“So, you know of the golden fox, then?” I ask him.
“I’ve had more than a few run-ins with her since I came to Varathia, yes,” the sage says. “But, more importantly, the situation has now changed. Meet me back down, boy, and we’ll have another talk.”
He then brings his platform to the ground, along with all of his team, while I also go down and land next to Daren and the others. When my feet hit the ground, I can’t help but notice that the air currents around me have calmed down, just like when Melindra cast the spell on me earlier. It appears that the currents are made in such a way that they temporarily deactivate whenever I land on the ground, and if I want to fly again, I need to reactivate them by raising my arms above my head.
“I’ve changed my mind!” Talmak says all of a sudden, as people were getting ready for battle. “There is no more need for us to fight.”
“And to what do we owe this sudden change of heart?” Daren says.
“You owe it to the stillwater girl, up there in the sky,” Talmak says. “You see, I’ve always been fascinated by the stillwater legends, but I’ve never really had the chance to see one up close. I’ve always wanted to study them, and to find out what the source of their power was, but the idea that I would ever have the chance to capture one alive seemed so unlikely, that I never even dared to dream that it might happen. And yet here I am, only a few dozen feet away from an unconscious stillwater, with the only thing standing in my way being that blasted impenetrable cage.”
“What exactly are you trying to say, here?” Daren says.
“I’m saying that I’m willing to offer you safe passage out of our camp, if you hand over the stillwater,” Talmak says. “All you need to do is convince your banshee friend to dismiss the cage and stop healing her, and then we’ll forget this encounter ever happened. Nolderan, do we still have those collars we found in the ruins that could restrict someone’s ability to cast spells?”
“Yes, we still have them,” Nolderan says.
“Perfect,” Talmak says. “Then we can chain her up and commence the experiments immediately. The tricky part will be to keep her alive while we dissect her, but I know more than a few ways to get around—”
Suddenly, Kate shoots several icicles straight at the sage, while a wall of rock raises itself from the ground to defend him. As the wall crumbles, and the icicles that got stuck within it fall to the ground, Talmak stares at Kate, with a look of utter shock in his eyes.
“Have you gone completely insane?” Talmak says. “You would forfeit your only chance to survive, just for the sake of a—”
“Stop talking, you filth,” Kate says, looking at him with an expression of pure disgust.
“Maybe I haven’t made myself sufficiently clear…” Talmak starts to say, adopting his usual authoritative tone.
“Yeah, no, I think we’ve heard enough,” Hadrik says, and he immediately rushes towards the sage, at a shocking speed.
The sage barely has the time to react, and he conjures another wall of rock in front of him, which Hadrik breaks in one punch.
“Enough!” Talmak shouts furiously, all of a sudden, as he makes several large spikes of rock pop out from underneath the earth, forcing Hadrik to jump back. “If you’re all so eager to march towards your deaths, then I will be more than happy to grant your wishes. I’m going to kill you all myself, and I’m saving the stillwater for last.”
“No, you won’t,” Hadrik says, with a grin, as he makes another lighting fast rush towards the sage, and he attacks him with a flurry of blows, while Talmak is struggling to create enough walls to keep up with his speed.
As Hadrik and the sage have begun their duel, the five henchmen are now getting ready to attack the rest of us.
I quickly take my crossbow out of the backpack, and start shooting at all of the enemies except for the sage, since I already know for a fact that the magical protection against physical damage that he’s using is powerful enough to make crossbow bolts bounce right off him. Sadly, it seems that he’s already cast the same protection on his allies as well, because none of the bolts harmed them in any way. Seeing that this weapon is useless to me, I return it to my backpack, and then I unsheathe my scimitar.
As the henchmen head towards us, Talmak knocks Hadrik away from him, with a large boulder, and then he uses the platform below his feet to raise himself high into the air. As soon as he recovers, Hadrik transforms himself into a giant eagle, and he soars into the sky, after the sage.
