Nasha smiled at Istar and said, “Simplicity itself; it sounds good to me. Ok, Etum and Shulgi, let's form a shield wall to hold back the horde of creatures. How about Namzu running and trying to lure them into the trap.”
Namzu said in a mocking manner, “Of course, you would suggest me!”
Nasha laughed and said, “You are the fastest, after all!”
With that Nasha ran into the cavern while the others prepared the shield wall and got in location to hit with ranged weapons. Moments went by as the team waited and finally Nasha ran back shouting, “Incoming!”
As Namzu moved through the shield wall Etum, Shulgi and Nasha pushed against the shields to close the gap, just in time for the sound of a massive thud of bodies hitting the shields. Etel-Pisha and Istar started shooting their range attacks across the top of the shields. Ahava raised himself up on a rock to get a better view of the creatures. All were twisted and deformed in different ways and all represented different earth creatures. Using his elemental fire and air power, he blasted a hot jet of flames through the narrow doorway. This started to burn the creatures, causing the survivors to back off from the wall. Arrow and stone shot over the shields at the adventurers from the cavern. Ahava ducked down behind the shields.
Namzu, who was at the back, shouted, “We also have incoming from the back!”
Ahava shouted, “I will go into the cavern and seal up the rock so they cannot attack you and try and deal with the monster in there.”
Namzu shouted back, “On Ahava’s signal form up the shield wall to the rear.”
Ahava sent a fireball over the shields which exploded, clearing a space for him to run into. As he passed the doorway, he sealed it with a rock, cutting himself off from the rest of the team. When the doorway was sealed, he blasted a jet of fire at a high temperature, spraying it in all directions as he moved from side to side. The jet started to burn the monsters around him as they slowly fell to the ground. While spraying the elemental fire he started raising sharp spikes of stone out of the ground under the monster’s legs. This impaled a lot of creatures and some were burning while being impaled in place. The light of the fire illuminated the cavern in a flickering glow of light. In a few minutes, most of the creatures were either impaled or burning or both.
From the back of the cavern, he heard the loud movement of the large stone statue. The statue was about five times his height. Its features were in the face of human but with an expression of twisted anger. Horns were sprouting from the top of its head. A club was in one hand. It moved forward quickly, hitting Ahava with the club before he could react in time. This knocked Ahava flying into the back wall of the cavern. As he was in midair, he had the presence of mind to start healing himself. This enabled him to quickly recover and be moving around the side of the statue before the club hit him again. He shot a jet of fire, which did not affect the statue. Next, he tried a fireball, but this only blasted it to the ground. It was soon back up and charging at him again. Using the earth power, he formed a cage of columns around the monster. As he watched, the monster slowly was breaking through the cage. Thinking about how to cause an explosion, Ahava used a sharp, powerful flame to cut a small hole in the leg of the statue. This he filled up with water, using the water elemental power. Sealing the hole with the earth elemental power, he then backed off and concentrated all the heat he could produce onto the one spot. Soon the water inside, due to the heat, vaporized, causing a massive explosion and the leg was blown apart. He repeated this method with the head of the statue, which was on the ground. This exploded the head, killing the monster.
Running back toward the doorway, he opened the stone seal he had put in place. The group of adventurers were still using the shield wall for protection but now all the creatures were on the ground.
Namzu said with a smile, “They just dropped to the floor a few seconds ago. What happened in there?”
“Oh,” said Ahava, ‘I just killed a massive statue and some other stuff. Does anybody need healing?”
Everybody had minor injuries. Ahava and Etel-Pisha went around and healed everybody. Some all the adventurers were inside the main cavern looking around. Nasha said in a loud voice, “We had all the monsters. Now, where is the treasure?”
Shulgi looked at him smiling and said, “Is not the battle the treasure itself?” Nasha just frowned and starting searching. They found nothing of value in the initial search.
