Blessed time 2 coda a li.., p.30
Blessed Time 2: Coda: A LitRPG Adventure, page 30
Inside stood two men, one holding a bow and the other clutching a crystal in one hand and a handaxe in the other. The crystal glowed with a light of its own, calling out to Micah’s senses with the cloying energy of Elsewhere.
Micah lunged forward, plunging his spearhead through the man’s back and spraying the man’s companion with blood. Micah ripped the weapon free, ignoring the look of shock on the axeman’s face. Energy began to coalesce into a narrow but brilliant path of light stretching from the distance until it ended on a dais at the other end of the entry hall.
A Flash Step and a snap kick later, the axeman’s leg was broken. Before the man could scream in pain, Micah’s spear gouged out his throat.
In one smooth motion, he withdrew his weapon and fired a pressure spear into the cloud of white mist that was rapidly gathering into the shape of the baron’s wizard on the dais.
It was too late.
His heart fell when the spell struck an invisible barrier. A sphere of light briefly flashed into existence as the sorceress stumbled slightly, disoriented by her sudden arrival. A moment later, she sighted Micah. A smile blossomed on her face.
“Micah Silver!” she cooed, enchanted rings glinting with latent power on her fingers as she flexed her hands. “That was rather unsporting of you. Of course, I can forgive your rudeness. Here I am, spending months trying to dig you out of your bolthole, only for you to find me. Now I won’t even have to cast a bloodline-tracking ritual on that cute sister of yours.”
“You were going to do what to Esther?” Micah hissed, his knuckles turning white as his grip on his spear became painfully tight. Behind him were the vague sounds of Trevor, Drekt, and the Luoca barging into the building’s main chamber.
“Nothing that a little therapy and healing magic couldn’t fix.” She smiled at him, drawing a short, rune-encrusted baton from her hip.
Micah whistled shrilly. The Luoca sprang into action at his signal and charged toward the smirking wizard, a runaway carriage of whirring wings and bristling menace. Before it could reach her, she raised the gem-encrusted length of steel in her hand and spat out a word of power.
His heart sank as a crackling red chain of burning energy spat from the metal focus, lodging itself in the daemon. Almost immediately, he felt his connection to the beast beginning to fade.
“Silly boy,” she taunted him in a singsong voice. “Relying on external power only works until you encounter someone able to pry your toys from you.
“And you can be certain,” the woman purred, her voice sending a shiver down Micah’s spine, “I will pry the secret behind how you summoned such a magnificent specimen out of you.”
42
Daring Rescue
Micah closed his eyes. The Luoca struggled against the burning strand of energy embedded in its chest, its mouth flapping wordlessly as it growled and wailed.
The pale woman grunted, then pulled back on the metal rod in her hand to drag the daemon a step toward her. It flapped its wings, its five insectoid legs skittering against the wooden floor as it fought against the wizard’s inhuman strength.
Beyond him, Micah heard Trevor shouting something. He didn’t have time to pay attention, his eyes glued to his frantic and resisting monster.
On instinct he reached out, grasping at the Luoca both physically and through his senses. His entire body tingled as his arcana skill activated, coalescing his will into something more tangible.
A misty white energy—a wisp of the great fog banks of Elsewhere—flowed out of him, encompassing the daemon, and suddenly Micah could feel it.
The monster’s incomprehensible senses merged with his own. Hunger, boredom, lust, and, above all, a sadistic desire to unmake slammed into him, threatening to overwhelm his perception, but deep down there was something else. A prison of gray-white energy wrapped around the core of the daemon’s being, constraining it while a tentacle of molten ruby power hammered at the shell.
He pushed. Some sort of vital energy—not mana, but something else entirely—flowed out of him, deadening the daemon’s mad screams and urges. Clouds of white sifted downward through the creature’s mind, soothing the raw red violence of the wizard’s lash.
The motes of light coalesced around the core, sheltering the daemon from the hammering blows of the wizard’s focus. The Luoca shook its head, opening its eyes and staring at the baron’s wizard.
Micah shuddered. He could feel his energy draining rapidly, but he was looking through the summoned monster’s eyes. They blinked, and he could feel its thoughts, parallel to his own as it hissed and begged for him to release it. To let it destroy itself and the human-shaped mass of mana in front of it in an orgy of violence.
“What are you doing, boy?” Micah was almost startled out of his quasi-trance as the woman hissed at him. “As strong as your summon is, it’s mine until the sacrifice empowering it expires. You’re defenseless before me, boy. Just give up before I have to make this painful.”
