God, what kind of sin did I commit in my last life that you’ve put me in such a difficult spot? Why didn't I notice them sooner? If he had noticed them in first couple of rooms, he would have gone back. But his greed had bound him, and he’d ignored any noise that came from behind him.
“The only way is to beat the beast in the next room. I need a way to cross the bridge,” Yerra replied. He’d made his decision. He would head forward. It was the best choice of the two.
“That's easy.” Sera pressed her hands next to the water and earth shot out from under her hands. Within seconds, a stone bridge spanned the pond.
Yerra's chest flared with pride when he looked at his sister. She was just ten, and casting level two and level three spells already. “Thank you, Sera. Now let's go to the other side of the bridge. You guys stay out of the room, and I'll come back after I defeat the beast.”
Everybody nodded. What else they could do? Yerra was the only adult present.
Yerra moved into the next room and beat the eight-legged spider beast, but when he came back to fetch the children, he found their corpses, battered and tainted with the black wounds.
♦ ♦ ♦
Yerra came out of the flashback. His mother still stood in front of him, waiting for an answer. It'd been ten years since that incident, but Yerra felt the emotional pressure draining his energy out, even today. The death of those four children was on his conscience. He wanted to curl in his bed and cry his heart out, but he couldn't, not in front of his mother.
“Why me, Mother? Why not Nela? She is stronger than me. She must be at least level nine by now. I’m just level eight,” Yerra said. What if he failed this time too? Would he be able to live with that weight on his shoulders?
“I would have sent for her if that was an option. I know the dreams still haunt you, my child. But it has to be you.” The queen gauged his reaction. “If you hadn't used the Eye of Hephaestus in your last trial, we could send Nela. The door is sealed and can be opened with your armor hand. We tried breaking in, using your armor hand, but nothing worked.” She sighed.
“Okay.” Yerra wondered why he was needed. Nela was stronger than him in most things. Her reflexes were quick, and her power was astonishing. There were also many other level nine mages in the Royal family who could have handled the mess. But if the guardian wanted Yerra to go, then he would go.
“Okay, Mother, if you want me to do it I need Nela with me on this mission.” Nela was his cousin sister. The day Yerra had come out of the temple with the sad news, Nela had stopped talking to him.
“Are you sure, son? You two haven't spoken in ten years.”
Yerra stood up and looked straight in his mother's eyes. “And that's why I need to take her with me. I fully intend to close the gap between us.” Nela and he were close as siblings before the incident happened. They used to share everything with each other, including Nela's adventures in her love life. But everything changed after Patrick and Sera died. Nela accused him of being responsible for her brother's death—which he was. And then she broke all connections with him. Even after becoming the heir to the throne, she wouldn’t speak to him. For her, Yerra had died along with the others in the temple that day.
“Fair enough. Do take your armor and old artifacts with you. I'm sure they will be useful in clearing the temple,” the queen said.
He nodded, and then realized what that meant. He had to talk with the quirky AI once again.
That's not gonna end well for me!
Chapter 3
N ew gadgets always enticed Yerra, but looking at the armor of Hephaestus he felt nothing but dread. The armor was the first thing Yerra noticed in the preparation room. In Eugenie worlds, high level mages were considered a status symbol by every noble family. The more high level mages a family had, the more weight the family had in royal palace affairs. Even the royal family wasn’t immune to it, so they pushed every person in the family to endure more trials and become more powerful. This room was the preparation room for all those souls that survived or perished in the sport of achieving the next level.
Yerra was the first person to get an armor drop out of the level seven trials, the trials of Hephaestus. The armor resided here as a display piece for other trial takers, perhaps even a prize for the exceptional ones.
