Blessed time 2 coda a li.., p.29
Blessed Time 2: Coda: A LitRPG Adventure, page 29
“I might have been a little drunk and started bragging.” Trevor glanced away from Micah, refusing to meet his eyes. “But it was at a dockside bar. Barons don’t hang out at dockside bars.”
“By the Sixteen’s unending mercy,” Micah said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Were you just ignoring everything when Jo and Sarah were talking about how Baron Hurden was hiring every blessed he could find and offering rewards for any information regarding his son’s death? How in the fucking world did it come as a surprise to you that there might be someone in a bar listening in on you? That isn’t a surprise, Trevor. That’s something you should assume.”
“But we talked about business at the Jolly Porker all the time!” Trevor shouted back at him. “And don’t go all creepy-time mumbo jumbo on me about how you’re so much smarter than me or some crap like that. I fucked up and I know it, but it’s not like it was anything too new. Yeah, I ran my mouth off to a couple of guys over drinks, but don’t act like you haven’t done the same.”
“That’s a false equivalence and you know it.” Micah struggled to keep his voice calm. “When we’re at the Jolly Porker, I drink water and keep an eye on our surroundings. If anyone gets close enough to overhear what we’re saying, I stop the conversation.”
“That won’t stop a hearing-based blessing,” Trevor replied, unyielding. “Look, it was a mistake and I’ll admit that. I’m just getting a little sick of you pulling this ‘everything is part of the plan’ routine. Even if there is a plan, we both know that neither Baron Hurden nor his superpowered pet wizard were part of it.”
Micah caught himself before he could say something dumb in the heat of the moment. Trevor was fuming at him, and he wasn’t completely wrong.
“Look…” Micah exhaled, struggling to try and choose his words carefully, “I think we all might have gotten a bit careless. It was easy for me to feel a bit invulnerable hiding out two days walk from Basil’s Cove. The problems were literally far away, so I just pushed them to the back of my mind. It’s hard for you to know what I want if I don’t say it.”
“Thanks.” Trevor relaxed. “I’m sorry, Micah, but we’ll figure it all out.”
“I’ve just been a little worried.” He motioned for his brother to join him on the teleportation formation. “If they could track the teleportation formations to the cave, they might have traced it to our family.”
“Wait.” Trevor froze. “They could know about mom and dad?”
“Yes?” Micah cocked his head slightly. “I thought you knew that’s why I was pushing us to reconnect with Basil’s Cove as soon as possible. It’s not like I could just walk in. If they managed to find the cave, they’re almost certainly watching the gates for me.”
Trevor started pacing. “Shit. I just didn’t think—”
“I know, Trevor,” Micah sighed. “Look, the Basil’s Cove side formation is in my bedroom. They’ve almost certainly seen you going in there. If they had wanted to grab mom and dad right away, they would have. I’m just hoping that they want me to come back so that they can grab me.
“The downside is that this might be an ambush.” He shrugged. “But with any luck, they’ve left Mom and Dad alone in order to draw me in.”
“Gods…” Trevor ran his hand through his hair. “Why didn’t we rush down to Basil’s Cove right away? With your magic, you could fly over the city wall and—”
“And what, Trevor?” Micah winced, as he could hear the exasperation in his own voice. “Flying would trigger an alarm. They might not be able to stop me, but the city guard would know within minutes that someone had circumvented the gate, and in all likelihood that would mean that Baron Hurden would know a couple of minutes after that.”
Micah sighed. “Even if I was able to get to Mom and Dad, how do you expect me to get out? There’s no question in my mind that they’re watching the house, and even if I could fight my way past whoever they have casing the place, there’s no way that Dad, let alone Mom or Esther, are going to be able to survive that.
“Come on, Trevor.” Micah extended his arm toward his brother. “The teleportation beacon for the house still works, and that means it's still standing. If they hurt our family, we’ll hunt them down and kill each and every one of them, but for now I have hope. Beyond that? I don’t know what we’re stepping into.”
