“Ouch! Fuck!” shouted Brian as he scrambled to his feet, pulling sharp thorns from his hand.
“If this shit is poisonous, I’m going to be pissed,” Randolph mumbled.
“I don’t think the mission start location that Esoterica’s professors selected for us would be an instant death sentence, Randolph,” I chuckled, but picking the thorns out was painful, and blood was already running down my hand and wrist. Not a great start to a mission.
In the distance, there was a steep mountain. At the summit of that mountain, I knew, was our destination: The Obsidian Void Keep, home to some evil wizard or another, who was in possession of a great many magical items that we were supposed to liberate. This was an S-Ranked mission, meaning it was supposed to be super hard, with a relatively high likelihood of lethality.
“Why the fuck did I agree to this mission?” Brian said as he surveyed the harsh landscape.
“Cuz I said pretty please,” Randolph said. “And we both need to absorb some mana.”
“And you didn’t tell me how dangerous it was until I showed up,” I pointed out with an annoyed tone. No wonder Brian had asked me so nicely earlier. They were having trouble finding another mission collaborator and probably knew I wouldn’t ask many questions, the sneaky bastards.
“Wait a minute,” said Brian, a third eye blinking open in the center of his forehead. He raged a probing finger out and pointed in the direction of the mountain. “There are monsters here.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Randolph said.
Brian cleared his throat. “I mean, like, a bunch. More than we can handle.”
Silence fell for a minute as Randolph attempted to think of a witty retort, but concern stirred in us all. “What can you see?” I asked.
“Shamblers,” he said. “So he has some necromancy powers like you, Liam.”
“Anything else?” Randolph asked. “I’m not worried about some glorified zombies.”
“Star-spawn and Nightgaunts.”
I gulped. I knew Nightgaunts well. They were scary bastards, for sure. Their faceless demonic appearance would likely haunt my dreams for a while. “What are Star-spawn?” I asked.
“Lesser children of Cthulhu,” Randolph explained. “They’re bigger than a Nightgaunt, but squishier. They have tentacles on their face, they’re green, and they’ve got bat-like wings and humanoid limbs.
“Oh, is that all?” I asked sarcastically.
“So this guy is powerful enough to bind or summon Nightgaunts and Star-spawn, meaning he has void magic,” Brian pointed out. “That’s pretty damn rare.”
“How do you get that?” I asked, but no one answered. No one knew the answer.
After a while, Brian chimed back in. “I say we make a stealthy approach. Be slow, quiet, hide in the shadows, and make our way with caution.”
We nodded in agreement. We summoned our familiars and had them at the ready, then trudged onward, beginning our journey again, but the landscape was treacherous. Bumpy.
Thorny grass gave way to a swampy and gaseous terrain, and as we approached the mountain, it shifted again into a brittle rocky crust that felt hollow as though it were going to crack and give way at any moment.
We walked for hours through an alien world, inching our way closer to the mountain, when Brian, who was at the fore of the group, gestured for us to stop.
“What is it?” Randolph whispered.
“There’s something below us,” Brian said ominously.
Now that he mentioned it, I could feel something shifting beneath me as the hollow ground underfoot began to crack.
“Run!” he shouted, and we wasted no time in complying with the suggestion. Our feet hit the ground hard, though, and I had no reason to suspect that was a good thing either as footstep after footstep planted new cracks and fractures in the earth.
Suddenly, I heard a thunderous eruption sounding from behind me—heard it and felt it. I looked back to see a few of the creatures Brian and Randolph had mentioned—Star-spawn—pouring straight for us.
I wanted to fight, really, but with the hollow earth cracking beneath me, I knew stopping for a tussle wasn’t an option, so I kept on charging for the mountain, hoping to find stable footing before too long. However, as we got closer, we saw a horde of Shamblers—basically zombies—coming down a trail on the side of the mountain. Good, I thought. I could use that.
I began preparing the spell of my life, an augmented Control Undead spell that was designed to turn all undead into my minions, affecting a certain radius of effect. I tried to aim the attack to catch as many of them as I could, and the moment I was in range I let the spell rip and watched as black mist poured from my cane onto the throng and my new Shamblers turned on the few that hadn’t been hit by the spell.