He just grunted, focusing his energy on the Luoca’s will and pushing. Urging it to follow its instincts, to shake the fetters placed on it by the sorceress and become the destroyer it wanted to be.
It lunged at the wizard, a triumphant snarl on its face as a wing blurred forward and slammed into her shield. Micah staggered backward, shielding his eyes as the mana barrier flared with light. A fraction of a second later, a pressure wave knocked him off balance, stealing the breath from his lungs.
Shaking his head, Micah blinked. The Luoca’s tail was lodged in the woman’s shoulder, a grimace of pain on her face. Even as he watched, brain still fuzzy from the previous exchange, her hand closed around the scorpion-like limb. The woman snarled a word of power, binding it to her body in a rapidly growing sphere of ice.
“Grab Esther!” he shouted to Trevor, not daring to take his eyes off of the fight as the daemon struggled to free its captured limb. “You need to get her out of here; collateral damage from area attacks could kill either of you.”
“Where is she?” Trevor screamed back as a swarm of roots, as big around as Micah’s wrist, broke through the wooden floor and began to coil around the Luoca. “I haven’t seen her anywhere!”
“Just look!” Micah replied before casting binding vines, struggling to focus on the high-level spell’s precise words and movements as the Luoca’s wings scissored through a handful of the roots encompassing it
The remaining vegetation wrapped itself around one of the daemon’s sharp, chitinous legs and began to pull, drawing a scream of rage from the Luoca. The daemon leaned forward, its human mouth snapping at the wizard’s face.
Micah’s spell coalesced, grabbing hold of his opponent's vines and releasing the Luoca only to turn them on the woman. Two curled around her calves, literally rooting her in place while a third stabbed deep into her hamstring, drawing a grunt from the wizard.
He gasped for breath, vision swimming despite his mostly full mana pool. With a blink, Micah released his mental hold on the daemon. At some point in the initial attack, she’d dropped the focus, and he simply didn’t have the energy to continue forcing his will on the creature.
It followed its last orders, perhaps not even noticing that Micah was no longer urging it on. The Luoca’s faced gnashed at her once, trying to remove her cheek and ear with its blunt but sturdy teeth as it tried once again to yank its tail from her shoulder.
“What in the hells was that!” she exclaimed, pain clouding her voice as she clenched her left hand into a fist. A ring disintegrated before turning into a spear of ice that launched itself into the torso of the trapped daemon, splitting its chitinous armor like rotten wood and sinking an arm’s length into its body.
One of the Luoca’s wings slammed into her. A pendant flashed with blue light, and the wizard’s entire left side became covered in ice for a fraction of a second before it shattered under the force of the blow.
Their opponent tried to shuffle her feet to recover from the attack, but Micah’s binding vines still held. Instead, she tumbled over backward, dragging the Luoca forward by its tail.
It screeched in delight, stabbing one leg through her hip and into the floor below. A fraction of a second later, a second leg punched through her chest, a match for the ice spear in the daemon as it punctured a lung.
The woman thrashed for a second, screaming in agony. The Luoca threw its head back and chortled with inhuman delight at her distress. Then she simply stopped. Her body, even her breathing, ceased to move as a deadly calm settled over her.
She reached into a pouch and pulled out a sphere of white crystal. It began glowing with an inner light as she concentrated on it, ignoring the blood flowing from multiple wounds all over her body.
The Luoca keened in triumph, leaning down and biting off an ear and a strip of flesh from her cheek. She didn’t even move, instead gripping the crystal with both hands, letting the hazy white glow within it build.
Micah’s eyes widened as he realized the implication of her actions.
“Stop her!” he shouted at the daemon, punctuating his command with a pair of air knives aimed at her hands. Both of them slammed into a white hazy shield as yet another defensive artifact activated.
The Luoca paused for a second, clearly hearing his command. Then it let loose a bloodcurdling wail and stomped down again, this time skewering a bicep.
Micah’s heart jumped into his throat. It was twisting his orders, obeying his directive to attack, but clearly too enamored with toying with its prey to finish the fight cleanly.
He frantically hefted his spear, burning recklessly through his mana to activate both enchantments simultaneously. For a fraction of a second, Micah saw a future where the wizard successfully teleported away, leaving him gaping like a fool, victorious but waiting forever for her revenge.
