As we prepared to head inside, I suggested to Nadya that she remain behind, hidden behind the tree line. If we messed this up, I didn’t want her or the town to get punished.
She quashed that idea. “No. I must go. I must see that Nazhena and her ilk are punished for their crimes. I must see this with my own eyes.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But stay back with me. Let the men take the front line.” I don’t care what century it is. Male or female, the spellcaster goes in the middle of the party where they don’t have little things like bodily harm interrupting them while they’re channeling the power to shape reality to their whims.
And Nadya had trouble fighting a giant bug. There was no way in hell I was letting her go to the front lines where she’d be a target for the kinds of things that usually tried to eat Burin.
“Okay,” she said. “If you’re sure that’s best.”
“Of course. You’ll be there to keep things off of me while I’m casting if they get past the boys.”
Burin was talking to Hatch about the tower. “How are the guards going to get us?” he asked the fey.
“They’re on top of the tower,” the little beard-man replied.
“But how will they get us from the top of the tower?” Had Golarion not learned about gravity yet, or was it just Burin?
“Because they’re on the wall.”
“Wait. You just said they were on the tower.”
“The wall is part of the tower!” the exasperated domovoi said before patting Burin’s cheek as though that settled it. Burin looked unconvinced, but he returned the pat by poking the fey in the belly, causing it to let out a sound somewhere between a surprised squeal and a giggle.
Terry decided to try to learn more about the guards themselves. “What can you tell us about the guards?” she asked.
“They’re guards,” Hatch said.
“Right, but what do they look like?”
“Guards,” the fey replied.
“Okay, but are they bigger or smaller than Gregor?” She was starting to get annoyed. Well, more annoyed. She was always annoyed.
“Yes.”
“But do they have –“ she stopped as I interrupted her. I couldn’t take it any longer. As entertaining as this conversation might have been otherwise, I was still pretty sick and having none of it.
“Hatch,” I said. “Are the guards humans?”
The fey considered for a moment. “Yes.”
Her question answered, Terry continued on another track.
“How do we get about inside?”
“I’d imagine by using your feet. Don’t yours work?” I don’t think the fey was messing with her. He seemed completely serious.
She sighed. “No. That’s not what I mean. Are there stairs? Or do we use another method?”
“Oh! There are teleporters. Use those.”
“Is there a specific way to use them?”
“You need passwords.”
“Do you know the passwords?”
“Many of them, but not all.”
“What are the passwords?”
He rambled for over a minute, despite efforts to get him to stop. When he finally finished, Terry looked like she was ready to strangle him. I restrained her. “Burin’s already on the move. We can just have Hatch tell us each particular password when we reach a teleporter.”
She stayed her hand and we followed Burin and Gregor’s lead through the open fields around the tower. From where we were, we couldn’t see any guards, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there, watching us as we approached. Still, we were too far away to fear attack unless one of them had somehow gotten ahold of some Earth or Numerian tech. I think.
From within the field sprung up a pair of pumpkin-headed plant creatures that I think were the same as monsters I’d seen listed in the Adventurer Wiki as ‘Jack o’ Lanterns’. They’re terrible things that sometimes spawn on the site of the death of a terrible evil witch or fey and propagate their kind by devouring the freshly slain corpses of the innocent, which they then vomit into the ground as fertilizer for their seeds.
I’ve always liked toasted pumpkin seeds, but I was putting my foot down if someone suggested we eat one of these things.
One charged the boys on the front line, while the other came in from the right and struck at Nadya. The one in the front breathed fire at us. Once more, my clothes protected me, but Nadya took a full hit. Then we managed to bring one down, and it exploded, once more hitting poor Nadya.
Almost simultaneously, the second exploded with a horrifying laugh. This one only exploded on Gregor and Burin, so they’d be fine. Burin would probably just be glad it didn’t try to eat him. But I was worried about Nadya, since I hadn’t seen what she could take yet.
Luckily, she was okay. I healed up the wounded – we were going through wand charges at a ridiculous rate – and we continued on towards the tower.
As we approached, a voice called down to us from the wall around the tower. “Oi! Who goes there?!” Okay, real talk. Why was his accent British? Everyone else around here, including Gregor and Nadya, had Russian sounding accents. Except that guy from the inn, the Toad or whatever. Had this guy come here with him?
