The wind whipped, carrying flecks of sand which battered Eurus’s already weathered face. He donned his goggles, and scanned the sky. Heavy billowing mammatus clouds rolled in from the west. Eurus had only visited Astire during its many dry months, and had never seen one of its rare summer storms. Today, of all days, the sky threatened to open up. He sipped his coffee on the street outside a cafe as the steward brought in the rest of the chairs and umbrellas. It was as if the city itself knew the greatness that Eurus was about to achieve, and it hurried to set the stage.
“You feel it, too?” his friend Ramorand asked him from across the table.
“The grandeur?” Eurus smiled.
“I’m glad that’s how you’re feeling.” Ramorand scratched at his bald head. “I can’t get my mana stabilized.”
“I have noticed that as well. I drank a potion, and felt euphoric for twenty minutes or so, but it has certainly faded. I think it’s the excitement. Think of it, Ramorand. Tomorrow we will be the most famous men in Roahl.”
“I like your confidence,” Ramorand said tepidly. “What rifle are you bringing?”
Eurus waved him off with a dismissive gesture. “Intelligence says projectiles won’t work.”
“I have my sword, but I also have my blaster. Surely you need something, especially if…” Ramorand covered his coffee and shook a gentle no thank you to the steward as he came by with the pot, then he continued more quietly, “… especially if they’re going to dampen our magic.”
Eurus pulled back his hood and threw his head back. As he felt the first drops of rain begin to fall upon him, he ran his hands through his thick grey hair and tugged at his beard. He flared his virons. He wanted to feel the strength of his well, but he could not evoke energy and cause a scene. Ramorand’s suggestion that they were dampening the viron field alarmed him. By all accounts, the protective runemarks on the local magi would prevent bullets. Eurus’s viron well kept him healthy and spritely, but as a man in his late 60s he stood little chance in a fair swordfight.
“My magic will see me through. This is my most singular moment. Tonight I fulfill the Great Quest.” Eurus took a deep breath. Tonight he would fulfill the Great Quest. It seemed impossible even as he said it, but it was true. “Either my magic will find me victorious, or you will not find me at the rendezvous.”
“My elites will also find you victorious. If things get hairy, stay behind them,” Ramorand said with intention. Eurus’s confidence was contagious, but the man was anything but pragmatic. “I mean it. You’re the only one that can…” He gestured vaguely, “drink it. If things go south, you’re the last man standing. Don’t be a hero.”
“I won’t be a martyr,” Eurus said. “I’m happy to be a hero.”
“Here they are.” Ramorand pointed to a van pulling in across the street. He stood, pushed in his chair, and tucked a few bills under his cup. Eurus downed the last sip of his coffee. As he stood, a rumble of thunder betrayed the approach of a storm. He and Ramorand darted across the street and entered through the sliding side door of the van, held open by a templar.
“Did you find a good garage?” Ramorand asked the driver.
The driver responded with something about distances and response times, but Eurus had stopped paying attention. It would be dark in an hour, and their assault would commence four hours after that. As the sky welcomed their plan, and the deluge of rainwater washed away the dust from the cobblestone roads, Eurus nestled into his seat and tried to get some rest.
—————————————————————————————————————-
“If you’re going to go, now is the time.” The driver called out.
Ramorand knew he was right. He looked at Eurus sleeping calmly in the back seat. They were about to do the impossible. They were going to invade a fortified church, steal their mystic energy source, and escape undetected. This plan could only work if this venerable archmagi was at his best. Ramorand needed Eurus calm and comfortable, but he also needed him awake.
“We need to get him up, sync timers, and talk extraction,” called out Ventin, Ramorand’s oldest and most trusted soldier.
Eurus snored fitfully in the back seat, and nobody dared touch him. They were right though. Ramorand shook Eurus, and spoke to him to avoid startling him.
“Master?” Ramorand coaxed, “Master Eurus.”
The archmagi opened his eyes and looked around somewhat surprised by his surroundings.
“I thought I wouldn’t sleep at all, I was so excited. How long has it been?”
“Six hours, sir,” responded Ventin.
“Oh?” Eurus responded as he grabbed his bag and tried to climb past the templar and out of the van. “We need to go!”
