In the Grip of Time

by Adam Jacob Burgess

  ‘I believe, under the new regulations, that this falls under fair use of magic,’ said Corinne as she retrieved a small leather-bound book from her bag.

  ‘What regulations?’ shouted Sawwse above the roar of the flames.

  ‘The ones I’ve been writing for the guild’s magic users,’ Corinne replied.

  ‘Aren’t you the only mage in Actum Tempus?’

  ‘Well, to say I am a mage may be overstating it. I haven’t received, what you might call, formal training.’

  ‘And yet you’ve devised a set of regulations just for you to follow?’ Sawwse asked, bemused.

  ‘Yes. It’s important to start the way you mean to go on,’ Corinne stated, matter-of-factly.

  ‘You can have this conversation later,’ Osrik growled.

  Corinne quickly rifled through the pages of her magic manual. It contained a series of runes painted in many different textures. The mage ran her fingers over a ribbed, triangular rune and began to incant.

  Magic was still unfamiliar to Sawwse. She’d certainly seen more of it since leaving the Blue Forest, but hadn’t yet had much chance to see it up close. Her scepticism at Corinne’s abilities turned to awe as a mist gradually appeared above the adventurers’ heads. Osrik, Rangrim, Sawwse and Ruby looked up and watched the mist as it thickened and darkened. Sawwse’s scepticism grew again as the mist began to centre above Rangrim. She took a step away from the young dwarf, as did Ruby and Osrik.

  ‘Er, Corinne?’

  Sawwse called out, but Corinne ignored the distraction and continued to incant in a low voice until the mist transformed into a heavy rain cloud. Rangrim raised his weary head and looked above him at the dark cloud as it gathered the mist into itself.

  ‘Corinne,’ Sawwse called again. ‘I think you may have got the positioning slightly wrong on the-’

  Unfortunately, it was too late. The rain cloud began to sprinkle water all over Rangrim.

  ‘Has that spell worked?’ Corinne asked, placing her spellbook away.

  ‘I mean, yes. In a way,’ Sawwse replied, watching the heavy-headed dwarf steadily wetting.

  ‘Hmm, right, this should do it,’ Corinne declared, waving her hands in Rangrim’s direction. The rain immediately intensified, pouring a torrent of water over Rangrim’s head. Realising her mistake, she said, ‘Oh dear. Just a moment.’

  Corinne walked over to Rangrim, physically grabbed the cloud and pushed it over the blazing wall. The fire hissed as it was hammered into submission by the rain, creating a fire-free channel in the centre of the wall. They took it in turns to run under the steady shower. All except Rangrim, who trudged through the room in his sopping clothes.

  Larn and Vadania were knelt a short distance away. The elf signalled the others over. There was another small, deep pool in the corner of the room. One of the three amphibian creatures they had briefly seen surrounding Alla’fyr floated lifelessly atop the water. Osrik carefully took up the creature and lay it on the ground in front of them. Its front was completely charred.

  ‘Sweet bread beer,’ wheezed Rangrim. The sight of this scorched body sobered Rangrim up. Much better to be wet than burnt. ‘Who was that woman?’

  The group turned to Osrik, who had clearly known the woman in red robes. He folded the creature’s arms across its body and sighed.

  ‘Alla’fyr. A dangerous, powerful wizard,’ answered Osrik. He spoke no louder than a murmur, so the others had to crane their heads in order to listen.

  ‘How powerful are we talking? Has she flunked out of No’areth’s Magical Academy, or are you telling us that the first wizard we come across is one of The Twelve?’ asked an incredulous Rangrim.

  ‘She’s a disgraced mage turned mercenary. It’s not good that she’s here, but it means Convener was right to investigate the energy spike.’

  Osrik took a weight from his bag and tied it securely to the creature before setting the body down again in the water.

  ‘And I don’t know her history, but she claims to have fallen from The Twelve, yes.’

  While the body sank out of sight, the adventurers paused to take this information in. Despite being the only one of the seven to have, albeit unknowingly, met a member of The Twelve, Sawwse had no idea what Osrik meant. Looking at the grim expressions on the faces of her guild mates, she gathered it wasn’t good news.

  ‘Sorry, but who are The Twelve, and why is falling from them bad?’ she asked.

