BT - Book 1 - Chapter 81

The air whistled past Micah as he descended into the woods just outside of town.  His feet touched down, twigs crackling under his boots as they sunk into the undergrowth.

He shifted Jo slightly, removing her from his shoulder and moving her to the ground next to a tall oak tree.  She stirred slightly in his grasp.

“Hey there stranger,” Micah jumped slightly as she stood up, brushing the dirt off of herself and rearranging her wind tousled hair.  “Usually when I go on a date and wake up with my hair and clothes this rumpled next to a guy, Sarah just calls me a slut.  Seriously though Micah.  What the hell was that?  One second there was some pale vampire looking lady walking toward me and then I’m waking up in the forest.”

“Baron Hurden had someone high level on hand,” Micah sighed, running a hand through his hair.  “I have no idea who they were, but they were using very high level water and wood magic.  I had to call in our backup in order to buy us enough time to escape.”

“I can’t believe I missed it,” she frowned slightly, touching her stomach.  “Actually you bruised me up pretty badly bringing me here.  I only really remember the last couple minutes of you flying me, but my muscles recall a lot more than that and they are cranky as hell.”

“Would you mind?” Jo asked, motioning at her stomach.

“Oh right!” Micah blushed slightly, a bit startled by her request before he cast mending, pressing his hand against her bruised stomach.  Warmth passed from him and into Jo as the spell did its work.

A couple of seconds passed in awkward silence.  Micah stood next to Jo, her slight frame slightly taller than him in the still night air.

She shifted slightly.  He was acutely aware of her breath as it brushed aside his hair and passed over his face.  He tried to calm himself as his heart hammered uncomfortably in his chest.

Gods, his mind jumped frantically from one thought to another.  She smelled like peppermint.  He wasn’t sure how but-

“So, when you say high level,” Jo brought his rambling thoughts to a sudden halt.  “What do you mean?  You’ve always been cagey about how strong you were, but if we had to call the backup and run, I’d guess that she was a bit beyond you?”

Micah frowned, stepping away from Jo in order to get a breath of air away from her distracting presence.

“I could probably have taken her with the backup,” he sighed, “but I think she had had three specializations.  I’d put her at level sixty to seventy.  That’s a bit beyond what I feel comfortable fighting on my own.”

“Above sixty?” Jo sputtered.  “Forget fighting, how the fuck did we get out of there?  I wouldn’t even last a second against someone like that.”

“To be fair Jo,” a slight smile bloomed on Micah’s face, “you didn’t.  She hit you with a spell before you could get a strike in and then it was lights out.”

“Maybe I’m just a cheap date,” she stuck her tongue out at him.

“Anyway,” Jo waved a hand half-heartedly.  “Did you get the spell?  Please tell me that we walked away from that entire mess with something to show for it.”

“I got the spells,” Micah nodded.  “As long as the Luoca can kill that woman, the entire night was well worth it.  Even if Baron Hurden knows that somebody broke into his estate, all that will do is put him on edge.  He doesn’t have anything to connect the break in with us.”

“Kill?” Jo raised an eyebrow.  “What the hell did you have as backup that could feasibly kill a level sixty spellcaster and why the fuck don’t I know anything about it.”

“Well,” Micah scratched the back of his neck sheepishly, “it’s a daemon.  Roughly the equivalent of a level sixty blessed.  I cast haste on it before we escaped which hopefully should be enough to empower it enough to kill her, but a lot will depend upon her specific level and abilities.”

“Daemon,” Jo crossed her arms in front of her.  “As in the things that the Church of Luxos refers to as abominations and rebels against the natural order of Karell?”

“Yeah,” he winced.  “It’s bound and under my control so long as I’m alive, but there might be some reasons behind those prohibitions.  I think they’re overly cautious, but it's not like the Church is beating down my door to ask my opinion.”

“Gods that’s cool,” Jo sighed, shaking her head.  “Why in the hells didn’t you tell me about this earlier?  Our team has a freaking daemon capable of taking on level sixty blessed and-”

“Wait,” she frowned.  “Why in the name of the Sixteen are we messing around in level twenty dungeons if you have something that powerful on hand?  Shouldn’t we be challenging the Cavern of Rust or something?”

“The Cavern of Rust is the eventual plan,” Micah replied, shifting a little.  Maybe it was fallout from his time at the Royal Academy, but revealing his plans always made him uneasy.  It just made him feel exposed, like at any moment someone would take advantage of his trust and throw Micah into another situation where he’d be forced to use Blessed Return again.

The thought of using Blessed Return sent his pulse skittering.  Maybe when he was older and higher level it wouldn’t carry so much of a sting, but he wasn’t sure he could handle being thirteen again.  Leveling up form level one and dealing with puberty and parents that were barely older than him mentally, all while hiding his true abilities.  The thought of it amplified the growing panic swelling in his stomach.

Micah closed his eyes and exhaled.  His plan was for Jo to be a part of his life.  To move away from the constant secrets and feigning mystery.  If he was going to open up to her, this was as good a time as any.

“Frankly?” Micah smiled nervously.  “I didn’t let you see the Luoca because I don’t trust Sarah.  She’s protective of you, but she’s kind of an asshole to everyone else.  I wanted to be sure that she wouldn’t sell us out to the Church of Luxos as soon as she found out what Trevor Drekt and I were doing.”

