After we left the mansion, nobody mentioned anything about me and Rose anymore. Daren’s intervention seems to have been enough to bring them all back to their senses. He may be an ass most of the time, but when push comes to shove, I guess he can really be a lot of help. I owe him one for this.
It took us less than an hour to reach the Beggar’s district this time around. The foul smell was still there, but somehow it didn’t bother me so much anymore. Maybe I had gotten accustomed to it in the meantime.
“Rose,” Kate says, as we travel through the Beggar’s district, “are you sure it’s a good idea to be seen alongside us right now? We may well have become wanted criminals in this city after yesterday’s incident.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about me,” Rose says. “A few years ago, our king enacted a law that prevents us locals from being incriminated by simply associating with criminals from other continents. Since varathians aren’t prone to associating with outsiders in general, it is assumed that when they do, it is because they are being held hostage. The gnome king has enacted many such laws that protect us from harm over the past few years. He is seen as a king of the people, and many look up to him because of that.”
“Hostages?” I ask. “Has the spell protecting you from outsiders malfunctioned before now?”
“The spell that they used to prevent you from attacking us has never been used before, as far as I know,” Rose says. “I don’t know how they managed to do it for this tournament, but I’m supposing that they either cooperated with a very talented mage, or they somehow got their hands on a powerful new device. So far, whenever people got invited to this continent, they would be kept under strict supervision, and they’d be teleported back if they misbehaved. However, there have been cases where outsiders have not been properly kept in check, and they’ve caused quite a bit of damage before they were finally punished.”
“You said earlier that this king of yours is a gnome?” Hadrik says. “Did I hear that right?”
“Yes, you heard me right,” Rose says.
“Are we talking about the same kind of gnomes, here?” Hadrik asks. “You know, the frail looking midgets that can’t grow a beard and that are even smaller than dwarves? The ones that are so disorganized that they can’t even form their own country, choosing instead to live their lives as nomads who never settle down in one place for more than a few years?”
“They may be seen as disorganized by many people,” Rose says, “but no one can deny the fact that they are also incredibly resourceful, and that most of the great inventors of our time are of gnome origin. The king of Thilias was also a renowned inventor before he was elected as king.”
“Elected?” Kate asks, shocked. “Do you mean to say that the current king of Thilias is not of royal blood?”
“Yes, that is what I’m saying,” Rose says. “The old king of Thilias did not leave an heir, and before he died of old age he made a public announcement, saying that he wanted the next king to be elected through a vote, so that he may become a true king of the people. Naturally, the nobles did not really agree with this, but they couldn’t defy the king openly, so they were forced to hold the vote, despite their misgivings. Since Golmyck was very well known for his inventions and for his cheerful personality, he quickly became the favorite candidate, and he was eventually chosen by a vast majority to rule over our kingdom.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Illuna says, “but is this marketplace supposed to be so deserted at this hour? I would have expected at least the merchants to be awake at this time in the morning.”
“No, you’re right,” Rose says. “This is strange. Usually this place is filled with people around this time of day. And come to think of it, most of the streets that we’ve passed so far have been empty as well.”
“This smells like an ambush to me,” Hadrik says.
“Yeah, it’s definitely an ambush,” Arraka says. “There are two mages heading our way right now. They will appear in front of us, once they pass that corner.”
Just as Arraka finishes her sentence, the whole area around us is lit by a bright green light for a few seconds, and immediately afterwards, Rose loses her consciousness and falls on the ground. Daren rushes to her side, in order to check her pulse, and he signals to us that she is still alive.
“Where did that light come from?” Hadrik asks. “Did those two mages do it?”
“It’s very likely,” Illuna says. “You may not have realized it because I am still controlling the body, but Flower has also fainted, and I can’t wake her up. She looks like she’s in some kind of a stasis, much like the one I put her in when we were at the ogre fort.”
As Daren tries to wake Rose up, the two mages that were coming our way finally make their appearance. One of them is dressed in black robes and has a snake tattoo on his bald head, while the other one is wearing green robes and a silver circlet on his head. I immediately recognize them as being the two followers of the God of Death and the God of Fate that tried to kill us with the stillwater skeletons on the day that we met Hadrik.
“So much for your stupid trap, Zack,” the mage in the green robes says. “We paid all of that money and all we managed to do was to knock out the one member of their team who can’t even put up a fight.”
“Silence, fool,” Zack says. “The merchant warned us that the trap had a low chance of success against trained mages. And we didn’t just get one of them, we got two. If you look closely, you can see that the little girl is actually a fusion of two souls. We managed to put the host in a dormant state, while the banshee is still keeping control of the body.”
“You!” Daren shouts at the two mages. “How are you still here after hurting Rose? Why didn’t the tournament’s spell send you back?”
“I would ask you the same thing, healer in armor,” says the mage in green robes. “Didn’t you or one of your friends kill a local yesterday? That is what it says on this poster, after all.”
