by Layton Green
Five yards away. Will wanted to shout with victory. He was going to make it. The closest archduke, the skeleton, was too far away to reach him. Will reached the wall and bent his legs for extra power.
Before he could propel the ball upward, something scaly wrapped around his neck and tightened. He dropped the ball, gagged, and clutched his throat. A flat serpent’s head darted for his eyes, fangs glistening. Will stuck out a hand and grabbed it by the neck just before it bit him.
Will unsheathed his sword with his other hand. He could hear the archdukes rushing towards him. The skeleton man must have thrown his staff all the way across the arena.
Will swung hard. His sword cut deep into the coils, shearing the snake in two. It fell lifeless to the ground. In one smooth motion, Will sheathed his sword and picked up the ball. Too late he noticed the bark devil right beside him. The massive being thrust its horned head right at Will’s chest, aiming to impale him.
The attack had come fast, but another attack came faster. He heard a war cry from his cousin and saw the pliable blade of the urumi sword snap in midair and smack away the bark devil’s attack, an inch before the deadly branches pierced Will’s chest.
The other four archdukes were a step behind the bark devil. But Will had the ball, and a step was enough. He hurled the rubber sphere at the circle, praying his aim was true, willing it to go through.
The bark devil snarled and tossed one of his lassos at the ball, seeking to foil the attempt just as it had the last two.
Mateo’s sword snapped again.
The rope split in two.
The ball soared through the circle.
-38-
After strategizing until confident they had the best plan available, Val and the others left the safety of the steam room. Before they confronted Asmodeus, they had to get past the gethzul, a task none of them felt confident they could accomplish. Again, they were driven by necessity rather than choice. Trying to drop down through the iron grate would draw every demon in the building, and in addition, Val had sensed powerful wards on the iron bars. They had tried removing a few portions of the floor, but had found nothing but packed dirt, as far as they probed. Either something strange and interdimensional was going on, or they would have to blast through so much floor it would alert every demon in the baths.
A dozen feet before the staircase, Synne laid a hand on Val’s arm. “Promise you will do as we agreed. Do not engage the gethzul. Queen willing, we’ll join you soon.”
Val cracked a grin. “You don’t trust your wizard?”
“I know how he thinks.”
He clasped her arm in return. “Good luck, and come back to me. I need my majitsu by my side.”
Her eyes flashed with emotion. With a short nod, she turned away and flexed her fingers, preparing for battle.
At the top of the stairs, Synne and Rucker fanned out to the sides. The eyes of the gethzul once again flicked upwards, watching the party with cool disdain through the swirling vapors. Rucker twirled his axe and grinned, locked eyes with Synne, and sprang down the stairs. The majitsu followed on the opposite side, taking five steps at a time with graceful leaps.
The gethzul on the right rose fluidly to its feet, awaiting Rucker’s charge. At the last second, the demon spun away from his axe swing and raked backwards with an extended hand. The creature moved far faster, but Rucker had somehow anticipated the maneuver and lowered his head. The gethzul’s black claws rasped harmlessly across his helm.
When Synne engaged, the two seemed evenly matched. The movements of the gethzul were not methodical in nature like the trained majitsu. Instead they were primal, animalistic. The smoke-colored demon slashed with its claws in whip-like motions, keeping Synne on the defensive. When she pressed the attack, the demon absorbed punches that would have shattered bones. Once or twice the gethzul stumbled backwards when Synne connected.
Val watched the fight with a hollow space in his stomach. Once the battle started, he led a second charge down the middle of the staircase, followed by Dida and Ferin and Adaira. The three mages erected Wizard Shields around the group as they raced down the stairs. Both gethzul broke off and tried to attack Val and then Adaira, but the Wizard Shields held—barely. Val felt the magic start to tear, and he knew a few blows from those black claws would rip right through the magic. Synne said the gethzul were immune to most spells, so they had no choice but to hurry through and leave the battle to the warriors.
