The Trapped Mind Project (Emerilia Book 1)

by Michael Chatfield

  The red and white runes across its armor reminded Dave of the same runes that had been hidden within Josh’s blade.

  Undead Demon Lord

  Level 275

  Soul-Bound Xelur Demon Lord and victims

  It stepped out of the portal, lightning discharging off into the night’s sky. Its armored head turned to face the various guilds that had come but weren’t trusted to not have any more assassins and traitors.

  With a mangled yell, it charged their forces. A massive blade of black steel and dried blood cleaved through magical shields and metal shields, cutting down Players with ease.

  The Xelur Demon’s natural enhancements made it one hell of a tank, the fact that it was level 275 made all of the attacking forces pause.

  It let out a yell of rage that made everyone’s blood chill in their veins. A stream of Dark energy erupted from its left hand, like a twisting helix of darkness. It bore through Players and People of Emerilia; it didn’t kill them, but threw them in every direction.

  The sheer corruption of the spell was killing them slowly and painfully. It created life bonds, draining others’ Health, Stamina, and Mana to fill its own.

  Dave opened a channel to Josh.

  “Give me your five best rogues. I can make more of your blades—ten of them, no more,” Dave said.

  “I’ll give you ten, greater chance that they hit the bastard,” Josh said.

  “Send them.” Dave sat down. As he broke off his contact with a number of conjurations, the power flooded back to him. He pulled out all his remaining soul gems, draining them for all but the minimum to power themselves. “Deia, I need your power.”

  “Take it,” she said without hesitation.

  Dave smiled at her trust as he linked their armor and pulled the few percent she had extra.

  Their armor could hold so much power that a single percent was over ten times all the power that Dave could hold in his Mana pool. He started conjuring, daggers appearing around him. More power flooded in from his armor, allowing him to conjure above his original limits. With just one conjured item but replicated dozens of times it was easier for him to form them again and again. If he had a dozen different kinds of weapons the mental strain would have stopped him from repeat conjurings.

  ***

  “Neutral, what are you going to do about this?” Light demanded.

  “What am I going to do? Nothing. But I would warn you that the fight is not over until it’s over. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m a little busy.” With that, he disappeared from her greeting hall.

  “Did he just dismiss himself?” Ackall, the Lady of Light’s occasional bed-mate, asked.

  Rage crept into her being. How did he do that? I power the runes in this chamber myself. I can allow people to enter and exit as I desire. I didn’t clear him a path out of here but he left as if it was nothing.

  “Ackall, I want someone watching Neut. I fear that we have underestimated the meddling creature,” Light said.

  She knew that Neutral was the balancer of Emerilia, but she had thought that he was only capable of changing the rules. The power he displayed there…

  She had not maintained her position by being brash except when she was sure that her actions would not be overstepping their boundaries. She had thought herself the most powerful; now with Dark moving to exercise his power over Emerilia, the power balance would be thrown into chaos.

  She knew that Neutral cared for the People of Emerilia; it had led to more than one time where he had looked the other way so that she could exercise her power and balance against Dark.

  She was not above manipulating creatures and making a front to make her look like the good and great Lady of Light she was portrayed. Behind it all, she was just as calculating as the Dark Lord, making great displays of her power to gather people to it.

  She knew Neut to some degree. The creature had allowed a good number of things to happen on both sides. An outright slaughter of his people’s lands—that was not in the cards.

  Then again, I would be willing to lose that many people if it meant gaining a greater power advantage later. What is his angle?

  “Make sure that we have people who are capable of reporting the situation happening at Boran-al’s Citadel. I have a feeling this is not the end of the battle.”

  “It will be done, my lady.” Ackall bowed.

  Chapter 35: Woman of Flames

  Deia turned to face Dave. She’d been ordered by Josh to take a weapon from Dave in order to attack the Demon Lord, who was rushing through the enemy lines like some kind of hellish tank.

  In Dave’s hands, twin wicked blades that curved around a person’s fist and down the side of their forearm appeared. Gray smoke, the signature of his conjuration, pooled around the blades.

  Deia took them as another set started to form. She could see the power that was draining out of Dave, the sweat on his forehead from creating such powerful blades.

  The stats were a bare third of the actual creation’s strength but there were twenty of them instead of just two.

  Josh appeared above them, using his blink-step to reach them faster.

  Other rogues and rangers joined them.

  “Take the blades Dave makes—we’re going after that Demon Lord. These blades should pull the souls from it, weakening it and giving us better Stealth skills. We’re going to go in with a bunch of rangers who are going to turn it into a moving pincushion and keep it distracted. It is our job to get in and tear the mother fucker apart,” Josh said.

  Dave was panting, holding the ground as his body shook from fatigue.

  Deia wanted to get him away from the battlefield and get him back to full condition. She knew that wasn’t going to happen and she was running into the middle of battle.

  “Everyone good to go? These blades won’t last forever, so we’re going to need to hit hard and fucking fast,” Josh said.

  Deia tucked the blades into her second fighting inventory spot, accessing her first slot. Dave’s compound bow appeared in her hand and a quiver on her shoulder.

  No one raised any objections.