Yerra picked up the armor and retracted it into its armor cube—a five-inch metal cube which stored the armor and expanded it with a tap of a button. He also collected his sword of flame, a unique Eugenie tech that turned a normal weapon into a magic receptor. Then his eyes traced the special locker placed in the center of the room. The locker contained special items belonging to the queen, and no one had access to it. No one but Yerra, who had hacked into the locker to inject his own magic signature alongside his mother’s. He’d used the forged signature to take out the tiara that held the Eye of Hephaestus before his trial, ten years ago. Out of curiosity, he tapped on the authentication crystal, and it still recognized him as his mother.
Bingo.
Yerra quickly scanned through the locker’s contents. There were a few crystals, which Yerra didn't recognize, and a batch of healing potion vials. Yerra quickly grabbed three healing potions and closed the locker. One never knew when those might come in handy.
“What the heck you were thinking, asking for me as your companion?” A strong female voice erupted from behind him, and before he could turn, a needle pierced his neck. How could he forget? His sister Nela was a trained spy, and once again she proved that she was better than him in almost everything. It was his fault. He should have been prepared for an ambush.
♦ ♦ ♦
Yerra woke to an immense pain in his gut. A sword was half buried in his body. He thought back to the last thing he remembered.
Right. Nela injected me with something. I should have expected to find myself in some kind of danger, but a sword? Nela went too far this time.
He looked down again. He wasn’t bleeding much, just a couple of drops, so Nela had made sure no major artery was damaged. If she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have woken up.
Nela kneeled in front of him and pushed the sword deeper into his body. “Don't worry, that won't kill you.” Her words were calm, but her eyes told a different story. They were full of fierce rage.
Yerra shot a fireball at her face, making her jump back, then pulled the sword out and emptied a healing potion into his mouth. Why not? He had three. At least one had turned useful.
A tingling sensation passed through the wound, and it sealed itself. The potion was a specialty of Eugenio technology and only available to the queen. Even the mage emperor had no idea such a thing existed.
Yerra crawled up and leaned back on the cockpit wall. Nela stood a few feet away with murder in her eyes and anger pinching her creamy brown face. Her hair was in a ponytail, secured by a dagger. She was one of the elite warriors of Asura. Nela Theron, Yerra's cousin, ascendant to the throne whenever his two-hundred-year-old mother decided it was time to pass the torch.
Yerra checked the time. Four hours had passed since he’d entered the preparation room.
“How did you get your hands on a healing potion? Stole it from the queen's cabinet the way you stole the Eye of Hephaestus?” Nela demanded, hatred burning in her eyes.
They hadn't spoken in last ten years. Though her words were not flower petals, he still welcomed them. Still, Yerra sighed. He had no answer for her. In many ways she was right, he’d acted as a traitor to his world. He’d stolen things, then and now.
Nela retrieved her sword and wiped it on the pilot's chair, leaving a bloody mark on the seat cover. Their servants would clean that tomorrow, but what about the bloody mark on Yerra's soul? Who would wipe that out?
“I'm hoping you’ll talk with me for Talia’s sake.” Yerra chose his words carefully.
Nela turned back, her eyes glinting with hatred. Her hand moved, and the sword once again pointed at his face. “If it wasn't for Talia, you would be lying dead in the graveyard. How dare you ask
for me, traitor!”
“You left me no choice, Sister.”
Nela slapped his head with the flat of the blade. He could see the creases on the fine metal in tiny little details. “Never call me that.”
“I had to deliver my apology in person. And you left me no choice but to use such cheap tricks to get an audience with you.” Yerra gulped. He’d waited for this moment for the last ten years, but now that the time had come his tongue twisted inside his mouth.
Am I freaking out?
He glanced at his sweaty palms. Yes, he was freaking out. Why shouldn't he? The woman he’d looked up like a sister had bailed on him after he failed to save their cousins. She’d stopped talking to him and didn't even tolerate his foolish attempts to visit her by surprise. Now was the time, and yet he was freaking out; his heart jumped inside his rib cage like it wanted to come out and throw itself at Nela’s feet to show her the pain it’d borne for the last ten years.
“Stop there. I don't want to hear to a single lie coming out of your mouth. Why don't you just admit it? It was the greed for the trial that made you leave the kids behind. Admit it, so it will be easy for me to kill you right now.” Her lips quivered with some unknown subtext.
