Hopefully it would be enough.
The magic I’d come up with for relaying a camera view back to a central location was still pretty clunky, and I’d only been able to connect a limited number of them. But the passages that wound through the tower’s mechanisms had a lot of choke points, so I was able to track the progress of the intruders well enough. They obviously had a map of the interior, because they made directly for the soul transfer system. Presumably they were hoping to catch me in the middle of working enchantments, and hit me by surprise.
I watched with anticipation as they approached the one corridor where I’d set a trap for them, wondering if it would work. But they proved to be as good as I’d feared. The group abruptly stopped well before they reached my little minefield, and huddled for a moment. Then they linked hands, and vanished from my view.
Teleportation? Or did they transform into something my camera couldn’t see? I wished I had a better monitoring system, but there was no sense worrying about it now. There weren’t any cameras deeper in, so instead I made my way to the position I’d chosen for my counter-ambush.
It was really just a gap between two of the crystalline machines that filled most of the tower, but part of the floor had been torn open by an explosion at some point in the past. That gave me a clear line of sight to the spot where I’d be working if I was really going to fix the rod for Odin. I’d even set up a decoy there, a flesh dummy wearing an imitation of my armor that was bent over a length of enchanted crystal. Magic played around it, doing nothing in particular but hopefully giving an impression of a wizard at work.
My staff had basic iron sights, just like any rifle, so I set it for a medium-power explosive shot and took careful aim. Then I settled in to wait.
A minute passed. Two. Five. How long would it take them to get down here, anyway? Even if they took it slow, it shouldn’t be much longer.
Something is amiss, Alanna said. They should have taken the bait by now.
That was all the warning I had before a mass of biting insects engulfed me.
The initial attack didn’t penetrate my defenses, of course. Alanna had shifted into a suit of full plate that covered me from head to toe, and even the spots where most armor would have gaps were protected. My helmet was completely sealed, with thick quartz vision slits to let me see out. Flexible bark covered my armpits, the backs of my knees and other spots that needed to flex, with a layer of steel mail over that wherever there was room.
But the horde of golden scarab beetles that had descended on me was obviously magical. Their black jaws gnawed at both the substance of my armor and the magic protecting it, and their wings let them reach my whole body at once.
I pulled one of the grenades off my belt, and tossed it over my shoulder. An eruption of water gushed out, filling the whole chamber in an instant. A heartbeat later the water heated to boiling, making me glad for Alanna’s climate control magic. The beetles thrashed frantically, but I didn’t wait to see if it killed them. I pushed forward, force blades sprouting from the knuckles of my gloves, and widened the hole in front of me enough to dive through.
A torrent of boiling water came along with me, of course, and the grenade was still pumping out more. I hit the floor and tumbled for a moment, before I got my flight magic active and rose into the air. A burst of force magic blew away the few beetles that were still clinging to my armor, and I took a quick look around the larger chamber where I’d been hoping to catch the assassins.
There weren’t any humans here, but a huge centauroid monster was waiting for me. It had too many legs to count, and four long arms that ended in sharp points. It’s whole body was covered in plates of black armor, and it was fast. Before I could finish getting my bearings its mandibles spread wide, and a swirling beam of dark purple energy erupted from its mouth.
The bolt of magical energy struck me in the chest, and slammed me across the room to crash into a crystalline column. But the layered wards on my surcoat held, and the dispel field unraveled the hostile magic that tried to cling to me before it could do anything else.
I leveled my staff at the monster, and returned fire with a spray of bullets that were bigger and much faster than the ones my revolver fired. It still wasn’t enough, though. They glanced off the armored plates that covered the thing’s body, leaving cracks and dents but failing to penetrate.
It rushed me in a blur of motion, an ominous ruby glow forming around the tips of its pointed limbs, and I didn’t have time to think of another plan. I cranked the power up with a thought, turning on all the acceleration rings, and the staccato cracks of bullets became a thunderous roar of sound. The monster blew apart into a spray of black ichor and mangled body parts.
My staff was enchanted to transfer the recoil of high-velocity shots to the surrounding terrain, and I saw an ominous web of cracks in the crystal out of the corner of my eye. But I didn’t have time to evaluate that, or the craters my shots had made in the wall behind the monster, because I was already under attack from another source.
Fire filled the room, raging against my force field without penetrating, but completely obscuring my vision. I lifted into the air, starting to move away from the impact crater I’d left, when something struck me in the back and sent me tumbling forward. A couple more impacts followed the first, but whatever they were didn’t even come close to penetrating my cloak.
Countering fire with water would be too obvious against these guys, so instead I triggered another of the devices on my belt. A force bubble formed just outside my wards, and expanded to form a bubble of near-vacuum that quickly filled the chamber. The fire went out, revealing a giant glowing worm floating in the air.
I dialed the power on my staff back down and fired off a burst at it. It died a lot more easily than the last monster, its body not nearly as well armored.
“Where are they getting these things?” I grumbled.
I did warn you they like to put demons in bottles, Daniel. Don’t stay in one place for so long.