Then the spear sailed through the air, every point of his body powering the throw. Sonic enchantment still humming, it slammed into the glowing orb of quartz just as the light inside it reached its apex,
The crystal shattered, leaving only a helix of glowing light spinning in the air in its wake. The woman’s eyes widened. The light flared, forcing Micah to look away as a wave of heat rolled over him.
“Foolish boy!” the woman shouted from inside the angry, flashing strobes of light. “What have you done!?”
The room exploded. Micah was flung into one of the wooden walls hard enough to break it with an audible crack. Or maybe that was his ribs. It was hard to tell.
For a moment, mist filled the room, the subtle tang of unreality permeating Micah’s lungs as Elsewhere lurched toward Karell. Around him, the howling darkness of teleportation closed in. Formless entities, too terrible for his mind to fully comprehend, flowed toward him with a terrible smoothness.
Then they were back in the wooden complex, wreckage everywhere. The teleportation array was in ruins, shattered and burning. The wizard was gone. An arm lay next to him, and across the room, barely visible, was her head, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, the rest of her body utterly annihilated in the blast.
Fuzzily, Micah contemplated the flames as they licked up toward the ceiling. They’d need to leave soon. It was only a matter of time before the entire building burned to the ground.
He shook his head. The Luoca was keening, the tip of its tail and both of the legs that had been lodged in the wizard simply… missing. It hobbled through the twisted remnants of the room, moaning to itself as steaming ichor dripped to the ground, warping and melting the wood.
Micah pulled himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his chest from slamming into the wall. He paused for a moment to cast augmented mending to ease the pain in his chest and side.
With a sigh of relief, the spell set in, deadening the pain and letting him breathe in easily. He turned to the Luoca as it stumbled aimlessly, inhuman moans and ichor spilling from its lips.
“Come on,” he grunted, the words painful as they worked their way up his burned throat and across cracked lips. “We need to make sure that Trevor and Esther are all right.”
It turned and stared at Micah with cruel eyes and a disconcerting hunger, but made no move to follow his orders.
He frowned as it cocked its head, a feral smile on the human face.
It took a faltering step toward him, its wings cocked back and ready to strike, tail held high. Ichor dripped from the gaping wound as regeneration sealed the injury, but it did not regrow the stinger that usually served as its tip.
That wasn’t good.
Micah reached out with his mind, drawing on the last dregs of the strange energy he’d used earlier to overcome the dead wizard’s control.
Its core was exposed, only half-bound in the silvery white light he’d come to associate with his will. The remainder of the Luoca’s being raged angrily, hurt, hungry, and eager to destroy as much of Karell as possible before it was once again banished to Elsewhere.
“Fuck,” Micah whispered, his eyes widening.
It took another step toward him, its mouth opening wider than should be possible to reveal a fang-filled leer as it basked in his discomfort.
“What in the hells happened, Micah?” Trevor shouted from the side as he came down a stairwell, Esther in tow. “I found Esther, but then I leveled up. Twice. What in the name of the Sixteen were you—”
His brother’s voice cut off in a strangled yelp as the Luoca whipped its head around to stare at him. Esther slithered behind him, whimpering.
Micah reached out, stretching whatever sense he used to control the Luoca in the past to its limit as he slammed his will into it. The daemon staggered slightly and whirled back to face him with a snarl, the runic seals covering its core glowing brighter.
It lunged forward, and Micah fell to his knees, every iota of energy in his body focused on one final mental thrust. A storm of silver light, visible only to the daemon and him, flowed over it, slowing its movements and reigniting the dormant runes that bound its core one by one.
For a moment, hope began to fill Micah. With just a little bit more, he might be able to reassert control. He slumped forward, hands slapping into the wood of the lodge’s floor as he redoubled his efforts.
It turned from him with a snarl, locust wings blurring into motion, then slammed its battered body through one of the building’s walls. For a couple of seconds, he heard the click buzz of its wings as it flew away, but then there was nothing but his breathing and the crackle of the flames.
43
A New Home
The light from the ritual faded, leaving a dimly glowing ring in the center of the engraved circle. Micah tapped his chin with his index finger, contemplating the complex and beautiful piece of platinum jewelry.
He picked it up, holding the cool piece of metal in the palm of his hand. Even with the amount of destruction done to the ritualist’s body by the failed teleportation, he’d managed to collect four rings, a necklace, and her control rod. In any other circumstances, between putting down a hated rival and collecting a significant amount of heavily enchanted loot, the raid would be considered an unmitigated success.
“What’s it do?”
Micah blinked and looked up at Trevor, leaning on his spear in the doorway to the crude log cabin where he’d been casting his spells.
