BT II - Chapter 35 (Patreon)

The third floor of the tower consisted of a series of testing rooms and laboratories.  An hour of searching only turned up the dregs of abandoned experiments, broken crockery, and general detritus.  Micah didn’t even manage to find any useful reagents.  Everything perishable had faded long ago, and any minerals or salts that had been in the lab were too mixed and cross contaminated to be safely used.

The fourth floor was also a waste of time.  All Micah managed to find were empty bedrooms with nothing of note present.  A collector would probably care about the antique and luxurious silk if he managed to drag them out of the tower, but Micah had neither the time nor the inclination to raid the Tower for pieces of art.  Unfortunately, no matter how closely his party looked there weren’t any hints as to where Dakkora hid her treasures.

As for the fifth floor?  That was where he finally made some progress.  Most of the books covered forgotten histories, rare ritual ingredients, and logs for experiments that were only tangentially related to the concept of ethics.  But, after an hour or so of searching, Esther managed to find a magically warded alcove with books about the Tower’s design and enchantments.

He leaned down to get a closer look at the runes on the stairwell archway.  The glyphs on this ritual circle were even more intricate.  Even with mana flowing through his engraving knife, sharpening it to the point where Micah could etch glass without actually touching it, matching the fine, almost invisible markings made by the original enchanter was all but impossible.

Luckily, the modifications that Micah was making didn’t require much precision.  There was no question in his mind that the changes would make the circle much less energy efficient, but that was hardly a concern at the top of his mind.

One last burst of mana elongated the needle of air coming from the dagger’s tip as Micah flattened the curve of a rune.  It was as simple as removing the word ‘not.’  Where before the defenses would ‘not’ trigger and attack someone with a specific energy pattern in their soul, now it would prioritize them.  He stood up, closing his eyes and letting his Arcana skill play over the ritual markings.

The magical circuit thrummed with life, an oval of glittering yellow light visible through Micah’s eyelids.  He put his knife back into its sheath with a sigh and picked up his spear to walk through onto the next floor.

Eventually, Micah would be able to create enchantments like this.  Before starting his journey, he had thought that he was one of the better enchanters alive, but after looking over the dead archmagus’ work, he now understood how lukewarm that claim was.

It might take years of study, but he already had Dakkora’s notes.  One day, he’d be able to finish her research and enact rituals on a similar scale.  None of the truly horrifying projects.  Micha didn’t even know why she wanted to make a twenty foot tall golem from the flesh of orphans, but he certainly had no interest in completing those experiments.

But the more mundane projects were fascinating.  New techniques to inscribe simplified runes on smaller spaces were just the beginning.  Much of her research on how to incorporate both natural and temporal energy into ritual castings was positively groundbreaking, even after the centuries had intervened.

His skin tingled as the field of energy in the doorway scanned over him, examining Micah inside and out, but it let him pass unmolested.  He let out the breath he had been holding, turning back to watch as Trevor, Drekt, and Leeka followed him out of the stairwell.

“So this is it,” Trevor remarked, glancing around curiously.  “The hallway of the iridescent shadows, the final stop before the staircase to Dakkora’s throne room and vault.”

Micah didn’t respond, instead inspecting the room that they found themselves in.  It technically was a hallway twenty paces wide and curving to the right.  The floor was featureless other than the stained glass windows lining the left wall, one every five paces starting about fifteen paces deep into the hall.

“I guess we just set up a trap here then and send Micah ahead to challenge the Pontiff,” Trevor continued  “We just need to find places for the three of us to hide, and then it's just a matter of waiting for Micah to bring him back so we can strip him of those magical gizmos and make all of this a fair fight.”

“It will not be that easy,” Drekt rumbled.  “We have no way to gauge the Pontiff’s power level before or after he has acquired the artifacts.  When Micah lures him back we must be ready to do whatever it takes to disarm the Pontiff.  It is important to remember that all of Karell is at stake.  If one of us must die in order to triumph, a sacrifice must be made.”

“I still don’t understand why I’m here,” Leeka said, walking out a couple of steps into the main hallway.  “I’ve seen the three of you fight, and I can barely track your movements.  I want to help if possible, but I think we’re inserting me into the combat line up a couple of years early.”

“That would be true if we were expecting you to fight in the melee,” Drekt replied.  “But this tower has the perfect cover for you, and if you can manage to hit the Pontiff with a disintegration arrow, it will be a formidable distraction.  With the alterations Micah has made to the runes of the doorway, the Pontiff should not be able to pass through and easily harm you.  If all goes well, you should be able to take cover in the stairway, firing shots at the Pontiff with relative impunity.”