“The fuck is happening up ahead?” Brian pointed at the scene I had caused.
“Oh, the Shamblers are mine now,” I gloated casually as I continued to run for my life toward the horde and away from the horror that was pursuing us.
Finally, the terrain changed and our feet hit solid ground, and the three of us, and our familiars, pivoted instantly to face our assailants. We realized that there were four Star-spawn and three Nightgaunts, among some other smaller batrachian monsters no one had identified for me.
I extended both arms outward and focused my willpower, launching flaming skulls at one of the Star-spawn. Uther did his part as well, twinning the spell successfully and launching his own tinier flaming skulls from his yipping maw. Meanwhile, beams of light and fire blazed past me, coming from my allies as they held their own easily, taking out the smaller, toadlike monsters as they leaped to their doom, getting nary a hit on any of us.
I also took out the Star-spawn pursuing me. I raised my hand even higher and pointed it at the dead monster tumbling from the sky, willing it to be mine. And so it came to be, by the power of my necromancy.
Its eyes lit back up, this time a sickly green, and it corrected itself before hitting the ground, flying toward me and picking me up. I fired flaming skulls from above but realized what I needed to do to win this fight was to bring the cavalry.
“Guys, I’m going to focus on directing the Shamblers!” I shouted. “Stay alive or follow me!”
Randolph sneered cockily. “We’ve got this. Do whatever it is you necromancers do.”
I had to laugh. Oh, that’s exactly what I plan to do.
Chapter 17
RANDOLPH: Disarming Developments
Although he was constantly firing magic missiles with each slash of his rapier, Randolph’s eyes were fixed on the insanity of the scene that was laid out atop the mountain pass above him. Liam Elloway, Mr. Necromancer Extraordinaire himself, was hurling legions of undead at the Star-spawn, and one after another they were laid waste to by his horde of the damned.
“Motherfucker—” but Randolph’s epithet was interrupted by the unusually shrill cries of Brian Adder coming from behind him.
The crimson sky swirled with chaotic energy, providing an eerie and unnatural-seeming light to the surface of the planet. Its reddish hue obscured much of the blood that had been spilled. Now, joining the blood-spilling was Brian. Randolph looked over his shoulder, merely glancing at first, but was forced to pivot immediately at the sight of what he witnessed.
Brian had been run through the shoulder by the claws of a Nightgaunt, and it was in the process of ripping the arm from his body by the looks of things.
“M’varka!” Randolph shouted, rapidly performing an intricate series of swipes with his rapier. A searing beam of fire blasted from the tip of the sword, and Randolph struggled to hold his grip—and his aim—steady.
The Nightgaunt was hit squarely in its head from its profile angle. The beam caused it to rip its claws from Brian abruptly, and the injured sorcerer collapsed to the ground, landing on his backside with his hands catching the rocky alien soil.
The monster struggled to shake off the effects of the attack, but when it had done so, it had predictably set it
s sights upon its assailant. Randolph had expected this—in fact, he’d counted on it.
What he hadn’t had time to count on, though, was the flood of monsters heading for him from all other sides. Focusing his assault on the Nightgaunt had opened him up. There were still perhaps a dozen other creatures on their share of the battlefield, and he didn’t have the time to assess how Liam was faring, though Randolph suspected the necromancer was just fine.
He fired off a flame nova spell, the most powerful type of magic he could handle, but as the ring of fire spread outward from him, he was dismayed to see how few of his monstrous foes were inconvenienced by the assault. His magic was much more potent when charged, but there was scant time for that.
To make matters worse, Randolph became aware of a shadow looming over them. He looked up, hesitant to see what he assumed might be yet another instrument of his painful demise.
“Need a hand?” Liam’s voice rang out cockily. He flew to the rescue on the back of an undead Star-spawn, its tentacled maw dangling only a few yards from Randolph’s head. The force of the gust from its flight nearly pushed him to the ground.
