BTIV - Chapter 7

The dizziness from Deja Vu faded, and Micah found his carriage pulling to a halt in front of the stage.  Above him, Gwen sat on her throne, waiting to present him with an award for his role in suppressing the outbreak.

A familiar man hurried down the stairs, a polished gem in his hand.  Micah tuned out his words, smiling and nodding as he began to cast his spells one after another. Haste, Regeneration, and, as he began to walk up the steps toward the stage, Foresight.  Finally, he found himself standing in front of the princess once more, all of his senses in overdrive as he tried to find the source of the attackers.

The sensation was faint, but he could feel something arising from the man who had driven their carriage.  To Micah’s crown it felt like magic, but different.  Almost familiar.

“Rise Guildmaster Micah Silver of the Silver Foxes”

Micah stood up.  Gwen had the exact same practiced but distant expression on her face as she opened her mouth to recite her speech.  This time, he could feel the strange energy surging from the coachman as he channeled it through some sort of magical item in his possession.  Reality began thinning in the two spots where the luoca were set to appear.

“You have done a great service for my mother’s kingdom,” the princess began, only for Micah to cut her off.

“The desert may be empty,“but that only highlights the beauty of the night sky.”

Hopefully her last words weren’t just idle poetic musing.  Micah could feel the ritual surging to completion as both of the portals opened.

The princess was standing, her eyes widening as she took in the pass-phrase, but he needed more time.  She was reacting too slowly and already he could see the twilight mists of Elsewhere through the openings as the luoca began to push themselves into reality.

Micah grabbed hold of one of the energy tendrils that connected the carriage driver to the daemons.  Somehow he could almost see a small ivory figurine in the man’s hands as it bubbled and melted under the force of summoning ritual.  Micah clenched his teeth together, seizing hold of the strange magic and ripping it from the man’s control.

Without thinking he extended his right arm, making a grasping motion.  Although the invisible struggle of wills took place almost entirely in Micah’s mind, the act of clenching his fist served almost as a trigger.

The streamer of power snapped, but it was too late.  Already both of the bug daemons were halfway through their portals, their otherworldly auras warping and twisting the very fabric of Karell.

He pulled with his mind, yanking on the thread of power.  Distantly, he felt the same trickle of energy that had helped him pull Gwen from Elsewhere.  It flowed from the center of Micah’s body and out through his hands, wrapping itself around the chain of magic and sinking its fangs into the portal like a cobra.

The passage to Elsewhere collapsed in on itself, flickering out of existence in a fraction of an eyeblink.  For a moment, there was silence, followed only by the plop of half of the luoca, cleanly severed by the collapsing portal as it slapped into the stage floor.

Fifteen paces away, the other luoca screamed something incomprehensible before throwing itself at Micah.  He danced backward launching two Pressure Spears in a row, each of them slamming into the daemon’s leg joints.  They weren’t enough to stop it, but they bought him enough time for both of the princess’ guards to draw their weapons and step forward.

Micah ducked under a jab from the daemon’s tail before tucking his shoulder and dropping into a roll that avoided both of the monster’s wings.  He managed to fire one more Pressure Spear that struck the luoca in the cheek, bruising its humanoid face and drawing a line of blood.

The bodyguards rushed to either side of the daemon, hoods falling free as they sprinted across the stage to reveal one man and one woman, both with similar features.  In their hands, each of them held an almost identical thick longsword, the only difference between the twinned blades was that the male’s was white while the female’s was black.

He spun to the right, flowing away from the rainbow darts that preceded the monster’s razor sharp legs.  On either side, the two guards attacked, their moves fluid and in perfect sync.  The moment both of their blades stabbed into either flank of the daemon it stiffened, and Micah felt a surge of magic as their weapons discharged energy between them.

Gwen was standing, each of her hands touching one of the armrests of her throne as she watched the fight, jaw slightly askew.

No, Micah corrected himself as he used the daemon’s distraction to cast Wind Blade.  She was looking directly at him, not the fight.

He unleashed the spell, directing it to hit the luoca in the joint between its left wing and the thick chitin of its body.  The pulse of incredibly dense and quick air pressure wasn’t enough to sever the limb, but it crushed armor and sent ichor spraying.

The two guards attacked again, moving at the exact same moment as both of them slashed at the daemon’s legs with heavily enchanted swords.  Behind them, four or five guards were running toward the princess, shouting about how they needed to get her to the teleportation formation.

Micah cast Explosive Thicket, knocking the luoca off balance but failing to pierce the glossy chitin of its underside as he ran past it.  Then the attacks from the bodyguards landed, each of them severing a leg and sending a bolts of raw energy from their blades and into the unsteady daemon.  Mana arced across the surface of its belly, blistering armor until the magic from both of their attacks met near its center and quieted.

The creature exploded into a burst of rainbow light as it lashed out with its legs and tail, frantically trying to strike Micah as well as the two blessed that served the royal family.  He dodged the attacks easily, moving a quarter of a second before the luoca even though to launch them, but neither of his companions were as lucky.

Both of them were beaten back, and the male fighter wasn’t quite quick enough.  He made the correct call when dodging a swipe from the daemon’s tail, stepping into the attack to avoid its stinger, but he didn’t have an opportunity to set his feet and was sent flying by the attack’s back-stroke.

His scream brought a wince to Micah’s face.  The warrior likely didn’t have an arcana skill meaning that he was forced to contend directly with the reality melting aspect of the daemon.  Still, he would have time to help the injured later.  The reinforcements were already surrounding the princess, and Micah could see the coach driver lurking in their midst.

“It’s a trap!” He shouted, planks breaking under his feet as he put his entire body attribute into closing the gap between him and Gwen.  “The man who drove my coach is a traitor, if you activate the formation it will kill everyone inside!”

