Ethria- the Pioneer

by Aaron Holloway

  “It's just a larder. A dead end.” The guard said as he looked back to me. “And it's too small and bare for him to hide anywhere inside. He must have gone out the window.” I ran over to it followed closely by the Knight Captain and looked desperately for any sign of where the shaman might have landed. But there was nothing, just the dead Hobgoblin from earlier and some bushes with fine long looking thorns that even an elf would have had a hard time getting through without making a racket.

  I was about to explode with frustration but the Knight Captain beat me to it, grabbing one of the hobgoblin bodies and hurling it out the window. “Damn it all to the nine hells below! By the seven heavens, and the infinite celestial spheres above, why is it so gods damned difficult to find and kill one bastard goblin shaman!”

  I straightened a little, “my sentiments exactly, commander.”

  The man looked at me askance for a moment as if he suspected that I was mocking him, but something about his examination changed as he looked at me. “W-What? Do I have some schmutz on my face?” I asked wiping at non-existent leftover vomit I was worried was clinging to the scraggly brown-blond beard I had been growing since coming to Ethria.

  His eyes shifted slowly from me to the cauldron, and then back to me. He got this expression on his face that spoke to connections being made, and gears slowly turning. “How full was the cauldron?” He asked, and I grimaced. I turned towards it, and before I could warn the guard, the little shit goblin stain stood out of the soup, it had created out of human, goblin, warg, and hobgoblin body parts, and hit the poor man with some kind of ray spell.

  The guard raised his shield, but yelped in pain and dropped the buckler as it frosted over. The shaman then cast his analog of force bolt, denting the man's armor and sending him soaring into the larder. The Knight Captain charged, sword extended in front of him in a style I was not familiar with and smacked headlong into a shield that sprang to life with a wave of the shaman's hand.

  My field of vision filled with stars, and I looked at the options I had available to penetrate the shield. I had the Hammer and Armor Penetration options available, but from past experience, neither one seemed very effective against this kind of shield. I grabbed the last of the augmentations I had created just days ago and unleashed it. Back then, I didn’t really know what I was doing with it. Now? I knew exactly how to shape the mana to get the effect I wanted.

  The massive blob of acidic force energy shot and then splashed against the shield above the Knight-Commander's head. Slowly, the acidic magic ate away at the shield but did not break it, only weakened it. “Back up!” I shouted at the commander, and he did, not far enough. I grabbed the back of his armor and pulled him unceremoniously out of the way, as I unleashed a jet of flame at the shield, weakening it further. The shield, glowing gold, flickered and failed at the same time as the flames burned out.

  The second guard charged in sword up in the same way that the Knight Commander had, sword drawn across his arm and pointed at the shaman. He stabbed at the goblin, who ducked into the putrid water to escape the attack. When he re-emerged a second later, the shaman pushed the sword away and placed his staff directly under the guard's chin. The man's head exploded outwards with a saved spell that came from the shaman's staff.

  “Mardus no!” Tegin shouted in rage. I saw him pull a dagger from his belt, pull back and throw it straight at the goblins head. The shaman ducked again and came up with a great gout of putrid liquid as he cast force bolts wildly in our general direction.

  The spell hit my shield, “Gah!” I yelled as the pain of the hit vibrated up the bones in my arm. They felt like they were going to shatter. I let loose a bolt of my own and elongated the shield to be taller, thinner and cover more of me as I did. My bolt hit the shaman square in the head, but the little green bastard just laughed.

  In a guttural accent, almost painful to listen to, the goblin screeched “Mistress will kill you all! She will end you all with the bones of your friends! I will bring her here! Yes, I will. I will bring her here!” He looked down at himself, in the center of the pot, smiled, pulled a dagger from the sheath along his belt, and drew it across his own throat. Blood mixed with the viscera putrid water in a fountain of red and putrid brown liquids. The shaman lifted his staff in both hands dropping the dagger into the cauldron and let lose the last spell saved in the weapon.