“The ring stores enough mana for a use of the spell flash freeze.” He unfolded his crossed legs and stood up, pocketing the jewelry. “It casts automatically when the bearer is hit, encasing whatever struck them in a block of ice. The only downside is that it takes about two days to recharge on its own after use.”
“That sounds useful,” Trevor said, nodding agreeably. “Anything else worthwhile in the haul?”
“She had another ring that keeps regeneration running constantly.” Micah walked to the door of the cabin, Trevor stepping aside to let him pass. “The pendant creates a forcefield that absorbs 500 hit points’ worth of damage per day before deactivating, and the last two rings look like they’re supposed to work in tandem. One summons a fairly large globe of water, while the other lets the bearer move and breathe freely underwater.”
Trevor whistled appreciatively as he fell into step behind Micah, the two of them walking over to the new construction dotting the edge of the lake. Esther was running back and forth on the shore, mud covering her clothes.
“How are they settling in, anyway?” Micah inclined his head toward Esther. “I know moving out of the city must be rough for them.”
“You know how they are.” Trevor shrugged. “Dad’s pretty resilient, and Esther misses her friends, but honestly I think it’s been pretty good for Mom. Of all people, Sarah has started to warm up to her. Whenever she’s not out hunting, the two of them spend a lot of time together around the camp. Frankly, I think it’s been good for Sarah too. Now that she’s met our family, she’s a bit less distrustful of both of us.”
“That’s good,” Micah sighed. “I don’t think we can safely move them back to Basil’s Cove until we resolve matters with Baron Hurden. It’s just too much of a risk. Only the ritualist was involved in Esther’s kidnapping, but who knows what she told the baron.”
“Speaking about the ritualist, what’s the story with that metal rod she had?” Trevor asked, a slight smile on his face as he watched their sister shriek and jump into the ankle-deep water.
“A daemon control focus,” Micah responded. “It can be amplified by a ritual, but the general idea is that it lets you wrest control of a free daemon, or one bound by someone else. As best I can understand, unless you have a rod of your own, combating it should be impossible. If it weren’t for the fact that I picked up a fairly obscure skill in a previous timeline, she would have grabbed control of the Luoca from me.”
Trevor stopped, prompting Micah to stop as well. He turned around to find his brother frowning at him. The other man chewed his lower lip for a minute, clearly mulling over something.
“We would have been dead if that happened, right?” Trevor asked, the question clearly rhetorical from the certainty he said it with. “Like, you probably could have managed a fighting retreat against either one of them, but combined, that would have just been a game over, right?”
Micah lunged forward, plunging his spearhead through the man’s back and spraying the man’s companion with blood. Micah ripped the weapon free, ignoring the look of shock on the axeman’s face. Energy began to coalesce into a narrow but brilliant path of light stretching from the distance until it ended on a dais at the other end of the entry hall.
A Flash Step and a snap kick later, the axeman’s leg was broken. Before the man could scream in pain, Micah’s spear gouged out his throat.
In one smooth motion, he withdrew his weapon and fired a pressure spear into the cloud of white mist that was rapidly gathering into the shape of the baron’s wizard on the dais.
It was too late.
His heart fell when the spell struck an invisible barrier. A sphere of light briefly flashed into existence as the sorceress stumbled slightly, disoriented by her sudden arrival. A moment later, she sighted Micah. A smile blossomed on her face.
“Micah Silver!” she cooed, enchanted rings glinting with latent power on her fingers as she flexed her hands. “That was rather unsporting of you. Of course, I can forgive your rudeness. Here I am, spending months trying to dig you out of your bolthole, only for you to find me. Now I won’t even have to cast a bloodline-tracking ritual on that cute sister of yours.”
“You were going to do what to Esther?” Micah hissed, his knuckles turning white as his grip on his spear became painfully tight. Behind him were the vague sounds of Trevor, Drekt, and the Luoca barging into the building’s main chamber.
“Nothing that a little therapy and healing magic couldn’t fix.” She smiled at him, drawing a short, rune-encrusted baton from her hip.
Micah whistled shrilly. The Luoca sprang into action at his signal and charged toward the smirking wizard, a runaway carriage of whirring wings and bristling menace. Before it could reach her, she raised the gem-encrusted length of steel in her hand and spat out a word of power.
His heart sank as a crackling red chain of burning energy spat from the metal focus, lodging itself in the daemon. Almost immediately, he felt his connection to the beast beginning to fade.
