Joven shrugged. “Sorry brother,” he said apologetically. “The Spengur was in the bowl when the attack came, from what we can tell.”
“Damn it!” Balen exclaimed, turning back to the maps. “We need him to help with these wolfmen!”
“They’re harder to kill than before.” Joven stated. “But they don’t fight as strongly.”
Balen turned back to his brother. “Yes. Do you know what they are doing?”
Joven pointed at some of the reddish patches of skin where the healing injuries he had sustained left his skin raw. “Fought several of them on the last excursion out of the city. I had been looking for you when the attack came.”
“So what did you learn, Joven?” Balen demanded. “Anything that can help my men in the field?”
“First, they are harder to kill because they are already dead.” Joven stated. “Endrance said there was dark magic at work driving these wolfmen forward.”
“Dead?” Balen exclaimed. “That’s impossible!”
“Balen, your mind was controlled by Kalenden into thinking we were the enemy and you didn’t even realize it was happening.” Joven said in response. “This is among the strangest things I’ve seen magic do, but I believe that magic could do this.”
Balen sighed. “Either way, dead or not-dead, how do we kill them?”
“They are stopped if you do enough massive damage to the body, or take their head from their shoulders.” Joven said. “They also are distracted by bright lights or fire. I’m not sure why.”
“All right.” Balen responded. “I’ll spread the word through my subordinates. We are going to retake the first bowl and repel the invaders to the walls. Once we have pushed them back, you can look for your Spengur.”
“No!” Selene exclaimed, shaking her head. “We are going in there and finding him now!”
Balen turned to her, a scowl on his face. “You will not!” he shouted. “I am not going to risk any more lives letting you through the gates until after we have retaken the bowl!”
“But he could be dying!” Selene shouted back, on some level surprised she didn’t shrink back from the general’s rebuttal. “It is our duty to protect the Spengur, and you have no authority over us!”
Selene and Balen glared at each other, anger crackling between them. Bridget saw that Selene’s hair was shifting of its own will and her eyes flickered violet. She sighed and slammed her fist into the table, the crack of leather wrapped fist striking wood making both of them glare at her instead.
“Look, we are going to go in, but we don’t want to just risk everyone’s lives to do our duty.” She stated. “We are not going to wait for you to retake the bowl.”
“But-“ Balen started to say, but Bridget cut him off.
“That’s why we are joining the front lines and helping.” She said. “We’ll help retake the bowl with the support of your troops. We can keep an eye out for the Spengur while we advance.”
Selene and Balen slowly deflated. “That’s acceptable.” Selene said.
“I mean gods,” Bridget continued. “The day that I have to be the voice of reason…” She rolled her eyes and turned to Joven.
Joven blinked at her, impressed. “I… I know. Shocking.” He said. “Can we go back to the battle plan?”
Balen turned to the map. “Yes. All right, you three are going to be in the opening charge through the gates, since you are so insistent. The first and second squads of men in heavy armor will be right behind you; so your job is to make room on the other side for us to move out.”
Selene started calming down. They were moving forward and Endrance would not be kept from them for long.
Chapter 12
Endrance felt raindrops hit him in the face and for a moment, he thought he had fallen asleep outside again. Then the memory of him tumbling down stone stairs came back. His eyes shot open. He was either in pure darkness or he had lost his sight. He felt around with his hands and listened carefully before he considered rising. Cold stone lay beneath him and the only sound he could hear was the faint drip drip drip of moisture falling from above, some drops of water striking him in the face.
His body ached and hurt and his head pulsed with a dull throb. Mentally, he tallied his resources and knew that his aura was nearly empty. His bracer was nearly empty as well. He could feel the handle of a dagger digging uncomfortably into his back.
He tested moving his fingers and toes. Those worked, but when he tried to shift his legs, pain shot up his left side and he let out an involuntary yelp. His arms worked and he felt his way down his leg. Pain flared again, but from what he could tell, he had cut his left leg on something when he had fallen.
