by Aaron Oster
Unfortunately for her, Elyssa wasn’t hard of hearing, nor had she missed the implications.
“Sarah?” she asked, giving the human a quizzical look. “Who was she?”
The way Hilda had reacted told her it was a sensitive subject, and the very fact that Morgan hadn’t even brought her up told her that this Sarah was likely no longer alive. Though it was clear Hilda didn’t want to answer, she’d walked herself right into it and had no choice but to either refuser her outright or to give a straight answer.
“I guess you may as well know,” she said as the two of them strode into the center of the gardens, revealing a massive marble fountain, now painted red in the light of the setting sun.
“Sarah was his entire world,” Hilda continued. “She was his oldest friend, the only person who really cared for him, and someone who Morgan loved more than life itself.”
“What happened to her?” Elyssa asked, now understanding Morgan just a little better.
“She was part of the group that went along with him to fight the Pinnacle King of Winter, a monstrous beast who’d already killed millions and was on the verge of wiping out an entire kingdom. Morgan was the only one who survived.”
“He seems to be doing alright now,” Elyssa remarked.
Hilda snorted out a laugh at that.
“Appearances can be deceiving. Until you truly understand how much he loved her, you won’t be able to fathom the depths of pain and despair he fell into. It was so bad that he vanished off the face of the world for over two years. He only returned recently, at the start of the war.”
This piece of information piqued Elyssa’s interest. Why would Morgan vanish for such a specific amount of time, only to return when the threat of war was on the horizon? If she didn’t know better, she would assume that he’d been forewarned, just as they had. However, if Morgan had been gone for two years, it meant that he’d found out an entire year before they had. There was a lot here that wasn’t adding up, and Elyssa hated things she couldn’t understand.
She could piece it together if she really wanted to. Make them fit by playing around for a bit. But she was still missing too many pieces to get an accurate understanding, which meant that she would have to start asking a whole lot of questions.
“What do you think…?” she began, only to stop when Hilda held up a hand, her expression suddenly serious.
Her eyes scanned their surroundings, though her sight was limited by the wall of hedges stretching around the cobbled courtyard.
“What’s wrong?” Elyssa asked in a lowered voice, his own eyes scanning as well, and her ears perked for even the slightest sound.
“We’re being watched,” Hilda said, keeping her voice down. “I don’t know by how many, but none of them seem friendly.”
“How can you tell?” Elyssa asked, still not picking up on anything.
“A skill,” Hilda said, not elaborating any further. “How are you in a fight?”
“I can handle myself,” Elyssa replied.
She then reached down to the long skirt she wore and tore it up the side. She hated to ruin such a pretty dress, but it would hinder her movement, and no dress was worth dying for.
A second later, she finally caught sight of something, a flicker of black near the corner of her vision. When she turned, she saw nothing.
“Brace yourself,” Hilda muttered, placing her back to Elyssa’s. “Here they come.”
35
The guardian screeched in pain as the spears lanced into its hide, punching holes several inches deep before unleashing their payload of electricity directly into its muscles. While he streamed more lightning into the constructs, he used Earthen Shift to lock its legs in place, hobbling it up to the knees. He then used Maximum Increase, quadrupling his Strength and Agility, and dashed forward, summoning another violet spear and thrusting it toward the guardian’s unprotected eye.
For just a moment, Morgan was sure the fight was over. He’d locked its muscles by using lightning and its legs by using stone shackles. Now, he was going to end it in a single blow. The guardian, though, seemed to be made up of tougher stuff. As he jabbed forward, it pulled hard to one side, a wing snapping open and throwing it to the ground.
The stone around its legs shattered, and though the spears continued to force lightning into its body, nothing prevented the beast from using a skill. It screamed, a sonic wail that made Grace’s attacks look like a joke in comparison. Though Morgan was fast, he wasn’t faster than the speed of sound, not without the aid of one specific skill.
The waves slammed into him, tearing at his eardrums and sending him flying back. He hit the ground, bouncing several times before regaining his feet, his ears ringing from the force of the impact. His hand moved to his ear, and though he was expecting to see blood, his fingers came away clean. The ringing was still there, though Morgan had no time to waste. His Maximum Increase would wear off soon, and then he’d need to wait nearly half a minute to use it again.
While that might not have seemed like much, in a fight, that amount of time was an eternity. His supermage shield flared around his body as he ran forward once more, his feet barely even touching the ground as he moved. The guardian was back on its feet, and with a single swipe of its claws, shattered the spears in its side.
As Morgan thrust forward, violet light flared around its body, and though he struck with full force, the beast’s shield held. It retaliated by swiping out with its front talons, forcing Morgan to dodge, only avoiding the lethal claws by mere inches. His fist flashed forward, the spear morphing into a gauntlet right before impact.
The power of the punch drove the guardian back, though no actual damage was done. He followed up, slamming a dozen blows into the same area before the beast could so much as react. Another wave of sound exploded from the creature’s body, this one extending in a dome and flowing outward.