Trevor nodded, his right hand gripping the haft of his spear tightly. He stepped across the damp stone floor of the tiny cave.
“Let’s go save our family.” Trevor moved onto the teleportation formation with Micah, grabbing his wrist.
“Be ready for anything,” Micah said grimly, reaching deep into the quartz teleportation beacon with his mind, sensing the hazy trail of white energy that led home.
The darkness of Elsewhere loomed around them. The vague, formless menace coiled and watched them as Trevor and Micah darted down the narrow channel of energy. Moments later, Micah spilled out onto the wooden floor of his childhood bedroom, Trevor beside him, as cold sweat poured down his back.
The two of them scrambled to their feet, spears at the ready.
Nothing happened.
From the kitchen, Micah heard their parents talking over the clink of utensils on pots as his mother made dinner. Trevor glanced at him, drawing a helpless shrug as Micah heard his father begin talking.
The two of them left the bedroom, moving quietly down the hallway until they reached the door leading into the kitchen. Micah just stood there, out of place in his full armor, enchanted spear in hand while his parents chatted quietly.
It was such an ordinary moment—the smell of the cooking food, the quiet chatter, the warmth of the hearth. Everything he’d left behind on his quest through time to save Basil’s Cove from the coming calamity.
Most importantly, nothing was wrong. His parents were fine. The house wasn’t ransacked. There weren’t any magical alarms or traps.
For a second, he let himself hope that Baron Hurden had never found his family. That the ambush at the Cave had been a coincidence.
Then his mother turned and saw the two of them standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Boys!” she gasped, dropping the spoon she’d been using to stir a pot of sauce onto the iron of the oven. “Thank the Sixteen you’re here. Did the guild leader tell you about Esther?
“Once Trevor left”—she hurled herself across the kitchen, wrapping the two of them up in a gigantic hug, sudden tears streaming down her face—“we didn’t know how to get into contact with you. She’s been missing for almost two days now, and the city guard isn’t doing anything.”
41
Field Exercises
Green flames crackled, consuming the reagents carefully placed in a wide circle around Micah, who sat with his legs crossed in its center. One by one, he recited the eldritch phrases from the Ageless Folio. He took note of the inflection marks over each syllable as the power of Elsewhere swirled and built around him.
Drekt and Trevor looked agitated as they nervously patrolled the starlit grove. Micah didn’t blame them. If their enemies had found the house and the cave, they almost certainly had been able to trace the teleportation formation to the general location of the giant trees. Unfortunately, he needed temporal energy or a serious sacrifice in order to power the enchantment he was working on, and that meant either hunting for an appropriate monster or risking another voyage to the grove.
Jo and Sarah were still back at the lake, guarding his parents. It had only been a couple days since they’d pulled the two of them out of Basil’s Cove, and Micah hoped that they would recover from the shock of their relocation and settle in soon, but he didn’t have time for those concerns.
The ritual reached a crescendo, the green flames around him licking high into the night sky as they consumed the last of the reagents. Micah snapped the Folio shut, willing it to disappear as he switched from the active spell to a simple repetitive chant.
He picked up the silver hairpin he’d retrieved from Esther’s room, bathing it in the unnatural light of the spell and rolling it in his hand. Then, as the fires began to burn lower, he began winding a single strand of his sister’s hair, stolen from a hairbrush. Each iteration of the incantation turned into one series of tight rings stretching the length of the pin.
Every ten seconds he completed another circuit of the pin. The fires burnt down at an unnatural rate, alien energies pouring from them and into the silver rod in Micah’s hands. Once, twice, four times, ten.
Abruptly the fires guttered out, leaving Micah gasping and sweating in the center of the ritual circle he’d seared into the forest floor. In his hand, the pin glowed faintly, lit by the power of the enchantments that he’d hastily drilled into it.