Ramorand stayed him with an open palm. “We need to brief you first. We need to sync timers, talk extractions, and coordinate radio.”
“We’ll have communion,” Eurus responded. “We need to hurry.”
“That’s a negative,” Ventin chimed in.
“Actually, sir,” Ramorand continued, “We tested it. Once you’re down in the sewers, the viron field is totally fritzed. We need to function on EM.”
“Great!” Eurus exclaimed.
The response took Ramorand aback. Eurus planned to run in with no weapons, and his response to learning that his magic wouldn’t work was excitement. “What’s great, exactly?”
“If the disruption is stronger in the sewers, that confirms the Singularity is here, no? We can home in on it,” Eurus responded.
“Again, I like your confidence,” Ramorand said. “But it also means we need to rely on some of the toys you hate. But we’re professionals, and it’s show time. On my command everyone set your comms to 200.”
The templars all reached down to fiddle with their watches. Ramorand watched closely to make sure Eurus followed the instructions. The old man was playing ball.
“Now!” Ramorand said, clicking the start, and listening to the cascading clicks from the team around him. “I’ve uploaded the extraction points to all your devices. We have one for 50 minutes, 80, and 110. They are different sites, so pay attention. Comms are set to 4140. If you get disruption, go to 8280. If that doesn’t work, go to, uh… sixteen…”
“16560, sir” Ventin chimed in.
“Right. Everyone got that?” Ramorand asked the group.
“Sir yes sir!” responded the templar in unison.
“Sir yes sir,” said a surly Eurus.
“Put your cloaks in your wetknap, you’re going to get wet!” Ramorand called out.
The gang slid open the door and emerged from the van. The four templars, Ventin, Courdor, Erika, and Gaeve exited, followed by Ramorand and finally Eurus. Eurus discarded his cloak, tucked it securely into his bag, then fastened his bag to his back. The group exited the back side of the garage, and descended down a river bank to an access sewer. A deluge of effluent water flowed from the pipe to the river.
“Is that going to be a problem?” Eurus asked.
“Believe it or not, it’s a blessing,” Ramorand responded. “There is a rebar ladder. You only need to go about twelve feet before it’ll open up. You’ll have a walkway and everything. Ventin, Erika and I will go up first. You three, enchant us. Then we’ll return the favor. The deluge will make it a little harder, but it doesn’t smell anymore.”
“Good plan,” Eurus said, then began an incantation.
Ramorand took point, reached up into the water outpouring from the sewer, and grabbed a hold of the ladder. Eurus’ enchantment was potent, and the water bounced off of him harmlessly. Without this help, the weight of the water would be miserable to climb against. As he climbed, he chuckled to himself about Erika, who would need to make this climb being enchanted by Gaeve. Hopefully she wouldn’t get washed away.
Ramorand emerged from the sewer. His tightsuit was moist from his own respiration, but he had been kept clean and dry. He lit a glowstone, then reached into his viron well, and tried to commune with Eurus. Even at just 15 feet, he could barely find him. He closed his eyes and focused on his enchantment. At full force, no man could climb against this deluge of water. Ramorand focused on creating a shield that repelled the water over Eurus, so he only needed to pull his own weight. It took half a minute or so, but Eurus emerged from the sewer. Ramorand dropped the enchantment, opened his eyes, and took stock of his team. He and Eurus were in peak shape and ready to go. The rest of the gang was soaked. They looked beaten, battered, and frustrated.
“That’s incredible,” Ventin shouted over the roar of the water, while he shook the water from his short blonde hair. “When I cased this place, it was full of shit.” He took a deep breath.
“I was so mad at you,” Erika said to Gaeve as she bent over to squeeze the water out of her hair, “but that was hard.”
“Yeah,” Gaeve responded as he pulled his cloak out of his knapsack. “Why is none of this working?” he asked Ramorand.
“The virons are disorganized,” Eurus answered. He was staring intently at his hand as his fingers emitted sparks to one another. “When you reach for them, they are not where you expect them.”
“Well, I’ve never felt anything like it,” Erika responded. She pulled a mana potion out of her bag along with her cloak.
