“But we can’t teleport in these caves. The crimson—”
“Is not a problem,” Mara declared, retrieved two black marbles, and tossed one to her colleague. “We’re leaving these caves for good. Let’s go,” They both crushed the marbles and disappeared in bright flashes of mana. Jazai watched this whole exchange and almost wanted to hit himself for not realizing it earlier.
“Of course. It’s those damned stones.” He sighed, lowered his hands, and extended them to his teammates. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t simply try to run?” Devol asked but took his hand as Asla did the same. “I thought you couldn’t teleport far.”
“I’m not going that far,” the boy stated and closed his eyes as he tried to focus. “Although this is only a hunch so you may want to start praying.”
“Do what?” his friend asked but as a large rock collapsed on the barrier and destroyed it, the three were whisked away through the caverns. In one blink, Devol saw collapsing rocks and cracking earth and the next, he stood in a dark hovel, seemingly the one he had found Jazai in earlier. “Wait, we’re back here? How did you manage that?”
The diviner sighed wearily as he collapsed against the large rock and rubbed his temples. “I overheard those two talking about the crimson. This entire cave system is flooded with it and the longer we’re here and the deeper we go, the more it disrupts our mana and weakens us. I was able to bring us back here because my…issues earlier left a ton of my mana residue everywhere in here so I could pinpoint the location easier.”
“Seriously?” Devol asked as he sheathed Achroma. “I guess that worked out for the best, huh?”
The other boy chuckled. “That’s the optimistic way of looking at it, yeah.”
Asla knelt beside the scholar and checked the injuries on his legs. “It looks like they are healing well.” She looked at him and Devol. “Thank you for finding me.”
Jazai nodded. “Thanks for the rescue,” he replied with a weary grin. “Did you snatch their signets off them after kicking their asses?”
The wildkin stared blankly at him for a moment before she checked her bags and pockets and fished out three signets, hers and the two ambassadors’. “It would appear so. It looks like I was in a right enough mind to remember to take them.” She closed her hand around them and looked at Devol. “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”
He looked away sheepishly. “Hey, we all have bad days, right?” He chuckled before a reverberation through the cave caught their attention.
“What now?” the diviner sighed and almost bashed his head on the rock.
“That felt like it came from the south—the path Ramah went down,” the swordsman commented and Asla’s ears flicked at the name.
“You ran into Ramah?” she asked. “Did you fight him?”
The boy shook his head. “No. He was going to look for Zed who was looking for…oh.” His voice faltered for a moment when realization dawned. “He probably found him.”
Chapter Forty-Six
“This is maddening.” Tiso wisely kept the thought to himself. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes since Zed and Koli began their fight, if one could call it that, but the pace was glacial and in that darkened cavern with only the two orbs of light the assassin had made to illuminate a small area, the squama had to rely mostly on his hearing to judge what was happening inside his personal rocky shell.
They were not fighting one another in an all-out brawl but as two assassins. This meant an occasional strike here or there. Zed would also seemingly strike at random areas thinking he had a mark on his adversary, but to no avail as he would hit nothing and disappear into the shadows again.
Whatever spell Koli had used to hide, he was a master of it. Tiso could not find him through either feeling for his mana or vibrations in the earth. At one point, he tried to shift the rock in the room to chisel away at some of the pillars and larger rocks he could have been hiding behind only for a chunk of his shell to be broken or a blade to strike close to his feet, warning him of his promise. Any attempt Zed tried to make to capitalize on this met with disappointment as the assassin would once again disappear before the merc could strike.
The orbs of light began to fade. The squama peeked through one of the small holes in his shell to look into the arena and was shocked to see his boss appear under one of the lights with his arms outstretched. “Come out, Koli!” He bellowed a challenge at the trickster. “This is supposed to be a test of skill and power, not this glorified children’s game.”
