Battle Mage: The Lost King (Tales of Alus) (22 page)

“Yes, let me check you with my magic. We seem to be safe for now.” He felt her magic enter him through her touch.

“That bolt blinded me, but my vision’s coming back slowly if you could speed that up I would appreciate it. I can’t see enough to fight right now.”

The mage realized that he was nearly shouting. The thunder of the lightning had apparently backfired on him in that regard as well.

His vision suddenly cleared to nearly full and the mage witnessed the devastation caused by a fully charged Hollow Sword. “Oh, thanks. That’s better Yara,” Sebastian stated without yelling as well.

A blackened stripe of ground led straight to where the central plant stalk was supposed to be. Vines covered the ground both those blackened and the green, but the trunk at the center stood burning and only about the height of a man. Pieces of the upper flower and stalk were scattered in all directions.

Giving a low whistle, Sebastian declared, “So that’s what a Hollow Sword can do.”

Yara released her magic finding no real damage to the mage other than what had been done to his senses from his own spell. “You don’t even seem that drained of power. If you had done that using a staff, I think you wouldn’t be standing by now.”

Looking at the blade emptied off all magic, Sebastian found no cracks or other damage as he feared that he might after abusing the weapon with the great power of the earth. The mage had managed to tread the fine line between holding the power and destroying the sword, though he had a feeling that it
was only just. Like a wizard or mage, the weapon could only hold so much power before breaking and he had just tested its limit.

The jungle seemed quiet once more.

“Now what?” Yara asked as she looked around at the devastation.

Pulling out the compass, Sebastian noted the position had remained relatively the same. While he had thought that the direction they had been pulled by the plant was the same, in the jungle direction was hard to keep track especially in the midst of such a strange fight. “We could finish this. I don’t think that we’re far from the source of the marker now.”

“But what about the others?” the girl asked worriedly.

Sebastian listened and even added the hound spell. Something sweet was in the air tickling his nose and managing to prevent any scent coming to him of his team, while the strange silence settled by the jungle also seemed nearly magical in its ability to prevent him from hearing anything beyond the two of them. “I can’t sense them at all. This jungle must be magic. I don’t know if it is something that was created by the Cataclysm or something that was created by someone afterwards but this can’t be just a coincidence.

“We can try and find this point now using the compass or we can try to find the others without any idea of where they are.”

Yara frowned at the conundrum caused by the situation. The look was suddenly interrupted as her face crinkled up before giving a petite, squeak of a sneeze.

Sebastian laughed at the sheer cuteness of the sound. He had never heard her sneeze before he realized.

“Stop laughing at me,” she rebuked him while still managing to smile. “There’s something in the air. It’s really sweet.”

The girl’s steps moved in the direction of the dot on the compass without having seen the last reading. Sebastian’s nose tickled as well, though he was nowhere near to sneezing. Simply rubbing the feeling away, the man followed the little blond noticing small rips and tears in her yellow shirt and brown pants. It was nothing too severe and he knew that he wasn’t in any better condition. Spots of red could be seen on the yellow, however, and Sebastian realized that the healer needed to be healed yet as well.

“Are you hurt?” he asked as he followed the girl past the destroyed vine system.

“Hmmm?” Yara questioned seemingly at least half distracted by the strange smell on the air. She didn’t sneeze anymore from the scent, however. Noting where he pointed to the blood on her shirt, the girl replied, “Maybe we can check it after we find the water?”

Bas was surprised as the sound of water running suddenly became noticeable to his ears. They hadn’t walked very far, but it was like the sound had moved to meet them as much as they had walked towards it. Rubbing his nose, the mage moved with little thought other than the curiosity of finding the water.

Chapter 15- The Tranquil Embrace

Unlike Sebastian’s team to the north, Maura’s team was part of a larger personnel drop off. With the extra manpower on the shore behind them at the ready to support any decision should she need them, the research wizard seemed even more confident than usual. To Liam, he found that almost impossible since she was insufferably so most of the time since he had known the woman.

“Liam, be a good man and lead the way,” the woman in brown waved the water wizard to the front of the line. There was a long overgrown path that was still usable leading from the beach and up the hill to the ruins that had been spied from the air by Sebastian and Annalicia. It was that path that Maura suggested with her finger pointing.

While her words and attitude towards him were slightly annoying to the man, it was Serrena that snarled under her breath and quickly moved to join Liam at the front trailed by Frell and the sergeant. Idenlare walked just behind the woman he was assigned to protect and his eyes moved warily from one patch of growth to another looking for trouble to show.

Thinking that they were now one for three for finding danger and the other two weren’t marked by the compass, Liam started to pay even more attention to the path and the land around them. If the islands that the Grimnal had surveyed enough to leave traces were indeed a danger, then the water wizard knew that the first line of defense would be seeing the danger coming. His roving eyes started to affect Serrena as well and the fire wizard increased her wariness as much as he.

Despite all their worrying, the small band of six reached the ruins in short fashion and unmolested. Liam let out a little sigh as he took in the tall stone walls. Vines and lichen worked their way through the stone breaking the once powerful walls into pebbles. The magic that had created the walls long ago was now humbled by even the furthest reach of the jungle. Plants were everywhere.

Oddly clumped bushes looking half like a hedge and half moss could be found in corners or other shadowed places throughout the fortress as the six wandered around hoping to find anything that might give them an answer as to who lived here and why. The Grimnal had been on a quest to find the Dark One and the left over sources of his magic from what the diary had allowed. Setting up a fort in the middle of nowhere seemed unlikely. Had he left men behind to continue some research again? He had sensed no
sunken boats in the water around the island as they passed. After the previous hidden disaster, the Sea Dragon’s wizards had made sure to look.

