“And how long ago was that?” Wulfsun inquired.
“About ten days ago,” she revealed and turned to look out the window. “We have another set of wards ready to go in case but they are the most complex wards they can muster. Even if they stop the dark spot from growing again, once those wards give out, there isn’t anything else we can do.” She pointed out the window. “You can see it from here.”
The team peered in the direction she indicated. Over the next hill, a large dome sprawled across the land, pitch-black like light could not escape it. It stood tall and wide and was easily far bigger than the one hundred and fifty meters Farah had said it was at one point.
“How long did it expand for once the first set of wards collapsed?” Jazai asked.
“Only two days. Now, it measures at least four miles.” She grasped her sword handle. “If this is a tear, we’ll have to venture into it and find it to shut it, won’t we?”
Wulfsun nodded solemnly. “Aye, and it is probably in the center of the blasted thing. This will certainly be a trip.” He pointed to the three young magi. “If you have any food or drink, enjoy it now. Once we get inside, almost anything without magic will be suspect.”
The three friends nodded, delved into their bags, and quickly devoured whatever food they carried. The carriage continued its trek. They were only a few minutes away and the abyssal dome loomed in front of them.
When they arrived, several guards surrounded the carriage quickly and only relaxed when Farah was the first to disembark. Wulfsun followed, then Asla, Jazai, and Devol, who hung onto the doorframe for a moment while he stared at the dome. This close, it seemed like it was swallowing the sky. His gaze settled on an archway that appeared to be made of cobalt with several intricate runes and wards etched into it. He finally stepped off and followed the others to where a group of scholars, guards, and soldiers waited.
“Captain Malik!” one of the guards exclaimed and saluted her. “I’m glad to see you ma’am. Is this the Templar?”
“It is, Haldt.” Farah nodded. “And these are his soldiers. We’re here to deal with the anomaly.”
“His soldiers?” the guard asked and frowned as he studied the three young people. “They seem rather young. Is he sure about this?”
“I am,” Wulfsun declared and all but bared his teeth at the guard. “They can handle this and have chosen to come here. Fortunately for you, I know how to deal with this accursed thing so if you would like us to get started on that, I suggest you move out of our way.”
The guard, briefly taken aback, straightened quickly and nodded. “Y-yes, sir. This way.”
“He knows how to deal with it?” one of the scholars asked another. “Thank the Astrals. I had begun to fear what the possibilities would be if we couldn’t contain it.”
“Nothing good,” the other scholar mumbled as the team passed them. “We’ll have to ask him the specifics when they return.”
“If,” the first scholar replied.
Wulfsun shook his head. “Honestly, I would be more concerned if they did know what this was,” he said, his tone low enough that he didn’t broadcast it but the rest of the group could hear. “I’d hate to see what would happen if enough fame-hungry scholars decided to play with the Abyss to make a name for themselves.”
“It could be what happened here,” Farah pointed out as another scholar approached her with a box. “Scholars can be rather inept when they get impatient.”
“Yes, and what folly they bring,” Jazai muttered. “It’s not like they are the ones typically responsible for discovering the full capabilities of magic or anything.”
“Here you go, Ms. Malik.” the new arrival said and opened the box to reveal several marbles. “These will take you back to the entrance once you break them. It will require a little vis to do so. We had to use a special container for the magic so we could apply small wards to defend them from some of the…irregularities that happen within.”
“Thank you,” Farah stated, took the box, and turned to the others. “Take one, each of you. As she said, these will teleport you back here in case something goes wrong.”
“Or when we’re done with this mess,” Wulfsun added, took one of the marbles, and stowed it in a pouch. He looked at the scholar. “Do you have any idea where the center is?”
“Well, the dome stretches for a little more than four miles, so a couple of miles heading north.” She pointed through the gate. “If the center of the dark spot is where it started to grow, that would be in the bloodflower patch.”
“Bloodflowers?” Devol asked and looked at Asla.
“Yes, bloodflowers.” The scholar nodded. “We have one of the largest fields of bloodflowers here in Renaissance and we use them in certain ceremonies, such as—”
“There’s no need for a history lesson right now,” Farah snapped and pointed to the archway. “Open the gate. We’re going to head in.”
“At once, Captain!” One of the guards nodded, motioned quickly to several magi, and pointed at the gate.
“Are you sure we don’t need anyone else?” Farah asked and drew her blade. “I’m certain a few would volunteer and many of the soldiers here are also skilled magi.”
“Things can get tricky in the Abyss,” Wulfsun stated and punched one of his gauntleted fists into the other. “Illusions, those abyssal fiends, not to mention the way it twists and turns the terrain it consumes. It might seem like a good idea to go in with an army but keeping the group small is for the best. There is less of a chance of chaos resulting.”
“Very well.” She took a deep breath and nodded, and four magi began to deactivate the wards around the gate. “Prepare yourselves. We will enter now.”
Devol drew his majestic, Achroma, and activated his anima. Jazai and Asla did the same, along with the Templar captain and Farah. As soon as the gate opened, the group entered cautiously one behind the other.