I moved, dropping the force bubble and looking for some clue about where the assassins were. They were still invisible, and even though they were obviously loaded down with magic items they didn’t show up at all on my mage sight. The area was too hot now for my thermal vision to be much use, but I’d also put together a force magic enchantment that detected motion. Hopefully that was exotic enough that they wouldn’t have a counter for it.
I moved into the main corridor leading out of the ambush room, only to blunder into a trap. A brilliant flash of light blinded me for a moment, despite the primitive attempt at glare protection I’d built into my helmet lenses. Chains of blue-white light sprang out of the walls to wrap around me, and sparks danced along my wards. My outer force field collapsed, and the dispel field beneath it surged and swirled as it fought against some kind of mana drain effect from the chains.
I swiped at the chains with my force claws, but the conflicting magics just sparked and flashed against each other without either force yielding. Then I caught a flash of motion from just down the corridor. Something small and fast smashed into my faceplate, and one of the lenses cracked.
Crap. That was still one of the weak spots in my defenses, and these guys were probably good enough to hit me in the eyes consistently. No time to be fancy, then. I set of another prepared spell, that filled the space around me with a whirling vortex of plasma and force blades patterned after Grinder’s blade, and then ramped up the power on my flight magic and launched myself down the hall.
The chains still didn’t break, but my wards had kept them from getting a firm grip on me. The howling shriek of my destruction sphere filled my ears, and my upper body slipped free of the chains under a thrust that could have lifted a tank. I had a moment to be glad that I’d thought to make that flight spell distribute the thrust across my body instead of delivering it all to one location, or else the stress would have torn my legs off.
Then something gave. A cloud of the little titanium shields covering my armor
broke free from the force magic that was supposed to hold them in place, and flew off into the vortex around me. But the chains lost their grip, and I found myself careening down the hall for a moment before I slammed into another wall.
Had I heard a scream? The plasma vortex was so loud I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like I’d flown right over the position of the guy who’d been throwing things at me.
I peeled myself out of the crater I’d made, and let the vortex fade away as I moved to a new position. There was lighting playing along the walls of the wrecked corridor, and even with my armor’s insulation I didn’t want to be there for long.
This time nothing happened for a few seconds.
“Playing tag with these guys in a maze of hallways gives them too much advantage,” I decided. “Let’s try plan dark.”
Yes, let us hunt these hunters of men, Alanna agreed. I dislike playing the part of prey.
I triggered another spell, and the corridor was plunged into darkness. The temperature dropped quickly as well, and the crackle of lightning faded away. I’d planted a whole network of connected devices around this part of the Spire, hidden amid wrecked machines where they wouldn’t be easy to spot, all designed to spread this same darkness effect.
The spell ate every photon of visible light that entered its area of effect, rendering even the best night vision useless, and the sound dampening would interfere with echolocation. Cold and darkness are commonly associated with necromancy, so I was hoping they’d assume this was the prelude to some nasty wide-area spell. I wasn’t sure how they’d respond, but the obvious solutions that occurred to me mostly involved breaking the darkness somehow.
Obviously that would give away their positions. But even if they had a less blatant option, they’d still be at a disadvantage. I’d carefully designed the darkness to eat only visible light, and not infrared. As the heat of the opening engagement faded away, and the magical cold took effect, the glow of our body heat would become more and more visible.
I floated soundless through the empty halls, looking for a sign of their presence. Body heat, magical disturbances, interference with the darkness field. Anything that would give away their position. Unfortunately I hadn’t counted on the number of friends they’d brought to the party.
Giant slime monsters. Animated gas clouds. Vicious-looking golems made of steel and bone. Another of those giant centaur things. The first few things that I encountered couldn’t see me through the darkness, but at the rate they were tossing out exotic menaces it was only a matter of time before that changed. Even the monsters that flailed around blindly were restricting my movements, unless I wanted to give away my own position by fighting one.
Then an anti-teleport ward unfolded over the area.
It seems that they think us trapped, Alanna commented.
“Yeah. Which means they’ll be trying to close off escape routes. I bet one of them is headed for the teleportarium.”
I ducked into a side corridor, circling a mass of broken crystal and dropping through a hole into the main shaft of the sun tap. The harsh glare of solar plasma drove the darkness away and washed out my heat vision, but I didn’t need it here. I dove down the shaft, hurrying towards the lower chambers.
Until a whip of flame lashed out from the main column to smack me in the face.
My force fields held, but even so the heat was sweltering. I dodged away, throwing up a larger bubble of force around myself to keep the heat at bay, and looked around wildly. Was someone controlling the plasma? There was so much magic in here that it would be hard to spot an animation spell.
But apparently it was another creature. A ball of eye-searing brilliance detached itself from the column that dominated the room, lashing out with whip-like limbs of plasma as it followed me. My helmet lenses darkened against the glare, and I leveled my staff at it. What should I use, though? Water would make a hell of a steam explosion, but earth might not disrupt this thing’s form. A dispel blast, maybe?
In my moment of hesitation there was a burst of magic behind me, and a massively powerful dispelling blew down my force bubble. A wave of ethereal energy engulfed me, flowing like water, eating away at the magic of my wards like acid. The fire monster pounced, like it had been waiting for the opportunity, and got one of its whip-like limbs around my waist.
