Amates 31, 1277. No one said this would be easy. If they had, I would’ve called them a liar.
The crystal golem knelt down next to me, then stirred the musty air between us with its right hand. Golden sparkles of light chased its gemstone fingers until they became flowing threads of light. Without warning, that gentle circle of light washed out over the both of us like a glowing stream, before it settled onto the mercenary’s burns. The elven man visibly relaxed with a heavy sigh of profound relief when the power from the spell melted into the burns like a soft cream.
Was I caught up in the moment? Oh, of course I was. Three kinds of death lurked nearby like pickpockets looking for a mark, and here I was all doe-eyed over an ancient, talking crystal golem that could touch magic. History had just come to life right in front of me, and I was all here for it. Besides, for a few seconds, I actually felt safe for the first time in days or weeks.
But the small war around me had kept going.
A loud crash behind me of ancient wood and fragile pottery shattered the delicate moment into nothing more than dust.
I scrambled to my feet, then spun toward the chaos, whip in hand. Pain from my lower ribs and a dozen bruises punched through me like an arrow and stole my breath. It made me stumble, but somehow I willed myself to stay upright. Better to be on my feet facing whatever was coming, not lying face-first on the floor. It was easier to stab new problems standing up. Sadly, I had no idea where my daggers were at the moment.
But thank the tides, it wasn’t a new problem. Just the same damn one, only worse.
The battle had wandered all over the place while I had been huddled up against the Automatic Crystal. In this latest round, the baron had slammed Vargas into one of the cabinets at the edge of the room with some sort of spell. Remnants of red-gold power dribbled off both Vargas and the cabinet for the floor. Two paces to the right, and Vargas would have been tossed over the side to his death.
I bit back the urge to run over and harass the baron, just to give the others some sort of chance to recover and regroup. It wasn’t the dumbest idea I’d ever had, but it was right there at the top. If I ran over there, there was every chance I’d get myself killed, or worse. I didn’t want to think about the ‘or worse’ part. Besides, it was about as useful as trying to set water on fire.
“We can’t keep this up,” I muttered under my breath. “Just can’t. We’re hurt. Exhausted. Vargas has his curse to keep him going for now, but for how long? Marius is undead. He’s getting faster at shrugging off whatever we do to him. We’re barely slowing him down.”
A tear crawled down my face. I wiped it away with a snarl.
“This isn’t like last time,” I snapped at the thoughts in my head. “There has to be another way. What in the hell and high tides am I missing?”
I shot a sideways glance at the Automatic Crystal.
“Can you do anything about this?” I stabbed a finger at the baron. “Like pin him down or something?”
The golem shook its head while it continued to work on the mercenary’s burns.
“The Maker was very clear,” its eyes flashed while it sang at me. “I was made to help, not hurt. One of those people is cursed by Deeplands wild magic, and the other is undead. I’m useless to the undead. They can’t touch me.”
That last comment was like a cold slap of water across the face.
I ransacked my memories of days, even weeks before. Bits and pieces of information I had heard or learned clicked into place like keys in a series of locks. Things suddenly made way too much sense. It had been in front of me this entire time. I wasn’t sure if I was about to scream, cry, or attack Baron Marius with the nearest pointy object. The lich had earned a good stabbing for what he tried.
“That’s why he tried to alter me,” I snarled at the ruins, room, and the small war around me. “It’s why he wanted Mikasi. Cesibus set all this up to keep Baron Marius away from the Automatic Crystal. Hell and high tides, if I didn’t just lead him through all of that to what that bastard wanted. Especially after he tried to break me…”
Another crash sent a hailstorm of wood across the room when Vargas was hurled into yet another cabinet. Shattered glass and pottery shot out in all directions like a bladed hailstorm. An ornate thin stone tablet that was more stained glass than stone slipped off a ruined top shelf and hit the petrified floor. It shattered on impact into thousands of pieces and set my mind in motion.