Also, I realized at that moment that we hadn’t come up with a plan beyond ‘go to tower, kill witch, stop ritual’, much to my horror. We were stuck winging it, with Burin in the party. BURIN, who was quite possibly the king of ruining on-the-fly plans.
Terry came up with something. “We’re here to pledge our allegiance to the queen!”
“Oi! Bill, have you heard anything about guests?”
Another guard appeared on the wall. “I can’t rightly say I ‘ave, Steve. Care to produce your invitations, wee stroppet?”
“What’s a stroppet?” Terry whispered.
“I have no idea,” I whispered back. “Maybe he combined ‘strumpet’ with ‘poppet’?”
“Look. We don’t have any invitations. But you don’t want to turn away someone as important as the people who killed the Black Rider, do you?”
“Oi!” Steve – or was it Bill? – said. “Now that would be an ‘ell of a thing. ‘ave any proof?”
Terry pulled out the lock of hair and the plague doctor’s mask we’d gotten from the rider. “This is my proof! We took these off of his corpse!”
“Oi!” Bill said. “What are those supposed to be? Some hair and mask? I must say that I’m not impressed. How about you, Steve?”
“Me granddad had two of those mask things. Used to wear ‘em on his knees for special nights with me grandmum, gods rest her soul. Unless you have another one and care to loan me use of the tart there next to you, I can’t say I’m impressed either.”
“Well, you heard Steve. So move along with you,” Bill said as he threw a snowball, smacking Terry right in the face.
I was dressed in the style of someone from the capital, maybe I could manage something. “If you knew who I was, you wouldn’t speak about me in such a manner! I demand that you open this gate immediately, prostrate yourself before me and beg for leniency! Or, so help me, there will be hell to pay when I return to Whitethrone and tell my mother of your insolence!” I may have screeched a bit. I hoped it would work. I knew enough of how rich kids tend to respond to problems that I think it was a believable performance.
“Listen to the little bird chirp, Bill. Listen, love. The rules are clear. No invitation, no entry. If your high and mighty mum doesn’t like it, she can take it up with Lady Nazhena.
I walked back over to Nadya. “Perhaps we should have brought the dogsleds and pretended to be making a delivery?” I whispered.
“Too late now,” she replied. “What is girl doing?”
I turned and, to my horror, spotted Terry wedging a grenade into the icicles that served as the tower’s gate.
“Oi! What are you doing, dove?” one of the guards called down.
“Knocking politely!” Terry called out as she lit the grenade and dove away.
The grenade exploded. I saw one of the guards slip and fall on his ass. Shards of ice landed in the snow before us. “Oi! What was that?!”
Four guards appeared in the gateway, shields in hand but not looking alarmed. “Oi! Bill, you alright up there?”
“I’m fine!” Bill said. “They don’t have invitations, though.”
“No invitations? Move along before we make you pay for the gate,” the leader of the guards on the ground said to us.
They still weren’t taking us seriously?! Even after Terry had blown up the door?
Gregor also seemed annoyed. He charged at the nearest guard, but slipped on the ice and whiffed his attack. This drew another round of laughter from the guards. What the hell would it take for them to take us seriously? I was getting really angry about that. They WOULD take us seriously, or they would DIE.
I may have been in a bad mood from being sick.
I walked over and cast a spell, unleashing a full gout of flame right into the mass of guards. The two in front died instantly and the two behind them looked to be on death’s door.
“HOLY SHIT!” one of the barely standing guards said.
“ALARM!” I heard one of the guards on the wall shout. They disappeared from the parapet, shouting out their distress as they ran.
Terry shot one of the remaining, and Burin cut down the other. That was more like it. I kicked one of the corpses. That’d teach them to not take us – me, really – seriously.
“Shall we go inside?” Gregor said.
“Think you can hit something this time?” Terry asked sarcastically.
Yeah, that wasn’t what we needed at the moment. We needed to save it for our enemies. “Less talky, more looty,” I said to the girl, pointing at the coin pouch on one of the guard’s belts. Eloquent, I know.
She looked like she was going to say something, but then thought better of it and began rummaging through their stuff. Meanwhile, Burin, Gregor and Nadya made their way in. I stayed with Terry to help loot.
A few moments later, I heard the sounds of combat in the courtyard. “This is thing you do when you see troll? Charge and attack it?!” Nadya shouted, exasperation in her voice.
Terry turned to me. “We can’t leave them alone for a second, can we?”
“Nope,” I said, giggling in spite of myself.
