The Court of Souls?

by Andur

  The Journey to the Afterlife

  Dedessia, the Sea of Souls, Semper Fidelis

  Shade

  “We finally meet each other face to face, my name is Enwick,” my declared archenemy smiles and bows. He gestures towards his heavily armoured followers. “These are my subordinates, Raden, Oter and Fimbul.”

  All three of them are clad in heavy plate armour and their helmets only have a small slit for the eyes. I can't help but wonder about their reasons. Wearing such heavy armour does next to nothing against higher immortals. Are they expecting to fight hordes of lows?

  Enwick doesn't give me the time to ponder about the outfit of his guards. His hand continues to Morello and his party. “And our allies from Imothep; Ra, Morello and Rhia.”

  So Rhia not only betrayed Soistaat, the fact that she is introduced as a member of Imothep allows some interesting assumptions. As to why she was with Soistaat in the first place, maybe a spy who was planted there from the beginning?

  I focus my attention on Ra. From the name of his clan and his own name I guessed that they have some kind of Egyptian theme going on. But Ra looks nothing like that. He is tall and has the dark, olive skin colour of a Mediterranean European person. His clothes are close to a Greek toga and I notice that he holds himself very straight.

  The man doesn't show any interest in me. Instead he is eyeing Ishaan intensely, so I dismiss him.

  “Greetings, I am Shade.” I gesture at my companions and introduce them one by one. It is good manners to have a proper introduction before the disembowelling starts. The people of old know how to settle a fight with style. They had the courage to walk up to a man and tell him what they think of him and that they are about to strangle him with his guts.

  All this modern day warfare of so called 'civilised cultures' is nothing more than murder and backstabbing in the dark. Which doesn't mean that I have something against such methods. I simply acknowledge the style of the good old ways.

  When I am finished, Enwick smiles at me and gets directly to the point. “We are here to get our property back. You have a minute to decide. Then we will sack the city, even if it means that we have to rebuild everything from scratch.”

  Wow, this fellow is really confident. Does he have a few hidden cards up his sleeve? I am sure that one of them is the fact that fifteen of our people are supposedly at the mine. The question is how many more advantages he has.

  I raise my hand. “We would like to have some time in order to decide. I suppose you are offering us to become slaves, or fight and bleed for our freedom? This is a hard decision, which we shouldn't make in haste. Especially since we just fought and bled to dethrone you.”

  “We didn't even put up a fight. This time we know how the situation looks like, so it would be much easier for everyone if you simply surrender.” Enwick snorts and shakes his head. “No, forget that. You are trying to stall. It's useless, even if you manage to get a message to your people at the old mine, they won't be able to return in time. We demand a decision. Now!”

  So one of his hidden cards is the knowledge about the mine. That's good. It means he is operating on a false picture of reality. We may pull this off after all. I shrug my shoulders. “Can you give us at least ten minutes? We have to inform our people.”

  He sizes me up for several moments, his eyes wandering up and down my body. I already start fearing that he will start the fight right here and now. At last he decides to speak. “You have ten minutes. Not a second more.”

  I bow and head back to the city wall by using levitation. The others follow me in silence until we are out of earshot. Then Ishaan lands close and hastens his steps to catch up to me. He casts a privacy spell and says, “I hope you aren't seriously thinking about giving up?”

  “Of course not, Dad. I just decided to stall for a little time,” I answer and address Doreen, “Doreen, we need to move all combatants beyond the city wall. Then all remaining citizens have to activate the protective barrier and pour all their power into the spell. In a few moments we will have hell out here and the city has to stay as safe as possible.”

  Doreen doesn't answer, instead she simply nods and starts issuing commands to the soldiers who are waiting at the wall. The soldiers understand her hand-signs without any difficulties and begin the preparations in silence.

  “Ishaan, I need you to obstruct their view. Can you pull that off?” I ask my father.

  Ishaan nods and throws up a thin wall of ice. Within seconds the wall of ice grows in length and size, sectioning off our forces from the attackers. It isn't much. It's no thicker than a centimetre, but since the ice isn't clear, the vision is obstructed just enough.

  I kneel down and concentrate mana in my fingertip. Then I start drawing the first glyph of a complicated spell. Normally I am very eager to hold this one back because the spell consumes my souls. But I really want to tip the odds back in our favour. The rune set combines mind magic, soul magic and a special little field to create doorways to other realities.

  Sadly, opening doorways to another world doesn't work. I already tried to do that without results. So that either means that the place I wanted to visit doesn't exist, or that Dedessia is really somehow closed off. But I don't believe that. So far, all the little hints and pieces of facts point at an entirely different picture.

  “What are you trying to do?” Doreen asks baffled.

  “Summoning assistance,” I answer, and pour mana into the spell formation which is channelling energy towards my shadow. The blue glyphs which I drew into the air flash with light.

  My shadow starts wavering and rises behind me. The huge, black mass finally decides to form an oval doorway. The archway rises ten metres in height and the energies which I channel into my spell formation solidify its shape, binding it in place and form.

