A Soldier's Life - 442 -

Chapter 442:

“Why didn’t you use your void magic on the emperor?” Lepidus asked, as he stood before me, cradling his broken arm.

Baelira was weak but was on her knees. “He doesn’t have void magic.” She coughed up some more congealed blood as she got to her feet.

“I confirmed it, he has the void affinity,” Lepidus stated with finality.

“He has been using his dimensional space to kill the creatures,” Baelira informed him smugly. I knew she had probably figured it out. I looked at her and nodded to confirm she was correct.

Lepidus twitched, and it was either frustration or anger. He seemed to be going through a range of emotions. “And your spatial affinity was not strong enough to eliminate the Emperor?”

“I tried.” I strained against the restraints. “They could return. Can we get me down now?”

 “The weave is strong but should dissipate in ten minutes. Keep fighting against it. It will weaken quicker,” he replied in his dispassionate tone, turning away from me.

If I was ever going to have to fight mages, I needed to learn the spell form for aetheric disruption. I strained against the invisible force; my veins, tendons, and muscles bulged. Every second could be vital. It started to feel more elastic than taught, but I had to relax and catch my breath after struggling so intensely.

“Are you healed?” I asked, taking deep breaths. Baelira was kneeling over Bharok in silent mourning. I asked again. “Baelira, are you healed?”

She slowly looked up, lines from tears on her filthy face. “Mostly. Still some internal injuries, but the potion got me mobile.”

“I have one dungeon potion remaining. Decide who needs it more,” I said as I resumed my fight against the restraints. After a few minutes, it started to feel like taffy and then abruptly I fell to the floor of the room, my face landing on the arse of a ghoul. I coughed to get the stench out of my lungs and got to my feet.

No one had entered in the six or seven minutes since the Nashasari died (Nasahasari is the race of serpent men. Derived from the Hebrew word for serpent). I stumbled as I healed my strained muscles and immediately retrieved my precious. The thick black spiral treant wood felt reassuring to have back in my hand. “We should go,” I said, indicating the maze.

“Baelira needs the potion more than I. I have set my bones and heal much faster than a normal man,” Lepidus said while showing his arm had been straightened and he no longer favored it.

I handed Baelira my last dungeon potion and Lepidus a lesser healing potion I brewed in Veil Mark. “Should I take Bharok’s body?” I asked Baelira. I felt responsible for the dwarf. In the short time he had been my bodyguard, he was dedicated to his task, and the camaraderie had been slowly growing. I had hoped he would meet Maveith one day to play checkers.

“He has no family or lover in Sanctuary. He wouldn’t want his hammer left behind, and I will gather his other artifacts.” I nodded to Baelira, and as she pulled artifacts from his body, I picked up the hammer, too cumbersome for Baelira to carry. It was a runic weapon, but forged by hand.

I looked down at the dwarf, his face now covered by his helm in rest. “I will make sure the next person who wields this is worthy of it,” I said softly. The hammer disappeared into my inventory.

“We need to join the others. Or we will never leave the island,” Lepidus stated, contradicting my plan to enter the maze.

“We cannot fight the Emperor, and you told us he is not the only mage,” I snarled, still bitter about Bharok.

“Fenlorian has returned with twenty Sentinels,” Baelira said hopefully, clearly not liking the prospect of being trapped in the dungeon. I grimaced as I did not think the Brotherhood warrior had been lying about the Sentinel’s arrival. It would almost be like we were dishonoring their attempt to save us if we didn’t try to escape.

Baelira was clearly going to go with whatever I decided. “We exit behind Lepidus, and pull him back in if he is overwhelmed,” I decided.

“I have almost reset my defenses. Give me a few minutes,” Lepidus said, not objecting to being our shield. I had to respect him for that, as he had almost been overwhelmed when he exited a short time ago. I made sure my amulet was charged and prepared two glass jars, one containing twenty smoke pellets and the other containing twenty blinding pellets. Baelira had taken the dungeon potion and was fully recovered, but had a noticeable hole through her abdominal armor, the bloodied gray robe, and light leather parted to reveal flesh.

We stood behind Lepidus and stepped through the dungeon exit. The much brighter light of day had the others squinting, but my aether sight was active. I pushed Lepidus to my right and brought Heartseeker down on a surprised soulless. The man didn’t have time to scream as the leaf cut through his neck and parted a diagonal slash across his chainmail. It was deep enough even to cut the ribs. He flailed but fell quickly.

Baelira was moving to engage two more soulless on the left. Two soulless were targeting Lepidus to my right. With my superior reach and speed, Heartseeker targeted the exposed necks of both in quick strikes. Lepidus was not using his wand, and I assumed it was to avoid drawing attention to us. He seemed useless in a fight.

The clearing around the dungeon shard was only guarded by eight soulless creatures. I was actually a little annoyed that Lepidus was right. The Sentinels had pulled away most of the soulless, the lich emperor, and members of the Brotherhood. The last three soulless wisely fled toward the flats and their master. We followed them, and I managed to catch the slowest, cutting his hamstring and then stabbing the back of his neck as I passed him.

The dense vegetation parted to reveal the flats, and about half a mile to our right, an intense battle was taking place. The fight was fierce, but I guessed the Sentinels numbered around two dozen, forming a defensive line against the soulless, who outnumbered them three to one. The soulless were roughly as skilled in combat as a green legionnaire and were far inferior to the Sentinels, who had spent decades, sometimes centuries, training.