  “Let’s go kill that Frankenstein mother fucker,” Josh said.

  The eighteen rogues and rangers good at close quarters combat headed around the rear of the fighting, past mages slumped in fatigue and others using the dregs of their Mana to fire artillery spells. Between the Players and Dwarves who were clashing with the remaining cultists and the Elven rangers who were firing streams of arrows into the cultists at range, ballista jerked, their payloads going over the fighting lines to smash into the cultists.

  The cultists around the citadel had been whittled down to just seven.

  Deia saw as the ten highest strength cultists were turning from their portal. Dark energy pooled around them; one of their spells fired. Dave was still out of the fight for making the blades. Malsour was the only other person skilled enough in magical constructs to pull those spells apart.

  Four of the attacks were blunted; the fifth tore through four ranks of Dwarves and Players.

  The sixth and seventh didn’t seem to have any effect but every dead that was not blessed or had been risen before started to get to their feet.

  The ninth formed a shield, not around the citadel, but the entire area. They were keeping them inside the citadel; the hunters were now the hunted. Deia felt fear curl in her stomach.

  The reason that the chant had taken so long and they had used living sacrifices was not because they were weak; it was because they were marshaling their strength for the real fight.

  “Fire!” Josh called. Rangers who had also moved around the outside of the formations loosed arrows, which struck the Demon Lord in mid-swing.

  Deia loosed with her bow. The Demon Lord’s tough skin was only aided with the crude heavy armor it was wearing.

  Rogues blink-stepped or used assassination or any skill that might get them closer to the Demon Lord faster. The eighteen rogues and rangers were brutal in their attacks, hitting vulnerable
areas and between the armor. Deia switched her weapons, the bow disappearing as the twin blades ran along her arms.

  She felt strength, strength that she had never felt in her life, fill her; she knew that it was the armor enhancing her own skills. She ran like a blur, dragging her blades across the back of the creature’s knee, running past it as it started to turn to face its attackers. She ran up a defensive wall created by an Earth mage and jumped backward toward the Demon Lord.

  Fire poured from her hands, creating an arc of fire as she saw the Demon Lord moving as if in molasses. She plunged her blades into its neck, cutting out a great section of its meaty traps, flipping away and using its armored back as a launch pad.

  She shot off into the sky, raising her fists and turning herself in mid-flight.

  Her blow made the Demon Lord cry out in anger; pain no longer affected it, but losing its Health and limiting its function drove it further into its blood-rage. It turned, trying to face the flying Elf with twin streams of fire holding her aloft.

  Its knee buckled as several of Josh’s rogue and ranger party materialized from the shadows and drove their blades into the creature. It dropped to seventy-five percent Health and slammed its blade down in the ground. Black tendrils of energy searched for anything living, slamming into them and pulling them apart.

  Deia heard their screams but there was nothing to do: the Demon Lord’s AOE spell meant that she couldn’t get in close to damage it further. Screams not of Emerilia cut through the sounds of battle and even those of the dying.

  Deia’s head snapped over to see a large magical circle. Two of the ten powerful cultists devoted their power and any sacrifices they could get ahold of to the circle.

  Seems that they got a bit diverse in their spell casting after a few centuries buried in the earth.

  Deia hissed; when it looked as if they could deal with one thing, another took its place. There was nothing to do but continue the fight.

  Five thousand Dwarves and a thousand Elves with five hundred mages and nearly a thousand Players had been reduced to three thousand Dwarves, five hundred Elves, maybe two hundred mages and four hundred Players.

  Deia rushed toward the demon as it rose from its stance. Its leg and neck had healed as well as the damage by the archers. The blades’ attacks had not only attacked the creature’s body, but the very souls that powered it; their damage was not so easy to shrug off.

  Deia created a tunnel of fire around her; much as she created her flame cannon, she now made it much bigger and surrounded herself. The competing air pressures fought each other until she was sent screaming toward the Demon Lord.

  To others, night became day as a lance of blue fire hammered the Demon Lord as it finally got to its feet.

  Deia hit it right in the chest.

  The armor flared with runes trying to fight off her magical power.

  The demon started to fall as Deia focused her energy. Fire had always come to her more on an instinctual level. The teachings her father and Induca had given her refined that magical power, making it exacting and specific.

  The runes on the demon’s armor failed; she was wreathed in blue flames, her energy focused on its chest, burning through the armor plate.

  The other rogues and rangers didn’t waste the opportunity. Even five feet away, they couldn’t feel the heat of the attack but they could sense the sheer power that was pouring off Deia.

  The demon raised his hand to cast a spell. Deia leapt away, her blue flames falling away. Her massive reserves were dwindling but her armor had continued to gather power. It was enough to create a rough shield as the demon sped up and fired its spiral beam of darkness at her.

  She gritted her teeth, pouring everything into her shield. She could feel it failing as the ground around her shield was ripped up and thrown from the attack.

  Rogues’ and rangers’ blades sunk into the creature’s openings but it seemed to care little, focused on only killing her.

  Chapter 36: Dragons Return

  “This has gone on long enough,” Malsour said. Dave was in a nearly catatonic state; no human should have been channeling the kind of power that he was. It was enough magic to make a century-old dragon drop to their knees in exhaustion.