  It is a ramped up version of my ability to summon and command the souls I stole. But instead of pulling a single soul out of the shadows, this is a permanent connection to the depths of my soul.

  When I regained my memories of Angrod, his memories allowed me to determine the nature of my ability to improve on it.

  “What is this!?” Aswang gasps and steps backwards.

  Ishaan snorts and crosses his arms in front of his chest. He already knows this spell because he watched me developing it, although he only knows the weak version which I managed to fumble together back in the days of us training together. “It's a doorway to hell. Are you really sure that you want to use this, Shade?”

  Funny that you are calling it a doorway to hell when it is actually a gateway to my soul. But I admit that the dark and cold space in there is a little disconcerting. Does it mean that I still have to uncover a lot of memories?

  “'Sure'? Which things are sure in this world? I have been storing up for a few years now, and it feels like it is time to pour a little water out of the bottle. It feels like my soul will overflow soon enough and this is as good a chance as any. We don't want the souls inside me to shatter their cage.”

  I take a deep breath.

  “And besides, I need more control over my powers. This will be a tough battle. It's true that each soul I hold within me increases my mana pool. But it also takes a lot of concentration to contain them. It is easier to wield my power when I don't have to restrain thousands of others at the same time.”

  I draw the last commandment of the spell formation.

  “Everyone, step through the door and fight for me. I promise freedom upon death.”

  The shadows waver and a person steps through. His body and armour are a combination of darkness and shades of grey. It's one of the soldiers who died at the night of the rebellion. Others join him, I recognize Paolo, the bastard who kept my mother as a slave. Tormentor is also among them and other soldiers start filing out of the portal. None of them pay attention to their surroundings. Their eyes are set on the people who I marked as targets.

  Well, maybe I won't let all of them go... if I can spare the effort, I will recapture a few special gues
ts who have special rooms inside the darker corners of my mind.

  The ones who rise from the darkness aren't just men. There are also the twisted bodies of beasts and monsters from my time with Ishaan. Over five years of hunting spirits and ice dragons in the tundra amounted to quite a lot. I had to think of something to defeat the slavers without an army at my back.

  A five metre tall ice dragon slithers through the doorway and I sigh in relief that it decided to take the contract. The serpentine creature hisses and ogles the surroundings for food. Luckily it is still bound by the contract. But I feel that we should start the fight soon or it will break loose.

  I only tried once to catch such a big spirit. Subduing such a strong and twisted soul isn't fun at all. I harbour the suspicion that the bigger spirits aren't just one soul, but a crazy mesh of several different ones. Without a governing will, they are doomed to an existence as a raging beast of pure power. Once they die, the meshed fragments dissolve to return to their individual souls.

  I watch the army grow; each summoned individual takes away a part of my mana pool, but also frees up my mental resources to use what I've left more effectively.

  Imagine being tied down with much too many weapons on your body. You might be dangerous and certainly won't run out of ammo, but at the same time you are also seriously hindered in your movements and slowed down by the sheer amount you have to carry around. And aiming is also troublesome if you are holding a dozen guns at once.

  That's when the barrier around the city and Yggdrasil activates. It couldn't have been a clearer sign that we don't intend to give in. The slavers charge and wisps of energy and spells start flying our way. Some of them are aimed at the city, but the barrier holds. My army of shadows has grown to two hundred individuals and quite a few monsters.

  “Don't worry. Yggdrasil is a gigantic powerhouse when it comes to stored mana. Normally he needs almost all of his magic to keep himself alive in the harsh environments, but in this safe zone he can build up a lot of reserves. They won't break through the barrier any time soon,” Doreen reassures me, letting me know that the situation is under control.

  I nod and point my shadows towards Ishaan's wall of ice. “Charge!”

  46. ~Proceedings.~

  “A fairy ring, also known as fairy circle, elf circle, elf ring or pixie ring, is a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms. The rings may grow to over 10 metres (33 ft) in diameter, and they become stable over time as the fungus grows and seeks food underground. They are found mainly in forested areas, but also appear in grasslands or rangelands. Fairy rings are detectable by sporocarps in rings or arcs, as well as by a necrotic zone (dead grass), or a ring of dark green grass. Fungus mycelium is present in the ring or arc underneath.

  Fairy rings are the subject of much folklore and myth worldwide—particularly in Western Europe. While they are often seen as hazardous or dangerous places, they can sometimes be linked with good fortune.”

  The Journey to the Afterlife

  Dedessia, the Sea of Souls, Semper Fidelis

  Shade

  “Charge!”

  The army of shadows floods forward, breaking through Ishaan's wall of ice and shattering it to pieces. Our own men follow right behind them in a loose formation. In distance I can see the enemies frantically giving new orders to reorganize their troops.

  Magical warfare on this scale is bound to be messy. That's why we don't even try to adopt something like a formation. Of course there are groups of people who are working together, but they are never much larger than ten people.

  Anything larger would be very hard to coordinate in a magical battle. Magicians can work together by using two different approaches. Strategy one is for a particularly strong magician to cast the framework of the spell. Then everyone else adds their mana to the magical construct. That is the easiest and fastest way, but it's not permissible if the framework isn't strong enough. The one who lays the framework limits the size of the spell.