The lich emperor was behind the soulless casting spells with one of the Nashasari at his side. The serpent mage was casting lightning spells and doing his best to shield the soulless from the spirits above the field of battle and ranged attacks from the Sentinels.

The fight might have gone in favor of the Sentinels if not for the Emperor. From reading Lepidus’s journal, I knew most of his strongest spell forms. He also could slow time around himself, making him unbeatable in melee. He had strong air and energy magic as well. He was using that magic now, seizing one Sentinel at a time and launching them hundreds of feet into the air. Two Sentinels were coming down at the moment. One was decelerating either from his own magic, an artifact, or help from his allies, while the other was thrown too far from the group for aid and hit the ground at high speed. The battle had just started, but the power of the lich was already unfolding.

The three soulless that had outraced us were running and calling for help. The battle seemed to pause, as both groups acknowledged us. I knew Lepidus would be a liability in any fight. “We need to get to our ship,” I said, getting the attention of the Baelira and Lepidus. “The warm salt water should have melted the ice over the last day.”

“Can you sail it?” Lepidus questioned.

“Dragon shit, no. We will need a water mage to get us out of the bay,” I conceded. Zynae would have been useful.

“They are moving toward us,” Baelira noted. She didn’t mean the soulless and the lich, but the Sentinels were rotating their line so they could retreat in our direction. Another Sentinel was thrown into the air, but this time it was xxxx, and he just hung suspended above the battle. He was in the perfect position to catch the next Sentinel rocketed up by the lich as well.

“Ghouls,” Lepidus warned. I turned around and just like yesterday, they could be seen moving along the tree line toward us, likely from one of the lord’s castles. I didn’t bother to use the spyglass and confirm, if the ghouls broke from the forest cover, the sunlight of day… Dark clouds were forming unnaturally fast in the blue sky.

“Lepidus, you are too slow,” I said as I overlaid my dimensional space on him as we ran.

“My muscles are atrophied, I am…” he vanished as my aether bottomed out, and Baelira stopped dead, shocked.

I was already drinking an aether restorative. “Don’t worry, the old Roman is fine. We need to reach the ship and hope the others can join us before the day turns to night,” I replied with a weak smile and indicated the darkening clouds above.

“We should help the council retreat,” Baelira said, looking back at the Sentinels.

The fact that they had come for us helped me decide. “Fine,” I relented, and we changed our direction to meet up with the Sentinels, who were in a fighting withdrawal. I checked the wind and changed my approach slightly as I prepared to use all the pellets in one attack. The yellow-eyed Nashasari turned his attention to us, and a thick aether bolt raced toward us. I changed my path, but the bolt adjusted.

I set an air shield at the last moment and assumed my amulet would protect me, but I was wrong. The bolt shattered the air shield, and the inferior aether shield amulet flashed but barely reduced the force of the blue energy bolt. It felt like an ogre’s kick as it struck my chest and knocked me backward off my feet. My leathers were torn apart, and the flesh underneath was cooked. I think I broke a rib or two as well.

I healed myself as I got to my feet and threw the glass jar of smoke pellets first. It was more violent than I expected, as the dense cloud erupted between us and the enemy. Maybe sixty soulless, the lich and the mage. I was already throwing the second jar of blinding pellets when the lich gathered the entire smoke cloud into a small tornado and directed it at the Sentinels.

While he was doing that, the second jar shattered among the soulless fifty feet away from me and dispersed among their number. It hadn’t quite gone according to plan, as I thought they would figure out the first cloud was harmless and just try to run through the second and lose their sight. The cloud even drifted all the way to the Lich Emperor and the Nashasari mage. No one was spared as the spores quickly formed a film over the eyes. The Emperor has been focused on pulling the first cloud to the Sentinels and couldn’t stop the second. “Just like I planned,” I murmured while switching my efforts to healing.

Baelira was made to help me, but I waved her off, and we went to join the Sentinels coming out of the cloud. “Where is Lepidus?” Fenlorian asked sternly.

“He is safe, Zynae and Bharok are dead,” I muttered. “We need to go,” I waved at the sky and the ghouls making their way through the woods. “Which ship?”

Fenlorian studied me in judgment before nodding. “There is a Brotherhood fleet making its way around the island; the ship in the bay is our best chance,” Fenlorian said. Less than a dozen of the soulless escaped the blindless cloud and chose to remain with the others, rather than pursue us.

When we raced down the sandy path, the dead soulless were still there, but so was the ice locking the cutter in place. It had melted, but only a few feet on the shore and around the cliffs. I didn’t need to worry as one of the Sentinels who had come to the rescue had much better fire magic than Torandir. The elf immediately wove a spell form in the air, and the water started to steam, the ice hissed and cracked under the assault.

“Everyone on board!” Fenlorian commanded as he cut off one of the soulless’ heads. I hadn’t noticed, but some of the dead had been twitching as their dead bodies were now able to absorb the island’s nether essence.

The ice quickly became slush, and we all crowded on board. Someone reported to the High Sentinel that five Sentinels had been lost, and he took the news with a curt nod. As we broke out of the cove into the ocean, some asked: “What is going to happen now?”

Fenlorian turned slightly and I followed his gaze and my heart sank. When he said the Brotherhood fleet was here, I was thinking two, maybe three ships. I counted six black sails, and maybe a seventh I didn’t want to confirm.

Fenlorian’s voice was grave. “We defend Sanctuary.”

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