Tiso began to panic, uncertain what Zed hoped to achieve. Koli could easily capture him now using his malefic if he had a clear line of sight on him. Did the man know something he did not? At this point, after listening to the mercenary captain’s ramblings all this time about the assassin, he had assumed he knew about as much as he did, but he must have missed something.
Perhaps Zed wanted his adversary to use his malefic. It would require a great deal of mana on Koli’s part, which would make him an easy target, but it meant the merc would have to be able to escape the distortion ability to make use of it. The squama tried to decide if his boss had a plan and if so, what it might be.
Zed’s arms lowered and he spun the dagger in his hands. “Do you feel scared now, Koli?” he taunted and looked slowly around the darkened room. “Why don’t you make use of that eye of yours, huh? Could it be you’ve already used it too much?” He smiled deviously. “Are you at your limit? Do you honestly think you can fight me without it?”
“I do indeed,” the assassin replied from above. Tiso and Zed both looked at the top of the chamber, where dozens of throwing knives hovered in the air. Koli stood above them, his legs planted on two stalactites side by side that prevented him from falling. He smiled as he pointed at Zed and the knives streaked toward him in a deadly rain.
“Pathetic,” the merc growled and pointed at the knives. “Redirect,” he invoked and the weapons halted instantly in their trajectory and spun to retrace their journey. The assassin pointed at the shrinking orbs of light and clapped sharply. They collided with one another and created a large explosion of light that blinded both Tiso and Zed, who looked directly at it.
Koli dropped out of his position and snapped his fingers, and most of the knives vanished in bursts of mana. He snatched one of the few real ones and landed a little to the side of his adversary and lashed forward with the blade to end this fight with a single strike to the neck.
When Tiso could see again, the assassin had his arm outstretched in front of Zed and he feared the worst. The trickster frowned, more curious than angry, and struggled to free his arm. The merc had caught the blow in one hand and seemingly tried to crush his wrist through brute force alone.
“One of the drawbacks about using my malefic,” Zed muttered and opened his eyes to stare at his opponent, “is that I can’t see too well when I’m in the dark. I’ve had to work on my Vello and Vita all these years to compensate so even blind, I know where you are when you finally show your face.” He grinned as he drew his dagger back. “I said this would be cut by cut and I think I’ll start with this arm.” He swung the dagger to hack the appendage off. Koli let the arm go slack and ducked as he drove his leg into the man and tripped him as his arms crossed. He flipped and forced himself out of Zed’s grasp.
The assassin jumped back, but the man turned and rushed toward him. He threw the knife, which Zed blocked with his dagger. Although he landed a hit directly on the man’s face when he was close enough, this did not halt his manic charge. Instead of attempting to stab or cut his foe, Zed grasped his vest and dragged him to the shadows. As Zed stepped in and vanished into the darkness, Koli seemed truly concerned for the first time when he understood what this could mean for him. He planted his feet to attempt to pull himself out of his captor’s grasp but to no avail. The effort only delayed his descent.
He reached toward the light, closed his hand slightly, and made it expand
rapidly and shift the shadows around him. Part of the merc’s face was still in the light, and when he looked back to see what his opponent was doing and saw the light drown the shadows out, his eyes bulged for a moment before he released the assassin and disappeared into the dark.
Koli darted back and straightened his vest as he regained his composure. He smiled as he noted the divide between the light and shadow, picked the knife up from the floor, and twirled it in his hand. Still smiling, he extended the other hand, turned the expansive light into an orb again, and made it hover above him.
Tiso knew this was bad. It seemed Koli was well aware of Ebon Jackal’s weakness. While someone seeing it for the first time could deduce that Zed needed darkness for it to work if they lasted long enough in a fight, there was another drawback that was far more lethal to the user. If the assassin knew that and could exploit it, Tiso could easily see the end of this match. He had no choice and had to give Zed an advantage. If the trickster chose to simply hunker down in that position, his boss would have to be the one to set the pace.