“Silly boy,” she taunted him in a singsong voice. “Relying on external power only works until you encounter someone able to pry your toys from you.
“And you can be certain,” the woman purred, her voice sending a shiver down Micah’s spine, “I will pry the secret behind how you summoned such a magnificent specimen out of you.”
42
Daring Rescue
Micah closed his eyes. The Luoca struggled against the burning strand of energy embedded in its chest, its mouth flapping wordlessly as it growled and wailed.
The pale woman grunted, then pulled back on the metal rod in her hand to drag the daemon a step toward her. It flapped its wings, its five insectoid legs skittering against the wooden floor as it fought against the wizard’s inhuman strength.
Beyond him, Micah heard Trevor shouting something. He didn’t have time to pay attention, his eyes glued to his frantic and resisting monster.
On instinct he reached out, grasping at the Luoca both physically and through his senses. His entire body tingled as his arcana skill activated, coalescing his will into something more tangible.
A misty white energy—a wisp of the great fog banks of Elsewhere—flowed out of him, encompassing the daemon, and suddenly Micah could feel it.
The monster’s incomprehensible senses merged with his own. Hunger, boredom, lust, and, above all, a sadistic desire to unmake slammed into him, threatening to overwhelm his perception, but deep down there was something else. A prison of gray-white energy wrapped around the core of the daemon’s being, constraining it while a tentacle of molten ruby power hammered at the shell.
He pushed. Some sort of vital energy—not mana, but something else entirely—flowed out of him, deadening the daemon’s mad screams and urges. Clouds of white sifted downward through the creature’s mind, soothing the raw red violence of the wizard’s lash.
The motes of light coalesced around the core, sheltering the daemon from the hammering blows of the wizard’s focus. The Luoca shook its head, opening its eyes and staring at the baron’s wizard.
Micah shuddered. He could feel his energy draining rapidly, but he was looking through the summoned monster’s eyes. They blinked, and he could feel its thoughts, parallel to his own as it hissed and begged for him to release it. To let it destroy itself and the human-shaped mass of mana in front of it in an orgy of violence.
“What are you doing, boy?” Micah was almost startled out of his quasi-trance as the woman hissed at him. “As strong as your summon is, it’s mine until the sacrifice empowering it expires. You’re defenseless before me, boy. Just give up before I have to make this painful.”
He just grunted, focusing his energy on the Luoca’s will and pushing. Urging it to follow its instincts, to shake the fetters placed on it by the sorceress and become the destroyer it wanted to be.
It lunged at the wizard, a triumphant snarl on its face as a wing blurred forward and slammed into her shield. Micah staggered backward, shielding his eyes as the mana barrier flared with light. A fraction of a second later, a pressure wave knocked him off balance, stealing the breath from his lungs.
Shaking his head, Micah blinked. The Luoca’s tail was lodged in the woman’s shoulder, a grimace of pain on her face. Even as he watched, brain still fuzzy from the previous exchange, her hand closed around the scorpion-like limb. The woman snarled a word of power, binding it to her body in a rapidly growing sphere of ice.
“Grab Esther!” he shouted to Trevor, not daring to take his eyes off of the fight as the daemon struggled to free its captured limb. “You need to get her out of here; collateral damage from area attacks could kill either of you.”
“Where is she?” Trevor screamed back as a swarm of roots, as big around as Micah’s wrist, broke through the wooden floor and began to coil around the Luoca. “I haven’t seen her anywhere!”
“Just look!” Micah replied before casting binding vines, struggling to focus on the high-level spell’s precise words and movements as the Luoca’s wings scissored through a handful of the roots encompassing it
The remaining vegetation wrapped itself around one of the daemon’s sharp, chitinous legs and began to pull, drawing a scream of rage from the Luoca. The daemon leaned forward, its human mouth snapping at the wizard’s face.
Micah’s spell coalesced, grabbing hold of his opponent's vines and releasing the Luoca only to turn them on the woman. Two curled around her calves, literally rooting her in place while a third stabbed deep into her hamstring, drawing a grunt from the wizard.
He gasped for breath, vision swimming despite his mostly full mana pool. With a blink, Micah released his mental hold on the daemon. At some point in the initial attack, she’d dropped the focus, and he simply didn’t have the energy to continue forcing his will on the creature.
It followed its last orders, perhaps not even noticing that Micah was no longer urging it on. The Luoca’s faced gnashed at her once, trying to remove her cheek and ear with its blunt but sturdy teeth as it tried once again to yank its tail from her shoulder.