As they passed the threshold, they were bombarded by the abyssal energy. It began to swarm around them but Wulfsun activated his barrier and pressed forward. “Keep your anima up and higher than normal,” he instructed. “Your mana will adapt. Once we get into the guts of this we’ll be in the clear.”
Achroma began to shine and Devol glanced at it and pressed on. He could barely make out a clearing ahead. Without hesitation, he moved to the front of the team and used the light to guide them. The abyssal magic pressed down on him but a flash of light from his blade seemed to carve through it until he stopped in an area surrounded by dark trees with blue leaves. “Is this normal, Wulfsun?” he asked as he studied the twisted forest. He received no response.
When he turned, no one stood behind him. His heartbeat raced for a moment before he focused and calmed himself. Wulfsun had said there would be tricks and the members of their team had probably been separated by the barrage from the magics. He shouldn’t have pressed ahead. With a shrug of resignation, he turned again and his gaze settled on some kind of structure in the distance. It seemed like a logical destination and perhaps the others saw it as well and would meet him there. For now, though, he was alone with Achroma in this dark, foreboding realm.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Asla heard a hoot above that sounded like the cry of an owl and it caught her off guard. This was probably the first sign of life she had heard in this unnatural world since they stepped inside the dome. She looked up with a frown and squinted as she tried to find the source of the sound. Trees surrounded her completely and although leafless, the tops seemed to bend inward toward one another.
She scanned the sky beyond the twisted branches but found no signs of any owl or birds in general. Her frown deepened until she recalled that Wulfsun had said the abyssal magic would play tricks on them. She merely had not expected them to be so banal. Tentatively, she took a couple of steps forward and hoped she had not fallen too far behind, only to be greeted by a black, muddy terrain and several pieces of bone with none of her team around her.
“Hey, Jazai. Be sure to kee
p us informed about any of the big, bad illusions, yeah?” Wulfsun called. “You are the scholar of the group, after all.” When he heard no reply, he shrugged and looked back. “It might have been a bad joke but you don’t have to…” his words faltered when he realized he was alone.
“How the hell did we get separated?” The Templar growled his frustration and looked around for any signs of life. This could only be an illusion, he decided. During his previous ventures into the Abyss, he had never seen someone warped around the realm or anything similar. That said, given the present situation, he honestly had no idea what this was capable of in their world.
He took a deep breath and calmed himself. “They will be fine,” he muttered and examined his surroundings. He stood in a ravine of some kind and a wind whipped around him as he looked at the jagged rocks that blocked the sight of the top of the dome. “They are skilled and have probably realized the same thing I have. I am sure they can manage well until I get to them.”
The Templar released a small burst of mana to circle him and watched it carefully to see if it passed through anything or anyone. It simply swirled around him and didn’t connect to anything. If there were any human bodies present, they somehow escaped detection.
“Is this only an illusion?” he asked, walked closer to one of the rock walls, and placed his hand against it. While it certainly seemed real, it was also unnaturally cold to the touch. It might indeed be an illusion but it somehow used the terrain to enhance the division between them.
“I don’t think it is trying to kill us yet,” he reasoned, although he was not exactly sure if the magic was sentient. It might merely be replicating what the realm did. “This could also be it trying to pick us apart, though.”
Wulfsun charged his gauntlets, pounded them together, and launched a blast of mana to shatter the rocks around him. He waited for the dust to settle and scowled when he saw no distortion or opening in the area. This would, he realized, be a pain.
“Well, this is unfortunate.” Jazai scanned the area in search of his team while he tapped the side of his head in thought. “Illusion seems the most likely explanation. I doubt everyone was teleported without me noticing. Cloaking and silencing everyone else would also be possible, although I would have a better guess if I knew more about what the hells this is.”
His attempt to identify the problem was interrupted by a bright light several yards away. He spun, held his hand up, and readied the cantrip-infused rings, but he was able to relax slightly when the light faded and Farah appeared.
“Well, there is one of you at least.” He sighed and straightened, although a thought occurred to him. “Assuming you are you of course. My guess is that this is an illusion, so you could simply be another part of that.”
The guard captain frowned and strode toward him. He held his ringed hand steady but waited for her—or potentially it—to do something. Rather than answer or offer any kind of display of proof, she did nothing more than raise her fist to rap him on his head.
“Gah! There are other ways of proving it, you know!” He yelped and rubbed his forehead. “You have physical form, at least.”
“I’m real, young magi,” she stated with a sigh. “As are you. This is an illusion and I had hoped to dispel it. It seems I was only able to break through mine.”
Jazai’s hands lowered slowly and his gaze darted around as a hypothesis began to form. “And are potentially caught in mine,” he said, his voice low.
Farah regarded him curiously, “Hmm? What do you mean?”
The young diviner retrieved his tome and flipped through its pages. “I don’t think we were caught in a single large illusion. If we had been, your plan might have worked. But my guess is that we are trapped in several smaller ones so instead, you only found me. This would mean that we could all be caught in separate illusions but there is a limit to what it can do, otherwise you would have simply been sent to another personal trap.”