  Larn tutted.

  ‘Such naiveté.’

  ‘The Twelve are the stuff of legends,’ said Corinne. ‘Supposedly, they are an order of extremely powerful wizards.’

  ‘And fallen mages are wizards gone rogue,’ added Ruby, gulping.

  ‘So, if a mage were to fall from the-’ Sawwse began.

  ‘The bigger the mage, the harder they fall,’ Osrik sighed.

  ‘That’s all nonsense,’ bellowed Rangrim. ‘They’re only children’s stories.’

  ‘Enough,’ said Vadania. ‘This Alla’fyr mentioned an idol. It’s possible that this is what we’re looking for. She already has a head start. Let’s move on.’

  Sawwse trailed at the back of the group as they walked quickly through more water-filled rooms. She felt slightly stupid and made a mental note to check the Gnomeopedia for any mention of The Twelve later.

  Eventually they arrived at a patterned archway decorating a wall and leading to another stone staircase. As they descended, they noticed that the floor was sticky and wet. When they arrived in another sandstone room, it was clear that questionable decisions had been made regarding the decor. Sticky webbing covered the walls and a low layer of tepid water covered the floor.

  ‘Lin’s not going to like this,’ Sawwse said, placing her hand to the gummy walls.

  Larn rushed into the room and began to examine the upper walls. The runes etched onto the walls upstairs were here as well, but they too were now covered in a thick mesh.

  ‘I don’t care about Lin, but something has ruined these glyphs.’

  ‘They look better if anything,’ Rangrim said with a smile.

  He meant it in jest, but it was true that the symbols hadn’t just been covered over. New designs had been added to the existing ones. Where two sloped lines intersected over the top of a square, perhaps representing a house, waxy blue webbing had been added, which ran across the bottom of the glyph.

  Vadania followed the modified symbols around the room until she came across a small alcove to her right. The stone bricks that made up the alcove wall were lighter than the rest of the tomb. There seemed to be an inscription written on the wall in a language she didn’t recognise: distinct, as well, from the symbols on the other walls.

  ‘Can you read this?’ The elf called over to Larn.

  He studied the inscription for a few moments. The letters were low and squashed together. They often seemed to drag downwards. Was that an extra flourish or part of the letter? The others looked on as Larn traced the letters with his fingers. Without longer to study, he could only guess that this was a bastardised version of Sylaxian. Taking that as his starting point, Larn worked out that the inscription was a simple linguistic lock. At his time in the Academy, Larn used to love solving rune locks like these. It was one of his areas of expertise. Even when he didn’t understand the language, he could recognise the patterns. A repeated letter or word would be enough to decipher the magic puzzle and uncover its secrets. He traced over four of the words on the wall until they glowed faintly white. A few moments passed, but then the bricks shunted backwards and slowly moved to one side.

  ‘Larn, that was amazing,’ exclaimed Sawwse.

  Ruby stepped back from the moving wall to hide behind Corinne’s cloak.

  ‘We’re all assuming there’s treasure in here, right?’ Rangrim said. He stood on his tiptoes to try and peer over Larn’s shoulder.

  Larn stared into the dark space for a moment, before moving away and allowing the others to pass by him.

>   Inside the small chamber, there was nothing but a cage holding one of the amphibian creatures that they had encountered on the upper level of the tomb. She looked up in shock as the adventurers gazed down at her. Osrik shuddered in spite of himself at the sight of the cage. Even from this distance he could feel the rusty metal bars against his bare hands, smell the despair and terror, and almost hear once again the clamouring voices pleading - he shook his head violently and seized his axe.

  ‘Stand back,’ he grumbled, before launching his axe at the cage’s lock.

  It broke with a smash and he prised open the cage door. The small creature was clearly young and frightened. Sawwse squeezed partway through Osrik’s legs and offered her hand.

  ‘I’m Sawwse Bohge, it’s a pleasure. Larn, get back over here and translate.’

  ‘I’m Kali,’ she replied, speaking in one of the common human tongues, to the guild’s surprise. ‘Thank you so much for opening this cage.’

  ‘Kali, why were you trapped?’ Sawwse inquired.