  Strategy number two is that all magicians cast the spell together, which requires a high amount of training and synchronisation. It's almost impossible to do on a city-wide scale.

  Hence, the reason for such a disorganized battle strategy becomes clear soon enough. Solution number one is like throwing all your eggs in one basket. A strategy which gets you killed if the individual who lays the framework leaves an opening to exploit. Solution number two isn't feasible for messy battles.

  While charging at each other, both sides start throwing spells. That's why I hate to fight in an army which is made up of magicians. Even the weakest immortal is able to conjure a fireball and it is only logical to put your enemy under fire while you close in.

  My companions hold back while they wait to spot a suitable opponent inside the approaching mass. I myself cast a barrier to stop any stray bullets from damaging my doorway which is still summoning reinforcements to the field. There is a steady stream of new creatures, though I can feel that most of my human resources are already depleted.

  A group of twenty soldiers breaks through the riving mass of battling bodies and heads our way. They are doing a good job in keeping the weaker shadows at bay while they move in a tight formation towards us. They clearly belong to the enemy, so Ishaan decides to take matters into his own hands. “I am off.”

  He steps forward and grows. One step and he is five metres tall. A second and he can reach the city wall! On his fifth step he is a twenty-five metre tall titan.

  One of the soldiers throws a fireball at him, but Ishaan simply raises his hand and deflects the projectile spell with his open palm. Then his final step carries him into the approaching group and he squashes two soldiers like insects. His foot lashes out and a third guy is kicked into the sky, sailing over the battlefield. The formation falls apart and my summonings take care of them. Individually the soldiers from Imothep stand no chance against the crazed mass of my servants.

  Somewhere right in the middle of the battle I can see my ice dragon. The huge creature sank its teeth into someone and is shaking him like a toy. When it lets go, the broken figure sails away, the flat trajectory is a testimony to the forces involved.

  It is clear that the enemy forces are trying to converge on my gateway. When one of Enwick's guards breaks through and heads our way, Aswang and Manti meet him on open field.

  Another group of attackers rises high into the air and tries to bombard the shit out of my position. But my barrier holds. This time Doreen is the one to drive them off.

  I keep my focus on holding the gateway open as long as possible. It has already provided more than a thousand additional troops to our side of the battle.

  When another group of attackers manages to battle their way out of the slaughterhouse, I direct the flood of shadows towards them. But most of the creatures who are leaving my portal right now are just weak monsters like tundra wolves and other small critters.

  Rising to my feet, I meet the attack of the first soldier who reaches me. He has a sword, but apparently not enough strength to wield it against me. There is a significant power difference between us. So I pick the weapon out of his hand and reach for his belt. Then I toss him into the closing portal behind me. His scream is abruptly cut off upon disappearing inside the black mass. That impresses his comrades and they stop.

  I judge the distance to the next guy who is lining up for death. The stolen sword leaves my hand in an underhand throw, turning three times before it embeds itself in the soldier's chest.

  That's when things turn a little dicey. Apparently someone thought it a good idea to summon a thick fog bank. It starts with white mist which covers my ankles, then my vision turns completely white within a matter of seconds.

  I recall the nine men who were charging me before my vision was cut off. I may be able to see in the dark, but that sense is relying on something like sonar. This fog is so thick that even I have problems seeing.

  With no better idea at hand, I jump into the air and cast a standard barrier spell and anchor myse
lf to its centre. This results in me sitting in the centre of a blue sphere of energy. Following up with several sets of even simpler barrier spells, I attach them to my sphere. The new ones aren't much more than flat blades of force.

  After sharpening the edges I am left with a neat, magical construct. It's a sphere with vertically oriented blades sticking out of it. A neat little magical vehicle. A god should ride to battle in style after all.

  I spin the entire construct, gaining speed quickly while rolling over the ground. My vision is still hampered, but I am not too concerned about running into something. At least nothing which I don't want to run into.

  My efforts are rewarded with a scream and blood splashing onto my barrier. For a moment I notice the two halves of a person being flung away. The armour tells me that it was an enemy.

  The rest of my opponents are left behind. With the gateway closed, there is nothing worth defending there. It's much better if I search for a higher immortal to kill and change the tide of the battle.

  By the time I clear the fog bank, the blood is already cleared away. Force fields have the nice tendency that blood doesn't stick to them.

  Taking in the scene in front of me, I look for the biggest pocket of opponents. Soon enough I notice a group of soldiers who are about to split our line, so I power up my meatgrinder and head for the breach, ignoring the fighting to my left and right.

  Above me is Doreen. She is doing a pretty good job at clearing the skies, most of it in single combat. Her nails are elongated to sharp daggers and where ever she strikes, men are cut to pieces.

  Then I impact the enemy ranks and my vision is obstructed by blood. Within a single moment the outer layer of my sphere is completely covered with blood and I have to wonder how many enemies I took out with this haphazard spell.

  Suddenly I feel the rotation of my sphere come to an abrupt halt and I stop. I pour more power into it, but something is holding the force construct firmly in place.