He leaped into the air, using his Flight to try and avoid it. Unfortunately, he was only partially successful, and the wave clipped him in the side, sending a fine web of cracks spreading over his shield. He dove downward, extending the gauntlet into a lance to sever the beast’s spine. The guardian seemed to have eyes in the back of its head as it nimbly dodged to the side. Instead of hitting its spine, Morgan ended up sinking the blade into the ground, all the way up to the hilt.
The guardian screeched, swiping out with its claws and trying to catch him while he was trapped. Morgan teleported away, using Gravity Warp and coming up in a blind spot. His lance flashed out, finally hitting the beast with a solid blow. There was a sound like tinkling glass, as a fine web of cracks spread across the guardian’s shield, and while a few sections dropped to the ground, he only managed to draw a small pinprick of blood.
The guardian’s tail whipped around, and Morgan dropped to his stomach, then teleported above the beast and tired once again to skewer it. As soon as he drew close, an orange-red light danced across its hide. Morgan was too late to teleport as the explosion went off, small crackling bursts firing all along the guardian’s body.
The force of the explosion threw him back once again, tumbling through the air until he slammed into the ceiling above. His shield shattered upon impact, and though he blew out to prevent being winded, the pain was still very much real. He felt as though he’d suffered another spine injury, though this one was milder than the last. Still, it would hinder him if he allowed himself to think about it.
Although it caused him pain with every movement, Morgan did his best to ignore it. Ripping himself from the ceiling, Morgan reached for the ground beneath the guardian, then, using his Earthen Shift, caused it to rupture into thousands of tiny fragments. They tore into the beast’s underbelly, punching through its shield and scoring deep cuts along its skin. However, it wasn’t nearly enough to finish the job.
The guardian let out a rumbling roar, blue light cascading over its hide as it did. Even as Morgan came down, it launched another attack, dozens of tiny blue spheres firing into the air and simply han
ging there.
Morgan had seen enough large-scale attacks to know it when he saw one, and this was screaming ‘danger’ in every sense of the word. A massive shield formed before him, just before he impacted with the first sphere. He could have tried to teleport away, but the odds of not hitting something when he landed were negligible at best. It was better to take the attack where he might be able to survive, rather than risk avoiding it altogether and being blown to pieces.
As soon as the shield touched the sphere, it exploded violently, releasing a blast of sound that tore at his shield and ears at the same time. With the first having gone off, it set off a chain reaction, blowing the other spheres as well. Morgan slammed into the ceiling once again, his supermage shield shattering entirely, along with his constructed one. Waves of sound tore at his clothes and skin, opening dozens of cuts and gashes.
His arms moved up, crossing over his face, but not before he suffered a painful cut beneath his left eye. The attack didn’t last all that long, a few seconds at most, but when it faded, and the bright light vanished, Morgan was left looking like he’d walked through a river of knives. The pain wasn’t too bad, but the sheer number of cuts was astonishing.
Worse, it seemed that the beast wasn’t anywhere near done, as it sprung into the air, spreading its wings and speeding towards him. Morgan tore himself from the stone, just as the guardian’s beak snapped shut. He was quick enough to avoid being bitten in the neck, but the sharpened beak tore into his right shoulder, severing muscles, tendons and crunching into bone.
Morgan cried out in pain, yet he didn’t allow the attack to go uncontested. As close as the beast was, there was no avoiding his next attack, and Morgan made sure to make it count. A powerful blast of concentrated light slammed into the guardian’s underbelly, searing through feathers and skin and burning all the while. The Sunblast skill could only be used once if not done by day, and that was only if Morgan had stored up enough sunlight to unleash it.
Luckily for him, he liked to be prepared and, therefore, always had a ready supply of light available.
The guardian screamed, releasing his shoulder and falling back down toward the ground. Morgan ignored his shoulder, simply allowing it to dangle as he teleported right on top of the beast, then drove a fist down and used Compression. The blast of compressed air made an ear-splitting crack as it left his fist, slamming into the blackened patch of feathers and skin, and finally succeeding in drawing blood.
He jumped back as an explosion crackled across the guardian’s hide, landing neatly on the ground as the guardian slammed into it back-first. Morgan winced as he tore a strip of cloth from his shirt, winding it around his shoulder to staunch the bleeding. The limb was all but useless, and he couldn’t allow himself to bleed out.
The guardian was back on its feet in a flash, its golden eyes narrowed in anger and pain as it stared him down. Blood showered the ground beneath it, and parts of its hide were stained red with its blood. Yet, to a creature of its massive size, the wounds Morgan had inflicted were little more than an annoyance.
“Let’s see you eat this!” Morgan said, launching a tiny black ball right at the creature.
The beast opened its mouth, expelling a condensed beam of blue light, even as his skill went off. Morgan tried to teleport away but found that he simply didn’t have enough RP. He hadn’t been careful in keeping an eye on it, and it had cost him a good deal of his remaining RP to use a skill as powerful as Collapsing Star.
The black spec exploded outward, sucking in the beast and all the light in a 45-foot radius. That was all Morgan had time to see before the guardian’s attack hit. The beam of blue light slammed into his chest and exploded. Morgan felt half a dozen ribs shatter under the force of the attack, hurtling him backward and slamming him into the far wall where it continued to exert pressure on him.