He takes a rolled up poster out of his sleeve, and he unfurls it in front of us, so we can all see its contents. On the piece of paper, we see some poorly drawn sketches of me, Daren, Kate and Eiden along with a title that says: ‘Wanted - Dead or Alive - Daren, the healer in armor, and his accomplices, for the murder of the earl of Ollendor’. The reward on our heads is in a local currency that I am unfamiliar with, but I’m guessing that they’re probably offering a lot of money, given the circumstances.
“We just happened to see this poster yesterday while we were looking for a few bounties to kill some time,” the mage in the green robes says, “and we quickly agreed that it was no mere coincidence, but the hand of fate that was guiding our actions.”
“It wasn’t fate,” Zack says, “it was the God of Death himself who was giving us another chance to make up for our miserable failure from last week. This time we’ll make sure to send you all to your graves, in the name of my god.”
“How did you know we’d be here?” Kate asks them.
“It’s all thanks to your friend over there,” the green robed mage says, as he points towards Rose. “Some beggar overheard her telling a nurse in the hospital that she’d be bringing a skilled healer to tend to the sick. He sold us the tip for a reasonable sum, and we arranged the emptying of the streets together with the local guards, in case the healer in question was indeed the one we were looking for. Now then, Zack, you should just stand aside while I deal with these weaklings. I alone should be more than enough to finish them off.”
“No, you’re not,” Daren says. “We already know that your god specializes in illusions. Illusions are useless against enemies who already expect them.”
“Are you sure about that, healer?” the green robed mage says, and all of a sudden, hundreds of clones of both him and his ally fill the entire marketplace area around us.
“You haven’t moved from your original position, genius,” Daren says, as he dashes towards him. “I know which one is the real you.”
As Daren reaches the two orig
inal mages, he slashes his sword and cuts through them both in one strike. Instead of dying, however, the two mages simply fade away into the air.
“What is the meaning of this?” Kate asks. “If those two were in fact illusions, then does that mean that the real mages were hiding invisibly when they cast the illusion spell?”
“Arraka,” I say, “why didn’t you tell us that the mages were invisible?”
“Because they weren’t,” Arraka says. “If anyone were to hide anywhere invisibly, I would have sensed them.”
“Then how do you explain the fact that the ones we were seeing were in fact illusions?” I ask.
“How am I supposed to know that, jackass?” Arraka says. “Figure it out yourself!”
“Can you at least figure out which ones of these are the originals?” I ask.
“No,” Arraka says. “I never bothered to learn how to tell the difference between clones and originals, because whenever someone would cast a spell like this against me, I would simply use a spell of my own to destroy them all at the same time, and that would be the end of that.”
“Does anyone have any idea why none of the clones have attacked us yet?” Hadrik asks us. “They’re just standing there, smirking like a bunch of morons. Do you think they’re waiting for something?”
“Kate,” I say, “could you freeze the whole area around us in order to take care of all the clones at the same time?”
As soon as I stop talking, I see a vision in which Kate blasts all of the clones with a wave of ice. Once they all disappear, Kate’s freezing wave quickly reverses its direction, and it hits us all before we get the time to react.
“Yes,” Kate answers me, “I was about to do just that.”
“Wait!” I shout. “Don’t do it!”
Kate is looking a little confused, but she stops her spell just in time.
“Why not?” she asks me.
“I just had a premonition,” I say. “If you had cast that spell, it would have turned against us and frozen us all, right after the clones disappeared.”
“So the clones are a trap, then?” Hadrik asks.
“Wait a minute!” Arraka says. “I think I got it!”
“Do you recognize the spell?” Kate asks.
“Yeah,” Arraka says. “This is actually one of Memphir’s favorite illusion spells. No wonder he started teaching it to his followers.”
“Memphir?” Hadrik asks. “Is that the name of the God of Fate?”
“Yeah, that’s him,” Arraka says. “The spell is designed in such a way that when all of the illusions get destroyed, the attackers get hit back with all of the spells they’d cast to slay the clones. I always used to fall for that stupid trick.”
“How can you tell that it’s the exact same spell?” I ask her.
“If you pay close attention, you will see that all of the clones have an easily recognizable signature in their magical auras,” Arraka says. “The flow of their auras has a sort of slithering motion to it. Kind of like a snake moving in the grass. Do you get what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, I think I get it,” I say.
“Hey, I think I can see it too!” Hadrik says. “This is great! Now we just need to see which of them don’t carry this signature, and we’ll know who the originals are!”
“Uh-huh,” Arraka says. “Good luck with that.”
“Why are you saying this?” Kate says.
“Because I already checked,” Arraka says. “Twice. None of them are the originals.”
“Are you saying that the real mages were never actually here, and they just cast the illusion spell from afar?” Daren asks.
“No,” Arraka says. “I’ve been monitoring the whole area around us ever since I noticed that the streets were empty, and I guarantee you that the only mages who were close enough to cast an illusion spell on us were the two that ambushed us.”
“But that makes no sense,” I say. “If those two were the real mages, then what happened to them? Did they just turn into illusions as well when they cast the spell?”
Suddenly, an idea comes to me.
