by John Bierce
Talia focused her senses back on the tracking spell and…
There was Hugh and Godrick, being held in the air by Anders. All three were being targeted by misshapen, spinning spheres of lava being launched through the air.
Godrick had told her the proper names for all of Abyla’s known combat spells when they were studying her, but right now, Talia couldn’t care less about spell names.
The damn woman was trying to kill her friends.
Bakori was halfway to Talia when he simply exploded in a shower of ichor and flames. All that remained was a pair of crisped, barely connected legs.
Talia smiled grimly at that as she readied a spellform in her mind’s eye. She hadn’t stopped pumping bone mana into the dagger, and when dragonbone was filled past capacity, well…
Boom.
She paid no mind to the ichor misting down on her from blowing up Bakori as she pumped her dream mana into the spellform she’d envisioned.
All of her dream mana.
A writhing column of dreamfire as thick as her torso shot out of her outstretched hands. Talia felt like it should make a noise, but it was utterly silent as it stretched towards Abyla.
Talia could feel… not heat, but something radiate off the beam of dreamfire. She’d never used this much dream mana at once, or attempted a spell this large before. Ripples of hallucinatory nonsense pulsed out from the beam. The lava below it bloomed into fanged flowers and oatmeal shoes, and the air around it began to turn blue and sparkly.
Abyla desperately lifted a wave of molten rock to block the oncoming beam, but it punched through without slowing or shrinking noticeably, and the wave dissolved into butterfly winged fish, which in turn simply faded into mist.
The beam struck Abyla, and the woman erupted into a burst of caustic sounds, tastes heavier than stone, and colors that rasped across the skin like a cat’s tongue, even from where Talia stood.
The magma— that was what Godrick had called it, magma— simply collapsed to the ground instantly, splashing and rolling. The lava bombs already in the air kept flying, but Anders was already deflecting them easily.
Talia’s mana reservoir emptied completely, and the beam flickered out like it had never happened.
The instant it did, she sagged, almost collapsing to the ground. She forced herself to stand, however, and started sprinting towards Hugh.
She dodged around puddles of magma and leapt over rivulets. She could feel the heat even through her enchanted clothing.
Talia just needed to get in earshot of Hugh.
Behind her, Bakori’s torso had already grown back up to his ribcage, streamers of energy rushing into him from inside the mountain.
The instant Anders lowered Hugh and Godrick to the ground, Hugh started running for Talia. Not fast— the imp bite and his countless bruises and burns, not to mention his exhaustion, were finally catching up to him.
“Hugh!” Talia yelled, but the rest of her words were drowned out by a bellow as Bakori stood back up, all regenerated save for a single arm and some skin, and a few rents in his distended, transparent stomach.
Hugh unwillingly came to a stop at that.
“Hugh!” Talia yelled, as Bakori began to run after her, “Make your book stop blocking scrying!”
What? Why would…?
Hugh shook his head and relayed the message to the book. Behind Talia, more of Anders’ silk glyphs began launching magical assaults at Bakori, but the demon barely slowed.
Hugh’s spellbook dropped the scrying shield it had been holding since the labyrinth.
A cool breeze immediately picked up, and a shadow rose over the peak of Skyhold.
“What a proper mess this is,” Ilinia Kaen Das said, and in a burst of wind, Bakori was yanked into the sky.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Don't Forget to Chew Your Food
Hugh turned around, and the view of the Skyreach Range gave way to what should be a view of the Endless Erg.
Ilinia Kaen Das stood in the way.
Or, rather, a stormcloud in the shape of Ilinia stood in the way. It towered over Skyhold, idly bouncing something tiny in the palm of its cloudy fist. With a start, Hugh realized it was Bakori.
“It’s about time you dropped that scrying shield, Hugh.” Ilinia said. When the stormcloud spoke, lightning crackled in its mouth. “I couldn’t interfere so long as it was blocking me from seeing into the council chamber. And Talia, well done, dearie!”