We made our way into the courtyard. The first thing I saw was a massive ice sculpture depicting a dragon. I think it was a white dragon, but it was translucent ice, so it’s not like I could be certain. Definitely a dragon though.
The second thing I saw was Gregor and Burin engaging with an ice troll. I unleashed two beams of fire immediately, striking the troll dead on. Nadya tried firing her bow, but was just shy of hitting. It looked like she was being overly careful about hitting Burin or Gregor.
Terry had no qualms about risking hitting anyone, and hit the troll dead on. A few more hits from the party and the troll went down. Its regeneration was still suppressed by my fire magic, so it stayed down.
“I am thinking I may need help,” Gregor said. Blood was spurting from a bleeding wound on his shoulder, right by his neck. I grabbed the wand and healed him before the blood loss became an issue.
While we checked a side room off the courtyard – it turned out to be an empty kennel – Terry walked around the courtyard and picked flowers. She then sat down with Hatch and ate some more cake.
Burin and Gregor turned their attention to the inner gate, another curtain of icicles. After a moment, once they were sure there wasn’t a hidden mechanism, they began bashing their way through the door. They narrowly avoided getting hit by falling icicles while doing so, but in the end, we had our way inside.
The room was steamy and much warmer than outside. In the center was a cauldron that seemed to be softly bubbling. Some of the water was flowing up into the ceiling. I suspected that we were looking at a magical heating and perhaps running water system for the tower.
Burin dipped a cup in the cauldron and took a sniff. “Smells okay,” he said, then took a drink. “It’s warm, but not too warm.”
That sounded perfect. I could use a drink. I pulled out a jar of loose tea from my bag, then dumped it in. Apparently that pissed off the water elemental within, as it rose from the cauldron and glared at me. I think.
Burin began speaking to it in Aquan, the language of the Plane of Water. I couldn’t tell what he was saying, but I could get the gist of the conversation. The elemental was angry and Burin was being Burin, so we were about to have a fight on our hands. I stepped back, getting myself out of the elemental’s easy reach.
“What’s going on?” Gregor asked me. I started to answer, but suddenly he shouted, “WHY DO YOU ALWAYS GO OFF BY YOURSELF?!”
I followed his gaze and spotted Terry standing on the side of the room with Hatch on her shoulder. She and the domovoi were completely encased in ice. Then they disappeared.
The elemental attacked. I quickly cast a spell and enlarged Burin.
“Does anyone remember what the password was for the first teleporter?” I asked. Nobody answered. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
We fought the elemental for maybe half a minute before I heard the pop of air that signified a teleportation. With the elemental pretty much down, I looked over and saw Terry and Hatch on the opposite side of the room from where they had left.
“GOAT!” the girl screamed. She sobbed and tried to speak, but it came out as incoherent blubbering.
And then Nadya warned us that someone was looking into the room from the opposite side of the cauldron. I hit Burin with the wand to begin healing his wounds and the giant dwarf plodded over to the door.
“Hello,” he called out. “We think we killed your elemental in here. Sorry, but he was kinda a real jerk.”
From my right, I spotted several guards coming from another room. Gregor spotted them as well and charged. The nearest guard went down in a single punch, his body going flying from the force of the blow.
Once more, I heard the telltale thwip of an incoming teleportation, this time from behind the guards Gregor was fighting. Then I heard a familiar voice as the forlarren Mierul began singing. I could tell she was using bardic magic to inspire her allies.
We couldn’t have that. I was the magical one here. I stepped to the side and got a clear line of sight on her, then unleashed a double beam of scorching fire. Both struck her and she collapsed. From behind me, I heard the telltale sound of alchemist’s fire.
“I’ll help the girl,” Nadya said. She rushed off to assist Terry. I’d have to hope that they could handle it, because one of the guards stabbed me.
It wasn’t a clean blow or even very deep, but it hurt. I retaliated with another cone of flame, scorching several guards. One of the injured guards, reeling from his injuries, drew a health potion. “We have to help Mierul!” he shouted.
“You can’t die, Mierul! We all love you!” another guard wailed, grabbing the potion from his comrade and disappearing from my sight behind the crowd of guards.
“Help her up!” the guard in front of me shouted. “Then help us hold the line so she can escape!”
What the hell? Had I ended up in Japan? Was she an idol singer and were they her fanboys? Idiots. They should all be running. I would have let them escape. There was no grudge there. I would have been just as happy to sneak past them and take out the one really in charge, the one responsible for the plot. No need to hurt anyone.