“I guess-” Leeka’s next words were swallowed by a startled squawk as Micah sprang into motion, grabbing her by the wrist and yanking her backward.  The tall orange woman looked at him with wide eyes, her breath coming in short sharp bursts.

“Careful,” Micah said, pointing to the stained glass windows with his spear.  “I think I figured out how this hallway got its name.”

The window shifted slightly, its colored panes flowing together to make a vaguely human shape crouching near the bottom of the glass.  If it weren’t for the hands ending in long green claws and the flecks of red used for its eyes, Micah would have taken it for a depiction of some ancient warrior or hero.

Purple light flared from outside the Tower, illuminating the silhouette from behind and spraying a rainbow of light into the hallway.  In the center of the kaleidoscope painting the marble floor stood the bestial figure.

“What the fuck?”  Leeka asked, her voice incredulous, but Micah just shook his head, releasing her wrist to put a single finger vertically across his lips.

The figure paced to the edge of the lit area, crouching low enough to let its green claws drag against the floor.  It glowered at them for a moment before sniffing deeply twice, as if to remember their scent.  Then the entity smiled, displaying a mouth full of unnaturally long and sharp green teeth.

The back lighting in the window flickered out, returning the hallway to its usual sterile white and gray.  Back in the stained glass window, the creature prowled back and forth, red eyes firmly fixed on Leeka.

“Well,” she said shakily.  “That was scary as hell, but for all we know it’s just an illusion or some sort of low level spirit summon.  Micah, I think you said that the power of your summoned spirits tend to drain over time and the further you travel from their source?”

“Yes,” he replied, taking a single step forward and inspecting the floor where the image had been, “but that’s me.  Dakkora wasn’t invulnerable, but her skills in this field are far beyond anything I can touch.  I wouldn’t count on the iridescent shadows being something weakened or made vulnerable over time.”

“Look.”  He pointed with his spear.

The ground where the entity had crouched was scored.  Four marks on either side of its body where its green claws had melted through the marble from little more than a touch.

“Well, shit,” Trevor remarked, frowning at the eight deep scratches in the solid stone.  “That looks like the sort of monster that could rip pretty much anyone apart if they weren’t careful.  I guess it won’t be that easy for us to sneak into the vault after all.”

“It makes sense,” Micah replied, edging toward the window, “Dakkora was the sort of woman that valued her privacy.  Given her capabilities, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that she would defend her isolation with some rather extreme violence.”

The purple light from outside the Tower flashed once again as Micah approached, spilling colored light into the hallway.  The crouching figure snarled silently, leaping toward Micah as he stood impassively just outside the lit area.

The monster disappeared as soon as it hit the edge of the illuminated zone, appearing almost instantaneously on the other side of the multicolored rectangle.  It landed almost in the center of the lit area, green claws shredding the marble as it skidded to a stop.

“The creature can only exist inside the area illuminated by the window,” Micah said distractedly as he moved closer to the frame of the window itself.  Now that the enchantment was active, gold writing was visible around the inside of the frame, as tight and complex as anything on the wards on the archway into the hallway.

“It appears that the enchantment can only light a space ten paces wide by twenty long,” he continued.  “Not enough to be truly useful in the field, but given the arrangement of the windows, there shouldn’t be any dead zones.  If my guess is correct, an invader will be forced to fight their way along the entire exterior of the tower before finally arriving at the stairwell that leads to Dakkora’s vault.  Wait this is fascinating, it looks like she- fuck!”

Micah shouted the last word, jumping backward just as the light outside the Tower changed.  The purple glow on the far side of the window brightened while that near Micah dimmed, turning the rectangle into a parallelogram that angled toward him.  The creature inside the prismatic area surged toward him, but a quick step backward was all it took for Micah to be out of range once again.

He flashed a quick grin back to the rest of his group, letting out a nervous chuckle as he carefully walked away from the silently glowering beast.

“Good news guys!”  He said cheerfully.  “I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out how this entire floor works.  The bad news is that all of the windows are linked to a control mechanism that isn’t right next to them.  I won’t be able to pull the trick we used to get through the stairwell doors to sneak past these guys.”

He hooked a thumb toward the monster as it slunk back and forth inside the lit area, letting its claws scrape deep furrows in the ground as it stared daggers at Micah.

“But I’m assuming we could fix all of this if you knew where the control panel is,” Trevor replied, waving in the monster’s general direction.

“Oh I know where the mechanism is,” Micah responded, walking toward the rest of the party.  Behind him, the light illuminating the stained glass window winked out, taking the crouching form of the monster with it.  “The only problem is that Dakkora put it right next to the stairs to her vault.  The only way to access it is to fight past all of the iridescent shadows or to use the passkey to bypass them.”