“I see,” she responded cautiously and looked at her sword. “So should I keep trying to break through until we are all together again?”
Jazai finally found the page he was looking for and read it quickly before he frowned and turned more pages. “We’ll consider it, but it is likely that even if it worked, we would be trapped again deeper into the forest. I believe this is meant to force us to waste our energy and magic. I’m not able to find the others even using my majestic, which means their animas are hidden from us.”
“What’s the purpose? To delay us?” Farah snorted in irritation. “It’s almost petty if that’s the case. What makes you so sure?”
“I’m honestly not,” he admitted. “I’m not sure how this place works and only have theories. But we aren’t being attacked and the illusion isn’t horrific by any means, so it probably isn’t meant to…” A smile formed on his lips as he tapped something in the book. “Man, it has been so long since I bothered to use this. I guess Zier did have a good reason to teach it to me.”
“Teach what?” she asked. “Do you have a plan?”
“I’m guessing the magic isn’t ‘alive’ as such but is reacting to ours. In a way, it is a mirror and only forms in certain ways when there is another magic to react to.” He placed his palms together and bowed his head. “Which hopefully means there aren’t illusions on top of illusions. Before you waste considerable mana trying to hack through them all, let me test something.”
“What are you doing?” the captain questioned as his body began to illuminate with blue light.
“I’ll be right back,” he stated and closed his eyes. “Watch over me for a moment, all right?”
“What for?”
“Projection!” he shouted before his body began to slump and Farah lunged to catch him.
With a swipe of her claws, Asla loosed another wave of her anima. Not much seemed to change from the last time, however. For a brief moment, the barrier around her fell but revealed only a slightly different alignment of trees, these with actual foliage. She hadn’t caught sight of any of her comrades thus far and the fruitless attempts had begun to tire her. If she continued with these random blasts, she would drain her magic too quickly and wouldn’t be able to keep this up.
“Asla?” Jazai called and she spun, surprised, and almost cut the forest down before her gaze settled on her friend—or, at least, a blue image of him.
“What the hells? Jazai?” She gasped and studied the projection warily.
“It’s neat, right?” He waved his hands enthusiastically. “This cantrip allows me to make a projection of myself using mana. It helps with a few things but getting past illusions is what counts right now.”
“Illusions? Plural?” she asked.
“Indeed. It’s a pain, isn’t it?”
“Honestly, I wish you had chosen a nicer avatar to meet me with.” Asla sighed and lowered her claws to her side. “Seeing you in this form is somewhat unnerving.”
“Sorry, but a pigeon or puppy is not available to me,” he replied dryly. “It naturally takes the form I’m most familiar with and isn’t an easy cantrip to use in the first place. I’m merely lucky I’m a diviner so doing things like this isn’t so taxing for me. I suppose I can try to change the form or would you rather I used that time to help get you out of here?”
“Huh. Yeah…uh, thanks. Getting out sounds more appealing,” she admitted and looked away for a brief moment. “So what do you need from me? I’ve attempted to break through but the illusion keeps reforming.”
“You may simply be slicing through different illusions,” Jazai told her. “But that’s neither here nor there. Right now, we are separated but that doesn’t mean we cannot interact. Farah should be able to use her magic to disrupt the illusion. She already found me,” he explained. “I needed to get a look at you and find out how these illusions are working here.” He extended a glowing hand. “Give me a small trickle of your mana. This will enable me to track you.”
Asla nodded and stretched her hand forward to direct a trickle of her ma
na to him. It appeared as a small orange orb and sank into his hand. “All right. Stay here. I’ll have Wulfsun do the same. With all your mana, I will be able to pinpoint where everyone is and Farah can bring us together again.”
“Okay—but wait. Does that mean you already found Devol?” she asked.
Jazai shook his head. “I couldn’t find him, I think he pushed ahead so we should probably hurry and regroup so we can go looking for him.”
The wildkin nodded furiously. “I understand, yes—go!” At that, the diviner seemed to fade and she looked between the trees directly ahead of her. She wondered if the other trees with the blue leaves she had seen were perhaps in the area where Devol was.
The Templar launched another burst of mana but nothing gave beneath it. He sighed and decided his best choice would probably be to press forward and see if there was some kind of threshold or perimeter where the illusion ceased.
“Wulfsun!” a familiar voice shouted. He looked quickly to where a projection of Jazai floated toward him.
“Jazai?” he asked. “Are you using a projection? It’s a clever choice. I assume it means this is definitely an illusion?”
“Mostly, it seems, but some of it is real.” The diviner held his hand out. “Quick, give me a little of your mana. I already have some of Asla’s. Me and Farah have a way to get through it.”
The man nodded. “All right, here tak—wait a minute.” He drew his hand back. “How do I know this isn’t another part of the illusion?”
“Are you kidding me?” Jazai placed his hands against his body. “I’m literally composed of my own mana. Can’t you sense it?”
“The Abyss is capable of all kinds of things,” he pointed out and raised his eyebrow. “Do you have proof it is you?”
Bloodflowers Bloom (The Astral Wanderer Book 2) Page 12