  A brown, gold and red disk of swirling magic appeared in the air on the opposite side of the cauldron from me and the commander, and a woman screamed from far below us. That sounded like Salina! Sweat sprang to life and ran in rivulets down my back, as the disk coalesced into a solid image. I found myself entranced by the disk, and almost without thinking about it I walked forward.

  The image solidified to show a stone grey room, filled with shadowy figures. In the center of the room, I could make out a single figure, standing in front of a large altar. The figure had a dagger in hand, and with a hard thrust downwards created a fountain of blood. I couldn’t hear screams, but I felt them in the way that the silhouette gripped the shadowy figure's arms in desperation, the way it convulsed, and the way it's back arched as it tried to squirm away. This is a sacrificial chamber, I thought.

  The image zoomed in on the figure who had held the knife, still, its back was turned to me. Its shoulders heaved, in what I thought at first where sobs, but then as the being threw back its head, and its hood fell away I realized with horror that it was silent laughter. The figures face revealed, I was shocked seeing it was female.

  She had raven black hair cut short in a wild and uneven pixie cut. She wore a crazed expression as the arterial spray continued running down her pale face. The entire scene had an otherworldly, almost divine power to it, but it wasn’t a divinity I recognized.

  After a few seconds of watching this scene, with nothing happening or changing I grew confused. “Huh, what was the purpose of this spell?” I asked looking back at the knight commander. The commander looked like he was about to respond, but then horror crossed his visage.

  Confused, I turned back to the disk and found the woman staring directly at me, face massive in the image. “Wow!” I gripped my chest and took several deep calming breaths as I leaned against the cauldron.

  After a few seconds of deep breathing, I felt a hand on my back and looked up to find the Commander staring down at me concerned. “Oh I'm fine, just got startled is all. Her giant evil looking face could scare blind children.” The commander fought back a laugh, as I stood and faced the image.

  The woman was looking at us unnervingly, her eyes were deeply green with flecks of black throughout. She reacted and followed us when we moved, it was like she was actually seeing us. Well, perhaps she is. I thought. Spells can do some interesting things like that, and it's not much more advanced than using an old video call app . I waved at her and elicited a smile that quickly grew from pleasant, to disturbing. “I think she can see us,” I said as I continued to wave, a painfully fake smile on my face.

  The portal dipped lower to the ground and widened into what looked like a doorway. “Uh, does that look like a portal?” I asked and the Knight Commander drew his sword in response. “Yeah, me too” I said bringing my staff to bear in front of me, and began storing spells in the crystal it contained as fast as my cool down timers would allow. I had an idea for something new, something non-fire based. Hopefully it will be both useful, and prevent me from accidentally burning down the house.

  The woman's face disappeared as the doorway formed out of the disk, but when it finally settled from floor to ceiling, she stood on the other side of the portal, almost as if she were standing in the room with us. The woman, black robes swirling around her, beckoned us to come through to her side of the silvery door.

  “No way lady,” I said as I grabbed the shoulder of the commander who had taken a step towards it, sword having gone slack in his hand. “You work with the goblins, we don’t trust you one wit, do we commander?” I said this while looking directly at the commander, who eve
n now seemed transfixed by the shadowy silvery doorway.

  “That hardly seems true” the woman's voice, a pleasant soprano, came through as clear as if she were next to us. “Your friend certainly seems, enchanted, with me.” That too large to be fully sane smile came back to her lips, and it sent shivers down my still sweating back. I received a prompt then that confirmed my suspicions.

  “Enthralment save successful. Due to your emotional stability and inherent intelligence, you were able to detect and then successfully counter an intrusion into your emotional state by outside forces.”

  “Yeah, guys do stupid things for women.” I quipped, pulling the Commander back further and forcing him to face me. “Particularly the broody, insane, black-robed, blood sacrificing, goblin helping kind. Right Commander?” The man's head swiveled back to the shimmery pool.