“Enough with the fucking minions!”
Neither threat was tangible enough to pin me in place, so I spun to see where the new attack had come from. Sure enough there was one of the assassins clinging to the side of the shaft, holding out a rod that gushed forth a stream of smoky white magic-eating fog.
I leveled my staff at him, and he changed his aim point to cover it with the fog. But the protective enchantments on the outside of the weapon held the attack at bay for a moment, and that was all I needed to switch settings. Water lance, ten percent power, continuous beam.
That mode was supposed to make a thin needle of water moving at several times the speed of sound, held together by a temporary force magic enchantment. Perfect for cutting walls, monsters and other obstacles into pieces even at long ranges. The fog ate away the enchantment as the beam left my staff, turning the needle of water into a firehose spray, but that just made it harder to dodge.
Somehow he actually managed to start moving in the tiny fraction of second before the jet hit him, but it didn’t make any difference. The impact smashed his left leg to a pulp, slamming him into the wall of the shaft and shattering the crystal there. I played the jet over his body, and a cloud of debris momentarily hid it. Then some capacitor in the machinery I’d smashed him into discharged, and a brilliant flash of lightning momentarily blinded me.
I rose above the fire monster, and swept the water jet over one of its limbs. It jerked away, releasing me to flee back towards the column of solar plasma in the middle of the shaft. But I only got a glimpse of that, because my vision was going dark.
“What the hell?”
It’s a soot demon, Daniel. Their bodies are like a cloud of dust, and it’s sticking to us. I’m afraid fire and explosions won’t arm this beast.
I had to shut off the water jet to make sure I didn’t hit the sun tap by accident. “Great. What does?”
Death magic is best, but we don’t have any. Cold makes them more solid, and acid might work. Do hurry, it’s already trying to work its way into the seams of my shell. If it touches flesh it can turn a man to dust in moments.
A wash of heat warned me that the living fireball was back for another try.
“How the fuck am I going to make it cold in here?” I grumbled.
I cut the lift on my flight spell, and let myself fall out from under the monster’s attacks. There weren’t any crosswinds in here, and the fire beast wasn’t tangible enough to actually move me, so I ought to fall straight down the shaft without drifting into the column of solar plasma in the middle. I’d better be right about that, because even my fancy new defenses weren’t going to protect me from that level of heat.
How should I know? You’re the wizard of invention here, Daniel. Do something impossible.
My cloak was on fire, shedding shield segments as its enchantments unraveled. My surcoat was mostly intact, but my armor glowed red hot in places. My hands, which had less protection than the rest of me, were only working because my healing amulet was fixing them as fast as they burned. And she wanted me to come up with some brilliant improvisation now?
Well, maybe there was a way. I reached into the enchantments on my staff, working through the intent control conduit I’d left open for myself. If I could just tweak the way the water conjuration worked…
I hit the bottom of the shaft.
My armor took most of the impact, but it still rattled my teeth. I bounced across the hard surface and came to rest on my back, with a new collected of bruises and wrenched joints to keep my healing amulet busy.
“I’m really getting tired of this shit,” I grumbled. “Next time I get into a fight, I want to do it from the commander
’s seat of a tank.”
I threw a large force bubble over myself, working blind because my faceplate was still covered with black dust. Where was my staff? I reached, and triggered the return enchantment. It flew through the air to slap into my palm, and I pointed it straight up.
An impact slammed into my throat, and something sharp just managed to prick me through Alanna’s protection.
Cursed blade, Alanna gasped. Another assassin is on us, Daniel!
I didn’t waste any more time. I triggered my staff, and a dense cone of snow and hail shot out of it. Naturally it just bounced off the inside of the force bubble, and rebounded to bury me. The hot metal of my armor melted the first of it that hit me, at which point the fact that it wasn’t just water ice became apparent.
I heard a startled cry from the assassin as he found himself drenched in a half-liquid slush of sulfuric acid. It didn’t stop him from trying to drive a knife through the cracked lens of my faceplate, but the quartz held.
I unleashed a wide-angle force blast in his general direction, and rolled over. The slush quickly grew deep enough to bury me, and the black coating on my lenses started to dissolve.
See? I knew you’d think of something. This stings a bit, but with the healing you’ve gifted me it’s no great matter.
Yeah, my armor was damaged enough that liquid was seeping in through gaps in the force fields, and the metal shell wasn’t completely watertight. I tossed out a couple of bouncer grenades to keep the assassin busy, and then took a few seconds to rub at the goop. It came away reluctantly, leaving me with a blurry view through damaged lenses.
I’d left my staff running, so I was completely submerged in acid slush by then. It hissed and bubbled where it touched my armor, but dissolving thick metal takes a while even at room temperature. As the metal cooled the reactions slowed down as well, so the damage might not be too bad.
Oh, who was I kidding? This armor was toast. I guess losing my gear was an improvement over getting chopped to bits, like some of my previous fights. But I’d been hoping things would go better than this.
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