From the back of the zombified Star-spawn, Liam began firing blast after blast of explosive flaming skulls at the monsters that were crowding around Randolph. The shrill laugh that the skulls made as they flew through the air toward their targets was freaky even to Randolph. Meanwhile, on the ground, a wolf-sized Uther was tearing through the smaller abominations. “Good boy!” Liam shouted, throwing a chunk of raw meat to the fox below him. Uther caught it in his jaws, swallowed, and continued his bloody work. The dude apparently brought raw meat on the mission to play with his familiar.
Randolph, meanwhile, wasn’t about to be made a damsel of. He used the sudden appearance of his ally as a distraction and rushed over to Brian, who was lifting himself back onto his feet. His right arm was dangling by a sinewy thread.
“Hang in there,” Randolph said as he pushed his back up against Brian’s. Then they started blasting.
“Doing what I can,” Brian said, “But I have to deal with this soon or—”
“I know.” The blood loss was severe.
And then the horde came. Within a minute or two, it was over. Over a hundred of Liam’s undead minions had swarmed the battlefield. The ultimate deus ex machina.
Randolph gritted his teeth tensely as he watched the scene unfold. He’d been at Esoterica for four years. He’d never seen power like this. He could handle one, maybe two minions at a time. Liam had an army of the dead within the first couple of weeks of his arrival at Esoterica.
“This is fucking insane,” Brian whispered in awe.
“Hacks,” Randolph joked. “Devs, please nerf.”
The obsidian castle glinted at the summit of the mountain Liam had been scaling before he flew to their rescue. Liam himself descended on the back of the undead Star-spawn and leaped gracefully onto the ground, executing a flawless three-point landing. Well, it seemed flawless at first, until Randolph noticed him struggling to stand back up.
“Oh, shit, that’s right,” Randolph grunted. “Your leg. Be careful, dude!”
“Forget my damn leg,” Liam said, shaking his head. “What are we going to do about his arm?”
Randolph shook his head in exasperation, throwing up his hands at the impossible situation. “We aren’t even finished with the mission,” he acknowledged with a whine. “We still have to get into and through the castle!”
“It’s fine,” Brian said. “Take off the arm.”
Randolph and Liam gawked at him.
“What?”
“Take off the arm, and use your fire, Randy, to cauterize it. I can heal fast enough once that’s done, but I can’t regrow an arm. It is what it is.” He looked at them with a vacant expression. His pupils were fully dilated.
“He’s in shock,” Liam said. “Let’s be quick so he has a chance to heal before he gets past the point of no return.” Liam raised a hand and reanimated the very Nightgaunt that ripped his arm loose to begin with. Randolph flashed him a look of disgust. “You got any better ideas?” Liam asked.
“No,” Randolph admitted. “There are spells for quick cuts, but I don’t remember them.” His gut stung with shame and guilt as he suddenly wished he’d prepared more for this sort of eventuality. Now Brian would lose his right arm over this.
The undead Nightgaunt approached Brian, but he showed little change in his expression. Its claws flashed in the air as it took his wrist in one hand and slashed down at the shoulder with the other, cleanly removing the arm just below the socket.
Randolph was ready. He inserted himself, and his hands lit up with fire that he directed to the wound, cooking Brian’s flesh, knocking him over with pain, but Randolph didn’t let go. He followed him all the way to the ground, and his fiery grip on his bleeding socket slowly became a comforting arm around his back. Liam watched wordlessly.
“Can you heal?” he asked.
“Dammit, Liam, give him some time!” Randolph said.
Liam nodded and sat down, legs crossed, in front of them. “Relax,” he said reassuringly. “I’m in no hurry.” For a moment, it looked as though he were going to reach a hand out to Brian, but he seemed to pull back at the last moment. Randolph wondered why but kept such reflections to himself. Instead, his eyes were fixed on Liam’s face.
Liam’s skin had grown more pallid as he became more comfortable with his power. Randolph also noticed his eyes becoming cloudier, little by little. Now, as he looked at Liam, it was hard to recognize the confused boy he first met in the cafeteria just over a week ago. He was looking at something else entirely now.