Nolderan is the first one of the henchmen to attack, and he goes directly for Daren. While the old master and disciple commence their duel, Kate quickly conjures a semi-transparent ice dome around me, her and Leila, just in time to defend us against a barrage of flames, coming from the two dwarves, who are apparently both fire elementalists.
“Don’t kill them, yet!” the banshee shouts. “I need to have some answers.”
“To hell with your answers, abomination!” the dwarf with the eye patch says. “You should be thankful enough that our master took you under his wing. Do not presume to think that you can give us orders!”
“The sage is not my master,” the banshee says. “We only have an agreement. I told him that I’d help him get the Magium, as long as he’d sign me up to this tournament, and let me pursue my own goals on the side.”
“The very fact that Sage Talmak is letting you breathe in his presence should be more than enough of a reward for your services,” says the dwarf with the scars on his face. “If I were in his place, I would have killed you a long time ago.”
As the dwarf finishes his sentence, Kate suddenly unleashes a hundred icicles that she’d been preparing in the sky all this time, and she shoots them at all of the sage’s henchmen, including Nolderan. Just as the icicles reach the four enemies in front of us, they all bounce off an invisible barrier, which was defending the mages. Nolderan, on the other hand, did not need a barrier to protect himself, and he simply danced out of the projectiles’ way, while also fending off an attack from Daren.
“Could we perhaps continue this argument at a more opportune moment?” the elf from Talmak’s team says, with a forced smile. “See, if I hadn’t shielded you just now, you would have all been dead, already.”
“As if!” the banshee says. “Maybe these fools would have died, but I was well aware of those icicles, and was already preparing to dodge them.”
“Is that why you haven’t even moved an inch, when you were attacked, despite not knowing about my invisible barrier?” the elf says, still forcing himself to smile.
“Shut up,” the banshee says, looking a little flustered. “I obviously knew about the barrier!”
“Of course you did…” the elf says. “Listen, just ask your question, quickly, so we can finally start murdering each other, will you?”
“You there, in the ice dome!” the banshee shouts at us. “I have a question for you. What is the name of the banshee in the amulet?”
“What makes you think that we’ll answer your question?” Kate shouts back at her, through the dome.
“If you answer, then we’ll make your deaths quick, and mostly painless,” the banshee says. “But if you don’t—”
All of a sudden, several fireballs rain down upon the sage’s underlings, covering their whole area in explosions.
“Arraka,” we hear Illuna’s voice, coming from the sky. “Her name is Arraka.”
As we look up, we see Illuna hovering a dozen feet above the ground, using Flower’s jets, while her eyes are shining with a blue light.
“Wait, how did you get out of the cage?” I ask her.
“You are allowed to cast teleportation spells inside the golden cage, as long as you’re the one who conjured it,” Illuna says, “The spell has been designed that way, so you could still escape, in case you trapped yourself inside with your enemy, by accident. Luckily, I barely ever use that daily teleportation spell of mine, so I had it ready for this occasion.”
“But what happened to Melindra?
” I say.
“She is conscious, but still recovering,” Illuna says. “The healing spell that I cast on her won’t take full effect until at least a few more minutes will have passed. I made sure to extend the cage’s duration, so she’d be kept safe until then, although it’s taken quite a lot of my magical energy to do it…”
“Are you two just about done with your conversation, or do you intend to keep ignoring us?” says the banshee who works for the sage.
As we take a look towards Talmak’s henchmen, we see that they were unharmed by the fireballs, thanks to the elf’s invisible barrier. While the barrier itself is not visible with the naked eye, you can tell that it’s still there, by the feel of its magical aura.
“Nobody asked you to wait for us,” Illuna says, in a cold voice. “You could have attacked us at any time.”
“Oh, I would have attacked you long ago,” the dwarf with the eye patch says, “if this sad excuse for an elf hadn’t surrounded us all with an impenetrable barrier that works both ways!”