The world moved like syrup. A flash shot across my mind’s eye about the tablet. There, a first century Ancient Order glassmaker took painstaking care to assemble a stained glass portrait. It was once a record of an important event in history, now? Lost.
Something inside me snapped. I stepped forward with murder in my heart, when a golden band of magic lashed out in an attempt to pin the baron’s arms down. The lich dashed to his right, then snapped the spell like strands of tinsel. He snatched up a broken cabinet door and hurled it back at the caster. It slammed into Ki like a hammer. Both hit the floor like discarded trash. Neither one moved.
“No!” I screamed.
Memories flooded the room. I couldn’t breathe or move. It was all so much, just too much, like being drowned in history. Memories of my last expedition choked off my air. Voices of old friends screamed out for me as they died all over again in the ruins. Slowly, those ghosts appeared around me.
I knew them all.
Every single one.
I had lost them all here in this very ruin.
“Lady deep, not now,” I begged with a ragged voice. “Please, no.”
Suddenly, my vision cleared, or at least enough to see the state of the disaster surrounding me. One Crimson Company archer had a broken leg trying to reach Ki, but his companion had pulled him to cover. They were both behind one of the countless piles of ruined furniture. The rest of the Crimson Company that had come down was missing or already dead. Ki lay still on the floor with a bloody shirt, but I saw his chest move as he breathed. Vargas was a magically twisted mess, who looked like he had fought a small war and almost lost.
He was a punch drunk wreck even despite his cursed transformation. Clothing, even armor, hung in shreds. Spiny, slate-gray fur matted with blood stuck out at odd angles from under what he wore. The four spider-like, crooked, fur-covered arms were at hideous odds with what was left of his human body. A scorpion tail the right size for his shape twitched while he rubbed face and protruding fangs across the back of a human arm.
As for the baron? The fight had carved him up like a cooked ham, but his undead nature had already mostly patched him up. He turned his attention toward me and flexed his hands like claws that dripped with deep red magic.
“Now. Where were we, my dear?”
“You getting dead,” I shot back.
“Already done. Care to join me?”
His words dripped over me like a cold, thick slime. I fought down a shudder that ran through me. All I had left was one last appeal to sanity, which was mostly me stalling to think of something to stop this.
“It doesn’t do what you think, Marius,” I snapped. “The Crystal belongs in a museum. It could teach and help. This is not a weapon. Cesibus had to have told you at least that much.”
Baron Marius stopped walking and glared at me. The magic still boiled around his hands, but from the look on his face, I hit a nerve. A big nerve and maybe even the chink in his armor.
“Shut up, woman,” he snarled.
Something blazed in those undead eyes. Fear? Alarm? Whatever it was, that was new.
“You weren’t even alive,” he growled, eyes blazing. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I allowed myself just a little smirk.
“Don’t I? Mikasi studied Cesibus and his works for years. You needed him to get past what Cesibus set up to keep you out. The rest of us, maybe even the Crimson Company, have been down here before. We were fodder to clear the path for you.”
“The others, perhaps,” he said in a cold voice. “But you? Oh, I have such plans for you, Tela.” Those last words had such a seductive undertone I felt like I was covered in slime again. My mind was going to need a hot bath and a stuff drink if I survived this.
Across the room, the last Crimson Company archer met my gaze, then scrambled for a better place to fire from. Vargas shook his head while he pulled shafts of wood from a ruined, furry arm.
I shifted position, which put me closer to the Automatic Crystal. It was all part of my plan. A great big, stupid plan, but still a plan. The baron narrowed his eyes at me, immediately suspicious.
“Oh, I know you do,” I replied in a dark, even tone. “I get it. You’ve been stalking me. Studying me like a bug. At some point, you figured out I could spin pieces of history around in my head until they fit together like a puzzle. So you wanted to magically alter me in a way that I could talk to the Crystal through that talent I have. Use me like some link to it. But you also knew you had to break me, so I’d cooperate.”
