BT - Book 1 - Chapter 46 (Patreon)

Micah returned to the window, casting flight as he walked.  At the precipice, he simply stepped out onto empty air and continued at his former pace, mimicking an ordinary stroll while he scowled down at the crowd of adventurers.

“Oh shit,” Gongo hissed, his eyes going wide.  “That’s a tier IV air spell.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Flavicus asked quietly, his eyes never leaving Micah as he gripped his halberd tightly.

The one legged swordsman the priest had called Jonah spat on the ground before drawing his thin rapier.  His gaze returned to where Micah stood impassively in the sky.

“It means,” Jonah grumbled, “that this guy isn’t bluffing.  Fourth tier usually means level thirty or so.  Even then, blessed of that level usually use it as more of a finishing move.  They take so much mana that even the guild leaders can only cast them eight or nine times in a row.”

“Oh gods oh gods,” Gongo’s mumbling was picked up by the circling daemons as the man’s fingers fiddled with the hem of his robe.

“Gage,” Melvin turned to the priest, frowning, “You never said anything about the target being on par with a guild leader.  “This doesn’t seem like a terribly good idea to me.”

“Adventurers,” Brother Gage threw up his hands angrily.  “I paid you to fight a threat to our realm, not to argue with me.  He is connected with the stag.  Luxos’ seers have seen it.  If you can capture the beast, he’ll surrender.”

Micah motioned with his left hand, taping the chains of fire that bound his daemons to him.  A handful of the newer Onkert exited the cave while the Luoca and surviving Brensen soared lower until they were circling him.

“It doesn’t look like he plans on surrendering Brother Gage,” Melvin shifted his stance, raising himself up onto the balls of his feet as he lowered his center of gravity.  A wise change that would let him spring into action on a moment’s notice.  It wouldn’t be enough.

Micah’s eyes took in every move, the circling Brensen providing a panoramic view of the nervous adventurers.  He probably should be disturbed by his ability to process input from a dozen eyes at once without being confused and dazzled, but he wasn’t.  Not much disturbed him anymore.  All he wanted was to be left alone.  To read his books until the cooldown on his ability ran out.

The adventuring party shifted uneasily, gripping weapons tighter and muttering to each other as the creatures grew closer.  Micah stopped, a handful of paces in front of them and more than a dozen up in the air.

“The offer for you to leave is still on the table,” he motioned with his spear at the party before pointing to the woods from which they’d come.  “Do not bother Telivern.  The stag is under my protection.  If you harm it, I will send the daemons after you, and that will only end in blood and viscera.”

Before Melvin or the rest of his adventuring party could reply.  Brother Gage screamed incoherently in frustration and pointed a hand at Micah.  Briefly, the priest’s outstretched hand glowed with the light of the rising Sun before a beam of energy pulsed out from it, striking Micah in the stomach.

Micah doubled over, the smell of burning flesh filling his nostrils as his HP dropped by a quarter.  The beam stopped, leaving a dagger of fire and pain lodged in his gut.  Without even thinking, Micah’s pain and anger merged with his tethers.

He wasn’t sure if he subconsciously ordered the daemons to act, or if they moved in response to the emotional outburst.  Regardless of the action that set them in motion, they rushed toward the adventurers with a terrible momentum while Micah frantically cast augmented mending on his burn.

Gage was the first to die.  In the midst of casting a spell, the Luoca landed on him, pinning him to the ground with an insectoid leg.  For a brief second, all of the adventurers stared in shock at their impaled leader.  Then the scorpion tail streaked downward, gouging a hole through his chest.

The man began to melt.  The definition on his extremities blurred together as the corrosive aura of Elsewhere entered his body through the stinger.  It pumped into the gasping man like venom as it reduced his lungs and organs to a puddle of semi organic sludge in moments.

“Brian!” Melvin’s shout broke the clearing’s silence.

Gongo and the female caster both targeted spells at the Luoca.  A hand made of earth reached toward the daemon while a series of iceshards slammed into it from the other side.  Flavicus and Alan, the two heavily built warriors of the party charged toward the creature, their sword and glaive poised to strike.

It didn’t even notice.  The Luoca whipped its stinger from the priest, spraying the two charging warriors with his still warm blood.  Gongo blanched, his hands trembling as he began mumbling to himself and backed from the fight.

A Brensen dove from the sky toward Melvin.  The fighter tucked himself into a roll, barely escaping the vulture’s skeletal claws as they dug furrows in the dead earth where he’d been standing.

Jonah hopped forward with a grunt, his wooden leg sinking deep into the loose dirt.  Extending his rapier he swiped it through the air, firing air knife after air knife from the blade at the daemon. 