“How do you even fight past that?”  Leeka asked incredulously.  “It’s a construct of light and magic.  I’m not even sure that it will even notice if I shoot it with an arrow.”

“It will notice the arrow, but I doubt it will do much,” Micah said with a helpless shrug.  “The windows are fed by some sort of titanic well of sacrifices.  I suspect the rock garden outside is in part managing the power sources for the entire tower.  The only way to defeat the shadows is to exhaust that power source or break the windows, and given how heavily the windows and walls are enchanted, I doubt anyone under level forty could even put a scratch on them.”

“There are no marks on the floor past the first window,” Drekt observed, his brow furrowing into a frown.  “I believe that more or less confirms our belief that the Pontiff has access to this passkey.  If he did not, we would see signs of battle from his passage through this area.”

“Agreed,” Micah replied, nodding.  “We also would have seen modifications or damage to the stairwell arches.  As best I can tell, the Pontiff didn’t even need to explore the Tower.  He simply walked up the stairs and into Dakkora’s throne room.”

“That hardly seems fair,” Trevor grumbled.  “We’re the good guys.  The gods should have given us this magical doohickey to smooth our way through all of these deathtraps.  Why does that bad guy get all of the useful tricks and power ups?”

“We cannot fight him here,” Drekt said, crossing his arms as he ignored his husband’s complaints.  “If Micah draws out the Pontiff, he will be forced to fight his way through the iridescent shadows simply to get back to our party.  Even if he can manage, he will be too weakened to help us in our fight against.  Unless we can change the stage for the coming battle, it is as good as lost.”

Micah bit his lip, ignoring the spikes of pain as his teeth dug into the soft flesh as he eyed up the hallway.  In every window lining the left wall a different shape moved in a window.  Some were crouching monsters like the one nearest him, but others were winged beasts, men with swords, or even what looked like a swarm of purple and gray spiders.

“This is probably a bad idea,” he began, only for Trevor to cut him off.

“That means it’s definitely a bad idea.”

Micah glowered at Trevor for a second, but the older man didn’t appear to notice, instead just grinning back at him.  Finally, Micah gave up and continued.

“Between haste and foresight I can move incredibly quickly and dodge anything the windows will summon.  You don’t have to defeat every iridescent shadow to get to the vault, just get past them.”

“And what happens then?”  Drekt asked, unconvinced.  “You repeat the process coming back, dodging attacks from both the shadows and the Pontiff?  There is no guarantee you will make it to the three of us alive, let alone in any shape to fight back.  Once he is here, we would be forced to fight in a confined space so as to avoid being slain by the shadows.  Try harder, I need a plan that ends without all of us dying Micah.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Micah demurred with a wave of his hand.  “I wouldn’t climb the stairs once I got to them.  I’d be sprinting there in order to modify the control mechanism.  Once I have access to it, I can reverse the function that lets it check for the passkey.  We can turn the corridor into an asset, a trap for the Pontiff that assaults him rather than us.”

“You won’t have time,” Leeka replied, shaking her head.  “It’s taken you five to ten minutes and all of your focus to carve your way through each of the archways.  There’s no way you’d be able to survive long enough to finish modifying the controls.  I don’t care how strong you are Micah, this is a suicide mission.”

Micah’s response was to finish incantation for haste.  Before anyone else could stop him, he sprang into motion, chanting the words to foresight under his breath as he sprinted into range of the first window.

The crouching beast appeared in front of him in a splash of rainbow light, swinging a claw at him in a blurry display of both speed and power.

He ducked under the attack, exiting the square of light before the entity could gather itself for another strike.

His foot touched down inside the range of the next window, and a mounted knight made from green and blue light appeared, barely a pace from him.  The rider lunged at him with a lance, an attack that Micah easily parried with his spear before using Gust Step to blur away from his enemy as the horse unhinged its jaw and snapped at him with a massive, fang-filled mouth.

The next window had a trio of birds, their feathers a golden-red and their claws a pulsing green as they dove for Micah.  Foresight guided his feet, and a stutter-step forced the first hawk to overshoot while the second was batted away by the haft of his spear.  Before the third could land a blow, Micah was clear.

Windows passed in a blur.  Micah ducked under tentacles, leapt over cavernous mouths that appeared in the Tower’s floor, and sidestepped motes of glittering green light surrounding a pair of malevolent purple eyes.  Finally, after parrying an attack from a four armed monster with a battle axe in each hand Micah saw the stairwell.