“That’s great.” He said to no one in particular. “At least none of the wolfmen made it inside.”
Endrance cautiously got his feet under him. Though his leg hurt, it was able to bear his weight. He paused for a moment, considering his options. He didn’t have much power left and could either create his nebula of light or fully heal himself, but not both. The sound of his labored breathing echoed through the darkness as he struggled with the problem. If he left his wounds unhealed, he could possibly bleed out and die, but if he didn’t have light…
Endrance remembered the number of places he could fall if he couldn’t see.
He settled on a compromise. Carefully, he enunciated the words for his singular light spell, slowly going through the gestures required to evoke the spell while he cautiously fed the magic power from his aura. When he released the spell, a bright pinpoint of radiant light flickered into being. Though it seemed just as bright as before, Endrance couldn’t help but feel that it was somehow dimmer than before.
The tomb entrance looked the same as it had been when he’d first entered. A circular room, the stairs cut down the middle, constantly slick with the trickle of water from the reservoir. The only door leading out of the tomb had closed above him; and the only other passage contained a set of stairs leading into the tomb proper. Surprisingly, the air didn’t smell as musty as it had before. Being opened twice in the same year had done wonders for cycling out air gone eight hundred years stale.
He had managed to put exactly the amount of power needed to cast the spell, something trickier to do than most mages cared to admit. Normally, he put an amount of his aura in a general approximation of what was needed, and learned from trial and error how much that was to him. Usually, once he hit a spot where he put enough power in the spell for it to work, he didn’t bother learning exactly how much was needed. This left valuable dregs of power wasted, something that a sensitive enough mage could feel when one was casting spells near them.
He couldn’t afford to waste any. Having carefully powered his light spell, he took stock of his body. Damaged from multiple slashes, all but a few had been healed before. He had bruises and scrapes from the fall and a gash on his leg. The leg wound trickled blood, but wasn’t gushing. He carefully marshaled his reserves, focused on his healing spell, and went through the long form motions and words of power to cast it.
While casting in long form would regain some of the efficiency lost from slinging the spell, he didn’t have much power to work with. He would just have to partially heal the cut now and hope that he survived long enough to heal the rest later. He released the spell and wisps of golden light leaked from the gash in his leg and the cuts on his chest as the bleeding stopped and the injuries scabbed over. The bruises faded and his scrapes all but vanished.
He didn’t heal any further, but now his leg felt like it could bear his weight more comfortably. Endrance sagged against the stone steps, exhausted. Now that he was healed and able to see, he was practically powerless. He felt around his person, checking for anything else he might have at his disposal.
Somehow, one of his daggers was missing. It and the sheath were missing from the clasp at the back of his belt. He had no other resources; the rest of anything he might have wanted would be on the horse he had ridden into the first bowl; and it had either fled o
r died when the wolfmen attacked.
Endrance leaned his head back and let out a long winded sigh. It was not like the daggers would do him much good in the tomb of the dead. The last time the wizard had been down in the caverns beneath the first bowl, he had been pressed for time and in search of a very specific thing. Now he was here not by choice and trapped as well.
He supposed he could just wait a few hours and pop open the top to see if the wolfmen were around, but there were inherent risks there as well. The wolfmen could still be around or water could have started refilling the reservoir. Endrance sighed. He better wait until he could recover more power, then he would be able to contact Gullin mentally. It was too hard to communicate when his aura was nearly empty, but the best he could figure, it had something to do with his connection tying the familiar to his plane.
He wasn’t even sure why the door had closed. The last time he had been in the tomb, the door remained open until the reservoir started refilling. This time, it was closed when he woke up. Perhaps he had somehow kicked a switch to close it when he fell down the steps, but he was not sure how that happened. He was distressingly unsure of a great deal of things.