They sat in silence, waiting for some sign that Brian was recovering. Randolph felt quite unnerved by the presence of the army of the damned that encircled them. And suddenly, a thought occurred to him that made him chuckle at first until he finally roared with laughter.
Liam cocked an eyebrow and smiled at his sudden outburst. “What’s so funny?”
Randolph gestured to the horde of undead around them. “This was supposed to be a stealth mission, wasn’t it?”
At first Liam chuckled a bit as he understood the absurdity of the situation, but then he ultimately joined Randolph in laughing uproariously.
And then, to both of their surprise, there were some chuckles from Brian as well. They stopped laughing abruptly. Randolph pulled him in tighter, and Liam, too, leaned in closer.
“Okay, guys,” Brian said with a weak smile. “I think I’m good to go.” The wound didn’t look much better than a charred mess, but Brian seemed lucid, if not entirely back to normal, and that would have to be good enough.
Randolph and Liam helped him to his feet. Randolph groaned as his eye shifted back to the severed arm on the ground. This was going to be tough. He also warily noted Liam massaging his pained leg.
“Welp,” Randolph said with an anxious, trembly sigh. “Let’s storm the fucking castle.”
Chapter 18
BRIAN: The Obsidian Keep
The black castle, known to them from their assignment brief as the Obsidian Void Keep was nestled at the summit of the mountain that Liam had already cleared of many horrors. Now, only Liam’s own minions remained, Brian noted. From this vantage point, he couldn’t make out many details. It was a glossy black castle that reflected some of the red light of the eerily blood-colored sky. From here, it seemed rather large.
If they had needed to scale the mountain themselves, it would have been rough. Instead, though, they were able to fly on the backs of three Star-spawn, with an army of undead following on the ground beneath them.
“We’re going to get to the top hours before your posse,” Randolph noted as they soared through the air.
“Right, any thoughts on that?” Brian added.
Brian saw Liam shrug in front of him. “I guess we probably need to go on in without them,” he admitted. “The longer we wait, the more complicated it gets. Plus, having too many minions in the castle will just co
nfuse things. The Star-spawn and the Nightgaunts should be enough.”
“Agreed, then,” Randolph shouted out, probably just hoping to be heard over the fiercely blowing brimstone wind.
“Agreed!” Brian affirmed. “Maybe they can join the party later?”
The summit of the mountain was littered with green and purple crystalline formations jutting from the ground. Some glowed with an eldritch radiance. Others didn’t. The same yellow, thorny grass that plagued them on their initial arrival was here in clusters. Imposing pillars of light were visible in the distance, adding to the odd scene as they shot up into the sky, originating from a few points in the lowlands on the other side of the mountain.
“The hell is that?” Liam asked.
“Beats me,” Brian confessed. Randolph said nothing. Brian looked over at him. He seemed to be lost in thought.
They agreed to land in the shadow of a large crystal, hoping they hadn’t been spotted, although Brian was confident that someone was aware of their presence by now, given the mess they’d made on the mountainside and below.
“I think our chances are good regardless,” he said.
“What do you mean?” asked Liam with a quizzical look.
Brian shrugged. “I just think we probably already took care of their army. That’s the best he’s got.”
Finally, Randolph chimed in again. “Never underestimate a space wizard with a mysterious black castle on an alien planet that’s protected by an army of blasphemous horrors.”
Liam nodded in apparent agreement. “Words to live by.”
They dismounted their Star-spawn, which automatically seemed to fall into a protective flank in front of them, with the Nightgaunts taking the rear. Liam’s connection with them was clearly powerful. Brian was impressed at how practiced it seemed to be, and yet he knew it couldn’t have been. Liam had been given no time for a dress rehearsal for a situation like this one.
“Plan?” Liam asked concisely.
“Nah,” Randolph said with a dismissive wave.
Esoterica 1: Liam's Awakening: A Lovecraftian Fantasy Harem Adventure (Esoterica Chronicles) Page 15