The team was ok with Ahava using the bodies to gain elemental flux. The large statue and the rest of the bodies produced a massive amount of elemental flux. Afterward, Ahava checked his stats and it showed:
Gender: Male
Biological Age: 30
Intelligence: 15, Stamina: 16, Strength: 15, Constitution: 14, Dexterity 16, Charisma: 11
Points: 1225
Element -Flux rate per second
Earth -70,8341; Water -10,857; Air -12,679; Fire -50,733; Ether -103,8134
Aristotle's Rhetoric Emotions
Emotions -Flux rate per second
Anger -1,302; Calmness -2500; Friendship- 170, Fear-320; Courage -450; Shame -50, Confidence-300; Kindness- 150; Cruelty -1,500; Pity -80; Envy -50; Love -100
When Ahava caught up to the rest of the group, he said, “I suggest we check under the altar. I should be able to move it out of the way for you.”
Ahava used his earth elemental power to make a hole in the side of the altar. Namzu said in an excited voice, “There is a hole in the ground!”
As soon as he said that, the wave of darkness hit all the team. Within it was a powerful feeling of despair and of losing hope. In addition to the emotional turmoil, all of the adventures started to have black and gray marks on their skin, with a shortness of breath. Ahava used his elemental healing and emotional powers to push back against the wave of despair and disease. He managed to keep the waves of darkness at bay as the team healed.
Etel-Pisha said in a quite weak voice, “The writing on the entrance indicated that this was a Storm-Demon's abode. We must be feeling its power of despair and disease emanating from the hole. This is the nature of this Storm-Demon.”
Ahava said, “I can keep the feeling of despair and disease at bay. Is everybody good to continue?”
“I for one,” Nasha said in a brash, loud voice, “will not be going back. We have not found anything of value for all this work. So we must go forward.”
Istar said with a smile, “For once I’m in full agreement with this muscle-bound oaf.”
With everybody in agreement of moving forward, the group of adventurers descended into a stairway. The stairway went down with a steep incline. Eventually, it leveled out to an entrance of an elegant hall. It had columns and pictures of different scenes all over the walls. At the far end of the hall was a throne with a human-like figure. There was a squeal from the throne, a clouding of breath, and suddenly a titanic beast of flesh and fury looked up from the throne. Two hungry eyes stared at adventures with an eerie foreboding, that Ahava suppressed, and another squeal pierced from its abysmal mouth as if it were a battle cry. Two enormous horns adorned its muscular head, which itself was thick as leather. An intense heat escaped the creature's narrow nostrils, set within a bony nose. Two skeletal wings extended themselves fully. Blackened bones and nothing but flames stretched upward and forcefully descended with a powerful gust.
The monstrosity squealed, “How dare you disturb my slumber? You will all die a death full of disease and a body full of maggots...”
Before the demon could finish the monolog, Nasha threw his spear with as much power as he could muster. The spear accelerated like a lightning strike, pinning the demon through the body into the throne. Then two other spears were in the air, flying and hitting with full force into the body. The demonic beast squealed as the clouding of breath and intense heat increased. Ahava ran forward and sent a blast of a cold into the body of the demon; he was using the air and negative firepower. Two hungry eyes stared at Ahava as ice started to form on the demon's body. The fir
e from the demon's nostrils was dimming as Ahava increased his power. Slowly the demon started to try and pull out the spear from its body. It was having great difficulty moving and was constantly squealing.
Etel-Pisha said, “The lore of Eridu says that only the opposite of the Storm-Demon's nature can kill it. Ahava, you need to push as much healing into it as possible; we need to all be as to be as confident and courageous as we can.”
With that Ahava started to projecting all the healing he could at the Storm-Demon's body, and the emotions of confidence and courageous. If the monstrosity’s squealing had been loud before, the squealing noise increased ten-fold. Slowly the Storm-Demon's body disintegrated into powder as the noise disappeared.
“Now let’s find the treasure!” said Nasha with a look of relief and excitement.
Much to Nasha’s relief, they found a few alcoves filled with gold, silver, precious and semi-precious stones and other items of great value. The whole team was ecstatic with the finds. Even Etel-Pisha was happy when they found a room of clay tablets full of information. It took all of Namzu’s persuasive power to convinced him to wait until they got back to town before starting to read the tablets.