A wave of thick hot air assaulted Val at the bottom of the staircase. Molds and yeasts and mushrooms covered the rock walls and floors, sometimes forming strange symbols and patterns, as if the fungi were sentient beings.
Ten feet past the stairs, Val turned and saw Rucker take a piece out of the gethzul’s shoulder with his axe. Black blood dripped from the being’s ashen skin, though it continued fighting in silence. With anticipation that seemed supernatural, Rucker avoided or blocked most of the blows, using his helm and bracers and even his boot spurs as shields. When one of the gethzul’s claws tore through his left spur, ripping it in half, the crafty warrior responded by jamming the end of his axe blade into the monster’s stomach, causing it to stumble backwards and trip over a step. Rucker swung down for the kill but the gethzul sprang away at the last moment.
Synne was connecting with more frequency than Rucker but causing little damage. Val could tell she was too wary of the gethzul’s poison bite to move inside for a killing blow. Blood streaked from wounds on her arms and oozed through her shirt.
What she needs, Val thought, is a weapon.
“Synne,” he shouted, “catch!”
He launched his staff over the head of the majitsu. Synne leapt high into the air to catch it, blocking downward with the staff as she landed to defend another blow. Val breathed a sigh of relief when the staff held up to the claws of the gethzul. With a lightning-fast combination, Synne found an opening and ripped a large gash through the creature’s chest with the crescent moon tip.
Val expected the gethzul to step back and regroup. Synne must have, too, because she was caught by surprise when the gethzul pressed through the awful blow and sprang onto her like a jungle cat, wrapping its legs around her waist and biting deep into her neck.
Synne dropped the staff and convulsed, her scream ricocheting through the hallway.
Stunned at first, Val recovered his wits and dashed forward, ignoring Adaira’s shouts of protest. Synne lay helpless on the floor, the gethzul still attached to her neck. Black energy sprang into Val’s hands, roaring through him, and he channeled the Spirit Fire into the demon’s back.
The gethzul arched and emitted a high-pitched moan. The Spirit Fire didn’t consume the gethzul as it did most things, but it burned a hole into its back, and Val kept pushing. Synne was still slumped on the steps. When the demon turned for him, somehow pressing through the pain, Synne lurched to her feet and picked up the staff. She swung with both hands at the gethzul’s torso, snapping her wrists so hard the azantite edge almost severed the demon in half. It fell to the floor, dead, and Synne collapsed beside it.
Val extinguished the Spirit Fire. He turned and saw Rucker locked in battle with his opponent, taking blow after blow from its claws and narrowly avoiding a bite. When Val picked up his staff to join the fray, the gethzul broke off from fighting Rucker and lunged at Val too fast for him to react. Val screamed as the gethzul raked his chest and arms with its claws, opening deep gashes as it sprang forward with its mouth agape, four long incisors prepared to clamp onto Val’s face.
His Wizard Shield came too late. The sickly sweet breath of the gethzul pressed into his face, then faded away as the monster slumped to the ground. Val looked down and saw Rucker’s magical axe embedded deep into the demon’s spine. An incredible blow. A killing blow. Rucker walked over, spat as he put a foot on the demon’s back, and yanked out his axe. “Teach the bloody thing to turn its back on me.”
“Adaira!” Val called out, shaking from the fading adrenaline and the pain lancing through h
is chest and arms. “Synne needs you!”
The cuerpomancer was already rushing over. After casting a worried glance at Val’s wounds, she bent over the majitsu. Adaira took in the blue pallor of her face and the bite wound in her neck.
Rucker’s words rang in Val’s head. A poison with no antidote.
Adaira moved everyone back and hovered over Synne. As the rest of the party watched the stairs and the hallway for signs of trouble, Dida caused the air to shimmer, shielding the party from casual observance. If anyone had heard the screams, Val realized, then they would assume the gethzul had claimed another victim.