Quickly, Micah placed it in a glass jar that he’d already prepared. The container itself was etched with a number of weak enchantments, already empowered in a ritual that had cost the life of a particularly large fish from the lake. The jar was filled with purified spring water, kept pristine by those enchantments.
For a second, the pin gleamed. Then the water began to hiss and bubble, as if it were boiling, while the glow from the hairpin increased. For a moment, the jar glowed like the moon as it hissed and shook. Micah barely held it still, focusing what remained of his mental energy on smoothing the interference between the two sets of enchantments.
Then the shaking disappeared like it had never been, leaving the water in the jar perfectly still. The hairpin spun once and then stopped, quivering as it pointed to the left.
He stood up, holding the glass container up to the moonlight as he turned around. No matter which directly Micah faced, the sliver of metal pointed always toward the same spot. Micah sighed in relief.
“Did it work?” Trevor asked urgently from his position about twenty paces from Micah. “Are we going to be able to find her?”
“I think so,” Micah replied. “Did either of you see anything? The last thing we want is to get jumped by a bunch of camouflaged goons in our moment of triumph.”
“Ankros hasn’t blessed us with any excitement so far tonight.” Drekt walked up to the two of them, his eyes still scouring the edges of the grove.
“Well,” Micah chuckled without any real warmth, “I don’t know how long that is going to last. The odds of us retrieving Esther without some sort of fight are almost zero.”
“That’s a problem for when we find her.” Trevor’s voice was grim, much more serious than Micah was used to hearing. “Drekt and I might not be able to match you in a fight, but both of us have our first specialization now. We should at least be able to help out.”
“Just remember to leave most of the fighting to the Luoca.” Micah glanced up to the sky, where the daemon blotted out the stars as it circled restlessly. “I doubt that I’m a match for her, but at least I’m strong enough that the sorceress won’t be able to kill me out of hand. Our only real chance is to have me support the daemon while it does the dirty work.”
“I guess.” Trevor let out a shuddering breath. He bit his lower lip, chewing on it slightly before he continued. “Do you think it will be enough? Last time, when you and Jo came back, it was pretty beat up.”
“Honestly?” Micah shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s going to depend on whether Esther is around the sorceress. She overpowered it last time, but she also had help. If she’s on her own? Maybe the Luoca will be enough to take her. Hells, I might be enough to tip the balance. There are just too many variables to know for sure. Really, the only thing I’m certain of is that we need to try.”
Trevor nodded silently as Drekt put his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder, giving it a quick, comforting squeeze.
“I don’t mean to be alarmist,” he rumbled, hand still resting on his boyfriend, “but I’m not sure how well we’ve thought this through. This woman, when taken by surprise, fought the Luoca to a standstill. By all appearances, she is a resourceful and fearsome foe. What makes us think that she won’t have made preparations for the daemon? Surely she knows that we will bring it.”
“What else am I supposed to do, Drekt?” Micah asked, turning to the big man with pleading eyes. “I have some tricks up my sleeve that the two of you haven’t even seen yet, but I can’t look you in the eye and say that I can assure victory. If you want to head back to the lake you can, but this is my sister.”
“Sorry.” Trevor smiled back at Drekt, putting his hand on top of the warrior’s massive black mitt. “This is something the two of us have to do. There’s no easy way out of this one.”
“I simply wanted to make sure you were aware of the situation,” Drekt chuckled. “A servant of Ankros is never afraid to die. The Lord of Night and Struggle asks us to test ourselves, and sometimes those tests end in failure. There is no shame in dying to a superior foe. It is simply the way of things.”
“That was… bleak,” Micah said, flashing a smile back. “I’d prefer to avoid dying valiantly in combat, but the sentiment is appreciated.”
“Maybe next time.” Drekt nodded agreeably.
He just turned to stare at the huge warrior as the man smiled amiably back at him. Even Trevor twisted around and shot Drekt a perplexed look as the brothers tried to figure out whether their friend was being genuine or displaying some strange brand of dry humor.