  “You think I'm helping them?” Her voice echoed through the stone and wood complex of the kitchens. She laughed, and the sound though pleasant to the ear, nearly had me jumping out of my skin knowing that smile accompanied it. “I rule them, they are mine to do with as I please.” The Commander tried to walk forward again, straining hard against my grip.

  “Hey, hey moron,” I said trying to get his attention with anything I could. “What's your name?”

  “Huh?” He asked finally paying attention to me. “W-what was that?” He asked, his mind still clouded.

  “I asked you, what’s your name!” I nearly shouted in his face.

  “Uh, oh yeah. I am Knight Commander Tegin Traser, nephew to Lord Traser.” He said as he began to emerge from the daze. He shook his head, and the dull look in his eyes faded, replaced by the passionate, brave if a somewhat stupid young man that I had grown to somewhat know over the last hour or so. You can only see someone do something brave and bold so many times before you start to like the guy.

  Nothing like a little blood and death to bond you and the people you’ve seen it with together, right? I thought as I kept a firm grip on his upper arm. After another second or two, he seemed fully awake and aware again.

  I relaxed slightly and looked back at the portal. “You’re enthrallment failed witch!” I pointed my staff at the portal and unleashed one of the spells stored there. It was a simple Force Bolt, but it sped to the portal on my command. When it hit the silvery substance that made the thing, my spell disappeared along with a small portion of the pool where it had struck.

  The substance flowed back together, but the portal was visibly smaller now, diminished in some way. The woman's smile faded slightly, as I let out another with a similar effect.

  “Good thing I did this rather than fireball,” I said to virtually no one.

  “What?” Commander Traser asked.

  “Don’t worry about it, just thinking out loud,” I said and unleashed another bolt which disappeared with another chunk of the portal.

  I was about to cast more bolts until the entire pool was gone, but that's when the knight that had been sent flying into the larder chose to reappear stumbling out of the tiny storage room and nearly directly into the pool. “NO!” I yelled and lunged for him, but I was too late. My hand gripped the end of his cloak and I pulled. But the portal pulled harder, and I was lifted off my feet and dragged into the portal with the guard.

  ----

  Everything was black, there was no light but somehow I didn’t need it. I could still see everything, and hear it all, but there was nothing to see or hear. Even when I looked at my hand all I saw was the mater there, no air to breathe, no ground to walk on, it was a void. A place between places. As soon as I realized this I looked down and found my body was halfway through the portal, but slowly it crept through propelled by some force I didn't know. I heard two voices as if in an argument.

  “...He is mine!” The first voice said vehemently. “He chose to go through the portal. He is mine to do with as I see fit!”

  “No. He overcame your bewitching charms dark one. Him being here is a coincidence, a convergence of fates, not an act of his own will, or even his subverted will as was the case with the first. The spell you used from your master's domain demands a willing entrant even if enthralled, not an accidental one.”

  “And yet he is here! How can one enter my lord Tesh’s domain, MY domain, and not be mine!”

  “He is not there, yet.” The second female voice said sternly. It was my rock that voice, so different from the first, and yet just as feminine. If there was an antithesis to madness, a cure for the ailment of madness in auditory form, it was the second voice. Even as the first was the disease.

  “Only because YOU interfere where you are not welcome! Tesh, Tesh will destroy you and your kind! He will intercede here!”

  “The sleeping child will do no such thing. The fact that you have but a bare spark of the divine in you, allows you this intercession, this, explanation, as a courtesy. Nothing more. I will take back what is by all rights, mine.”

  “Ethria itself will intervene if you break the rules it has set forth regarding divine law!” The first voice said in a panicked, almost manic tone.

  “Do not quote the laws of Ethria’s founding to me darkling! I was born long before they were written. My divine spark saw the birthing of the first suns, the creation of the first stars in the sky! Though in my diminished state I am strained to remember it, I laid down my children's first seeds upon our homeworld before your child god's great grandsires were first conceived of in the minds of mortal beings, let alone their mother's wombs!”