He gasped, trying to force his uncooperative body to move, to get out of the way, but his depleted reiki refused his efforts to use a skill. Another couple of ribs broke as the solid beam exploded again, driving him deeper into the wall. A spray of blood left Morgan’s mouth as the wind was knocked out of him, and it was all he could do to keep himself from blacking out. Then, mercifully, the attack was over, leaving Morgan’s smoking form to drop to the ground.
Not even having the strength to catch himself, Morgan slammed into the stone face first, aggravating his shattered ribs a half-second later as they hit the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he could still see the black hole he’d conjured, though judging by how small it had gotten, the skill was nearly at its peak.
More than half of the guardian’s body was poking free, and judging by the way it was thrashing its hind legs, blowing chunks of stone to pieces and sending flares of blue light dancing over its form, it was still very much alive. Though it was the very last thing Morgan wanted to do, he forced himself to stand back up. It was at that moment that the Collapsing Star reached its limit and finished off with a massive explosion.
The entire cavern was rocked by the force, staggering Morgan as it washed over him. Luckily, his attacks normally had no adverse effects on him, though nothing would stop the actual force of the attack from harming him. The explosion tapered off and revealed a smoking and burned, but still very much alive, guardian.
Smoke rose off its body, and blood leaked from several large wounds. One of its front legs was bent at an awkward angle, and the feathers on both of its wings had been mostly burned away. Morgan let out a long breath, inhaling painfully as both he and the beast faced one another. He wasn’t sure who bore the greater injury, but he knew that just as he was on his last legs, so was this massive beast.
His last attack had done a serious amount of damage, but it was only now, once he’d witnessed the intensity of the attacks, that Morgan really knew what he was up against. This beast had a supermage ability, just like him. One which seemed to be comprised of sound, while the other caused explosions. However, had this beast been anything above Intermediate, it would likely have wiped the floor with him.
It was a whole two ranks above him, so if it were Advanced, he’d likely have lost. Even so, the fact that this beast had to be Intermediate or lower did not instill him with any great confidence, as the Pinnacle King he’d be facing had both a supermage ability and had reached the Pinnacle of power.
It might be a lower rank than him, but that was no guarantee. If he was this closely matched with what he suspected to be an Evolved beast, then perhaps he hadn’t grown as much in the past two years as he’d thought.
The beast, seeming to sense his self-doubt, sprang forward, the talons on its good front leg glowing a bright blue. Morgan grimaced, trying to force himself back into the fight. He had to win, no matter the cost. There were simply too many people counting on him, and if he allowed doubt and indecision to cloud his judgment, he would be letting them all down.
36
The first of the black-clad figures only became visible as they dashed from the shadows cast by one of the tall hedges. The man, judging by the shape of his body, was around five feet tall. He was wielding what appeared to be a dagger made out of red energy. It buzzed as he approached, completely ignoring Hilda and making directly for the Queen of the Elves.
Hilda, though, was not about to let the man get past, just because he was ignoring her. Stepping quickly into his path, she struck out, aiming for his legs. The man, apparently not even having expected her to interfere, went down hard, his leg crooked at an odd angle. And though Elyssa would have liked to watch the woman fight and get an idea as to how strong she was, the appearance of more black-clad figures stopped her from doing so.
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to see past the masks to see the people hiding beneath. However, not so much as a scrap of skin was showing. Not even the eyes, which were covered in a mesh material that did a good job of disguising them. She could, however, tell that these assassins were from several races, simply going by their body shapes and sizes.
A massive seven-foot-t
all woman was the first to reach her, barreling toward her and swinging an oversized ax at her head. Elyssa remained where she was, not even flinching as she faced certain death. Then, just as the assassin reached her, she stepped forward, stomping down hard and letting out an explosive breath of air. At the same time, she brought her fist up in a powerful uppercut, aided by the force of her activated skill.
Seeing as her fist had less distance to cover than the ax, her attack struck first and with far more force than anyone her size should have been able to muster. Her fist landed unerringly in the troll’s gut. It was obviously a troll, as no other race produced offspring this large. Her muscles flexed, and a massive hole was blown through the center of the troll’s body, painting the ground and all those behind the assassin in her innards.
The assassin collapsed backward without so much as a sound, but if she were hoping that the brutal killing of one of their own would make the others back off, she’d have been sorely mistaken. Luckily for her, she hadn’t, and so, when the next assassin came at her, she was more than prepared.
“Who in the hell are these people?” Hilda demanded, blocking a knife strike and lashing out with a kick.
“If I were to guess,” Elyssa said, redirecting the thrust of a spear, then slamming an open palm into her attacker’s face. “Someone who doesn’t want to see an end to the war.”
“How would killing you stop an alliance? If anything, it would just turn everyone in Faeland against one another,” Hilda replied, narrowly avoiding a blade made of ice as it swiped out at her leg.
Elyssa was forced to pause in her answer, as three attackers came at her at once. One was wielding a sickle that was dripping with poison, while the others were holding weighted nets. Her eyes narrowed as she saw that, calculating the distance, trajectory and most likely forms of attack. Her skills and abilities were kept hidden from everyone, even her closest friends and allies. The only one who’d ever known what she could do was her father.