The transmuter planted a hand on the ground. He would drop the stalactites onto the assassin, force him out of position, and give Zed his chance to strike. He could do it quickly. After all, he was simply breaking the earth, not reshaping it, and he would be able to do it before Koli even realized that he was.
“I believe I have given you sufficient warnings now,” the assassin said in a suave but disapproving tone. Tiso heard it behind him and outside his shell. He looked to where Koli had been but he had vanished. Startled, he tried to recall when he might have moved without him noticing.
The shell he was hiding in was crushed as a hand reached in, caught his neck, and pulled him out before it thrust him into a wall. The assassin placed his dagger against his neck. “And I assume you know what I have to do now that you’ve broken the rules, little lizard.”
“Z-Zed!” Tiso choked and his eyes widened as an arm and dagger appeared out of the darkness behind his captor. The trickster smiled and lowered his knife as Zed leapt out of the dark and attempted to run his blade through his head. Koli simply tilted his head to the left. The blade passed him but skewered the squama between the eyes. His body instantly went limp.
The merc leader glared at him for a moment before the transmuter’s mana that lined the cavern walls disappeared as he released the body. Ebon Jackal split the head open as it fell through the blade and onto the floor. The assassin made a disapproving sound and clicked his tongue against his teeth as he turned to the mercenary leader. “Now, Zed, is that how you discipline all your underlings?”
Ramah felt Tiso’s mana fade. He had no doubt that he was dead. The wildkin stood, picked his hammer up, and held it in both hands as he stared at the wall. Zed had been given his chance and it had cost them one ally already. This needed to end. He raised his hammer and prepared to drive it through the wall, ready to end it himself.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Zed shouted in fury as he swiped at Koli, who simply ducked under the clumsy attack, placed one hand on the ground, and flipped back several paces. “I must certainly give you some credit, Zed,” he commented and twirled his knife. “You have started to use your malefic more imaginatively, but you are still quite predictable since you seem so keen to deal decisive blows. I thought you said you wanted to savor this?”
The merc lashed out and swept his dagger in front of him although he was still far away from his target. The assassin saw his arm disappear and immediately noticed it protruding from the wall in an attempt to slice into his stomach. “There you go,” he teased as he stepped back. The dagger cut into his vest and shirt but not his skin.
His adversary dove into the shadows of the wall and vanished from sight. Koli looked both above and below him and reminded himself that he needed to get into the light. His foe could come from any direction. He held a hand up. “Illuminate,” he invoked and fired several small orbs of light into the air. This wouldn’t block out all the shadows and darkness but it gave him more room to maneuver.
“You keep taunting me and goading me to use my malefic,” Zed said belligerently and his growled tones echoed inside the chamber. “But what about you, Koli? Is this another way to mock me, not using your malefic? Or are you simply too much of a coward? I’ve heard about the eye and I know what happened to that count. Are you afraid the same thing will happen to you?”
The assassin was about to respond when he felt a small tremor as something pounded against the earthen wall across the chamber. It seemed someone was knocking.
“Every malefic makes you pay a price for its power, Koli. Have you paid up yet?”
“It’s a shame yours seems to be the need to chatter incessantly,” he mocked as he bounded to a pillar, caught hold of its side, and hung about ten feet up as he looked around the chamber for any signs of where Zed could attack from and made sure to keep his back in mind. It seemed increasingly obvious that the man was giving up the piece by piece or cut by cut nonsense.
Although, despite his confidence, the merc leader’s words had some effect. He had to ask himself why he had not ended this miserable farce already. Admittedly, his opponent had at least put up an enjoyable fight, but the more enraged he became, the more Koli felt that this would dissolve into a simple brawl, and that was no fun at all.
He recalled the warrior he had killed shortly before he found Zed and that at the end of that fight, he had begun to feel somewhat more…jolly than usual. He shouldn’t have been so surprised or displeased because it wasn’t like the feeling wasn’t enjoyable. But he had always prided himself on his control. His decisions and actions were his own. While he might be an evil person in the eyes of many, it was his choice to be so and he neither despised nor reveled in it. Quite simply, it was how he lived his life.
