Chapter 112: Illusory Gains (Patreon)

[A lit candle on a black back drop.]

L if for Light, the Font that grants sight. Everywhere by day, and crucial by night. The power seems gentle, and pleasantly warm, but with enough power can melt an ice storm.

-Sally Rider’s ABCs of Magic_

—

At first, it looked like Kole’s light spell was receding as the black wave of spiders came, the walls floor and ceiling simply turning black, but as they got closer he could make out the shapes of individual spiders.

“Now!” Rakin shouted, when the spiders were still ten feet away.

Kole released the spell, sending it through his bridge, where the main focus of his mind was to both speed up his casting of the spell and to avoid dwelling on his potential impending doom.

The light went out as the Thunderwave manifested. As soon as he felt the spell completed, Kole brought back his light and saw the tunnel around him cleared of spiders to the extent of his light’s reach, the wave of concentrated sound having been amplified and focused by the tunnel, sending the creatures farther back than Kole expected.

The absence of spiders was only temporary, however, and the black wave came on, crawling over the corpses of their allies.

Kole heard Rakin shouting something, but he couldn’t make it out. It was only after he’d been pulled back onto his butt and the cave in front of him collapsed, filling the air with dust that he realized it had been “get back!”

While Kole tried to recover his bearings, blinded by the dust and his light only making the issue worse, Rakin stepped in front of him, relying on his tremor sense to battle the small spiders that were able to cross through the gaps in the collapse. With nothing else to focus on, Kole was distinctly away that he no longer felt the drain of the webs after the collapse.

By the time to dust had settled and Kole could see, the dwarf was covered in dust caked on by the blood and guts of the hand sized spiders he’d been crushing by the dozen. But, on close inspection, Kole saw that some of the blood was red and Rakin hadn’t gotten out unscathed.

“I saw bigger ones through the cracks double back,” Rakin said. “The little ones all started fighting each other just before it happened.”

“Why didn’t they teleport through?” Kole asked.

“I don’t know, lets just get out of here.”

They reached the others, who were in the process of loading a emaciated  human girl onto Doug’s back, Runt secured already on Zale’s.

“Amintha’s at the door,” Amara said, standing by nervously, her eyes darting back and forth down the tunnel in both directions.

“The spiders are looking for another way around and I can’t collapse another tunnel,” Rakin said, moving to take the girl from Doug.

“Torc save us,” Rakin said, “I feel them coming.”

They ran down the tunnel, towards the door, and when they passed one of the branches they’d not explored before, Kole caught a glimpse of three dog-sized spiders coming for them.

In an instant, the three spiders set back and then leapt for him.

Before they could reach him, however, Kole had already cast another Thunderwave, and without anything to hold onto, all three were thrown down the tunnel. Amara’s rune light shone in a narrow beam down the tunnel, farther than Kole’s could extend, and the spiders flew well beyond it’s view.

“Well if any are left, they know where to find us,” Kole shouted, to the others.

As if he’d summoned, them, more spiders stepped out of the darkness. Doug sent an arrow down the tunnel. It landed on the ground, and vines sprung from it, growing to restrict the path.

“That was my last one,” he said, showing an empty quiver.

“Aya!” Amara shouted, throwing something down the tunnel.

“Look away!” Kole warned everyone, even as he moved to cover his abused ears and squeezed his own eyes shut.

Even turning away, his lids lit up red at the flash behind him, and a bang echoed down the hall.

They didn’t wait to see what the results were, and they ran, reaching the crag before the spiders came back into view. Zale went through first, switching Runt’s position so her arms were draped around her shoulders. Rakin did the same with his passenger, but the girl’s legs dragged behind him on the ground like a cape.

They all piled into the crag, squeezing in, but slowed by those in front with burdens.

While they still had halfway to go Rakin cursed.

“Zale, go silent,” Kole whispered, and he activated his Fade.