“I couldn’t have done it without you!” Talia said as she came to a stop next to Hugh. He silently handed her the still hot tracking pin with a smile.
In the center of Skyhold’s new lava lake, another breeze picked up Sabae and flew her towards them.
“She basically flew me most of the way up through the mountain,” Talia confided to Hugh, “until we got close to your book’s weird scrying shield.”
She took the pin, tucked it away in her shoe, and then grabbed Hugh in a bear hug and squeezed. A moment later, Sabae was set down next to them, and unsteadily staggered over to join their embrace.
Bakori’s voice drifted to them on the wind, despite the distance. “How is this possible? You’re hundreds of leagues away!”
“I’m exactly a hundred leagues away, little demon,” Ilinia said. “Well within my range, but far out of the range of your vile little spellform wrecking field.”
Hugh and Sabae exchanged smiles at that. Ilinia had told Hugh, right in front of everyone, how she’d enjoyed watching Hugh protect Theras Tel from the sandstorm, and Theras Tel was a hell of a lot more than a hundred leagues away from Ras Andis.
Godrick limped up to them— Hugh had no idea when Godrick had hurt his leg, but then, Hugh was feeling a lot of aches and pains right now that he didn’t know the origin of as well— and wrapped all three of them in a hug.
And squeezed.
“Too hard, too hard!” Hugh managed to wheeze.
Godrick chuckled, and eased up a little.
“Who do you think you are?” demanded Bakori. “Under what right do you…”
“You know damn well who I am,” Ilinia said. “And you know damn well how long of a list of titles I have. Right now, though, all you need to know is that I’m the woman whose granddaughter you just tried to kill.”
Bakori barely had time to scream before the stormcloud shaped like Sabae’s grandmother tossed the demon into her castle-sized mouth and began to chew.
Streamers of vomit-colored energy began to pour up from Skyhold to regenerate Bakori’s wounds.
Sabae slowly disengaged from the hug. “You all smell awful,” she whispered.
Godrick snapped his fingers, and the smell vanished.
Hugh frowned suddenly. “It’s my fault backup took so long to get here. If my book hadn’t been blocking scrying, your grandmother might have…”
Sabae covered Hugh’s mouth with her hand. “No. I was the one to order you to shield us from scrying, the responsibility lies with me. I honestly never thought your book would prevent the jaws of the trap closing on Bakori.”
“Also,” Sabae added, “I kinda expected it to be Kanderon who’d be the jaws of the trap, and I guess I thought my grandmother was just doing some sort of information exchange or something. A bit obvious in retrospect, I suppose.”
Hugh started to say something, but Sabae hushed him as a pair of figures approached. Best not to give away incriminating details.
“I’ve got to admit,” Anders said as he helped a wounded Headmaster Tarik towards them, “This is the most unusual exam day I’ve ever experienced.”
The six of them turned to watch Ilinia chew on Bakori.
No one left the mountaintop while regeneration energy was still streaming up from the mountain to Bakori, though Tarik was kind enough to sculpt chairs out of stone for them to sit on.
When mages came up from below to investigate the council chamber, Anders just shushed them, and told them to send a message to the council members who had gone to deal with Jaskolskus.
“That,” Ilinia said, “was disgusting.”
Talia sighed. “I want to be your grandmother when I get old, Sabae.”
Alustin returned a day later, and Kanderon and the remaining councilors soon after that. The mountain was still a hive of activity, with mages repairing the damage, healing the wounded, and going over Skyhold with a fine-toothed comb for any more traitors.
Over two hundred people had died, most of them trained battle mages. Amazingly, less than a tenth of the casualties had been students, despite the huge number of them in and near the labyrinth during the breakout.
Sabae had strong suspicions regarding that, but she hadn’t voiced them to anyone yet.
It had been a week, and Alustin had just now found the time to meet with them, apart from a long debriefing in front of the remaining council members, which hadn’t given them a chance to ask any sensitive questions of Alustin or Kanderon.