Ahava, with the team’s help, put all the items quickly into his bag to transport them back to the city and sort for distribution among the team. When they had finished taking anything of value that was or was not nailed down, the team started to exit the throne room. As the others left Ahava used the camera on his tablet to take photographs of the pictures on the wall for later analysis. The last thing before leaving was to see if the body of the demon could give him any additional elemental power. He could feel the power inside the body of the dead demon as he got closer to the remains of the body; it felt like an open door from a blast furnace with the power being emanated.
As he was about to take in the energy, Thoth’s voice sounded in his head in a calm, collected manner. “Before you do that, let's just consider this for a moment.”
“You have been gone for a long while,” said Ahava, a bit surprised. “I thought you had forgotten about me.”
“No, no,” said Thoth, dripping sarcasm, “I been watching your every move constantly. But really now you are just starting to get interesting. Though you still have a long, long... way before you are interesting. I wanted to have a chat with you before you take in this amount of power.”
“Ok, chat away,” said Ahava, interested in why this was important.
“Well, you are about to take in massive amounts of raw elemental power all at once. You do think you are ready to control that much power now?”
“Do you mean I will not be able to control it, and I will explode or something?” said Ahava with a worried expression on his face.
“No,” said Thoth, “you control the power with your imagination and most people do not wish themselves dead at a fundamental level. What I am talking about is what you use the power for: will you destroy, will you control and will you kill? Or will you create, will you help and will you heal? Or will you do a mixture of all them? Just remember, with this power you can affect more and more of your surroundings. With this, the life of cities will be in your hands. I just want you to think about whether you are ready for this power within yourself. An explosion is not the only way to destroy yourself. Just consider this when using the power! It up to you now. I will talk to you later, when you are a bit more interesting. Ta-ta for now.”
With that Thoth’s voice inside his head went quiet. Ahava thought about what to do. Inside his mind thoughts of survival, responsibility, oppression, and happiness mixed around in a confused vortex. He then reached out and took the power inside his body. He expected for there to be a He-man moment but it just felt the same as when he had taken power from the previous monster. He opened his tablet and checked the H-Stat application. This showed him the following changes:
Gender: Male
Biological Age: 30
Intelligence: 15, Stamina: 16, Strength: 15, Constitution: 14, Dexterity 16, Charisma: 11
Points: 1225
Element - Flux rate per second
Earth- 1,170,835; Water -1,083,867; Air -1,001,619; Fire -1,092,331; Ether -5,007,716
Aristotle's Rhetoric Emotions
Emotions -Flux rate per second
Anger -100,502; Calmness -2500; Friendship -170, Fear-150,520; Courage -450; Shame -50, Confidence-300; Kindness -150; Cruelty -1,892,602; Pity -80; Envy -150,000; Love -100
Thoth had been correct; there was a massive increase of all the elemental powers. If Ahava was correct with his estimation, he could have an area of effect of over a kilometer's distance with him at the center. As he had been infusing elemental flux into his skin for protection; muscles for speed, dexterity, and strength; and bones for the constitution; and wanted to accelerate the process, he infused a massive amount of elemental flux into each of the areas of his body. This did produce a He-man moment. With the power inside him, he ran forward. He was fast and before he could control his body he smashed into a wall. He felt nothing but there was a large hole in the wall with a bit of dust and rock on the ground.
Ahava thought, I will have to be careful until I can control this.
He then checked his health stats: Intelligence: 16, Stamina: 30, Strength: 32, Constitution: 35, Dexterity: 28, Charisma: 11. He was about three times the normal male in this world. Looking at intelligence, he needed to improve that stat.
Chapter Twelve: A Request
The travel back the city was uneventful. The whole group of adventurers was in a happy mood, looking forward to splitting up the wealth. When Ahava got back into his house he took out all the items from the throne room into a few rooms. As he and the others were about to sort through the items, there was a loud shout at the front door. In a minute Lilith brought a very tired and frightened young man with a clay tablet in his hand to Ahava.