Micah squinted.  The visual distortion created by the spells were small, tight and fast.  Quickly, Jonah wove a web of mana infused air, slapping and battering the more powerful daemon long enough for Melvin to escape. Clearly, Jonah had all but mastered the spell.  The speed, efficiency and power of his casting was too much for any other explanation.

Taking advantage of his distraction, a pair of Onkert slammed into Jonah, knocking him to the ground.  With an agility that belied his crippled appearance, he rolled to the side and rose up from the ground on a burst of air mana.

His rapier flashed, taking one of the daemon's eyes while Melvin sprinted under a wild swing from the creature, his sword slashing across its hamstring.  It stumbled, tumbling forward as its legs suddenly couldn’t support its weight.  Jonah landed on the daemon, cracking his peg leg into its collar bone.  With a quick pivot, he drew his sword across the monster’s throat.

Micah winced as the tether connecting him to the Onkert snapped just as augmented mending restored his last missing hit point.  He thrust with his spear, triggering the enchantments and firing a spike of air pressure at Jonah.  Using the breathing room created by distracting the spellblade, Micah prepared himself to cast a more powerful spell.

The man’s rapier blurred as Jonah coated it in the high pressure of an air knife and intercepted Micah’s attack.  Micah’s eyebrows went up as the spell absorbed his attack in a display of pinpoint control over both mana and air pressure.

The other Onkert took advantage of Jonah’s distraction to kick Melvin.  The warrior’s mouth transformed into an ‘o’ of surprise as the blow knocked the breath from him and sent the man flying across the clearing.

Micah finished casting poison fog, grimacing at the unfamiliar feel of the spell.  A billowing cloud of greenish yellow smoke appeared around him and began to descend on the clearing, obscuring his view of the invaders.  One of the adventurers screamed in alarm, Micah couldn’t quite make out which one, but it hardly mattered.

He closed his eyes, relying upon the sight of the daemons as they pursued the humans through the opaque mist.  Micah’s senses filled the Luoca as it chased after the two warriors that had rushed to Brother Gage’s rescue.  Both of their weapons, Alan’s gigantic sword and Flavicus’ glaive lay on the ground, bisected by the daemon’s wings.

The men choked and stumbled as they ran, their high body attributes letting them resist but not ignore the fog.  Micah frowned sightly as the Luoca slowed, like a hound savoring the chase it sought to prolong its pursuit.  He pursed his lips.  Honestly? That was probably why they were still alive.  He doubted that either of the men could have stopped the wingstrokes that destroyed their weapons from cutting deeper.  It easily could have slashed them in half with the same motion.

Flavicus slammed his foot into a rock and gasped in pain, taking in a lungful of the gas.  Almost immediately, he fell to the ground, hands clawing at his throat.  The Luoca didn’t even slow, its tail darting out to spear the huge man through the chest.

It continued after Alan, moving at a leisurely lope.  On the ground nearby lay Melvin’s corpse, his face bloated and lips blue.  The man’s agility based build might have been useful against the ponderous Onkert, but his slight frame was unable to fight off the heavy toxic clouds.

Alan veered to the side, laying on the ground was the female caster, her chest barely moving.  Her robe was ripped, exposing her bare legs to the stalking daemon.  

Micah nodded as he saw the source of the rip, a strip of cloth covering her mouth, soaked in an indeterminate liquid.  Quick thinking on the caster’s part.  Without some sort of filter, there was no way she could survive the roiling clouds of miasma that filled the clearing.

The huge man reached down and slung the woman over his shoulder while the Luoca looked on in amusement.  Micah shook his head as he paced them in the air above the cloud.  

“Quit playing with your food,” he muttered, reaching out and touching the burning chain that connected him to the daemon.  “I can’t have witnesses, but you don’t need to drag it out.  Kill them and be quick about it.”

The Luoca snorted and pounced forward, its human face locked in a sneer as its two front legs punched through Alan’s calves and into the ground beneath.  The man screamed, his abruptly halted momentum sending the caster flying.  Her body landed ten or so paces ahead of the Luoca. 

“Fuck,” the man said, his eyes wide as he twisted his torso to take in the monster that had doomed him.

The daemon casually removed Alan’s head with a wing before walking over to the spellcaster’s unconscious body.  With a single thrust of its tail, it caved in the back of her skull.  Unhurriedly, it continued strolling out of the mist, following the sound of the other spellcaster, Gongo, panting and stumbling as he ran. 