Everyone stopped, and Kole closed his eyes, fully entering his vault with his mind as he visualized his group as being a part of himself. In his vault, he saw as power flew in through his bridge from the Illusion Font that dominated the view. The energy struck him, and then green tendrils of light flowed from him, out to the walls of his vault where it disappeared. While the sight was new, the sensation wasn’t and Kole could feel as his power tried to dissuade the spiders from following the sounds that they heard.

Kole felt the drain increase rapidly, just as it did right before his friends broke free of the effect in their training. He pushed more of his focus into the spell but to no avail.

In the stretched time of his vault, he moved to construct a Thunderwave, but he knew even before he began that he lacked the Will.

Then, old instincts only very recently beginning to fade reared their head, and he left his vault, drawing on his sorcerous ability to appear before the Font of Illusions. His mind began to draw the power from the Font to turn himself invisible, but Kole fought against his own instincts.

He would not save himself if he couldn’t save them all.

But still, the power called to him, and there had only every been one shape his soul knew to mold it into. A single spell that was the whole of his sorcerous heritage. Desperately he tried to shape the power into something, but it slipped from his grasp the more he tried to hold it.

Until it didn’t.

Just as his Fade was about to fail, with only a scrap of Will remaining, Kole felt something within him click. Something he hadn’t felt since he’d unlocked the ability to turn invisible all those years ago.

The power that had been slippery, now molded itself, seemingly of its own accord into a shape Kole couldn’t comprehend.

Not sure what was about to happen, Kole’s mind thought back to the collapsing tunnel, longing for the power to bring this narrow passage down on the spiders about to come down it. He felt the power drain from him, and in the darkness, nothing happened.

He waited, hearing only his own breathing, and that of his friends. Then, there was the rhythmic tapping of spider legs, far beyond, but then they stopped.

Tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap tap.

And then they retreated, and there was once more only breathing.

Up ahead, he heard his friends moving. And he followed blindly, nearly crying out in joy as the tunnel began to glow with the light of the openinng.

“How did you collapse the tunnel?” Doug asked him as they entered the light.

“I did?” Kole asked, not sure at all what he’d done.

“He didn’t” Rakin said, surely. “I woulda felt it.”

A splitting headache rocked Kole then, and he that he’d exhausted his Will and he was still maintaining a spell, though he still didn’t know what it was.

He took his last potion of clarity, and reveled in the sensation of restored his Will.

“Guys!” Zale shouted. “The doors stuck!”

All eyes shot to Zale, where she stood in front of the door. She pulled with all her might, but the door wouldn’t budge. The edges were still flickering unstably, but whatever strength Zale had used to open it before having left her in the battle.

“Shhhhh!” Rakin hissed, commanding everyone to silence.

He crouched down, bending to place his ear on the ground.

“There’s something big coming,” he whispered.

Kole drew upon his Font once more, Willing the group huddled around the door to be ignored.

Immediately he felt his Will drain rapidly, as something was coming right for them with intent.

In panic, he sent his mind our back to the Font of Illusions, and drew on whatever mysterious power had saved him before.

Not knowing what to do with it, Kole once more thought about the collapsing rocks of the tunnel as the power went through him. Through squinting eyes, Kole looked out the opening of the ledge. The bright sky seemed darker than it had a moment before, and there were strange faint lines all around it, as if he were looking through a semi-transparent image of some pattern his mind couldn’t place.

Then, a segmented leg became silhouetted in the opening. Each segment of the leg was as long as Tigereye’s leg, and then another came. And another, and another, followed by mandibles the size of Zale’s swords, and a head covered in six eyes as large as Kole’s head. The eyes took in the opening. Pausing to take it all in.

And then, it moved on. Its massive body completely blocking the light of the opening as it passed through.

As the silhouette of the spinneret disappeared below the edge, Kole sagged in relief, and everyone joined in.

They sat there for three minutes, no one risking a sound until Kole couldn’t take it any longer. He stepped outside the strange brown overlay and turned to see that a giant pile of collapsed rocks stood where his friends and the door ought to have been.

“Huh,” he said, not sure what else to say of it. “That’s neat.”

Kole, it seemed, had created an illusion.