“I will remove the barrier as soon as our banshee friend is done asking her questions,” the elf says, in a calm manner. “And also as soon as you promise to not get caught in every single one of the enemy’s deadly attacks, like a gang of amateurs.”
“That banshee from the amulet that you called Arraka…” the black-haired banshee starts to ask Illuna, while ignoring the elf. “How old is she, exactly? Do you happen to know if she’s been around for more than a thousand years? Perhaps even five thousand?”
“Oh, I’ve been living for quite a bit more than five thousand years, little girl,” Arraka says. “But I think we should both stop beating around the bush. What is it that you want to ask of me, exactly?”
“I will ask you this directly, then,” the banshee says, with a dark look in her eyes. “Did you, or did you not cause the banishment of all banshees from the magical realm five thousand years ago?”
“Aha- Ahahahahaha!” Arraka laughs. “So there are still banshees who know the story after all these years? Oh man, it looks like not even getting trapped in a mountain for thousands of years is enough to extinguish the flame of a true legend! I am so proud, right now, you have no idea.”
“So it is true…” the black-haired banshee says, with the look in her eyes now darker than ever. “I always knew that those rumors were true. The only reason why I came to Varathia was because my information led me to believe that this was where I could find you. And as soon as I felt that sinister aura coming from the amulet, I knew that it would be you. All this pain and suffering that our race has had to endure for millennia… Being forced to live our lives as parasites… All because of you!”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Arraka says, in a provocative tone.
“I am going to end you!” the banshee shouts. “I will avenge every single banshee that you’ve cursed with this torturous existence.”
“If you destroy this amulet, you will only free her,” Illuna says. “And you will doom us all.”
“If she goes free, then I will kill her again, and again, and again, until she is dead for good,” the black-haired banshee says, with her eyes full of rage. “And if you stand in my way, I will kill you too. Undo this barrier, elf. It’s about time that we all settled our scores.”
“Finally,” the elf says, as he dismisses his barrier. “Try not to die in the first five seconds, will you?”
Just as soon as the barrier disappears, the two dwarves channel their magic into a single ray of fire, which they use to attack Kate’s ice dome. The ice is being reinforced almost as fast as it is melted, but it’s clear that Kate won’t be able to keep this up much longer. In the meantime, the black-haired banshee flies up in the sky, and begins to attack Illuna and Flower with a variety of spells.
Judging by the very different types of spells that she’s using, I’m going to guess that she is some sort of a generalist. She’s already cast a lightning spell, a sonic spell and a freezing spell, one after the other, while also summoning a few eagles to try and catch Illuna by surprise. Luckily, Flower has done a good job at avoiding the attacks in mid-air, although neither she nor Illuna have managed to land a hit on their adversary, just yet.
While she is still busy reinforcing the ice dome, Kate shoots a few more icicles at the dwarves, but this time, the projectiles get stopped even further up in the air, by what seems to be a small, flat, semi-transparent barrier, that the elf conjured to intercept them. The elf smiles at Kate, from a distance, which makes Kate frown at him, through the ice-dome, as she turns her head to Leila and me.
“If either of you could keep some of those three mages busy, while I attack them, it would be highly appreciated…” Kate says.
“I’m on it,” Leila writes.
“Me too,” I say. “Open the dome.”
Once she gets our confirmation, Kate waves her right hand towards the side of the dome, and she makes an exit for us, which is just the right size for the two of us to fit through.
“Let’s target the elf, first,” I tell Leila. “If we both attack him at the same time, we might force him to focus his barriers more on himself, than on the dwarves, which will leave his allies defenseless against Kate’s icicles. I’ll attack him from above, and you can attack him from the ground at the same time.”
Leila nods, and then we both walk out of the dome, as Kate closes up the exit behind us. As soon as we’re out, Leila starts running towards our enemy, while I begin flying in the elf’s direction as well. When they see us get out of the dome, the two dwarves quickly switch their targets, and they begin to aim for Leila and me, instead. The dwarf with the eye patch seems to be the one focusing on me, while the one with the scars is currently throwing fireballs towards Leila.