Since he knew the primary occupant of the tomb was still somewhat aware of current events, Endrance was reluctant to venture further down the tomb until he had recovered some strength. If all there was in the tomb was what he remembered, then he could potentially be stuck in a small space with literally no methods of survival.
As he was focusing on resting and recovering his energy, he realized he could see a shift in the light through his closed eyelids. His eyes snapped open, but as he searched around the entry chamber, he saw nothing but stone, shadows, moss and water. He could not see far beyond the chamber, but he thought he could see a glimmer as something in the darkness caught his spell light and reflected a few scant rays back at him from the first landing down the stairs.
Momentary panic shot through him. What if one of the wolfmen had made it down into the tomb? What if it was one of the iron skeletons we fought before?
Nothing moved and Endrance slowly calmed as the glimmer of light only shifted with the slow steady bobbing of the spell’s light. Wearily, Endrance picked himself back up and shuffled down the stone passageway. As the light followed him, it peeled back the darkness from around the source of the glimmer. Endrance found a tiny orange rock.
He reached down and picked it up. Holding it closer, he could see the rock was composed of several crude facets of orange gemstone. He blinked at it, puzzled. It hadn’t been there last time he had been in the tomb; and he could swear he hadn’t seen it when he first took stock of the room upon awakening. The stone looked remarkably like Crystalphage. It was raw and uncut, but it seemed to be the same material.
Endrance focused on his aura and struggled to get over the strung out, hollow feeling he was experiencing when he tasked what little of his aura was left to probing the crystal. He had to be careful. If he lost the last reserves of his aura, he could black out or even worse, die. Death from losing one’s aura was known to be one of the most horrible experiences a mage could undergo.
What was worse was that if the aura was emptied and the mage kept pulling for power as he died, that pull for power would snag some of the energy of his death and spark off his conversion into an undead mage. Usually, only mages of high wizard or greater status were powerful enough to trigger such a conversion, but it wasn’t a sure thing; any mage could become a lich through such a mistake.
The stone didn’t grab at his aura or try to consume his power like fine cut Crystalphage. If anything, he got the impression that it only slowly pulled at the power inherent in the area.
“Huh. Natural Crystalphage.” He muttered.
He tried pulling on the power stored. The rough gem brightened as the power flowed inefficiently through the crystal and into his aura. It darkened, and he felt a miniscule portion of his aura restore. Completely empty, the raw Crystalphage turned black and began to crumble in his grip. The gem in his bracer didn’t do that, even when he had emptied it. Neither had the stone that King Kalenden used when he fought them in the Spengur’s longhouse.
Endrance felt marginally better, but his aura was still quite close to empty. Another glimmer caught his eye and he saw a similar stone sitting just inside the range of his spell light at the next landing down the stairs. Endrance saw it and closed his eyes, suppressing his desire to sigh in resignation. Apparently someone or something was trying to lure him further into the tomb.
He had nowhere else to go, and the bait was enticing. Endrance shrugged and walked down the stairs, pausing to stoop and pick up the next nugget of Crystalphage. He concentrated, pulling the power out of the stone as he continued walking. He discovered a third stone as he descended. He sifted the powder of the second through his fingers as he retrieved the third and drained it too.
By the time he found the fourth, he had recovered a small portion of his power. Barely a hundredth of what he normally could do, but it was significantly better than before. He stopped, thinking. He had better options available to him now. He canceled the light spell at a nagging insistence in his head. Focusing on it, he could feel the imparted memories of the goblin shaman he had slain. Though the goblin was a species that excelled at working in darkness, Endrance didn’t have the ability to see in perfect darkness.
He sat on the steps, stretching and making a show out of being tired. As he did so, he leaned back and closed his eyes for a second as he communed with the goblin. The first impression he had ever captured, it had been the first to ever provide him with valuable skills and knowledge. Because of him, Endrance had become more than experienced at soul magic, something that was not taboo, but only because it was the magic of goblins. Mankind and goblins had never been on amicable enough terms to share magical knowledge. He was sure if the circle of magi knew how much like necromancy it was, they’d ban it.
