by DB King
“A cleansing light,” Marcus mused. He looked at the wight in the cage. It was indeed a sorry-looking creature. It seemed made of mist and shadows, but up close it looked a bit more solid. Gray rags of tattered skin hung off the skeleton, and hollow eyes stared out of the creature’s skull. Lank hair dripped from under the rusted iron helmet, and the bony fingers shook as if the creature was freezing.
As Marcus looked at the creature, he wondered what the ‘cleansing light’ could be. But an idea struck Marcus immediately. He held his dungeon mace up, and the crystal that contained his dungeons shone out with a sudden bright light. The wight gave a cry, and babbled in his native tongue, a long stream of lilting words that Marcus did not understand.
“He’s speaking too fast,” Daya said. “I can’t translate…”
Marcus held up the mace, drawn by instinct toward the power he felt glowing up within him. A spell appeared in his mind, new and unexpected, but fully formed and ready to use.
Without hesitation, he said the spell. “Cleansing Light!”
Green fire blasted from the end of the mace. It was almost unbearably bright, and it lit up the whole courtyard like a bonfire. The wight threw back his head and yelled, vanishing within the green fire.
Spell: Cleansing Light Level 5
Level increase: 50%
Progress to next level: 50%
Wow, Marcus thought. The spell has started at such a high level!
All the soldiers in the courtyard had gathered around Marcus and the vampires, but now Kairn, with Anja and Ben at his side, came shouldering through the press. “What has happened?” he roared, glaring around for someone to give him an explanation.
“Behold!” Marcus cried. “Behold the power of Cleansing Light!”
He drew back the spell, and the green light faded to white. In the cage, the wight was gone.
A shocked silence fell. The horrifying, ghostly wight had been replaced by a man, dressed in gleaming armor and a strange, outlandish-looking woven cloak of bright colors. His hair was golden, and his skin was fair. Dark eyes glanced around at the group of folk who stared at him.
The man looked down at his hands. He moved them as if he’d never seen them before. He looked up and straight at Marcus. In a halting voice, he spoke. “You… you have cleansed my curse!” he said.
“And you have learned to speak our language!” Marcus replied. He smiled, then turned to Kairn. “Kairn, my friend, the key to the cage.”
Kairn took the key from a loop on his belt and walked forward to open the iron door.
“What is your name?” Marcus asked the blonde man.
He blinked in confusion. “I… I don’t remember. I am of the Thun people, that’s… I remember nothing else.”
“Do you remember how to fight?”
The man clapped his hand to his belt. Here, there was a sword, a great, wide-bladed weapon that hung from his leather belt. He grinned. “I do!” he said.
Marcus smiled at him. “I can use my magic to cleanse your companions as well. If I do, will they fight for me?”
“They will!” the former wight said enthusiastically.
Marcus nodded. “In that case, follow me. We do not have much time.”
He took the nameless man to the top of the wall and walked to the parapet. Looking out, they saw the wights gathered in the field below. A restless moaning emanated from them, and they moved back and forth, as if seeking something. When the nameless man called out loudly in the old language, however, the wights all stopped moving and looked up.
The nameless man spoke and gestured to Marcus. “Use your power,” he said. “They are ready.”
Marcus took a breath and raised his mace. He felt the power surging through him again, and this time he felt that it was like a dammed river that was about to burst. Even in the thick of magical dungeon battles, Marcus had never felt this much power ripping through him.
He took off from the parapet and flew out over the wights, releasing the power of the spell.
Green fire blazed from him. It started from his mace, but soon it blasted out from his arms and hands. His body exploded in green fire. He hung in the air, twenty feet from the bony upturned faces of the wights. The fire poured from him—through him, as if he was just the conduit for an immense power that raged and blazed from somewhere else.
The fire flowed over the ground around him, expanding in a blazing wave that consumed the wights and hid them from view. The brightness increased quickly, like a flash of lightning.
Marcus blinked, and gasped in air as the tide of magic released him from its grip and retreated. Below, instead of the wights, an army of men stared up at him. They were dressed similarly to the nameless man who Marcus had purified first, in bright cloaks and leather armor, and some with a bit of chainmail here and there. They wore sandals, and were armed with round shields and the same broad-bladed, curved swords that the nameless one had.
Spell: Cleansing Light Level 6
Level increase: 100%
Progress to next level: 50%
“This is magic on a whole new level,” he murmured to himself. Evidently, cleansing an entire army in one spell was worthy of significant leveling!
As he flew back to the parapet, the army cheered him, and the cries of adulation were taken up by the men and women on the walls as well.
Marcus smiled, but something made him look away from the stronghold and toward the docklands. There was usually some light shining into the night from that direction, but now he saw that there was a sullen orange glow rising up into the night sky.
Fires, he thought. Does that mean that the docklands are ablaze?
“There’s no time to revel in this victory,” he muttered to Ella, who still hovered beside him. “We have to move—now, or it will be too late.”