“Regardless…” Micah shook his head, still undecided. “The dowsing needle will only have a couple days’ worth of charge before the needle melts under the enchantment’s stress. It will tell us where Esther is, but it won’t give us any sort of hints as to how far we’ll need to travel. Unless there is something pressing, we might as well head out now. The sooner we find her, the sooner we can make our escape, and hopefully disappear into the night.”
Then they walked, stopping at daybreak for a brief meal and later around noon to sleep. Even Trevor, usually an unending font of complaints, managed to hike for hours in grim silence. By the time they started making their camp beneath a copse of trees, the tension was almost electric.
The three of them divided up watch shifts before lapsing into silence and trying to rest. Even when it was Micah’s turn to make sure that no wandering animal happened upon the three of them, Drekt simply shook him awake before nodding brusquely and setting up his own bedroll.
Around six in the afternoon, they began walking again. None of them had slept well, but the stress of the situation kept them jumpy and awake as they continued to follow the guidance of the tiny glowing needle suspended in water.
Finally, just after dusk, Micah raised his hand to stop the party. The Luoca warbled incoherently, slurring nonsense words together as Micah peered through the fading light at a two-story wood building with a guard standing out front.
It wasn’t a question. No matter how they circumnavigated the clearing, the needle consistently pointed at the unpainted wood planks of the two-story building.
Micah chewed his lip. The structure was a fairly rough construction, but practically a palace compared to their compound by the lake. The ground floor was about four to five times the size of his parents’ house, and although it didn’t have any windows or ornamentation, the construction appeared to be sturdy and watertight.
The guard out front didn’t look particularly menacing, but she was hardly a pushover. About half a head taller than Micah, she wore a complete suit of plate mail minus the helmet. At her side, a large mace was strapped to her hip by a strip of leather, and even from the edge of the clearing, Micah could feel the faint tingle of magic from the weapon.
Unfortunately, as much as Micah wanted to unleash a truly high-power spell and simply eliminate all of the potential threats in the building in one go, Esther was inside. That meant that temporal vortex and poison fog weren’t an option.
He tapped Trevor on his shoulder before pointing at his brother’s spear. Then he pointed at the woman before raising five fingers. A second later he lowered one, drawing a nod from Trevor.
Four seconds and some hastily mumbled words of power later, Trevor’s spear clanged off of the woman’s chestplate, drawing a spray of sparks even as Micah’s spell punched through the thinner armor covering her thigh.
“Alert!” she shouted, staggering backward as blood began to pour from the hole in her leg. “We’re under attack!”
Trevor’s spear whistled back into his hand, recalled by the frowning young man’s blessing.
“Take her down!” Micah yelled, all attempts at secrecy out the window. If Trevor’s spear couldn’t make it through her armor, that meant she was at least level 30. Even if she hadn’t already screamed for reinforcements, the warrior likely had enough hit points to survive any ambush, at least for a couple of seconds.
The Luoca launched itself into the air, Micah frantically casting haste from the edge of the forest. Drekt and Trevor sprinted past him as another thrown spear deflected off of a shoulder pauldron. Grimly, the woman took a hesitant step toward his companions, mace held at the ready.
With his first spell done, Micah began casting regeneration on the Luoca even as the beast swooped out of the sky toward the warrior, a step or two ahead of its two sprinting allies.
She swung her mace hard enough to powder bones, only for the daemon to simply ignore the blow. Its tail darted forward and plunged into her face, drawing a gurgling scream as she fell to her knees. A moment later, its wing swept forward, severing her mangled head from her shoulders.
“Hold them off, Lynn!” a muffled voice shouted from inside. “We’re signaling the Archmagus now; it’ll only be a minute.”
“Fuck,” Micah spat the word out, before running toward the building. Even as he ran, the incantations for a second casting of haste began to fall from his mouth.
He blurred past the Luoca, kicking in the front door to the building and reflexively leaning his head to the side to let an arrow pass him.