“There was no other way. Why can't you understand, Nela? I had to move forward and defeat the beast.”
Nela didn't reply. She turned and focused on the pilot’s display.
Yerra walked closer to her, but she shot him a disapproving glare. He beat down the urge to turn her to face him and force her to listen. Even in desperation, he knew that wouldn't go well for him.
“Get ready. We will reach the north gate in few minutes,” Nela spoke after a while.
Yerra touched his now sealed wound. It looked good, but there was still a little pain and numbness. “The gate under the palace is still sealed, is it?” Their palace was placed on top of the west door to the temple. Each door lead to different routes and different beasts. The door in their palace was the safest one because royals regularly cleared the rooms and kept the monster spawning in check. It was the easiest way to get their magic leveled up in the final stretch of their advancement.
“After you came out of the door with four dead kids, some ancient magic sealed the door. Your arrogance has cost us a lot, and we had to clear the south gate for level seven advancement.”
Yerra sighed. “That explains why I got the armor of Hephaestus when I killed the final boss, the spirit beast. I shouldn't have used the Eye.”
The last beast fight had dropped an ancient set of armor, and the Eye was bound to the armor. Nobody could remove it from the armor. Even the queen's magic failed to do so.
Yerra sunk into the luxuriously cushioned co-pilot’s chair. It had been a while since he’d experienced the comfort of his home-world. “Why are we going to the north gate then?” He asked, in an effort to continue the conversation.
A blade appeared next to his throat out of thin air. Yerra didn’t even blink his eye. “You talk too much. I don’t like it.” Nela stared at him with an I-could-kill-you-anytime glare. Yerra began to doubt it was a good idea to take her on the mission.
“Okay, got it. I won’t ask you any question. But can I at least talk? You don’t have to answer, but if necessary you can nod back.”
Nela nodded with a crooked face, reminding him what his actions had done to Nela. Yerra’s neck became sweaty when he remembered the innocent faces of his sister Sera and Patrick. This would be more difficult than he’d expected. Having Nela accompanying him was a bad idea after all; she reminded him of the four dead children and pushed him inside a dark pit in his mind—a pit where the ghosts of those four kids lived.
Chapter 4
E motions were not Yerra’s strong suit. He was used to shutting them off as soon as they overwhelmed him, but he couldn’t run away from the flood of emotions that came after wearing the armor of Hephaestus.
“Master Yerra. Wow, finally I can see your face. I thought you’d let me die alone.” The armor’s AI appeared in Yerra's HUD. It was a quirky AI that looked like Sera and talked like Sera. Every time he saw the AI, it reminded him of Sera and caused more grief. That was the top reason he never used the armor, despite its incredible power.
“Hello, AI. Not nice to see you again.” Yerra glanced at the AI's girly face.
She rolled her eyes and hissed something under her breath. “That's mean, Master. I expect a proper greeting from you, too. Anyway, I'm happy to be back in action once again. So, whom do you want me to set on fire? That girl with you? Is she your girlfriend? I would love to know her better.”
“Shut up and go into silent mode until I speak with you again.” Yerra hated the AI because she was so quirky and talked unnecessary. “And she is my cousin.”
The AI snorted but otherwise remained silent.
Entering the temple was easy. Yerra placed his gauntlet inside the perfectly shaped notch beside it, something clicked, and the door opened into a dark passage. Wind rushed out, bringing with it the smell of salty air. Yerra had never found the reason why the air smelled salty when there was no sea nearby.
“This is not good,” Yerra murmured. The temple rooms changed in between trials, and a dark passage like this always led to something dangerous. A new room waited for them beyond the dark passage, a room with never before seen monsters and weird magic. Past adventurers had even abandoned their trial when they encountered a dark passage at the starting area.
“After you.” Nela slid her katana into a gap between his armor plates and pushed the pointed tip against his spine.