Sabae had managed to sneak a letter to Alustin informing him of a few more sensitive details, like the fact that Anders was selling Skyhold secrets.
“You used us as bait,” Sabae said, the instant the apprentices had settled in the comfortable, battered armchairs in Alustin’s office.
The paper mage gave her a pained look and sighed. “It wasn’t my idea, but I’m not going to argue I don’t share responsibility. I could have told you what Kanderon was planning from the first, but I didn’t.”
“You knew exactly who the traitor was from the start, didn’t you?” Sabae said angrily.
Alustin nodded. “We did. Well, we didn’t know that Anders was selling secrets, but Kanderon knew Abyla was working for Bakori the instant he sent her the order to vote against the alternate test.”
“Wait, what?” Talia demanded angrily. “You knew? What was even the point of the investigation, then? You and Kanderon almost got us all killed!”
“Like I said,” Sabae replied, still staring at Alustin, “we were being used as bait. The whole investigation was a sham, meant to put pressure on Bakori to accelerate his plans.”
“I mean, we already guessed that Kanderon was trying to lure out Bakori,” Hugh said uncertainly. “Is this really that much worse?”
“Yes,” Talia snapped. “We wasted how many hours this year on this stupid investigation, and it was all for nothing?”
“Also, yeh know,” Godrick said, “there were all the people that died.”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Alustin insisted, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “Again, you figured out that there was a second traitor…”
“Avah figured out what Anders was doing,” Talia interrupted irritably, “not us.”
Alustin paused at that. “Wait, Avah did what now?”
Sabae rolled her eyes as Hugh and Talia gave a somewhat garbled explanation of that. She could see Godrick smirking at their divergent explanations for the situation.
Alustin lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes in exasperation.
“Alright, alright, let’s just not mention that part to Kanderon?” Alustin said. “And please ask your girlfriend not to tell anyone about any of this, Hugh.”
Hugh grew a little quiet at that. Things had been a little… strained between them since the battle against Bakori. There had been quite a bit of crying, though no fights.
“I seem to recall you predicting exactly this outcome, Talia,” Alustin said. “Two traitors, one of whom was Anders. I really don’t think you need to be grumpy about Avah figuring it out.”
Talia brightened up immediately. “Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I? I guess life does turn out like in stories after all, doesn’t it?”
She said that last with a smirk at Sabae, who struggled not to roll her eyes again. Talia was going to be insufferable about that.
Part of Sabae didn’t mind that at all.
“In addition, your investigation served its intended purpose quite well,” Alustin said. “It was the stick that pushed Bakori into moving early by threatening to expose his ally on the council, with Kanderon’s absence on Midsummer serving as the carrot luring him up. He moved far ahead of when we anticipated him to, based on our scouting of his forces in the labyrinth. If he’d waited a few years, he could have flooded Skyhold with more imps than Kanderon and the full council could have dealt with easily, at least not without far greater casualties in Skyhold.”
Talia brightened at that.
“Ah’m a little shocked yeh got me da to go with this plan,” Godrick said. “He seems… rather angry with yeh right now.”
Alustin gave another pained look. “So… things might not have actually worked out quite like we planned. The four of you were actually supposed to be shadowed by a team of Librarians Errant that had been hiding in the labyrinth, but you somehow managed to give them the slip minutes into entering the first floor.”
If Sabae had to guess, that had probably been thanks to Godrick’s enchanted hammer and Hugh’s spellbook helping guide them past dangers in the labyrinth.
“The four of you were never intended to…” Alustin sighed, taking off his glasses again, “fight your way through an army of imps out of the labyrinth, engage in a running battle with said imps all the way through the mountain, break through both a besieging horde of imps and a military grade magical barrier, confront the council, expose a traitor, engage in combat with said traitor, who happened to be one of the deadliest battlemages alive, somehow manage to kill said traitor after she eliminated multiple other council members, accidentally delay Ilinia from arriving and destroying Bakori, and then survive a confrontation with a demon who could easily have been counted among the great powers.”