However, his latest experience channeling the blood tiger had made him feel incredibly capable. He could swear he could see better in the dark during those moments, but he had done no controlled experimentation.
Endrance mentally checked himself. He was no apprentice; there were times when a wizard had to trust his experience and education, and go forward without taking so many precautions. He reached out mentally and was able to touch the goblin’s impression.
His eyes burned for a few seconds, and he had to keep from scratching at his face. His joints ached as his body twitched with the memory of limbs that weren’t his. He felt other thoughts rise to the surface of his own, sifting through his mind like the voice of a tutor.
He opened his eyes and to his shock, he could see the stone ceiling above him clearly. He looked forward and could see down the steps as far as his natural vision would have let him if it had been well lit. There was no color that he could distinguish, but it was a corridor of dark gray and black stone. Glancing at himself, he found that he could see color, but it was severely muted.
His eyes still burned, but not intolerably so. It was almost like he had been staring too long without blinking. He could see, and in the back of his mind, he was dimly aware of the things that the goblin was telling him. He should lighten his steps; shift the weight to the balls of his feet while over stone. He stood and knew that the faint sounds of the broken chain shirt were like ringing bells for anyone listening out for him. He shucked his shirt and the armor in one move, leaving it piled on the stone floor. It had been wet, slashed up and soaked in his blood at the same time. It was none too comfortable in the first place.
He drew his remaining dagger and crept down the stairs, now sure that no one was watching him from that stretch of darkness. He descended and was vaguely aware of the myriad little corrections the goblin’s impression was making to his attempts at stealth. He could stand a fair chance of sneaking up on Joven if he kept practicing. His breath became shallow and quiet as he became more and more comfortable with the goblin’s impression, like wearing in a new pair
of shoes.
He came to the next landing and found the next stone. He swiftly palmed it, but kept moving, draining it and stuffing the crumbling stone in his pocket lest the falling stone bits gave him away. He got to the spiraling stairs and found a fifth stone. He did the same with that one, creeping down the stone stairs. He slowed as he approached the bottom, realizing he heard the faint clink of a pebble being set on stone.
Goblins were expert ambushers, but he had no time to set up anything. And if he waited too long, the entity laying the bait would finish laying out the trap. Instinct told him to act now. He peeked his head around the corner, low near the floor where others would not expect someone to poke their head out. Glancing with one eye, he immediately pulled back and resolved what he saw in his mind. A human figure in some kind of black suit was setting a stone on the landing at the base of the spiral stair in the dark.
It wasn’t a ghost or another form of undead, but a living being. He leapt into action, the dagger in his offhand, since he was going to try to subdue the person first. Endrance silently rounded the stairs and pushed off the stone, leaping towards his target. If he could knock it down, he would have the advantage he needed.
The figure tensed as he rounded the stairs and started turning as he leapt out. He caught a glimpse of catlike eyes just before the black leather clad woman caught his arms in mid leap and tumbled with him. They rolled out into the walkway and during the whirl of action, Endrance felt the dagger wrench out of his grip. They came to a stop, with Endrance flat on his back, his own dagger at his throat, and Jalyin pinning his right arm and legs.
The Sha’hdi assassin was beautiful in an almost preternatural way. With a body so smooth and perfectly curved that it might have been sculpted, dark tan skin, and a cascade of precisely straight long black hair, she cut an impressive silhouette. Her face was sharp and angled and symmetrical, a beauty that was only made fierce instead of ugly when angry.
“How did you-” she hissed and halted, staring him in the eyes. She was breathing hard, but had only had one explosive second of action. Unlike the rest of the world’s muted colors, her golden cat’s eyes were as brilliant as the last time he had seen her. Endrance struggled to break free, but she pressed the dagger firmly against his neck.
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