He flew to the edge of the parapet and hovered above it so everyone could see him. “Friends!” he cried. “We have little time for celebration! The Corsair and his army of vicious vampire hybrids have come to attack the docklands and take Kraken City for their own! The Corsair would transform the population of Kraken into an army of vampires to do his bidding! We cannot let that happen! Come, let us march to the docklands and defend our homes!”
Everyone cheered, and the gateway to the stronghold was thrown open. With a triumphant shout, Marcus’s army marched out through the gates and joined with the newly cleansed wights. The Thun, Marcus thought. That’s what I should call them, not the wights.
The Thun army fell in behind Marcus’s force. They were well drilled and moved with confidence, organizing themselves into units of around fifty men each. They were an impressive sight, with their brightly colored cloaks and their gleaming hair shining in the moonlight. At the back of the group came the force of cavalry, tall men with spears in chainmail, all riding big, dappled horses. He looked out over their heads and tried to count them. There must be at least a few hundred Thun, added to the hundreds of slum dwellers and Gutter Gang warriors. We’ll have a chance at victory now, he thought.
He turned toward the glow of fire from the docklands.
Time to save our city!
Chapter 27
Marcus flew high above his army, looking down on them with pride. They were a strong force, looking confident and moving with a smooth, disciplined stability that made him feel that the prospects for victory were good. At the front, Marcus’s friends marched together—Kairn in his heavy dwarven mail with his huge axe in hand and his great white beard glowing in the moonlight, Anja and Ben behind him striding side by side, grim but determined.
Dirk was there too, of course, in his black Sun Islander armor with his Katana in his hand. He was in charge of overseeing the slum dweller units, and the slum dweller officers kept an eye on him, ready for orders. Isa and Amun, the tall, noble-looking Akhians, with their weapons in hand and the light of revenge in their bright eyes, stepped out toward the front of the host. Jay, the leader of the Gutter Gang, walked by them with sword and shield in hand, the Gutter
Gang marching in lockstep behind him.
And near the Thun forces Max and Daya the vampires walked. Marcus had put them in that place because they could speak the Thun language, and so it would be essential for them to stick near the Thun and interpret orders for them.
They were ready. The only sound was the steady tramp tramp of marching feet across the plane.
Ella flew beside Marcus. She leaned in to speak into his ear. “The light at the docks is getting brighter,” she said. “Shall we fly over and have a closer look?”
Marcus nodded wordlessly and they turned, zooming over the dark plain toward the slums. Here, all was dark—the inhabitants had all gone to the docklands to join in the defense. The whole population of Kraken City would be there, with weapons in hand ready to defend the city as best they could. Marcus just hoped it would be enough.
Ella was right. The light from the docklands was growing brighter. As they drew closer they heard shouts and yells, and smelled the smoke of the fires. When they came over the ridge of thickly populated higher ground that lay behind the docks and stopped, the whole scene was laid out below them like a diorama on a tabletop.
Marcus looked out over the scene, and his heart lurched within him.
The Kraken City folk had set fire to their own ships. The Corsair’s fleet was approaching at speed, and it was vast. Marcus ran his eye along the line of black hulls—there must have been eighty ships there, and each one was packed with blank-eyed hybrid vampires, ready to be turned into vicious, merciless fighters by the Corsair. The Corsair’s flagship itself was in the lead, heading straight for the biggest of Kraken’s stone wharves, the dock known as the King’s dock.
But rows of archers with flaming arrows had loosed their burning shafts into the forests of masts and canvas sails that bristled from the hundreds of vessels anchored in the docks. Marcus saw the logic in that, though it tore at his heart. Kraken Island was surrounded by cliffs on all sides except this one. The Corsair could land his terrible army nowhere else, and so the burning ships would create a fiery barrier that the enemy would have to pass through before he could land. Many of the hybrids would die before they reached dry land, but the Corsair seemed to be coming on anyway.
As he watched, he heard someone shout and point up. “Marcus the dungeon master!” The whole crowd cheered, waving their weapons in the air and pointing to him. And at that moment, something happened. He felt a shift, as if the universe had slipped sideways around him. He felt something under his hand—it was a power, a new power, some power that was so new and so immense that he couldn’t even grasp it. He felt the stones of the docks calling out to him, the flames of the fires on the ships reaching up to him, and he felt a thousand minds below him on the docks, reaching toward him like hands trying to grip his.
“Marcus,” Ella said, “what was that?”
The feeling dropped away from him, and reality snapped back into place. “I don’t know,” he said, “I felt something… something enormous. But I can’t explain it just now. I don’t know what it was or what it means. Look at the Corsair’s fleet. It’ll be on the docks any moment. We need to hurry our folk along. I want them to be at the docks when the first wave hits.”
“How will you do that?” Ella asked, sounding unconvinced. “It’s quite a way still from the Wasteland to the docks.”
“I…” Marcus felt again the wash of power over him. He saw his own spells laid out before him, speed, stealth, and strength. But there was a difference. Before now, drawing on them felt like lifting a cup of clear water. Now, he felt a river of power running below his fingers—a river of unending power, just waiting to be channeled into his spells.