Well, no one except the jerk that stabbed me. But he was already down.
Mierul escaped out a side door into the courtyard, and we were stuck fighting guards. Though, again, I really didn’t have anything against her. So no real reason to pursue. We’d have finished our work here long before she could go get help and return.
Gregor continued delivering blow after blow, sending guards flying with each hit like something out of one of Daddy’s silly martial arts movies. The ones where all the stunts were done with wires. The bodies had begun piling up in a far corner.
In the end, we were victorious, though Burin was in need of some serious healing. Gregor needed a little, as did Nadya and I. Terry was almost entirely unscathed, aside from a single bleeding pinprick just above her right eye.
“Why do you always go alone?” Gregor asked her.
“It wasn’t intentional,” the girl complained. “I was just inspecting the teleporter when I asked Hatch what the pass phrase was. He told me, then next thing I knew, I was covered in ice. Then I was suddenly in a room with a big table, where the goat lady was standing, singing. A couple fairies were juggling along. Then she had a fire sword. I panicked, threw a grenade and told Hatch to say the phrase to get us down.”
“How did you get this?” I asked as I magically cleaned the blood from her wound.
“Before I teleported back, one of the fairies managed to stab into the ice with one of those needle swords of theirs. I think it went through just enough to get me.”
“Well, at least you’re all right, little girl,” Burin said. “Shall we check those side rooms and then head up ourselves?”
“How did things go with the elemental?” Terry asked the dwarf.
“He refused to florgle my schlrrp.”
“What?”
“Oh, sorry. I accidently spoke Aquan there. He refused to accept my apology.”
We went up in waves, two by two. As I arrived, I saw Burin wandering off, with Gregor right behind him. I quickly followed. He opened the door before him and greeted the person inside. I rounded the corner and realized he was talking to a spriggan in what appeared to be a kitchen set up in an icy outcropping from the tower.
“Who are you?” the gnome-like creature asked.
“My name’s Burin, and we’re here to kill witches. Oh, wait. Um…”
The spriggan drew a halberd from the cookpot he was standing in front of – I made a note not to eat the soup – and then grew as large as Burin usually does. Nadya and Terry came up behind us just in time for the spriggan to hit Gregor with a spell that sent him fleeing through the dining hall.
We attacked the spriggan for a moment before it decided it was time to flee. It did so by casting another spell, this time causing the floor below it to crack and open. He disappeared before us and we could feel the room we were in begin to shudder and quake.
“Everyone run!” Burin shouted.
We made haste back into the dining hall, escaping just in time to watch the entire kitchen break off and fall away from the tower. From inside a nearby room, a woman emerged, greatsword in hand. “What’s with all the noise?”
“We’re not here to kill witches!” Burin declared emphatically. He then turned and gave me a thumbs-up. I would have face palmed right there, but it was still possible the woman was just as dumb as the dwarf.
“Two of our members are afflicted with a magical ailment,” Terry said. “We have come seeking the help of the witches to cure it.”
The woman regarded us for a moment. “You must be the intruders Bill and Steve ran through here to warn everyone about.”
Nadya threw her axe at the woman, missing. I still think she was trying too hard to avoid hitting allies. I mean, I did the same thing, but I was shooting coherent beams of flame, not throwing puny axes. So I’m totally not a hypocrite here.
Gregor rejoined us. “What is going on?”
“We’re fighting, apparently,” I said.
“What’s your name?” Burin asked the woman.
“Before we kill you,” Terry added.
“Hestrig Orlov,” the woman replied as she slashed at Burin with her sword.
“Well, I’m Burin Frostfist,” the dwarf replied, returning the blow.
What the hell was this dialogue? We were trying to kill each other, but it was like they were old friends going out for tea. Had we become inured to the dangers of battle?
With so many versus one, it wasn’t long before Hestrig fell. And that’s when things got weird. Weirder. Or was it ‘More weird’? I dunno, whatever. Inky black tendrils seeped from the corpse of the woman’s body, mostly from her eyes and mouth. So describe that how you will.
Burin saw the roiling mass and immediately cried out in dread. He turned to run away, but he wasn’t fast enough.
The shadows slammed into him, cramming their way in through the same orifices that they’d come out of. He screamed in agony and collapsed.
We helped him up, but Terry kept her distance. She looked ready to raise her gun and shoot at a moment’s notice. “Are you alright?” Gregor asked him.