Adaira face had paled and she broke into a cold sweat as her hands moved in a slow circle around the wound. The work of a cuerpomancer was a mystery to Val, but he gathered that Adaira was very talented, and she looked as exhausted as he had ever seen her. He brought her a drink of water and stayed by her side, but could do little else except look on in concern. Though incredibly painful, he sensed his own wounds were a shadow of the poison coursing through Synne’s system.
Val grew more nervous with every passing second. He guessed many of the demons could see through Dida’s spell, and it was only a matter of time before one wandered over. Or maybe the strange, luminescent life forms on the walls were reporting their presence, and Asmodeus was already waiting on them.
At last the majitsu coughed and opened her eyes. Adaira swooned and fell into Val’s arms. “The poison was so strong,” she said weakly. “Unlike any I have ever encountered. Had I not reached her at the very moment of injection, she would have had no chance.”
After drinking an entire skin of water, Synne hobbled to her feet. The color returned to her skin, and she flexed her hands and rolled her neck. After a deep bow to Adaira, she signaled with a curt nod that she was ready to continue.
The cuerpomancer was slumped on a step, barely conscious. “I can walk,” she said, struggling to her feet, “but I’m afraid my magic is spent.”
Val gritted through his own pain and stood beside her. Besides the physical wounds, he guessed half his magic was depleted.
Synne recovering from a brush with death. Rucker bruised and battered. Adaira and Dida almost drained, Val at half-strength, and Ferin of little use against the sort of adversaries they were facing.
As the party started down the humid passage glowing with the bioluminescence of demon-spawned fungi, marching towards a final encounter they might not be able to survive, Val wondered, as did all leaders, whether the choices he had made that led to that moment were the right ones. Whether he could have done better.
In response, he tightened his grip on his staff, filled his mind with images of his brothers, and prepared to steal the crown.
-39-
Dean Groft jerked awake and sat up in bed, his subconscious mind tickled by an abnormal fluctuation of spirit. It was probably nothing, a spirit mage honing a late night spell or a ripple from a distant battle of wizards or a bubble in the space-time continuum. He knew his subliminal awareness was more attuned to the presence of spirit than was his conscious self.
Instead of falling back asleep, he rose for a drink of water. Unlike the vast majority of his peers, Dean Groft did not have a towering stronghold with a colored spire in the Wizard District. Though spirit mages themselves, his parents had raised him to be a public servant, and he had married a common-born woman who had long since passed. The dean lived a block off St. Charles, in a quaint, ivy-covered cottage across from the stately public library. A modest house compared to his neighbors.
That did not mean his residence was unprotected. Everyone knew who lived there, and attempting to encroach on the property of an elder spirit mage was, well, it was simply not done.
Clad in a linen bed-robe, his bad knees creaking, the dean’s eyes passed over the portrait of his wife on his bedside table. The warm smile and eyes like melting glaciers, hair as red as flame, a woman whose kindness surpassed even her beauty.
After Helena died of old age, the dean lost much of his will to live. What kept him going was not a desire to live forever—on the contrary, Groft had no children, his parents and siblings were long deceased, and he desperately missed his wife and looked forward to the day his spiritual energy reunited with hers.
No, his motivation was his sense of civic duty.
Lord Alistair had always been ambitious, but ever since his own wife had perished, his lust for power had consumed him, warping his perspective. Though an effective leader, and one of the most powerful mages to grace the Realm in hundreds of years, the Chief Thaumaturge did not believe in egalitarian rule. He believed in the superiority of the mage-born.
Extreme loyalty to one’s own people was not a positive character trait, Groft knew. It simply made one insensitive to the plight of others. Not only that, but a world ruled by the privileged few could only lead to inequality and ruin. The growing disparity in the Realm had bred anger and desperation. Revolt was inevitable.
The Congregation would crush the Revolution, of course. Yet what kind of world would result? One of slaves and masters, cruelty and prejudice?
That was not a world in which the dean wished to live.
Groft knew he was the only mage powerful enough to challenge Lord Alistair’s bid for authoritarian rule. Many looked to the dean as a stabilizing influence, and he feared what would happen should he die and leave the Realm in Alistair’s hands.