“Something’s odd here,” Frell said quietly to her wizard friends. He had never heard words of worry like that from the blond haired falcon before and looking at her perceptive blue eyes searching for what troubled her made the two wizards that much more wary.

Nodding his acknowledgement of her worry, Liam asked quietly of the two women, “Is it me or do you feel like we’re being watched?”

A light of realization filled the falcon’s blue eyes as she replied, “That’s what it is. I feel like eyes are watching us, but I can’t figure out where the feeling is coming from.”

“Everywhere,” was Serrena’s opinion.

Liam had to agree with the fire wizard’s conclusion.

“Orcs,” Maura suddenly declared from where she was searching.

The three from Sebastian’s team all moved quickly to see what the researcher was going on about. There were no orcs within view, but that wasn’t to say that they weren’t a nearby worry.

Looking up to see the remainder of her team near enough to avoid shouting, the brown robed wizard stated, as she he held up a club and rusty helmet with a single horn jutting to one side, “It was a fortress of the Dark One, I believe. The weapons and armor are in disrepair, but they are too numerous to be anything else. Men from either continent don’t rely on such crude pieces and pirates use little armor with weapons of finesse.”

Liam was surprised that was the woman’s final opinion. Whether it was an orc fortress or not, he would assume that she would want to exhaust the potential of the ruins. As he noticed the woman’s eyes,
Liam realized that she was just scared. “Do we continue to look around then?” the man asked more than willing to leave the eerie feelings behind him.

Not looking like she wanted to speak her answer, Maura stated, “We’ll search each room to be sure, but this fort is far enough into ruin that I don’t expect to find much. It would be a waste of time to do more, but we shouldn’t do less.”

Moving deeper into the fort, the wizards continued to feel eyes on their backs. None of them were immune to the impression of being watched. Sergeant Kulvayr even had his sword drawn and held at rest, but ready for a fight. More weapons in racks or scattered on the ground were found throughout the remainder of the ruins. Liam wondered if a battle had been fought here. There were too many pieces of armor and weapons left scattered so haphazardly. Where would they have gone so quickly while leaving their weapons behind them?

Serrena’s hand touched Liam’s sleeve. “Did that bush just move?” the woman asked refusing to take her eyes from a bush standing in the corner as she pointed to it.

Thinking that the fire wizard had finally given in to the strange vibe given off by the ruins, he was about to say that he hadn’t seen anything when the sound of thunder echoed from beyond the small mountain to the north. A second and third boom which seemed to get louder with each rumble shook the land. Liam looked to the sky in confusion seeing only blue sky.

The land around them seemed to tremble or at least the plants around them did. Like beasts being shaken awake, the bushes began to shift as Serrena had feared. There was no question of it this time since the entire fort was coming to life.

“Back to the beach quickly everyone. I don’t like the looks of this magic,” Liam ordered pushing Serrena back the way they had come. Grabbing Frell’s arm helped to spin the falcon, who was a little slow to leave being struck senseless by what she was seeing around her, the wizard urged the two women closest to him to run. Sergeant Kulvayr needed no urging. The soldier was a veteran and knew a bad position when he saw one and felt the foreboding evil of the awakening plants.

Idenlare pulled Maura with one hand and summoned a fire spell with the other.

“Don’t attack them unless they attack us, Idenlare. It will only make things worse. If we don’t give them a reason to attack us, maybe we can get out of here safely,” the water wizard ordered though Maura was technically in command. He didn’t want someone risking his life with a hasty attack to antagonize beings that might simply be shifting from the strange thunder to the north.

Two rooms passed quickly, but the wizards found vaguely human shaped bushes moving to block the broken doorway before them. Turning to look at the four openings around them including the way that they had come, they only found more of the strange creatures moving in from all sides. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the plants would find them so easily. They had been moving quickly. The fact that they were so coordinated with their approach made Liam wonder what was controlling them or if there were some other way for the creatures to communicate.

“What now, water wizard? Your ideas seems all wet as well now,” Idenlare added the popular insult for his school.

“They haven’t actually attacked...,” Liam began as he worried just how long that would last as well. His hopes that they were merely stirred awake by the thunder might be right, but maybe the lumbering plants blamed the six wandering through the broken fortress for awakening them.

Frell moved forward from the group motioning for them to stay behind her. “Let me test if they will let us pass,” the falcon said before uttering her reflex spell. The spell would give her the best chance of all of them to escape.

Moving towards the door and the bush men blocking her way, Frell approached cautiously and did nothing to provoke an attack hoping to simply slide past the plants. Pushing forward, two of the plants
suddenly led the charge grasping for the girl. Dancing back, the battle mage warned, “They’re not going to let us past, Liam. We’re going to need to fight our way through.”

A fireball was flung into the plants stretching to reach the falcon. Frell was quicker in her movements than human and so far Liam judged these creatures to be slower than a normal man. As the fire struck, a new observation was digested. The flame had absolutely no affect on the bush man other than pushing it back a single step before it tried to close on the mage dancing between their outstretched arms, or perhaps branches to be more accurate, the water wizard half thought as he readied a spell.

Frell slashed at an arm severing the limb like a branch, but Liam noted that the core of the arm looked like the flesh of a man or animal. Perhaps it was part of an orc. There was bone at the center, but green vine and moss laced the rotted meat of its flesh. This plant might be alive, but what it was formed on was not.

Releasing a water condensing blast at the group in front of them, Liam guessed that was all the moisture he could pull from the air close by. The limit of his magic was one that made many choose the opposite, fire. With no source of water, he was going to have to get creative if he was going to be of help.