“I think I’ll be okay,” the dwarf replied.
“What was that?” Terry asked.
“Does it have something to do with that monster you were fighting in your dreams?” I asked.
“You can see my dreams?” the dwarf asked, surprised.
“Not on purpose,” I said. “And not always. Only sometimes. I’m not sure what causes it.”
“I see. Well, yes, that was the demon that’s trapped inside me. You see, many years ago, thousands of years, I think, there was a dwarf named Burin who fought a white dragon. He and his adventuring party battled the creature on a mountaintop. It was so cold that Burin had to use magic to freeze his axe to his hand so he wouldn’t drop it, which is why the family name is now ‘Frostfist’.
“When they slew the dragon, they learned to their horror that he was being possessed by a powerful demon. And somehow, the magic the wizard used on him split the demon into several pieces. The largest of these sought refuge from annihilation within Burin, whose eyes became bright blue and hair became white.
“Every generation in my family, a child is born with white hair and blue eyes. Their parents name them Burin, and they are fated to contain the shard of the demon that curses the family. For if it ever escaped, the results could be catastrophic.”
“Wait,” Terry said. “They’re all named Burin? What if the child is a girl?” Way to cut straight to the heart of the matter there, kiddo.
“Then she’s named Burin.”
“Those poor little girls,” Terry said with a sorrowful look. “Hey, can it ever escape you?”
“Our family inscribes Burins with wards to contain the demon, so it can’t exactly escape. But it can sometimes get free enough to speak if I lose the nightly battle.” He considered it for a moment. “Though I think I just picked up another of its pieces, so it could be stronger now. I think I need to work to become stronger so I can better contain him.”
Gregor clapped him on the shoulder jovially. “Why contain him when you can defeat him?”
“I’m open to suggestions on how to do it.”
“Is this witchcraft?” Terry asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve heard of spells to bind demons into people, but it’s complex and powerful magic. No idea if a witch had done it. My guess would be that the dragon invited the demon in so it could increase its power.”
“And it ended up being controlled instead,” she finished my thought.
“Sounds like it.”
“And now this thing’s in Burin. Who I can’t get away from. Great.” I couldn’t fault her for her concern. It was a bit worrisome. But the dwarf could handle it. I think.
In the room Hestrig had come from, we found a library. On the table, there were a number of books about the white dragon represented in the ice sculpture down below. Apparently it was called Auburphex, and Nazhena’s mother had killed it after it had opposed them for some reason.
From Hestrig’s notes, the dragon may have been her ancestor. It was a pity that we had been unable to have a conversation. She might have been an interesting ally. Instead, she was just another foe ground beneath our heels.
The witches were our enemies, but there had to be a lot of people who were just doing their jobs. I hated that we were going to have to kill those along with the people doing evil. But they were in the way of our cause, and we were trying to save the entire world, so it would have to be. Hopefully we’d be able to spare some of those enemies who were nothing but cogs in the machine of evil.
I think about that a lot.
On the other side of the library was a hallway. Burin headed down and began knocking on a locked door. He said something I didn’t quite hear. No idea what he said, so I’m going to say that he said, “Housekeeping!”
“W-Who’s there?” a familiar voice I couldn’t quite place called back.
I got an idea. “Tell her that you’re Hatch’s replacement,” I whispered.
“Tell her that my ass is complacent?” Burin shouted back. I was three feet from him. Shouting was unnecessary. This time I did facepalm.
“I- are you the intruders I heard about? Because if you’re not with the witches, maybe you can help me?”
“We’re not here to kill witches,” Burin said. “In fact, we’re here to help them. Right, Miss Lyriana?” He gave me another thumbs-up.
“What.” He had to be messing with me. Surely no one could be this stupid and still able to cast spells. But he looked completely sincere.
“I’m opening the door. Please don’t hurt me.” The door unlocked with a click and we saw a familiar face standing before us.
“Wait, how are you here?” Terry asked Lady Argentea.
“I was brought here by the fey when they attacked my caravan.”
“But we were sent by Yuln to rescue you. We found you in the lodge with the bandits.”
“That’s impossible. I’ve been here ever since then. The other must be an imposter.”
“Well, let us finish here and we’ll take you to safety,” Terry said, taking the woman’s hand.
“Ow!” the woman said, pulling back her hand.
“Oh, sorry. I have long nails.” Was she still suspicious? Had she tried something?