This meant that the one moment in which he did not make a decision of his own volition…well, it was understandable that it annoyed him to some extent.
He felt his enemy’s mana behind him, which wasn’t at all unexpected. But when he turned and threw his knife, it pierced a wall and he realized it had been a distraction. He felt it again below and looked down to see the merc launch himself out of the shadows toward him. Koli kicked off the pillar as Zed hurtled past him to the ceiling, where he disappeared amongst the shadows cast by the pillar.
The assassin reached out to the orbs of light, shifted them, and tried to maneuver them so most of the shadows were in his line of sight. Unfortunately, this proved to be a little more difficult to execute than he had hoped. That squama could certainly design a cave, it seemed. He then saw Zed for only a moment as he faded from the ceiling into a patch of shadow on the ground, and again when he headed from one wall to the other and gained speed. Koli jumped into the center of the cave, picked up two of his discarded knives, and held them ready. It seemed his opponent intended to try to best him in a test of speed. Well, at least he was trying.
He checked his shadow, thin and stretched in the light. That was one of Zed’s weaknesses. He could move his body through darkness and shadow, but if he wanted to move his whole body through, the space had to be big enough and his large frame hampered that. The obvious solution to this was to thin himself out so his ability to use his power was more convenient, but Zed chose not to do this. It made the assassin almost sorry that the Ebon Jackal had fallen into his hands. He certainly did not use it to its full ability.
One of the orbs was snuffed out and Koli looked as Zed vanished into another wall and then lunged from the ground to slice through another orb before he disappeared again. It was somewhat clever, but creating light demanded almost frivolous amounts of mana. He could simply create another batch before his adversary could destroy those already in existence.
The assassin spun as his adversary surged toward him. He attempted to dodge the strike and was mostly successful but felt a pain in his arm as the merc’s dagger sliced into it. While it didn’t sever the arm as he probably wanted, it left a deep wound.
&nbs
p; Zed disappeared into another wall before he fell through the ceiling, destroyed one of the orbs, and shrouded the area around Koli in shadow as he attempted another strike. The trickster met the attack with his dagger but Ebon Jackal simply cut through it and the blade shattered in his hand and flung shrapnel into his face and hand while the merc disappeared into the now shadowed ground.
Koli moved the remaining lights around him quickly as he picked out the pieces of blade lodged in his skin. At least he was landing strikes now. As he made the lights swirl around him to ensure that the man could not get close to him, he heard his laugh echo through the chamber.
“Do I have your attention now?” the merc mocked and his laughter echoed the pounding against the rock wall nearby. “Come on, Koli. All that talk before was only having a little fun. Now, you are merely trying to hide from me, but you know what my Ebon Jackal can do.”
The assassin’s vest pushed outward and a hand ensnared his neck while another appeared holding the dagger. His adversary was using the shadow created by the clothes on his body. “I own any darkness near me!” The arm swung viciously to stab him in the eye and he managed to tear his clothes off as he ducked to the side to avoid the strike that nicked the side of his head and ear. He flung the garments away as the arms disappeared.
In the next moment, something draped across his shoulder. He grasped it and realized that his eyepatch had been sliced off in the scuffle. Startled, he ran a hand through his hair as it stood slowly when his distortion field formed around him and his malefic awakened.
“There we go.” Zed chuckled. “I want this to be a real victory. I want to crush you at your best to let you know you stood no chance against me after all this…” His words trailed off when Koli laughed, but not the casual, jovial laughter he normally used in conversation. This was far more wicked than usual, more like the laughter one would utter after killing someone they despised. It was what Zed might do after his enemy fell to him, but Koli hadn’t killed him yet.
The Oblivion Trials (The Astral Wanderer Book 3) Page 25