“Wait…” I say. “I think I may be onto something, but I’ll need some confirmation before I’m sure. Illuna, check my thinking. Could this all be an illusion? Not just the clones before us, but the whole world around us, too? You know, like that time with the shaman.”
“No, that’s impossible,” Illuna says. “If a mind affecting spell of that caliber had been cast on us, then there should have been a visual effect of some sort, for all of us to see, in the same way that the underground caverns were filled with smoke when the shaman cast his spell. There was no such—”
Illuna pauses for a second, as realization dawns upon her.
“The green light!” she says. “Of course! I should have realized it immediately! This also explains why their so called trap affected Rose. It’s because the reverse is what actually happened. Their mind affecting spell could not target Rose, and so, it appeared to us as if she’d been rendered unconscious. It’s probably the same for Flower as well.”
“Great,” Daren says. “So we’re back to square one, then. We need to find the real mages so we can kill them and get out of the illusion.”
“No, we don’t,” Illuna says. “We only needed to do that with the shaman because he’d trapped himself in the illusion with us in order to prevent us from escaping, remember? Since the mages are not actually here with us, it means that this illusion’s main purpose was not to kill us, but to buy time so that they could kill us in the real world while we were defenseless. This leads me to believe that time is flowing at the same speed here as in the real world, which is different from what we experienced in the shaman ritual.”
“Oh gods,” Kate says. “If that’s true, then it means that Flower has been fighting the two mages by herself in the real world all this time!”
“Most likely,” Illuna says. “We need to get out of here quick. Everyone, close your eyes and start visualizing the moments before the mages cast the illusion on us. You need to do this with the conviction that the image in your head represents the real world, and that you want to return to it. If we all do this at once, we’ll break the illusion’s effect over us.”
We all close our eyes and start doing as Illuna said. As I get a clear image of the city’s streets in my mind, the image starts to become clearer and clearer, until I feel myself getting pulled into it, and suddenly I realize that my imagination had become reality without me even noticing it. As I open my eyes, I see myself standing in the middle of the street, but everything looks a lot different from how I remembered it.
There are craters all around us, the walls from the houses on the side of the street have all been charred, and there’s a huge skeletal dragon standing right in front of us. Rose is on her knees, crying, and Flower looks like she’s barely able to stand on her feet, but she’s staring at the dragon defiantly. She is bruised all over, and her clothes are a complete mess, but there is a very intimidating aura surrounding her, feeling as if it were made from a fire hotter than that of her elemental magic. When Flower senses that we’ve finally awoken from the illusion spell, she turns to us and she gives us a tired smile.
“You broke the spell!” the girl says. “I knew you could do it. I knew it…”
As she utters the last words, Flower’s eyes slowly close, and then she drops to the ground, unconscious. Daren is now hurrying over to her side, in order to shield her from the dragon, in case it decides to strike her while she’s down.
“She was so reckless…” Rose says, as she’s holding back her tears. “She never stopped fighting even after she had clearly exceeded her limits. She was desperately trying to protect you, even at the cost of her own life…”
“It’s alright,” Illuna says, as she takes control of the girl’s body, but she doesn’t get up from the ground. “The girl only fainted due to exhaustion. She’s not going to die.”
“Do you see what you’ve done now, fool?” Zack the necroman
cer tells his ally. “If your useless god’s spell had worked properly like you said it would, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”
“Don’t you dare pin this on me!” the mage in green robes says, while he’s sweating all over, looking as if he’s about to faint from exhaustion as well. “My spell was never designed to work against fusioned souls. It just targeted the soul that was controlling the body at the time and left the other one alone. There was no way I could have prevented it from happening. You’re the only one to blame for this, you stingy bastard! If you had just used that stillwater summoning spell of yours when I told you to, they would have all died within seconds.”
“Be quiet, heathen,” Zack says. “I can only cast that spell once a day. It would be an insult to the great God of Death Ulruk if I were to waste its one daily use so early in the morning, on the likes of them.”
“Are you kidding me?!” the green robed mage says. “Do you have any idea how much magical energy I needed to spend in order to keep them in that illusion for so long? I had to cancel all of my protections two hours ago just so I’d be able to cast the damn spell! I don’t even have my magic shield on right now!”
Just as the green robed mage stops talking, an ice cone passes straight through his head, and soon afterwards he falls on the ground, lifeless.
“Thanks for letting me know,” Kate says.
“You wench!” Zack says, furious. “Do you have no honor?”
“It’s his own damn fault for not paying attention during a fight,” Kate says. “And don’t you talk to me about honor! You would have done the exact same thing to us if Flower hadn’t protected us while we were defenseless.”
“Don’t you lecture me, wench!” Zack says. “There is no need for honor when killing irredeemable heathens such as you!”
“Wasn’t your friend a heathen too, though?” I say. “Why would there have been any need for honor when killing him, then?”
“Because unlike you, he was actually serving the God of Death’s cause!” Zack shouts. “You, on the other hand, are so beyond salvation that you can only serve him through your deaths! It is therefore my duty to send you to him before you stray even further from the righteous path.”
Magium: The Mage Tournament: Book 1 Page 33