With a deep sigh, he padded into the kitchen. He poured a cup of water from a pitcher and added a few chips of ice from the frost chest.
That drink of water saved his life.
When he stepped back into the bedroom, he saw two black shadows in human form flow through the walls and converge on his bed. Hands extended, streaks of silver light pulsating up and down their bodies, they reached for the rumpled bedcover that had concealed Groft’s sleeping form not moments before.
His first thought: how had they gotten past his wards?
His second: what in the Realm were they?
As the two beings realized the bed was empty and turned to face him, he at once sensed the warped magic that had been forced into these creatures. Knew they were perversions of humankind and spirit.
He also sensed their power, and that a touch would mean his death.
The shadows flew right at him. Groft blasted them with a Spirit Wind that pushed them back. They regrouped and pressed forward. He raked them with Spirit Fire but it disappeared into their shadowy forms, as if joining with their energies.
He had moments to act. None of his plentiful magic items would help him. He guessed only a handful of items in the Realm could combat these beings. He tried a few more spells in rapid succession, just to be sure. Fire Sphere from a shattered lamp, Spirit Ray, Mind Whip. Nothing worked.
Forced to take defensive measures, the dean skipped the inferior Spirit Shield and went straight to Spirit Skin, a highly advanced spell that bonded spirit to the outer layer of the epidermis and created the strongest barrier known to man. Dean Groft experienced a grim relief when the shadow creatures tried to grab him and were repelled.
The problem was, Spirit Skin was incredibly draining. If maintained, he had perhaps ten minutes before his magic ran dry. It gave him a reprieve but little else. A scintilla of time to formulate a plan.
The shadow beings seemed to sense this and hovered just out of reach, watching him.
Waiting.
He looked closer and noticed in shock that he recognized the faces of the shadow beings. Both were former spiritmancers who had died over the years: one a student who had perished during the Planewalk; the other a young mage who had disappeared while exploring the Place Between Worlds. Or so they had been told. Lord Alistair had presided over the failed Planewalk attempt, and spearheaded the search party in the Place Between Worlds.
Alistair, the dean whispered in horror, what have you done?
He contemplated flying into the Wizard District, rousing the Conclave, and letting the members bear witness to these beings. If
traced back to Lord Alistair, his deed would land him in the Wizard Vault for life. Perhaps spell his execution.
What stayed the dean’s hand was worry for the safety of others. Only a dozen or so mages in the Realm could form a Spirit Skin, and these beings would destroy all others who stood in their path. Would destroy him if he didn’t figure out a way to combat them.
Congealed spirit was the rarest and most powerful of all magic. The might of a spirit mage molded over time and distilled into an item of arcane power. He did not know exactly what these hybrid beings were, but he sensed they were formed of spirit during a long and arduous process. He could not even imagine the suffering those poor souls must have endured.
He also knew the one thing that could combat congealed spirit was a higher purity of magic. This was why Zariduke was so feared. It cut through lesser magic without fail, and must have been made by a supremely powerful arch mage. Salomon himself, if the legends were true.
But Groft did not have Spiritscourge, or another item even close to that level of power. His greatest offensive weapons—spells born of spirit—would only inconvenience these beings. Groft could fight them by making a weapon of equal or greater strength, but that would take time. Years.
Yet offensive spells were not his specialty. A true spirit mage focused on exploring the nature of magic itself, probing the dimensions, unlocking the secrets of the multiverse.
Let us see, he thought, if I can defeat them in another way.
Let us see if they can follow where I lead.
As the shadow beings watched, streaks of silver light heaving up and down their forms, Dean Groft clapped his hands to create a rift in spirit, and then stepped into the Void.
A tunnel of endless dark.
Boundless. Formless.
He extended his hands and flew, not with his body but with his mind, down and down and down, faster and faster, unlocking his power, whisking across the fabric of reality.