Yerra stepped inside the dark passage. He passed through it quickly. His eyes widened in surprise when the next room revealed itself in its full glory.
The first thing that grabbed his attention was a giant, three stories high, stone hand punched out of the floor with its palm spread out. The hand made a thirty-degree angle with the floor. A bodiless lion's mouth rested on the palm. The hungry mouth contained a door in it. “That seems to be leading to the next room,” Yerra said.
A strange feeling clasped Yerra's mind. He felt like there was a monster hidden below the surface of the room. He wondered what they would do if the monster beneath the surface decided to come up and play. Terror licked the sweat on his neck.
Yerra glanced around for monsters. Surprisingly, there were none. Ten stone statues of a creature that looked like a hybrid between a giant bird and a human stood in a ring formation.
Yerra extended his specialty spell, perception, to detect if any monster was present in the room. Nothing stuck out. He sent a fireball into the room, illuminating a portion of the room, but nothing jumped at the fireball. Yerra turned to Nela, who was eating an apple.
Are you serious woman? He kept the thought to himself and turned back to the room. He didn’t want to provoke her. A blade in back wouldn't feel good.
There had to be monsters inside. The temple never presented a room without monsters. Maybe they were invisible, like the puppets in the Temple of Lunaris.
He turned to Nela when he couldn’t think of any other option.
“Nela, do you detect anything?” Maybe she had a clue with her lightning magic.
Nela seemed uninterested in what he did or said. She stood there with her back against the stone wall. Her expression was clear. Yerra was on his own.
I should have asked for someone else. This was a terrible idea.
“Master, do you want me to try my analysis spell?” the AI said.
Yerra retracted the armor into the armor cube and put it back in his backpack. He didn’t need it.
Yerra glanced again at Nela, who was on her second apple. “Wait here. I’ll check the room.” Yerra stepped into the room, moving his hands over the rough wall. Maybe there were some traps inside the room which were undetectable by magic. Trap rooms were rare in this temple, but not unheard of. The text of legends suggested that traps were generally found near the exit door.
After searching all four corners, he decided there
was no threat. If there had been, it should have attacked him by now. So he moved towards the center of room. His eyes were fixed on the ground to detect any impression of a trap. But his walk posed no danger. When he reached the first stone, he gazed at it for a moment. The body was defiantly human-shaped, but the wings resembled a hawk’s, and the face looked like it was another hybrid between a man’s face and a bat’s face.
“That’s a gargoyle, and if I were you I wouldn’t touch it,” Nela said.
She was too late. Yerra had already touched the statue, and it had shifted its eyes to him. The first thing the gargoyle did was punch Yerra’s chest, sending him flying towards a wall. By the time Yerra hit the wall and dropped to the ground, the creature had touched all its brothers, and ten stone gargoyles were floating in the air at the top of the stairs.
“Fucking hell! You could have told me this in advance, Nela.” Yerra glared at Nela who was checking her nails. He sighed in frustration while his eyes lingered on her longer than necessary, and while he was at it one of the monsters almost took a bit of Yerra’s flesh with its slash.
Yerra jumped back, and the gargoyle hovered back to its original position. Yerra turned his attention back to Nela while keeping an eye on the gargoyles out of the corner of his eyes. He was right to do so. One of the gargoyles blurred and punched him in the chest, bypassing his shield. This time its claw-like nails pierced his flesh and did a lot of damage.
“Oh, and I forgot to mention that magic doesn’t work on them, not even your magic shield.” Nela added.
Yerra yelled in pain. The monster’s sharp nails had given him pain like he hadn’t felt in years. His magic was always there for him, but today he might not have that leverage. “Fuck….” Yerra’s brain went on full speed to consider his options. What did he have in his inventory that he could use? If magic didn’t work, he needed something metallic to protect his body. He had a sword of flame, but that would be useless as it relied on his fire magic. The solution was clear: his Hephaestus armor.
Crystal of Souls_Fire Mage_Star Mage Novella Page 2