  The void went silent a moment, as the two voices thought of what to say next. Finally the first spoke.

  “Fine, take him. I have the first, it is all I will need to break free of here. I have regained my power, I have regained my memories” The first voice said this smugly, pointedly as if taunting the second with this knowledge. “He will die in waves of the dead soon regardless of what you do here.”

  After a brief pause, a teenage male voice spoke. Definite, and final, as if sick of the games of the others. “So be it, necromancer. Warn your darkling masters, and let the contest be joined.

  Chapter 12: Investigations and Preparations

  “Always be prepared.” - Boy Scout Motto

  Laketown, Frega, 33rd, 2987 AoR

  I was hurled back through the portal, unceremoniously sprawled on the cold stone of the room I had just left. “Holy spheres above!” The Tegin Traser yelled “How did you get back?!” he grabbed me and hauled me to my feet.

  I shook myself and brushed the dust and blood from the floor off my pants l. “I-I don’t know,” I confessed as I turned towards the portal. What I saw froze my heart.

  A hand pushed against the silvery film of the portal and extended out coated in the stuff the portal was made of. The woman, the necromancer I now knew, slowly pushed her hand further, until nearly her entire arm, still coated, was protruding from the magical doorway.

  “What?! Does the binding still hold? But the sacrifice...” The necromancers voice trailed off as if confused.

  “No matter! The shaman did as instructed, there are at least a few useful tools there. I will show you my power!” She raised her silver-coated hand then and released a spell, dark purple and black bolts of magic spread throughout the room leaping from her fingers towards the dead bodies still hung from the deer hooks all along the wall next to us.

  There were five of them, the bodies, and as the spell struck each one, the black metal daggers piercing their hearts seemed to melt into them. The necromancers laughter filled the room, as the bodies began to twitch.

  I turned back to the portal, extended my staff, and said: “You have no power here, necromancer!” Because I have a thing for melodrama. I unleashed the spells I had been saving in the staff. A torrent of force bolts leaped from the staffs top crystal and struck the portal, each one disappearing a chunk of the silvery material. They came in a steady stream of strikes, it's not fast enough! I thought angrily, as the woman's laughter grew more shrill and unhinged.

  I forced the
spells faster through my staff, and the torrent became a deluge. Tens of bolts a second struck the portal and I had to grip my staff with both hands to keep the recoil from sending the spells in wild directions. When a bolt hit and disintegrated her silvery arm the laughing ceased.

  I had only stored about half the storage space full of the force spells, and soon the last bolt past through the golden yellow crystal, glowing hot with residual energy.

  The portal had been reduced to only a tiny silver sphere hanging in the air. I launched a force bolt from my hand this time, and the last vestiges of the portal disappeared with no more argument from the necromancer.

  I turned my attention to the writhing corpses on the wall. Their bodies were now covered in the black, tar-like metal substance the daggers had been made of. Their skin, eyes, hair and every distinguishing feature were buried and lost underneath what looked like a black, tight latex suit. If I had not seen what had been written on the dead, and if it didn’t come with the sharpening and elongating of their teeth, I might have felt as If I had stumbled into some kind of S&M club.

  The dead creatures pulled on their chains, their arms raised above their head not providing them much leverage to bring to bear their obviously enhanced strength. They barked and snapped at us, eyes black orbs covered with the latex, tar-like tight black substance that had been the daggers.

  The daggers themselves no nowhere to be found. The only one of the mutilated dead who had not transformed was the first woman who had screamed at the older man's death. Her body still hung naked and limp in her chains. The shaman must not have had time to finish the ritual, I thought as I took up a defensive stance next to Commander Tigan Trasser.

  I used my analyze ability on one of the glossy black undead creatures.

  “Name: Unknown, none given.

  Race: Human Undead, Reaver