  Kali hesitated. She looked on the intimidating guild mates in turn, but settled back on Sawwse’s smiling, reassuring face.

  ‘The mad priest, Tjark. I tried to warn the others about him,’ Kali replied.

  Osrik held onto his battle-axe a little tighter, his knuckles whitening. Kali explained that her love of scrolls and texts from all over the world went against the teachings of her church. Her parents had smuggled them in for her, because they knew that it made her happy.

  ‘When Tjark found out about this, he cast them out. He never used to be like this. Tjark helped to guide us here, but he changed when he found that stupid Lung-dor.’

  ‘A lung door?’ Sawwse asked, trying to remove the gruesome image conjured into her mind.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know the translation.’

  Still between Osrik’s legs, Sawwse called behind her.

  ‘Larn, what’s a lung door?’

  Several feet away, Larn stood with his back to them looking again at the altered markings along the opposite wall.

  ‘Some primitive cultures aren’t exactly monotheistic or pantheistic, but derive elements from both systems of worship. They will attempt to seek out a god, and spend effort and resources summoning a god, but they do not know who or what this god is. Lung-dors are objects that can contain great magical power. I expect the spike in energy that Convener sensed is related to this so-called priest. I have read of tribes wiped out by those foolish enough to accidentally summon a demon,’ Larn explained, a familiar phantom itch climbing his legs as he spoke. He turned to Kali. ‘Describe the Lung-dor you saw.’

  Kali opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She looked about her prison and found a mound of dirt in one of the corners. Taking two handfuls of the dirt, she dropped it on the floor in front of the adventurers and began to form horizontal lines with it. She added a wavy pattern to the design.

  ‘I remember it clearly,’ she said. ‘They found it sealed in the cathedral and it sent them all mad. “This is the Lung-dor,” they said. “This will deliver us spawn from our sins.”’

  ‘Where is the Lung-dor now?’ Vadania asked, urgently. Her eyes lit with fire once again.

  Kali gestured to another patterned archway leading to a corridor. The adventurers clutched their weapons tighter, which didn’t go unnoticed by the amphibian child.

  ‘Please promise not to hurt my fellow Frupgoans,’ she urged. ‘They do not mean you any harm. Tjark has whipped them into zealotry and...’ Kali trailed off.

  ‘Someone upstairs has reported that your friends have been attacking them,’ said Sawwse.

  ‘Only ever to defend themselves and our home,’ Kali retorted.

  Having climbed onto Osrik’s shoulder, Sawwse looked around the group.

  ‘I don’t know about you lot, but this Tjark character seems entirely disagreeable to me. If you ask me, we should take out this tyrant and investigate Convener’s energy spike at the same time,’ Sawwse said, nodding her head. ‘If we come across a fallen member of the Ten-

  ‘The Twelve,’ Corinne corrected.

  ‘-then we’ll just have to teach her a lesson.’

  The gnome thrust her finger into the air before shouting, ‘Onward!’, hoping for a battle cry in unison from her guildmates.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Osrik sighed, wearily.

  As they entered the next room, they were stunned to see hundreds of the Frupgoans sitting in variously-sized pools around the space. Some of them growled as the team walked by them. Kali spoke in a low, wet voice, and they backed down.

  Vadania, watchful, caught her eye.

  ‘I just told them that you wanted to join the church,’ Kali answered.

  Sawwse glanced down at Kali from her perch on Osrik’s shoulder. She sensed that these creatures weren’t happy. They seemed almost solemn.

  ‘What is this place, Kali?’

  ‘It has become our home. At first it was just a place of sanctuary. The lagoon in which we lived was drained and so we had to settle here. I don’t doubt that this place is valuable to you overgrounders, but we have nowhere else to go.’

  ‘So, this is a temple?’ Ruby asked quietly.

  ‘A tomb, a temple, a home, a creche, all.’

  Stepping around the water, the adventurers made their way to the far end of the room. Indecipherable voices seemed to be shouting to some kind of frantic rhythm. Every few moments, a low bass vibrated the floor.