“No!” Eurus forbade, “Don’t drink your potions in anticipation. Save them for right when you need them. We cannot fill our wells.”
Erika looked to Ramorand, who gave her an agreeing glance. She shrugged, and attached her potion to her belt. Then she pulled her cloak tight around her with a shiver.
“And projectiles don’t work,” Ventin pointed out, “so we are going in with no magic and full melee?”
“You are the finest battlemagi the Federation has to offer,” Ramorand retorted. “You were hand picked for this mission. You are soldiers. We are sneaking into a temple where a bunch of old clerics are sleeping. Is that too much for you?”
“If their runemarks will repel all our rifle fire, calling them ‘old clerics’ might be a little disingenuous,” Ventin pointed out.
“You will not find a wizard more powerful than I,” Eurus asserted.
Ramorand waited a second for another complaint, but none came. “You heard the man. Let’s carry the ball. Courdor, take point.”
Courder read a number off his watch, gestured a salute, and marched down the sewer. Ramorand’s glowstone illuminated twenty meters or so, but Courder’s shadow was disruptive, so he lit his own stone. He marched them no more than 300 meters, having taken one right turn, before he gestured to a hatch on the wall.
“That’s the one,” Courder said.
Ventin wasted no time in twisting the handwheel to release the pressure. He pulled it open, revealing the rough dirt floor and hewn stone wall of the temple catacombs. Ventin gestured for Courder to lead. The rest of the squad filed in behind him. Ramorand gawked as his stone lit the busts of High Fathers. Every time he passed by one, he felt the piercing gaze of the dead, as if the great magi were criticizing his diminutive viron reserve. As he passed the third statue, a King Kelrig, he felt a disruption in the local energies.
“Stealth is folly, we are detected,” Eurus snapped. “A spirit watched us, then departed through the ceiling.”
“Make haste!” Ramorand called out, and the team broke into a metered run, slow enough to maintain formation. “Can you stop them?” Ramorand asked Eurus.
“No. They are going to the Father Deacon. He’s in the western spire,” Eurus responded through struggling breaths.
“How do you know?” Ramorand asked.
“Get to him!” Eurus commanded.
Ramorand broke rank and sprinted past the rest of his team. He found an ascending stairwell with torchlight at its apex. The rough hewn walls turned to masonry as he ascended, and even as he stepped through puddles draining down the stairs, he could tell he was leaving the underground and entering the temple. He reached into his bag and grabbed a mana potion. He dug around looking for a second, but he knew he wouldn’t find one. One was usually enough to last him a whole day. This was his second potion in eight hours, and it was supposed to be his back up. As soon as he opened this door, though, he could be descended upon by hostile combatants. He drank the potion. He felt the warm glow of its power course through his veins. Then he pulled out his blaster and flung open the door.
A confused young man stood in the hallway on the other side of the door. He held a pike in one hand, and was walking toward the catacombs, apparently alerted by the sound of someone running up the stairs. Without hesitation, Ramorand fired his blaster at the man and struck him in the chest. The man barely had time to realize his own death as he clutched his breast and fell to the ground with a thud. Behind him stood a sentry drone. The sentry started shaking, and Ramorand figured it was about to sound the alarm. Ramorand flared his viron well and emitted a scorching bolt, which severed the circuitry of the sentry and left it also falling to the ground in a heap.
Fear washed over Ramorand. The power offered by his potion had lasted him all of twenty seconds, and now he was to challenge the High Father with just his sword. His pace never slowed, however. If this were his fate he would face it bravely. He sprinted down the hallway, before encountering another ascending stairwell. So as to not alert any more sentries, as well as to catch his breath, he climbed these stairs with a more metered pace. He realized that the cold glow of his glowstone stood out against the warm flicker of torch fire which otherwise illuminated the corridor, so he dismissed the stone and replaced it with a torch off the wall.