Two of the lesser guards stepped in front of the Princess, their shields up and drawn swords pointed in his direction.  One of them struck, but it was almost a joke.  After years of fighting high leveled monsters, even without the enchantments layering his body Micah could have easily avoided the attack.  As is, the sword slash looked like it was moving in slow motion.

Almost contemptuously, Micah slapped his hand onto the flat of the blade, ripping it out of the defender’s grip even as he cast Air Knife repeatedly, firing the low level bursts of pressure and mana over the guards’ shoulders and toward the carriage driver behind them.

The other soldier tried to raise a shield to stop him, but Micah simply swung his arm, slamming it with a forearm shimmy and knocking the man a step backward and letting him pass.

By now, Princess Gwendolyn’s gaze had turned, following the arc of Micah’s spells toward the driver intruding in their midst.  His attacks had torn the man’s shirt open, revealing the silver glint of mail beneath.  In slow motion, the man drew a dagger coated in a dark liquid, clearly a poison of some sort, and lunged at her back, seeking to beat Micah’s advance.

Calculations blazed through Micah’s head, none of them good.  The shield bash had slowed him too much, he would arrive an eyeblink behind the traitor’s stab.

He clenched a fist, forcing his mana into the spellform of Root Spear faster than he had ever cast the spell before.

The floor beneath the Princess’ throne seemed to explode as the stage morphed into a half dozen spikes, angled upward but still rooted in the rest of the structure that impaled the charging man like a pike square stopping overeager calvary.

Micah dove past Gwen, her eyes widening as he balled his hand into a fist and punched the coach driver with all of his strength.

It wasn’t a spear, but an ordinary human wasn’t meant to survive a blow from something with more than 50 body.  His face exploded like a cantaloupe dropped from a tower, disappearing into a spray of gore that spattered the tapestry draped walls standing behind the throne.

He wheeled around, trying to shake the blood off of his right hand as he took in the battle with the luoca.  On her own, the woman was outclassed.  She had managed to cut through the daemon’s chitin one more time, but she was currently being pushed back by a flurry of leg stabs and wing slashes.  The male guard was returning to the fight, but he was walking with a visible limp and likely wouldn’t be enough to turn the tide of the battle on his own.

“Hold it still!” Micah shouted, preparing himself to cast Vacuum.  “If you can keep it from moving, I have a spell that can cripple it.”

To his side the princess took one look at the wrecked body of the coach driver before adding her voice in support of his.

“Kyle, Luci, listen to the man.  Seal its movements.”

Micah nodded gratefully, his mouth occupied with the complex and alien words to the spell.  Power swelled inside of him as the two bodyguards threw themselves at the luoca in an unsustainable flurry of attacks that overwhelmed the monster.

For a brief second, the daemon was unable to counter attack, instead forced to flail wildly with its wings as it sought to deflect the perfectly synced strikes from their swords.

Then, the moment was over.  Whatever martial art or surge of adrenaline that was powering the two fighters ran out.  Their movements lost their edge, slowing just enough that the luoca could force them to retreat with a forceful sweep of its tail.

But, it was enough.  Vacuum did an incredible amount of damage, but the spell was incredibly hard to adjust once Micah began casting it.  He might be able to move it a pace back or forth, but the adjustments were slow and inexact, making it an awful spell to use against a nimble enemy that could simply walk out of its area of effect while he was  casting it.

The rear of the daemon exploded as the spell destroyed everything in a one pace radius.  It screeched wildly, collapsing to the stage floor where its aura immediately began to erode and melt the wood.  The two blessed shared a glance, and a moment later they both struck together, unfurling like coiled snakes to sink the tips of their blades in each of the daemon’s human eyes.

It shuddered once and went still.  Micah let out a breath and its corpse began to disintegrate, fading into a wisp of familiar mist that was rapidly blown away by the morning wind.

“Form a cordon.”  Princess Gwendolyn’s voice was filled with steel as she looked over the wreckage.  On the street below, her soldiers were beating back the onkerts, and a detachment of the provincial guard was approaching, scimitars and bucklers at the ready as they prepared to assist.  “There might be other assassins out there.  I don’t want anyone but Guildmaster Silver, Kyle and Luci getting close.”

“But your highness,” one of the nearby soldiers began, her eyes flickering to Micah’s torn shirt and bloodspattered hand.  “How do we know that he’s saf-”

“Now,” the princess growled.  “To your posts.”

After that, there was no objection.  The rank and file guards formed a ring around the throne, stepping aside to let the two warriors that had helped Micah with the luoca pass.  Both of them nodded respectfully to him before taking up positions on either side of Gwen, and it was only when they were a couple paces away that Micah realized that they were siblings.  Likely fraternal twins.

“How did you know my family’s pass phrase?” Gwendolyn asked, crossing her arms as she stared accusingly at Micah.  “Outside of our most loyal retainers, no one is supposed to know the monthly password.  Did my Mother send you?  Maybe one of my uncles?  Or was it a sibling?”

“Nothing like that,” Micah replied, waving his arms in what he hoped was a disarming way.  It didn’t help that he was still covered in the coach man’s blood.  “I’m a time mage with the ability to reverse a short period of time.  Originally, you died in the assaination attempt, but before you died I asked you for something I could use to identify myself.  You told me the phrase yourself.”

She glared at him.  The seconds began to stretch out, and Micah could only smile weakly at the woman.  Finally, she sighed.

“I’m not sure I can believe you,” the princess said unhappily, “but we can’t stay here.  I”ve already been attacked by daemon summoners once.  I’d be beyond foolish to stay in the open and make a target of myself.”