He turned and flew back toward his army. “I feel something happening, Ella,” he called through the whistling of the wind in his ears as he flew. “I feel a new power rising, a greater abundance of power—do you understand? I think that my spells are going to increase in effectiveness.”
They pulled up over the heads of their army. Ella was right. At their steady marching pace, the force would reach the docks in about an hour. But Marcus didn’t have an hour.
“Something’s going to happen, Ella,” he said breathlessly, feeling this new rushing river of power surging up around him. He raised his hands and called out to the army. “Friends! Get ready to run!”
Raising his hands, he cast the spell. “Fleetfoot!”
The enchantment burst from his hands, flying down at his army like a projectile of whirling white light. It burst like a firecracker just above the heads of the marching troops, and spread outward in a huge circle, blindingly quickly. The light snaked out and touched every single person below. He heard Kairn let out a loud shout of command, and the whole force broke into a sprint three times as fast as any human could have normally moved.
Spell: Fleetfoot Level 3
Level increase: 100%
Progress to next level: 42%
Marcus felt fierce delight running through him as he saw the massive level increase he had gained on his spells from applying it to the whole army. Whoops of delight came from throughout the army as they relished their new speed. They were incredibly fast now, and they tore up the ground with their stride. Marcus looked down in amazement.
Beside him, Ella gasped. “This is it!” she cried out. “This is the true power of the Eloran, the master of dungeons! This is the true depth of your power now manifesting!”
“Come on!” Marcus cried to her, and they blasted forward, keeping pace with the army.
They completed a journey that would have taken an hour in less than twenty minutes. The enchantment was wearing off as they appeared on the docklands to the cheers and shouts of the assembled defenders. They were just in time.
The Corsair’s fleet crashed into the docks at all points at the same time. The black hulls seemed to have been treated with something—or perhaps it was some kind of magic—that prevented them from catching fire easily. But the flaming ships in the harbor hindered them still, and the defenders on the docks sent fresh flights of fire arrows into the air, whistling through the black night to land on the decks of the attackers, and to lodge in their sails and in the wood of their hulls.
The black ships smashed into the burning ships, becoming wedged up against each other and jammed in next to burning sailing ships and merchant vessels. They pushed up against the stone wharves. A black tide of hybrids poured from the ships touching the wharves. A sound—somewhere between a roar of rage and a moan of pain—emanated from the horrific creatures, filling the air.
The other black ships that were not touching the wharves were packed so tightly against each other that they formed a bridge. Hundreds of hybrids from all the ships leaped across this bridge, aiming for the shore.
The defenders charged, running to the choke points where the massive stone wharves let out onto the docklands. So many hybrids were packed onto the wharves that they tumbled off the edges on either side. Some fell in the water where they splashed and flailed, but others fell onto the burning ships and went up like moths in a bonfire.
Kairn took command of Marcus’s forces on the ground. Marcus flew back and forth over the heads of the defenders, watching the opening stages of the battle develop. Setting fire to the ships in the docks had worked well, he saw. It meant that the hybrids could only attack along the wharves where their ship bridges made contact, and that channeled them into small areas that could be more effectively defended.
If the ships in the dock had not been torched, they would have attacked at all points at once, and the defenders would have been immediately overwhelmed. Still, the hybrids attacked with a ferocity, speed, and disregard for their own bodies that was terrifying to witness.
Marcus watched as the front lines of the defenders buckled under the sheer weight of the press of hybrids. The black-clad creatures clambered over each other to get to the defenders, and when they reached the front lines they clambered up again, even onto the heads of the defenders, trying to push through their ranks
.
Power rippled under Marcus’s fingers again, and he cast Hero’s Might over the armed men who held the entrance from the wharf. As his Fleetfoot spell had done, the enchantment blasted down from his hands in the form of a ball of light that expanded over the defenders. They roared fierce battle cries and pushed back against the hybrids, trying to drive them back into the water and the flames, but the enemy fought with such ferocity and such reckless abandon that even that push seemed to make little difference.
Marcus swooped down to join the fray. He crashed into a hybrid, his foot cracking its skull. As he hit the ground another hybrid charged at him, thrashing wildly. Marcus ducked. The hybrid’s claws sailed overhead, whistling through the air. Marcus brought his mace up, shattering the creature’s jaw and sending it to the ground.
The hybrid stirred. Its jaw hung loose. As it tried to get up and attack Marcus again, Kairn dashed over, raising his hammer. Kairn’s blow smashed the hybrid’s skull. The dwarf nodded. Marcus nodded back as the dwarf ran off to take on another hybrid.
Marcus glanced around. Where is the Corsair? he thought. Will he join the battle? Or will he stay hidden, controlling his forces with whatever this magic power he has is? Marcus had to find him—and quickly.
Marcus took to the air. The defenders fired a flight of arrows, setting fire to the hybrids who were packed together on one of the wharves. Marcus flew back along the docks again, casting strengthening spells where the defense needed them.