Pain erupted from Micah’s throat.  He blinked, returning his vision to his own body.  Jonah Baird, the crippled spellblade, stood just outside the poison fog, a blurred sphere around his head from the air supply spell proof of the resourceful man’s survival.  In his hand, another air knife hovered, prepared to finish the job if the first had failed.

Micah’s hand came away from his throat, covered in his own blood.  He tried to pull in a breath, only to be rewarded with a wet whistling noise from his wrecked windpipe.  A mortal wound.  Panic threatened to overwhelm him, but Micah fought it down, instead reaching for a ring he kept on his right hand.

“And so he falls,” Jonah spoke darkly, to himself, but loudly enough for Micah to hear.  “A formidable daemonlord to be sure, but in the end, he was as human as the rest of us.  One targeted spell is all it takes to bring down a caster.  Without his breath, he can’t cast spells.  If you catch them unaware, even daemonlord in his tower will die just as easily as the rest of us.”

Micah brushed the tethers connecting him to the surviving Brensen as he poured mana into the ring causing the enchantments inscribed in the chip of amethyst to glow.  His vision narrowed as his body screamed for oxygen, but Micah didn’t let it distract him.

He’d suffered too much and come too far.  He’d defeated men much greater than this motley band of adventurers.  There was too much left to do.  

His vision dimmed.

Micah redoubled the mana flow into the ring.  The inscriptions grew hot as he overwhelmed them, but the onslaught of magic did its job.  The pain in his throat dulled.  More than anything, it itched as the skin and tissue began to reknit itself.

This battlefield would not be his grave.

Next time he would save them all.  Next time, Esther would live.  Next time, Jo and him would actually be able to make something together without misunderstandings or interruptions.

Next time.

The ring shattered on his hand, cutting and scarring him, but the spell was finished.  His throat was still ragged and bloody, but air passed through it once more.

 Immediately, Micah cast augmented mending on himself.  The emergency enchanted ring had limited power, but it was perfect for situations like the one that the spellblade had forced him into.  Many tried to injure or silence casters first.  The ability to cast a robust healing spell on yourself without speaking or moving was an essential survival tool.  

The remaining Brensen descended upon Jonah.  Without both of his legs, he didn’t have the mobility to escape.  Three slashes of their claws later, his shredded body adorned the clearing floor.

From the forest, Gongo’s wet gurgling scream marked his end as the Luoca caught up with him.  Micah sighed and entered his tower once more.

He’d have to leave.  They’d found him here once, it was entirely possible they could do it again.  Next time, they might bring a higher level subjugation team or hostages.  His very presence was putting Telivern and his family at risk.

After a couple hours of packing his meager belongings, Micah mounted the Luoca and directed it to fly.  He didn’t give it particular directions.  Just a general idea.  North.

The aura of Elsewhere pouring off of the daemon almost comforted him.  Cradled his tired and injured body as the daemon’s great wings flapped and they covered a days march each hour of flight. At some point he went to sleep, only waking up when they were deep in the mountains. 

A flick of his eyes and a touch of the tether and they were beneath a rock overhang near a waterfall.  It would be as good a place as any to practice his spells and wait for the timer to run down.

The days passed swiftly.  At first some predators approached his hiding spot, but the aura around him and his daemons quickly dissuaded them.  After a short amount of time, the vegetation around him died and all of the creatures in the valley learned to avoid him.

The silence suited Micah as he cast spell after spell in an attempt to push up his skill and spell levels for the next iteration.  Before long the walls of his overhang were scarred from constant magical abuse as he spent days at a time without the sleep or food he no longer really needed practicing.

Finally, the day came.  In relief, he invoked Blessed Return, eager to escape the doomed timeline and try again.

The magic took hold of him, and he began retracing his steps, faster and faster.  His actions and surroundings a blur as he moved backwards through both his successes and mistakes.

Then he stopped.  Micah and his surroundings were frozen.  Bugs trapped in amber on the empty plains of Elsewhere. 

The mist around him roiled and backed away from Micah as a great hand reached out from nothingness toward him.  He remembered this moment.  It was when he’d been broken body and mind after he’d foolishly thrown himself into Elsewhere.  

He watched, unmoving, as the hand grasped him about the torso and pulled.  His vision erupted in a kaleidoscope and the world spun.  Then, the sensations were gone.  He was sitting in a gaudy and slightly overstuffed chair.

“Micah Silver,” a strangely familiar feminine voice spoke behind him.  “You’ve bumbled back and forth through time aimlessly three times now.  I think it’s only fair that you and I have a little chat.  I’m sure you have plenty of questions that you think need answers.”