“I needed you more… agreeable. Pliable,” Marius replied in a dangerous, low tone. “At least until you were broken enough that you would submit to anything I wanted. Specifically, make the Automatic Crystal to use its power to reshape other’s minds in the same way.”
The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. That was how he planned to get around a city’s anti-magic shield generated by a Schutz Crystal or a Blackstel Shield. Just walk the Crystal and myself right through those defenses before tuning us loose. I shuddered and glanced away a moment to gather my thoughts.
All around me, the ghosts were still there, like an audience. Marius acted like he didn’t see them. Some of the ghosts glared at the baron, others looked at me expectantly. They all acted like I was supposed to do something amazing.
No pressure, right? The dead are so damn judgmental.
“I was made to help, not hurt,” sang the Automatic Crystal. The golem got to its metal and stone feet to stand just behind me and to my right. “I will not help you cause harm!”
There was so much emotion packed into those last words, I thought they would pop open. This wasn’t just a golem. I wasn’t sure what this dark device really was, but it was anything but ‘just an old relic’. But that wasn’t important at the moment. I’d think about it tomorrow, provided I was alive and in my right mind.
“What did it say?” snapped the baron with a suspicious glare.
“Crystal here says it won’t help you. That it wasn’t made that way,” I translated.
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” the baron snapped at the golem, then started toward us. “You don’t think. You’re just a device to be owned and used!” He flexed his hands, which made the magic bleed faster from his fingers. “As for you, Tela, if you would hold still, this won’t take long.”
On the other side of the room, out of the baron’s sight, the lone Crimson Company archer made a quiet, frantic wave for me to dive aside. I replied with a small, quick shake of my head.
A knot rolled around in my bruised guts. I needed the baron closer. A lot closer. So I held my ground and sighed.
Each step the lich took toward us was pure agony to watch, and I swallowed the urge to scream. Finally, the baron was close enough to touch. He towered over me with that same self-satisfied, smug look on his face. I cleared my throat when he started to reach for me with that magic-coated hand of his.
“Baron?” I asked with what I hoped sounded like a soft, submissive, maybe even meek voice.
He paused, face pinched in suspicion again.
“Yes?”
“Gotcha,” I said with a smirk.
The baron stepped back in alarm while I jerked my right hand behind me to pinch the air in front of the Automatic Crystal. Across the room, the lone Crimson Company archer let fly an arrow that stabbed the lich in the back left shoulder. Marius yelled in rage as he ripped the arrow free.
Pain flared through my chest and sides, but I moved my hand in a circle through the air like I’d watched Ki do a hundred times. After all, casting magic, how hard could it be?
Every thought in my mind focused on what I wanted to happen. The ‘intent’ that Odro taught me only a little about back in the ruins.
Did I really know what I was doing? No. But that never stopped me before.
A brilliant yellow light exploded to life behind me.
“This is a bad idea!” The Crystal sang in alarm before it took a step back.
“I’m all out of good ones!” I snapped back in reply.
Quick as I could, I yanked my hand back out in front of me. Bright yellow threads, like spun sunlight, wound around my fingers. Interspersed between them were stands of blue-white power so pure they were almost silver. Inside, a part of me groaned. I’d already done something wrong. But there wasn’t any time to think about it.
Baron Marius dashed forward in alarm. His hand was almost at my throat. I wrapped those magic threads around my fist and swung for the baron’s nose.
He was terrifyingly fast.
I was faster.
My fist, wrapped in healing magic and more, slammed into the Baron’s undead mouth and nose. A small sun of power exploded between us. It burned the lich as if he had been dumped in acid. I shut my kobold-like eyes in time before the flash of light overwhelmed my vision, but I still felt a bit toasty overall from the explosion.
I opened my eyes in time to see a storm explode to life between myself and the baron.
An uncontrolled storm of wild magic.
In my defense, I never said this was a good idea.