The top of this staircase featured no door, and he quickly found himself emptied into a grand hall outfitted like a mess room. It had pews and tables all around it, and was lit and warmed by a large fireplace on the far side. Grand windows adorned the wall to his left, and the powerful echo of an aggressive rainstorm clattering against the glass covered the sound of his footsteps. Two young clerics sat silhouetted by the fire. They held each other in an embrace, and kissed each other with a passion that Ramorand surmised they would not emerge from. There were three exits from this room. On the near wall was a large oaken door, on the far right was a hallway, and on his left an ascending staircase. As Eurus had directed him to climb a spire, he deemed fit to ascend again. He walked steadily and confidently across the grand hall and toward the stairs. He watched the couple out of the corner of his eyes, but did not turn to face them. They had no interest in him.
Once he had made it out of their sight, he once again broke into a sprint. The stairwell spiraled, with broad landings every twelve vertical feet or so. The landings were adorned with seats and statues. As Ramorand climbed four floors, he began to feel fatigue set in. Normally he could flare his virons to push through such trivial problems, but the mundanity of his condition left him victim to the wiles of weariness. He heard a voice shout from above him, so he extinguished his torch, disappeared into the next landing, and hid behind a bust. If Alric’s defense delegation was being deployed to the Catacombs, perhaps Ramorand could avoid them entirely. The uneven orange light of a torch filled the stairwell above him. Ramorand held his breath as a dark haired boy with the torch and a staff in his hands emerged from the stairs above him swiftly disappeared down the stairs below him. Had Ramorand known it would just be one, he would have struck the boy down.
Ramorand checked his watch, and it read 238. He hesitated for a moment to catch his breath, then resumed his ascent. He did not light another torch. He opted instead to trust the architecture of the stairs, and to climb via the faint light emerging from his watch. After ascending two more stories, the stairs emptied into a modestly sized room. Rugs lined the floor, and torches lined the walls. The room was lit glamorously, and beautiful tapestries hung from the ceiling and obscured the stained glass windows. A throne stood at the far end of the room, and in front of that throne stood an old man, fabulously dressed in purple and gold.
—————————————————————————————————————-
Father Alric ran through his enchantments, desperately informing the listener network, and getting the word of the assault out to all his clergy. He had sent his staffbearer, Lucca, down to the Sanctum to assist Nina, and alert her that Federation scum was attacking, and they could not reach the Sanctum. Once all the clergy were awakened, he would send the Listeners to slow the intrusion in any way they could.
A cold chill ran down his spine. He detected a powerful presence nearby. He almost hadn’t noticed it, because it was a force barely stronger than Lucca’s, but Lucca was not here. Alric engaged his protective runemarks as he lifted his head to face the door. Immediately after, an energy bolt blazed from the top of the staircase and deflected off his abjuration.
Alric evoked a gust of wind to extinguish the torches. He knew the room much better than his assailant, and darkness would be his advantage. Alric was not fast, but he quickly took a few steps toward one of the windows. He needed to change his location so as to not catch wanton blaster fire. He pooled his energy and prepared to evoke a blast of heat when next a noise would betray his assailant’s position.
To Alric’s terror, his assailant’s position was betrayed not by a noise, but by the glow of a blade becoming wreathed in a blue flame. In the cold glow of the sword, Alric could see the attacker’s dark skin, his bald head, and the malice in his eyes. Alric released the blast of heat, but the intruder absorbed it into his blade and let out a guttural yell.
A Listener emerged from the floor to come to Alric’s aid. Alric launched it at the attacker, but the man severed the ghost with a skillful stroke of his enchanted armament. Alric tried to blast him with a crackle of electric energy, but the enemy swung his blade and met the strike with the blistering energy of Listener he had severed. The spirit’s waning essence absorbed the crackle of lightning, and dissipated it with a pop.
With each failed attack the trespasser advanced upon Alric, leaving him cornered. Alric fell to one knee and lowered his head.
“What do you want?” the Father Deacon asked.
Without a word the assailant approached until he stood menacingly over the High Father. Alric lamented his situation. He had not been purified, and now he would never join the Ascended. He was filled with rage as his eternity was stolen from him. Ramorand struck the grovelling Deacon and severed Alric’s head from his neck. He severed Alric’s life from his body, but Ramorand could not sever Alric’s rage from his spirit. Alric would never face the afterlife he had been promised, but his afterlife had a new purpose now.
Alric would haunt this man until he could realize his revenge.
Leave a Reply