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Chapter 16: Lord of Bones I
🕑 Added 2024-08-17 23:46:52 +0000 UTCChapter 16: Lord of Bones
I
A ball of poisonous liquid whizzed past me, sizzling a line along my rudimentary Bone Armour as it did. Those giant frogs had been harassing the fort for too long.
“Die!” I cackled hitting one of the cart sized monsters at the peak of it’s jump with Necrotising Bolt. It withered to a husk, no bigger than a regular treefrog in size.
“Incoming!” Orlando cried from his position in the marshalling yard, by the crack in the exterior wall. I looked over from my position atop the wall just in time to see the impact. I wobbled as my feet gave way under the tremors.
The colossal bronze bull had made its move, busting the crumbling stone wide open and letting the ash creatures seep in. Orlando would be overwhelmed if he was left there with only the earth golems to aid him but leaving the walls would give the jumping poison spitters free rain to pelt us from behind. I clenched my teeth as I strained to think of a solution to the dilemma.
How had I gotten into this mess?
☠
I had just escaped the clutches of a pair of violent goddesses by creating a portal, with one of the system spells as a component.
Denigrations:
You have sacrificed the spell Shocking Aura this spell cannot be relearned.
It had been an experiment that I was forced to conduct as I couldn’t think of anything else with strong enough ties to my new physical plane to create a portal. At least I had learned it was possible, although the price was high.
The system was trying to push another notification at me, it was different somehow, but I ignored it.
As soon as I landed in the grassy courtyard of a ruined fort I turned about to watch the portal I had just jumped through. Less than a second, later Orlando’s armoured ghost sprinted out just before the magic ceased to function. I could hear the divine cries of rage cut off leaving the metalic sound of a knight charging.
He was still under the influence of the celestial, Maniae’s, mana and was following her order to “Stop” me. I was thankful it appeared to have superseded her previous order to “destroy” or the Lv.100 Paladin may have smashed through me at lethal speed. In his eyes there was a mixture of surprise, puzzlement, and reluctant regret. It was the only part of him over which he still held dominion and his emotions were as clear as day. He clearly believed that despite my achievement I wouldn’t be able to escape him, being so much higher level than myself he may have a point. Luckily for him I didn’t intend to escape.
His raven black hair, once gold, trailed behind him as he ran, his head the only part visible, the rest of his poltergeist body covered in black plate armour, the helm having been turned into motes of magic upon the activation of the portal spell.
He reached out and grasped my wrist, thinking to drag me away. I couldn’t slip his grip but I didn’t need to. As soon as he turned about, intent on dragging me back threw the tear in space his body froze. He hadn’t noticed it had already closed, there was no way back to that extra dimensional island the Gods had created to play their games.
Orlando turned statuesque, my left wrist still caught in a vice. I had expected as much, when someone under a controlling spell is unable to fulfil an order they often seize to move, unless their controller has given an order for when the first cannot be complete. Most don’t think to.
Plunging my hand through his presently ethereal eye holes I set to work, I had until Maniae found some means to send an order to resume the Paladin’s soul from this predicament.
The exposed ends of the mana were fraid where I had grasped it before, When casting the spell which had removed us from their domain. I dragged a good amount of the mana within him into the working, using the connection the mana had to its mistress to fuel the substantial remainder of the required mana. Now there only resided about a quarter of the white mental magic, tinted with purple, which had been used to control Orlando. I had left as much on purpose. Now that I had enough time I drew out a thread of power, using its opposite, and ran it through my own mana network, purifying it. The white stuff acted similarly to the souls I had absorbed, bolstering the strength of this vessel’s mana pathways without the possible undiscovered side effects.
It took half an hour of standing in a weird embrace before every ounce of the mana was absorbed and my body became capable of using an expert spell more than once in a day. As soon as the last proverbial drop of controlling mana left Orlando’s body the frozen poltergeist suddenly slid to the floor. The grip which had bruised my arm finally readied his knees giving out and tears streaming from his deep blue eyes.
I didn’t know what to do. I had never been put in such a position as this before, it was one thing to console a child like Howard (Gods who don’t hate me protect him) but a fully grown man? I had seen this kind of grief before, in the past. It was deep and completely incomprehensible to me. Last I had witnessed this was before I became an Archmagus, or even a court mage, I was on the rearlines of some long forgotten war between two countries which had been lost to time. The case was similar to this one, the enemy mage cour had attacked at night, sending a mental mage in person to infiltrate the camp; a tactic so risky we hadn’t expected it. No one knew anything was wrong at first, the magi delayed her orders to give herself time to escape. An hour before dawn all hell broke loose, we turned on our own. Half the eight-man tents contained a controlled person, they killed 30 percent of our army without a sound and shortly after we were in chaos. By the time myself and three other magi devised a counter spell it was too late. The enemy had used the disarray to start their own offensive. I fled. A fire mage, thirty years my senior, greying and pot bellied; joyous but lazy, had stayed behind to give us as much time as possible. I could still see the pillar of flame as he made his last stand, far more honourable than I had ever expected of him. He had taught me how to cheat at cards. I didn’t even remember his name…
Some of the cursed, as the survivors took to calling them, were killed. Some chose to remain and die fighting for vengeance or redemption, whichever they thought they could achieve. Some were dragged away by their friends, their faces emotionless and their bodie’s unable to move. Some ran with the rest of our retreating army, in complete denial of their actions. And then there were those like Orlando who, when the spell ended, broke down then and there with steel flying and fire burning all about them - no matter what anyone did they were inconsolable. I ignored them in my flight, only concerned with preserving my notebooks.