“Okay,” Jo nodded, flashing him a half grin.  “I will admit that’s a fair concern.  Don’t worry.  I won’t tell her that you’re some kind of budding daemonlord or something.”

“She’ll find out eventually,” Micah sighed.  “The only way we’re going to make it to the Khan is using the Luoca.  I just wanted to give the two of you some chance to level up and trust the rest of the party before we started getting into the thick of it.  Right now, both of you are liable to die to some of the monster’s auras, let alone an actual attack if we were to go into the Cavern of Rust.”

“Say Micah,” Jo looked up into the night sky, trying to make out the moon through the trees.  “That entire time travel thing of yours.  Is that actually real?  I kinda just assumed that you found a whole bunch of magical artifacts left over by some old master and that you were making up multiple lives to cover it up.”

“What?” Micah squawked, unable to keep a startled look from his face.  “Of course it's real!  I knew that your mom was an elf?  How else could I have known that?”

“Well,” Jo shrugged sheepishly.  “You have so many weird abilities and know ritual magic.  For all I know you used a ritual to spy and Sarah and my secrets.  Probably watched us bathing too.”

Micah stopped, mouth stuck halfway open.

“Huh,” he mused.  “I never even thought of that.  I probably could have done that with a ritual.”

“Hey now,” Jo laughed, her voice a clear chime of bells in the otherwise silent night as she slapped his shoulder.  “You have to wait a couple of years to watch me get out of the bath.  Well that and buy me dinner first.”

He blushed as his mind immediately filled with images of her from his last life in various states of undress.

Before he was forced to respond to her provocations, the heavy buzz of daemon wings filled the night.  Micah took a step back, squinting his eyes into the sky as he tried to make out the incoming Luoca.

“Is that it?!” Jo shouted, her eyes widening as its dark, bulky shape lowered itself between the trees.  “Holy sh…”

Her voice trailed off as the Luoca settled to the forest floor.  It was covered in wounds, each of them leaking boiling black blood.  The viscous liquid hissed and started small brushfires in the undergrowth as it dribbled down the daemon’s side.

Micah’s mouth narrowed into a line.  The Luoca was missing one leg entirely, wobbling and slightly off balance on its left side.  Half of its human face was bloody and swollen, one of the creature’s eyes closed entirely by some unknown blow.

Perhaps the most worrying was the creature’s wings.  One of them was riddled with holes, likely from the caster’s ice spells, and Micah had seen the monster struggle to land with any sort of accuracy or deftness as it lowered itself below the trees.  The other rested at an uncomfortable angle, as the creature hissed at him in pain, either sprained or broken.

Quickly, he cast Regeneration and then Heal.  It was a shame he had to use the extra mana to cast spells on the daemon, but without the link there was no way he was going to touch the monster in order to cast the much more efficient Augmented Mending.  He preferred his limbs unmelted by the corrosive forces of Elsewhere very much, thank you.

As the wounds closed on the Luoca, he found himself frowning.  The creature’s wings, tail and remaining legs were covered in bright red human blood.  As bad of shape as his summoned monster was in, it had clearly done some serious damage in the Baron’s estate.

Still, the fact that it was forced back was troublesome.  That meant that either the Baron had been able to field a handful of level forty elites on short notice to support the spellcaster, or that she had been able to handle the daemon on her own.  Either option was troublesome.

Worse, the Luoca was under orders to return for two reasons.  The first was that it had eliminated everyone in the immediate area after Micah called it.  Silently he prayed to Mursa that  was the case.

The other scenario was that the enemies arrayed against it were strong enough to threaten the Luoca.  Then, the daemon was ordered to fight its way free.  The bloodthirsty monster had tried to resist the command, even when he was just inscribing it in the whistle.  He knew that there was no way that it would voluntarily give up the hunt.

Unfortunately, Micah didn’t have any way of figuring out which scenario had happened.  Given the injuries to the Luoca and the blood on its limbs, feasibly either could be true.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair.  Hopefully the Luoca managed to finish the caster off.  She was a bit too canny for his taste, and although he didn’t think she had anything definite on him beyond Jo mentioning a common first name, he didn’t want to risk it.

“Wow,” Jo mumbled.

He glanced at her as she approached the daemon, taking a half step forward.

“It’s like,” she pursed her lips momentarily, searching for a word, “there’s some sort of energy coming off of it.  It feels twisted.  Wrong.”

“Yeah,” Micah began, “daemons run on energy from another plane, it doesn’t play nice with Karell and I wouldn’t suggest-”

“Shit!” He shouted, lunging toward Jo and slapping her hand to the side before she could put it on the monster’s heaving flank.

She glanced at him, confusion in her eyes.  Micah blushed, very aware of her wrist in his as he turned to look at the Luoca to avoid her gaze.

“Anything it touches tends to melt,” he mumbled, frowning slightly as he squinted at the daemon’s haunch.  “I wouldn’t…”

He trailed off, taking a step closer to the creature and looking closer at its side.  No one spoke as Micah’s mouth moved wordlessly, subvocalizing strange syllables.

Finally, he reached into his pouch and began drawing a circle of salt around the Luoca.

“We need to be ready to move Jo,” he spoke grimly even as he pulled out the Ageless Folio, flipping to the page recording the day's astrological conditions and dewpoint.  “Whoever that caster was, she managed to put a tracking rune on the Luoca.  I don’t know if she’s on her way right now or just trying to track us back to our base, but I need to get this ritual unraveled and then we need to move fast.”