“Okay. Well, I’ll wait here for you. Don’t take too long.”
We passed by some more ice sculptures depicting some mephits and looted some rooms on our way. We then found ourselves in a room filled with plants. Based on what was growing, it looked more like a reagent room than a food production farm.
Burin walked over to one particularly strange looking plant and pulled it out. The mandragora let out a piercing shriek. We proceeded to beat it to death violently. I think everyone else was getting as tired and grumpy as I felt, even though I was the only sick one.
Terry peeled the mandragora, having learned bad habits from Gregor.
We then took a teleporter up to the aerie. “You must be the outsiders my birds told me about,” the sylph – an aasimar-like being with elemental or djinni ancestry – woman waiting up there said to us.
“Do we really have to fight?” Burin asked.
“Yes.”
He sighed. “You can run away if you want. We won’t stop you.”
She cast a fly spell – immediately stoking my jealousy. Gregor charged forward and grabbed on to her. Terry shot her. Burin grabbed on to Gregor so she couldn’t fly off with him. And then we beat her into unconsciousness.
“There are birds coming!” Nadya shouted, pointing out a hold in the wall.
“Grab her and let’s get out of here!” I said. Terry was already at the teleporter, ready to leave.
We managed to teleport away just before the birds reached us. Burin set the unconscious sylph down. “What now?”
“Finish her off and take her stuff?” Terry asked.
I could see Burin frown at that suggestion. “Let’s tape her up and take only what might be useful,” I suggested as a compromise. They both nodded, though Terry did try to steal the woman’s valuable necklace. Burin stopped her.
On the woman was a magic key that opened the last teleporter. We used it to head up to the top of the tower, which Hatch identified as Nazhena’s personal chambers, where we hoped to join in epic combat with the witch who ruled this section of the land.
We appeared within a room with a domed ceiling perhaps thirty feet above us. Floating in the center of the room was the image of a globe. I recognized the landmasses – most people don’t know this, but the Rangers have a hidden satellite in orbit keeping an eye on the world in general, so I’ve seen images of the continents – but I wasn’t entirely sure what the lines crisscrossing the globe were. Perhaps ley lines?
The rest of the room was a bit of a mess, with alchemical components strewn all about. Standing on the other side of the table was the figure of the tower’s witch, with a quintet of ice elementals between us.
“Nazhena’s a bit more, um, mannish, than I was expecting,” I said to Nadya.
“That filth is Radosek, Nazhena’s apprentice,” she replied, spitting as she said his name.
“Bill and Steve told me that you are the new Black Riders, and that the old one is dead. That means all I need to do is kill you and thus secure Nazhena’s position – and thus my own. I can do this. You will die by my hands!”
He unleashed a flurry of magical snowballs – SNOWBALLS – in our direction. I retaliated with more beams of flame, while Terry shot him twice. His defensive magic was better than his choice in attack spells, because he didn’t immediately die from our volley.
Gregor, Burin and Nadya tore through the elementals in quick order, and began making their way towards Radosek. As they moved, I noticed a goat standing next to him. It appeared to be eating a bench. I don’t know why.
“The goat’s his familiar! Take it out and you’ll cut him off from preparing new spells!” I called out as Radosek took to the air.
Flight was a mistake. No longer was there anything blocking our clear shots at him. Terry and I blasted him again – mostly Terry, I was running on fumes as far as spells– and he collapsed to the ground with a massive thud.
The goat took several seconds to realize it was dead. It just stood there, looking stupid, then suddenly collapsed with a strangled cry. I almost felt bad for it. Almost.
Nadya cut Radosek’s throat and Gregor skinned the goat and harvested its meat. I’m not even sure why that surprised me anymore. But we’d have goat for dinner, and I like goat. Well, in a curry, which I don’t think we had the spices for. Still, it would be okay.
“I’m going to look over these books and diagrams while you guys check the side rooms,” I told the others. They agreed and set out.
They didn’t go that far, and I could hear what they were saying. From the sound of it, the first room they looked into was a bedroom. There was a statue of Nazhena within. Curious, I took a peek. She was very pretty, but there was something about her that prevented her from being attractive.
They had to burst down a door of ice to get into the second chamber. As Burin entered, I heard a booming voice from within. “The uninvited shall wither and die like the frost-covered bloom. You should never have ventured here, and you’d do well to leave before my return.”
“Trouble?” I called over to the others.
“I think I got cursed,” Burin said.