  Still, Dave pressed on. Cliff-Hill was his home; the people who lived there his friends. For a man who had so few friends in his past life, he treasured them as the rare people they were. It was hard to find true friends, to find people who were willing to lay down their lives for Dave. Dave was willing to do the same.

  Malsour had met few people like Dave and those in Cliff-Hill.

  “She really is like her mother.” Induca looked to her brother as her body grew and extended. A tail appeared from her clothes as her tanned appearance turned scaly and red, her face protruding into a snout.

  Malsour smiled.

  “Grandmother would be most displeased if we didn’t help her, and she does despise the Demon Lords who use her fires for their dark rituals.” Malsour’s voice grew deep and powerful as his body grew. Wings grew down his back as the black of his cloak spread across his clothes that turned into scales.

  He took to the skies. As a human, he was able to use just a tenth of his complete power. When in his true form, he could use it all.

  The battle seemed to pause for a moment as those gathered realized that they were in the presence of two beasts that had not been seen in centuries.

  Dragons once again flew the skies of Emerilia.

  The two dragons let out an ear-shattering screech, their claws tearing the shield surrounding the citadel apart. They crashed through it and out into the skies, cartwheeling around before tucking their wings and coming down straight at the Demon Lord.

  Their claws dug into the Demon Lord; its spell backfired as it was hauled into the sky with powerful wingbeats. It turned to fight its new attackers, only to be thrown clear of the citadel and over the camp at the base of its stairs.

  The Demon Lord brought down trees and left a trail of destruction in its flight. It roared in rage, pulling itself up. Malsour let out a bellow as he charged into battle.

  Induca followed her brother.

  Malsour had forgotten the rush of battle—the rush of his blood and the feel as he was able to use his Mana to its full. To test his limits against another. There were few who could challenge him but the Demon Lord was a worthy adversary. Malsour spat Darkness from his mouth at the Demon Lord.

  It fired back its own spell. The two waves of Darkness smashed into each other as Induca let loose with her fiery breath. Red flames poured down, hammering the Demon Lord.

  Malsour sensed another Mana buildup. He extended his senses and his eyes widened in alarm.

  *The Earth Lord’s forces have moved up; they are about to assault the camp! I will deal with the Demon Lord.*

  Induca let loose a frustrated noise; dipping low in an attack run, she let free a series of blue fire bolts, making the Demon Lord falter. She tilted up and away, turning toward the camp where the green light of Earth mages could be seen, forming magical artillery.

  Her Fire bolts ripped through the forest, crashing into the Earth Lord’s forces there. Her fire bolts were enough to stagger the Demon Lord, tilting him and making his beam go wide. Malsour redirected his magic, turning the demon’s spell against him before firing.

  The demon cried out and dropped to a knee. It was at fifty percent Health. Darkness seemed to stretch over its body and armor, empowering it.

  Malsour conjured Darkness’ Toll. A dome of black rose around the demon.

  The demon, empowered with its own buffs, tore free of the dome and jumped into the sky, conjuring Dark shadows under its feet to run across the skies.

  Malsour’s face grew into a deadly smile. Countering with shields and magical attacks, stone and metal met the demon’s blade.

  Darkness was not just the power of death, but the power of the inanimate. Something that the necros and the Demon Lord seemed to have missed.

  Metal spikes
shot out of the ground as if fired from a cannon.

  The demon forged a shield of Darkness, smashing one away, and dodging two others; the fourth smashed into its back plate. Its buff was the only thing keeping it together as the demon smashed a bolt of Dark energy away.

  It carried inward with a cut. Malsour twisted; he’d become too close to the creature.

  The demon cut his wing.

  Malsour dove, away from the Demon Lord, creating distance; the Demon Lord followed as fast as possible, sending Dark energy at him. Malsour twisted and flared his wings out, a wall of metal moving into the path of the Demon Lord.

  The lord smashed through, only to find a dozen more spikes headed for it.

  Malsour had used his flight to create runes on the spikes, runes that he had learned from the demon-killing daggers and Dave’s own tome.

  The Demon Lord avoided many, but two struck the Demon Lord, pulling souls from it.

  Malsour let their power free, seeing them dive toward the battle being waged around the citadel still.

  The Demon Lord pulled the blades free, falling to twenty percent Health. It dropped toward the ground. Its landing caused a crater in the middle of the Earth Lord’s creatures. It ripped the souls free from those who were dead around it.

  Malsour didn’t want to think what would’ve happened if the Demon Lord had used that move on the citadel.

  Malsour dove, seeing how the souls were rebuilding its Health and magical reserves. Malsour commanded the inanimate of the ground: rocks, metals, gems—all of them ripped into the Demon Lord.

  It wasn’t fast enough.

  Induca sent her own streams of fire into the Demon Lord.

  Wings as dark as Malsour’s and made of living shadow beat down on the ground as the Demon Lord came out of the destruction, leaping for Malsour.

  ***

  Dave had never felt so damned tired in his life. He circulated Mana through his body to pull himself upright and into a seated position.