She pointed to Ahava and said, “The message is for him.”
The young messenger, who was dressed in soldier's robes, trying to catch his breath, said, “An important message for you, sir. When you are finished reading it, we must hurry to the fort on the lower plains, sir!”
Ahava looked at the message; it was only a few lines:
Ahava,
Come and meet me on the plain in front of the fort.
Olga
p.s. I brought a few thousand orc warriors for persuasion if needed.
Ahava spoke to the young messenger. “Is this true?”
The messenger nodded and said, “Yes sir, we must hurry, as they could invade the fort anytime now.”
Ahava turned to Shulgi and said, “Please take care of things here for a while. I may be gone some time, as I have to visit an old friend.”
Shulgi nodded in reply. Ahava and the messenger started to run out of the house and through the streets of the city. The messenger shouted, “King's messenger” to move people out the way as they ran. Ahava was in his full armor but found it easy to keep up with the messenger. As they left the city gates the open road was stretching out in front of him with green countryside on either side.
As they were running, Ahava asked the young messenger, “Is it important that we get to the fort as fast as possible?”
The messenger replied, “Yes sir, time is of the essence!”
Ahava said, “As that is the case, I will run ahead as fast as I can. If I outpace you, sorry about that.”
The messenger replied with a smile, “I doubt you will, sir. I am fast.”
Ahava slowly started to accelerate until the younger man was not smiling anymore. Then he put on a burst of speed and left the younger man behind him. Soon he was running with the green land rushing past him. The feeling was one of the air rushing through his hair like he was on the back of a motorcycle but with the excitement of running. As he passed people, they looked at him like he was some strange demi-god of the wind, and maybe he was with this power.
In about an hour, he was at the top of the gorge leading down toward the fort. He
passed the fast-flowing running whitewater down into the fort. As he approached the fort it was in a state of high alert. There were guards all around the walls. The gateway was closed into the back of the fort but there was a guard waiting with a look of distress on his face.
As he approached the guard shouted, “You better be Ahava?”
When Ahava was in talking distance, he said, “I’m Ahava and a messenger told me to be here as soon as possible. So I ran ahead.”
“Good,” said the guard. “Now you’re here, sir, I will take you the captain.”
The guard signaled the soldiers on the wall to open the gate and they both entered. The inside of the fort was full of fully-armed soldiers dressed for battle. All faces turned toward Ahava with quizzical looks of nervousness. Nobody spoke to him until the captain walked up with a look of determination on his face.
In a sharp voice, the captain said, “You have read the note?”
Ahava said, “Yes, I have.”
“Will you go out and meet them?” said the captain.
“Of course, that is why I am here,” said Ahava with a smile.
Without out any delay, the captain led him to the front gate, where a large number of soldiers were waiting. After a signal from a soldier on top of the wall of the fort, a small door in the gate was opened and the captain indicated for Ahava to exit.
As Ahava’s eyes got used to the brighter light than it had been in the fort, the first thing he saw was an army of thousands of orcs, now just standing up from sitting down in the hot sun. Like princess Olga, they all had light brown skin coloring and a heavy-set body. Most of them were taller than the average human and all had the large tusks protruding from their bottom lips. What really surprised Ahava was a set of creatures standing facing the army. They were like three-dimensional models of the pictures he had seen on the wall of the fort when he first was here. He looked at the wall and the pictures were not there anymore. Somehow, they had been called to life and were guarding the fort. There were lions with three heads, massive elephants, and large dogs. All of them were at least three times the size of a human. Ahava started walking toward the army of orcs. The guardians of the fort paid little attention to him, just glancing at him as he walked past. Their main focus was the army. When he was past the guardians, the army of orcs was on their feet and drums were beating in a powerful rhythm. In time to the beat, the whole army started to stamp their feet and hit the ground with the butts of spears. This intimidation carried on while a small group of orcs walked out from the main army to Ahava.
The First Era Page 11