for you!” He raised one booted heel and kicked the small girl in the face as she tried to rise. Blood sprayed from her mouth as she fell onto the floor again, crying out as she cut herself on the pile of daggers she’d been carrying.
I heard the shout, but my blood had already gone from ice cold to boiling with rage, and I was on my feet, closing the dozen feet from behind the armored figure before he knew I was there. I lifted my naginata in both hands and drove it forward, avoiding the shield and piercing the thinner chain mail covering his lower back, it ripped into his kidneys before exiting through the front.
I whispered through gritted teeth “Surprise, motherfucker!” before lifting and throwing aside the skewered man, then drawing both my swords. I saw three more armored figures; one was short, and wore cheap, older armor, but I focused on the other two that spun at the sound of their comrade screaming in shock and pain. I took three quick steps and leapt across two fallen slaves to land before the man I judged to be the greatest threat. Clad all in red, he was human, with a shaved head and a beard that reached mid chest. He was heavily muscled and dressed in an armored robe, of all things.
His chest was covered in interlocking leather sections that separated out like a legionnaire’s kilt from his waist. His arms were covered in bracers and blue woad-like tattoos, as was his face. He was the first to react, both hands raising and electricity flashing between his fingers as he pointed them at me, I landed and rushed forward, stabbing out with both swords as he released his spells. The strike catapulted me away in a flash of light and searing pain.
I was sent flying backward, my feet catching on a pile of rubble and flipping me over to come crashing into the wall upside down, braced between two particularly large stones. I jerked and shuddered as the last of the spell ran through me, then slumped down and almost wedged myself on my head. I had to twist and kick off the wall, but by the time I landed on my back on the floor, a second pair of lightning spells slammed into me, causing tremendous pain and dropping my HP bar to half.
When my eyes cleared, I was pulled half upright, and with a click, a thick collar of metal was locked around my neck by the smaller figure, now recognizable as a dwarf wearing armor that was a size too big for him.
“Sorry ‘bout this lad…ye should have stayed hidden there. I’d no have said owt,” he whispered as he just barely inclined his head toward my previous hiding place.
I grimaced as I reached up to grab the collar, feeling it send a warning shock through my body as I touched it. I tore my hand away and reached for my daggers, only to have my hands freeze an inch from the hilts.
“Ye canna touch owt ye think of as a weapon, laddie, ‘tis the collar’s magic. Try, and ye’ll only hurt yerself,” the dwarf said, looking ashamed as he avoided my eyes. I tried to punch him, and again, found that I couldn’t, but this time, I felt a flare of pain run down my body from the collar as a reward.
“Get him upright, Oren! I want a look at my new slave…And you, Toka! What do you think I pay you for? Get my face sorted, and then get Esold healed!”
I was pulled to my feet and saw I’d managed to land a hit on the mage, but it was only a thin cut from his jawline up to his cheek on the left side, barely deeper than a scratch. The last figure scurried across to the tall mage, gesturing at the man I took to be Esold, who was writhing on the floor with my naginata driven through him and spoke up sibilantly.
“Shall I heal him first, sir? He’s…”
“I said, heal me, witch!” The mage backhanded Toka hard across the face, driving him to his knees to spit blood onto the floor. I looked down at the kneeling figure in shock, then recoiled instinctively. Toka wore a collection of leather studded straps and little else. I assumed it was human, but lines of scars covered every exposed inch of flesh, and the straps were barely big enough for decency. When it looked at me, it grinned and licked the blood from the split lip it had been given, shuddering in pleasure and winking at me.
“You’ll be fun to train… oh yes… you will!” it whispered. The standing mage grabbed it by its lank, greasy hair and pulled it to its feet.
“Now heal me!” the mage bellowed at Toka.
“I’m sorry, lad…” I heard the dwarf whisper by my side as he started relieving me of the daggers he could see.
“J
ax! Can you hear me? Are you okay!?”
Oracle! In the shock of everything, I’d forgotten that I’d ordered her and Bob to stay hidden!
“Yeah, Oracle. I’m here, and I’m all right. Fuckers stunned me and put a collar on me, though. Can’t touch my weapons! I’m gonna need you to do something about that…”
“A slave collar? A black metal ring with a lot of symbols carved into it?”
“Can’t see it, as I’m wearing it, but it was black, yeah…”
“I should be able to block its magic, just give me a minute…”
I walked beside the dwarf until I stood a few feet from the mage, and looked him in the eyes, ignoring everyone else. I felt mana flowing through my body, pulsing in and out of the channels in my neck and hesitantly touching the collar before moving more confidently. The collar seemed to give a little shudder and lay still against my skin, inert. Toka finished healing the mage then and stepped aside to head toward Esold, who lay writhing on the floor in a pool of blood.
“What are you grinning at, fool?” the mage said, frowning at me, as Oracle spoke up again.
“I can block it for a few minutes, but that’s all. It will drain our mana pool quickly; I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be sorry, Oracle, that will be all we need. Once the fighting starts, though, get Bob up here and make sure no more of the ones outside come to ruin the party!”
“Well, slave?!” the mage shouted, backhanding me across the mouth. I shook my head slightly and spat to one side, eyeing the dwarf who stood at my side while holding my weapons.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stand aside while I sort this tosser out,” I said, then turned from his shocked face to look at the wide eyes of the mage as he began to sputter in rage, lifting both hands.
My left hand flipped the toggle on that side of my belt free, sending it flying out to the side as the razorwire unraveled, even as my right hand pulled the toggle on the other side and I flicked it upwards. Both loops unfurled, wrapping around the mage’s throat three times before he managed to grab at it. His fingers came away bloody as he gagged.