I shivered to dispel the foul mood which overtook me and sat, cross legend, on the lush grass beside Orlando; despairing upon his knees. His appearance was slumped and defeated. I couldn’t see his face because of the long black hair which hung over it but tears of ectoplasm dripped every few seconds, splashing on the dark green blades. Not a sound came from the muscular form of The Paladin’s spirit, his shoulders rose and fell with silent sobs.
I sat with him for some time, I know not how long, with naught but the sounds of nature. I only know I had to use my trio of protection and enhancement spells and that it was night when the silence was finally broken. I had considered many times using the new minor evolution of Soul Manipulation, ghost buddies, that this mysterious D who had such control over the system had forced me to have, in order to get Orlando on my side. A part of me wanted to discover what it may do. If I hadn’t met him previously I probably would have done so without a thought, perhaps I was getting soft in my old age, but I felt I couldn’t take him under my control after he had been through such an experience.
I chuckled aloud at the idea of my bony body bending and going soft, Orlando finally stirred; I heard his voice for the first time since he had effectively imprisoned me.
“We need to move.” he said in a certain tone, his tone disturbingly undisturbed; no trace of the grief that had only moments before overtaken him. The words seemed to be an instruction to his ghostly body and his slumped over form was spurred into action, starting to stand.
“We?” I asked, knowing we hadn’t parted on the best of terms.
“Yes, we. I don’t know who you are but you have saved me from…” Orlando trailed off, “you saved me,” he continued in a darker tone. “I have to return the favour.”
“How so?” I questioned, rising to be on a level with him - less a foot. I was uncertain whether I should reveal my identity to Orlando if it would stop him from saving me from a threat I hadn’t foreseen.
“Gods are petty, cruel, and cannot stand the idea that a mortal might have gotten one over on them. They have rules so Maniae and Lyssa can’t attack us directly but that doesn’t stop them from sending their followers on the mortal plane from killing us… well you at the very least. Something is likely already heading for us. I’ll probably need to fight it off, ” Orlando informed, stretching his incorporeal body. Now that the grief had passed he seemed harder than I remembered, without the cheer and warmth his aura gave off. Now he felt cold and detached as he blasphemed against the gods that as a Paladin he had championed. Something had happened before his gladiatorial imprisonment, likely related to the apparent fall of the goddess of light. Despite his hard exterior he still seemed fragile, so I chose not to pry and not to reveal my true identity.
“You’re quite sure of yourself,” I said, joining him in his marshall stretches to loosen up a body that had been sitting for too long.
“I’m level 100, I could probably fight off anything she can send but I can’t ensure you would survive the encounter. Thus, we need to move,” he said matter-of-factly with some of that arrogance that had been so charming in his previous incarnation, returning.
“That's as may be but you no longer have a patron. I can no longer see holy mana within you. You wouldn’t be able to do anything like that pillar of light you used on the dragon made of fire,” I argued. Orlando looked at me strangely for a moment.
“That’s right, you’ve heard of me. You recognised me at the start of the fight. None of the people I… none of my opponents have recognised me in, well I don’t know how long it’s been since I died. After what I did I thought they would have buried my name,” he replied.
“I’m a scholar of history,” I lied, scratching my chin absently and looking up at the half moon. Orlando grunted disbelievingly in response and kept an eye on me as he went on:
“Even without any powers I’m still a Lv.100: I have the strength, the speed, and the swordsmanship,” he said, striking a crumbling, ruined wall beside us and turning it to powder in an area the size of his fist. The Paladin tried to shoot me a reassuring smile but it felt wrong on his face and soon wobbled off.
“I’ll need some ingredients for a scrying spell to tell us where we are and where any enemies might be,” I responded once his expression had settled back into a mix of hopeless and hopeful.
“I can answer the first,” he replied.
“You can?” I asked, looking about in the moonlight at our surroundings. Three stone walls, perhaps half their original height and being overrun by vines and trees, surrounded us. At the final edge abutted by the crumbling facade of a militaristic fort. The portcullis long since rusted leaving a heap of stone that may have once been the only entrance to this grass carpeted courtyard, leaving us trapped.
“I know this place like the back of my hand, I recognise it even in this state. I grew up on a farm not far from here. This is what remains of Fort Far-Reach.” The words seemed to resonate with the System notification I had been suppressing.