I easily dodge the flame attacks coming from the dwarf, in mid-air, and then I prepare to dive towards the elf, but just as I’m getting closer, a large, flat, semi-transparent barrier appears right in front of me, blocking my way. When I try to get around it, the barrier just moves along with me, and it doesn’t allow me to get past it. I don’t get to do this for much longer, because a new barrage of flames forces me to distance myself from the mages, once more.
In the meantime, Leila seems to be having her own problems with barriers, although the ones that she’s bumping into are completely invisible, and can only be detected if you really focus on them with your magical sense. I try to make another dive for the elf, but my path gets blocked by one of his barriers yet again. Just as I was trying to get around it, Kate shoots dozens of icicles towards the elf, coming from all directions, which forces him to dismiss all the barriers and to make a new one, around himself.
This allows Leila and me to finally reach him, and to attack him with many rapid strikes, even though each one of them gets blocked by the invisible barrier around himself. With the elf no longer protecting his allies, Kate immediately starts attacking the two dwarves with icicles, and it doesn’t take her long until she manages to kill them both, with a few well-placed shots to their heads.
“So much for the great sage’s elite squad, eh?” I tell the elf, as I land on the ground, and continue to attack him through his barrier, along with Leila.
“Those were only easily replaceable pawns,” the elf says, with a forced smile. “The older members of the team are currently away on an important mission, related to the pinecones. It’s too bad that you will never get to meet them, because the sage will obliterate all of you before then.”
“The sage?” I ask him. “Not you?”
“I am only in charge of defense,” the elf says. “I have no spells that could help me fight you in any way. I’m just going to keep this barrier up until you either tire yourselves out, or get bored. You won’t be able to break it anytime soon at this rate.”
“Right…” I say, as I continue to attack him.
While we’re dealing with the elf, I can’t help but notice that the sky above us is currently filled with big, floating rocks, which Talmak is
using to chase Hadrik around, in his eagle form. It looks like Hadrik is at a bit of a disadvantage when fighting aerial battles, due to the fact that the flying creatures which he can morph into are too weak, compared to his regular dwarf form, and he needs to switch back to being a dwarf every time he wants to smash one of the rocks into pieces.
Somewhere below, at a much lower altitude, Illuna and Flower are still busy fighting the black-haired banshee, in mid-flight, although they seem to be very evenly matched, and neither of them has managed to do any significant damage to the other. Flower and Illuna may have the upper hand, in terms of raw power, because there are two of them, but the banshee working for the sage is making good use of the multitude of spells she has at her disposal to compensate for her disadvantage.
Meanwhile, the duel between Daren and Nolderan seems to be much less balanced. The ex-sage doesn’t look like he’s taken any hits, so far, while Daren is already moving much slower than before, and he appears to have been injured during their battle. I’m not sure how long he’ll be able to last at this rate. Maybe I should go help him?
Before I get to think any further on the subject, Hadrik quickly lands on the ground, in his eagle form, and then he turns himself into a dwarf. The sage is still up above, on his platform, with all of his rocks floating around him, and he seems to be waiting for Hadrik’s next move.
“Give up, Daren,” Nolderan says, with a confident tone in his voice, as he manages to wound Daren yet again, by attacking one of his armor’s elbow joints. “I can see that you’ve learned some new techniques since we’ve been apart, but you’re still no match for me. Maybe if you beg Sage Talmak for mercy, he might still spare your—”
The ex-sage does not get to finish his sentence, because Hadrik suddenly dashes to his side, and he punches him so hard, that he throws him into a nearby wall.
“I think you may have forgotten that this is a team fight, not a duel, old man,” Hadrik tells him, with a grin. “You might want to mind your surroundings a little more, next time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Nolderan says, as he struggles to get back up.
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