Alustin closed his eyes. “No, you were supposed to just be escorted to a hidden safe house we’d established in the labyrinth after you picked up your tokens at the entrance to the second floor, and guarded there until Bakori was dead and the threat was over.”
Everyone was silent for a little bit. When put that way, their actions might be… a little on the absurd side. It might have been a little more sensible to hide, rather than… well.
“You forgot kill a giant awful nightmare bird…” Talia said.
“Terrorbird,” Godrick interrupted.
“And rescue a damsel in distress,” Talia finished, ignoring Godrick. “Also, it should be pointed out that one of the councilors actually ran away, unlike us.”
Their teacher sighed and opened his eyes again. “No, let’s not forget any of that.”
“Has Rutliss shown up at all?” Sabae asked.
“Nah, still missin’,” Godrick said. “Me da reckons he’s ashamed ta show his face and ran fer it.”
Alustin sighed even louder. “I have a lot more work to do, do you have any other questions?”
“It doesn’t seem very responsible of Kanderon to put that much human life at risk,” Hugh said uncertainly.
“Kanderon doesn’t care that much about human life, to be honest,” Alustin said, “save for on the scale of cities and civilizations. I doubt she generally notices much of a difference between a human dying of old age and a human dying young in battle.”
Sabae had basically suspected as much, but it was still a sobering thing to hear from Alustin.
“What is the council guarding?” Talia asked. “What’s with that weird metal seal?”
Alustin actually seemed a little relieved at this question. “It’s the entrance to an extraplanar vault Kanderon built soon after the founding of Skyhold, with the assistance of several other archmages. It can only be opened on Midsummer and Midwinter, and… well, it contains things too dangerous to use and that, for one reason or another, can’t be destroyed.”
“Like what?” Talia asked, visibly excited at the thought of weapons too dangerous to use.
“The only known egg of an Issen-Derin queen, held in stasis. Some sort of Ithonian artificial plague engine. A red aether crystal sword that
generates uncontrollable, nigh-inextinguishable wildfires. A sphere that corrupts and twists people’s affinities permanently and horribly. A four-foot-long tuning fork that can generate mana deserts lasting decades. A pair of sentient leather boots that has a habit of assassinating rulers in ridiculous ways.” Alustin had an odd look on his face. “And those are just some of the tamer items near the entrance.”
“I feel like it would be easy to destroy a pair of boots,” Talia said.
“You’d really think so,” Alustin muttered irritably. “I’ll lend you its file sometime.”
“What was Bakori after? Ah highly doubt it was a pair a’ boots,” Godrick said.
Alustin snorted. “No, indeed. Near the back of the vault is a rather delicate wand made of some sort of chitin. Kanderon believes is an artifact of the Labyrinth Builders. It… well, she’s fairly convinced that Bakori could use it to destroy the labyrinth.”
No one commented on that.
“Any more questions?” Alustin asked, rubbing his eyes again and yawning. “I have a lot more work to do today.”
“What has Kanderon had you and the other Librarians Errant looking for all year?” Sabae said.
Hugh’s spellbook suddenly hovered up a few inches from his side, looking oddly interested.
“Looking for the lost city of Imperial Ithos,” Alustin said, sounding almost bored. He didn’t even look at them. “The weapon that Kanderon and the other Skyhold founders built to exile it out of our universe and make the entire world, including themselves, forget its location, is failing. We expect the city to return to our world in a matter of just a few years. Half the nations and great powers on Ithos are scrambling to figure out where it will reemerge, while the other half have realized something is going on and are trying to figure out what has everyone else so worked up.”
Alustin sighed when no one answered him. “I literally can’t tell you what we’re looking for,” he said.
Hugh’s spellbook was shifting its gaze eagerly back and forth between the apprentices and Alustin.
“But… yeh just told us what yeh were lookin’ for,” Godrick said.