Well, crap. “Nothing fatal?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, keep it down, then. I’m trying to study here.” Over the course of a couple hours, I learned several interesting things. First, those were maps of ley lines. Second, there was a ley line that ran between Heldren and Waldsby, likely the reason for the portal between the two areas.
And most importantly, I learned that the portal here was only the first. A few others had been opened, and many more were planned. If we didn’t stop her, Elvanna would cover the world in snow and ice. It confirmed what we’d learned from the Black Rider, and I was sure that he was right about needing Baba Yaga to stop it.
But I could end this one portal. It would buy some time, maybe. At the very least, it would probably save Heldren. That was enough for me.
Burin and I discussed the ritual required to end the spell. We both gave it a shot, but were unsuccessful at maintaining the concentration required. But there was more than one way to end a spell.
I pulled out a vial of djezet, a rust colored liquid metal found only in abundance in the crashed ship in Numeria. It has numerous applications in spellcasting, though I only know a couple. “Everyone should get moving downstairs, and away from the building,” I said. “Take everything you can carry and help Lady Argentea and the sylph to get out. Prep will take five minutes, but then I don’t know how long it will take before the explosion.”
“Explosion?!” Terry said.
“I’m going to create a magical feedback loop. With the amount of power flowing through this ritual circle, there could be a hell of a backlash. I need you to be waiting for me with the dogsleds so we can flee quickly.
“I will stay with you,” Gregor said. “There may be ambush as we retreat.”
“Fair enough. Burin, get the girls to safety.”
The dwarf nodded. “We’ll be waiting with the dogsleds just outside.”
Five minutes later, I was ready. “Do you see them?” I asked Gregor, who was standing at a window.
“The sleds are on their way here.”
“Good,” I said. “Here goes nothing.” I drew the new lines and immediately heard a hum. “To the teleporter.” We stood there as Gregor activated the key. “Any time now.”
“Is not working.”
“What?”
“I use key, and we go nowhere.” Was the feedback loop interfering with the teleporter’s ongoing magic?
“Shit! We can’t be up here when this goes off. We’ll die!”
“Can you stop it?”
“Maybe if I had an hour, which I don’t.”
He walked over to the window. “Then we go other way.” He kicked the wall with all his might, just below the window. Ice exploded outward, leaving a gaping hole in the wall.
I looked down. “Are you insane? That’s a hundred foot fall!”
He handed me the end of a rope. “Tie around waist. Will lower you most of way. Then you cut rope and I climb down after.” He began securing the rope to a heavy desk.
“That’s still almost fifty feet!”
“Snow is deep around tower. Will cushion fall.”
“This is still insane,” I said, tying the rope around myself.
“Are you having better plan?”
“No. What about the God of Martial Arts? What does he think of your plan?”
He looked off to the side for a moment. “He say plan is crazy. Yet, is still only plan we have.” He walked over to the hole in the wall. “BURIN! We are coming down this way! Do not be in way of fall! Trying to land in deep snow!”
As he began lowering me, I watched Burin below. The dwarf had grown in size, as had the shovel in his hand. And he was busy digging. “What are you doing?!” I called down.
“Making the snow deeper!” he shouted back. I could see it now. He was piling the snow he dug below me, hoping to cushion my fall even more. Score one for crazy dwarven stereotypes!
Realizing my boots would prevent me from falling through the snow, I was careful to go for a landing on my back, so I could sink in and displace as much snow as possible. It still hurt a lot, but I survived. A moment later, Burin was there, helping me to my feet.
Terry began shooting at the wall. “What are you doing?!” I asked.
“Making handholds for Gregor!” she called back.
Gregor fast roped down, using a similar technique to something they’d taught us when I was training with the Mystic Knights back home, then used the handholds to climb a few feet further, before pushing off and landing in the snow.
We hopped on the dogsleds and hauled ass as fast as we could. Even this far away, I could hear the reverberating, pulsating hum. Not just hear it, but feel it! It would only be a matter of moments.
Just as we reached the tree line, the Pale Tower exploded. The explosion was large enough that the entire roof shot up over ten feet into the air. It then fell back into place, but the force of the impact caused cracks to spread through the tower.
They were small at first, but they spread and multiplied until the tower could take it no more, collapsing under its own weight and sending snow flying. The portal was down. Taldor was safe. For now, at least. But there were a lot of portals on that diagram.
We really needed to find Baba Yaga and stop this before Elvanna could finish her plan.
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