He reached up touching the fang on his shoulder and began pouring mana into his armor’s enchantment as he ran past a pair of three violet wolves.  On the wall adjacent to the stairwell, Micah could finally see the control mechanism.  A large ritual circle carved deep into the marble and stained gold with whatever magical ink Dakkora had used to complete the enchanting.

It pulsed with energy, like it was a live.  A magical heart that controlled and powered the defenses for the entire floor, every glyph angle and nested ritual circle packed with enough meaning to launch a dissertation from one of the academics back at the Pereston Royal Academy.

The wolves leapt toward his unprotected back just as golden mist poured out of Micah’s shoulder, reforming into the river kraken.  He stepped to the side, not bothering to turn around as he tracked the monsters’ movements by the rainbow arcs provided by foresight.

Three tentacles lashed out, catching the wolves around their waists as they skittered to a halt just before the edge of their lit area.  The kraken filled the entirety of the hallway, stretching three stained glass windows deep.  It held the wolves aloft, preventing them from touching the tower’s floor even as the four-armed axe wielder and gorilla-like monster began to pound on its glowing golden hide.

Micah ran to the wall, dropping his spear to the tower floor and drawing his engraving knife as he inspected the ritual circle.  Mana began to flow out of him in a steady stream as the kraken demanded it from him in order to maintain its corporeal form under the onslaught.

He reached forward, the air shimmering and crackling under the tip of his blade as he touched it to the control circle, sharpening a swooping glyph into a boxier shape and adding legs to it.  Behind him, the wolves bit and gnawed at the tentacles holding them captive, but Micah ignored them.

His world narrowed to the glowing runes and glyphs, to the scratch of his knife against the marble as minute changes to the runic circle changed the meaning of entire segments with one minor flick of his wrist.

Dimly, Micah recognized that what he was doing was insanely dangerous.  One of the first lessons of ritual magic and enchanting was to never try and modify a live circle, but safety concerns would have to wait for later.  Even if he failed, ripping a hole in the tissue thin fabric of reality and letting Elsewhere spill into Dakkora’s tower, it would hardly change anything.

He was backed into a corner, out of options.

Someone had blundered.  It was not his role to pray to the gods and beg a reply.  It was not his role to try and reason why.  Micah’s only focus was to do or die.

The river kraken shimmered, its outline growing hazy from damage.  At some point, no matter how much mana Micah poured into it, the spirit bound to his armor would be unable to go on.  When that happened, it would fade away, going dormant until the kraken’s spirit could repair itself and leaving him at the mercy of the violet wolves.

An axe thwacked into its rubbery flesh, and Micah could feel the summon lose even more coherence. It’s consciousness brushed against his own, rebellious and exhausted.

He clamped down on the creature, crushing its will under his own even as Micah chipped away a line of runework, exchanging it for a swirl with a dot.  Through inefficient mana use and his Arcana skill, he would be able to force the kraken to fight past its limits, but at some point, it wouldn’t be able to hold on any longer.

Micah’s knife moved expertly, carving a thin channel that connected two runes in different subcircles.  He needed to be done by the time the kraken faded, or it would be all over.  Micah was powerful, but there was no way he could fight three monsters with inexhaustible health and energy at the same time.

HIs knife flashed again.  Behind him, one of the kraken’s tentacles faded from existence for a fraction of a second, letting a wolf slip out of its grasp.

The second its paws touched the floor, the monster bolted toward Micah, leaping at his unprotected back.

Before it could land its blow, a tentacle slapped it out of the air, sending the creature flying across the hallway to where it slammed into the far wall.  It sprang back to its feet, leaping onto the kraken’s side and ripping a mouthful of golden energy from its flank.

The spirit groaned, sagging limply to the tower floor where it rested for a second before its body faded into a cloud of golden light that streaked toward Micah’s back.  The three wolves stalked toward him, spreading out so there was only a pace between them, well within range to attack Micah if he were to try and escape.

They tensed, prepared to leap on Micah, dragging him to the ground and murder him just as he finished his last stroke with the engraving knife.

The purple light outside the window that defined the wolves' existence flickered, snapping them in and out of reality for a moment.  When the wolves came back into being, they paused, confused.

One of them cocked its head, whining silently while another padded up to Micah, sniffing him with a glittering purple muzzle.  It looked back at its companions, and the light outside the stained glass window disappeared.

Micah let out a deep sigh that echoed in the now empty hallway.  He reached up, dabbing the sweat away from his eyes before stretching to relieve his body of some of the stress and tension that had built up in his harried charge through the hall of iridescent shadows.

Finally, Micah let himself smile as he spoke to himself.

“All right then, time to head back and set up the fallback position.”