  The team rushed through into a bigger, almost cavernous chamber: the Frupgoans’ cathedral. The sandstone had been eroded and beaten into elaborate shapes. Sawwse could tell that this had been a significant room for the ancient culture whose tomb they were in. Gilded coffins were set evenly into the walls, final resting places for the most important citizens, perhaps. Her eyes followed them to a large, intricately designed tomb, positioned centrally at the far wall. And there stood the mad priest, Tjark. He used the ornate coffin as a kind of pulpit and altar.

  Tjark was much larger than the other Frupgoans. He wore various kinds of webbings, dyed red and white and fashioned into ceremonial gear. In front of him lay what could only have been the Lung-dor. Even at the other end of the room, Sawwse could see its brilliance. It shone bright, star-like.

  ‘Alla’fyr’s here,’ Osrik snarled. ‘I can sense her.’

  ‘That must mean the idol is here too,’ Sawwse muttered.

  ‘I think the Lung-dor and idol are one and the same,’ Corinne postured. ‘And the surge in magical energy coming from that altar is significant. This must be what Convener sent us here for.’

  A magical bubble surrounded the Lung-dor, and every few moments it shrunk inwards, creating the deep vibration they had felt outside. Tjark was chanting in a bastardised version of the Sylaxian tongue, joined by two priests either side of the makeshift altar. Between them and the adventurers were hundreds more of the Frupgoans. Rather than solemnity, it was clear that Tjark had provoked them into a cultish frenzy. They rocked back and forth, bowed, and repeated recitations.

  ‘That fool,’ Larn spat. ‘Can he not see that this much energy is going to blow this place apart?’

  Larn was the first to run. He manoeuvred his way across the right-hand wall, and began weaving in and out of the praying people. Vadania and Rangrim followed suit, making their way on the left.

  ‘I’ll ensure no harm comes to our friend,’ Corinne said, placing a protective arm around Kali.

  ‘I’ll stay too,’ squeaked Ruby, looking anxiously around the room.

  ‘Yes, perhaps if a couple of us stay here we can-’ Sawwse began, but was interrupted.

  Almost forgetting he had a little gnome on his shoulders, Osrik charged away, straight through the middle of the room.

  ‘We need eyes on Alla’fyr. She probably hasn’t got the idol yet, but she’s much too dangerous to ignore,’ he said.

  Although Vadania had been hunting for longer and was faster in battle, Larn’s motor
ised legs reached the altar first. He kicked over one of the congregation without a second thought, and used the fallen Frupgoan’s back to launch himself towards Tjark. The trajectory was perfect, but as he approached Tjark, an invisible force stopped him from getting close enough to strike.

  Vadania watched as Larn’s attack was brushed to one side. Two priests either side of the altar seemed to be channelling some kind of energy at their leader, protecting him. The elf loosed an arrow from her bow and caught one of the priests in the shoulder. It wasn’t enough. She began notching another arrow when she was set upon by the congregation. They smothered her, stopping Vadania in place.

  Barrelling past Vadania through the crowd, Rangrim made his way up to the priest on Tjark’s right. He reached back to retrieve his weighty, two-handed sword, but came up empty. It was only at this moment that Rangrim once again remembered that he’d left his sword at the inn. Panicking, he looked down at his hands and then back up at the chanting, amphibian face in front of him. The Frupgoan priest’s eyes swivelled to focus on the young dwarf.

  Rangrim had never been in a fist fight before, but now was not the time to back down from a possible hero moment. He struck the priest with an uppercut, sending him reeling backwards and weakening the protective energy around Tjark. Turning back to help Vadania, he saw the elf standing strong behind him.

  ‘Keep them from stilling my bow,’ she said with authority.

  This time she notched two arrows in the bow and sent them soaring across the room to the other priest, knocking him to the ground.

  Osrik paced through the congregation, attempting to spot anything uncanny that might suggest the mercenary’s location. He saw the air bend around a silhouette, but it was too late. A powerful force blasted him into the crowd and knocked Sawwse off his shoulder onto the floor. She jumped up as quickly as she could, ready for battle, but there were only praying Frupgoans around her.

  At the altar, the bubble surrounding the idol had shrunk significantly and the invisible field that had thwarted Larn was now gone. He launched forward once more and drove his rapier into Tjark’s chest. The mad priest’s heavy, web cladding stopped him from being hurt, but the force of the attack knocked him backwards, breaking his concentration.