“What in the hells was that!” she exclaimed, pain clouding her voice as she clenched her left hand into a fist. A ring disintegrated before turning into a spear of ice that launched itself into the torso of the trapped daemon, splitting its chitinous armor like rotten wood and sinking an arm’s length into its body.
One of the Luoca’s wings slammed into her. A pendant flashed with blue light, and the wizard’s entire left side became covered in ice for a fraction of a second before it shattered under the force of the blow.
Their opponent tried to shuffle her feet to recover from the attack, but Micah’s binding vines still held. Instead, she tumbled over backward, dragging the Luoca forward by its tail.
It screeched in delight, stabbing one leg through her hip and into the floor below. A fraction of a second later, a second leg punched through her chest, a match for the ice spear in the daemon as it punctured a lung.
The woman thrashed for a second, screaming in agony. The Luoca threw its head back and chortled with inhuman delight at her distress. Then she simply stopped. Her body, even her breathing, ceased to move as a deadly calm settled over her.
She reached into a pouch and pulled out a sphere of white crystal. It began glowing with an inner light as she concentrated on it, ignoring the blood flowing from multiple wounds all over her body.
The Luoca keened in triumph, leaning down and biting off an ear and a strip of flesh from her cheek. She didn’t even move, instead gripping the crystal with both hands, letting the hazy white glow within it build.
Micah’s eyes widened as he realized the implication of her actions.
“Stop her!” he shouted at the daemon, punctuating his command with a pair of air knives aimed at her hands. Both of them slammed into a white hazy shield as yet another defensive artifact activated.
The Luoca paused for a second, clearly hearing his command. Then it let loose a bloodcurdling wail and stomped down again, this time skewering a bicep.
Micah’s heart jumped into his throat. It was twisting his orders, obeying his directive to attack, but clearly too enamored with toying with its prey to finish the fight cleanly.
He frantically hefted his spear, burning recklessly through his mana to activate both enchantments simultaneously. For a fraction of a second, Micah saw a future where the wizard successfully teleported away, leaving him gaping like a fool, victorious but waiting forever for her revenge.
Then the spear sailed through the air, every point of his body powering the throw. Sonic enchantment still humming, it slammed into the glowing orb of quartz just as the light inside it reached its apex,
The crystal shattered, leaving only a helix of glowing light spinning in the air in its wake. The woman’s eyes widened. The light flared, forcing Micah to look away as a wave of heat rolled over him.
“Foolish boy!” the woman shouted from inside the angry, flashing strobes of light. “What have you done!?”
The room exploded. Micah was flung into one of the wooden walls hard enough to break it with an audible crack. Or maybe that was his ribs. It was hard to tell.
For a moment, mist filled the room, the subtle tang of unreality permeating Micah’s lungs as Elsewhere lurched toward Karell. Around him, the howling darkness of teleportation closed in. Formless entities, too terrible for his mind to fully comprehend, flowed toward him with a terrible smoothness.
Then they were back in the wooden complex, wreckage everywhere. The teleportation array was in ruins, shattered and burning. The wizard was gone. An arm lay next to him, and across the room, barely visible, was her head, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, the rest of her body utterly annihilated in the blast.
Fuzzily, Micah contemplated the flames as they licked up toward the ceiling. They’d need to leave soon. It was only a matter of time before the entire building burned to the ground.
He shook his head. The Luoca was keening, the tip of its tail and both of the legs that had been lodged in the wizard simply… missing. It hobbled through the twisted remnants of the room, moaning to itself as steaming ichor dripped to the ground, warping and melting the wood.
Micah pulled himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his chest from slamming into the wall. He paused for a moment to cast augmented mending to ease the pain in his chest and side.
With a sigh of relief, the spell set in, deadening the pain and letting him breathe in easily. He turned to the Luoca as it stumbled aimlessly, inhuman moans and ichor spilling from its lips.
“Come on,” he grunted, the words painful as they worked their way up his burned throat and across cracked lips. “We need to make sure that Trevor and Esther are all right.”
It turned and stared at Micah with cruel eyes and a disconcerting hunger, but made no move to follow his orders.
He frowned as it cocked its head, a feral smile on the human face.
It took a faltering step toward him, its wings cocked back and ready to strike, tail held high. Ichor dripped from the gaping wound as regeneration sealed the injury, but it did not regrow the stinger that usually served as its tip.
That wasn’t good.
Micah reached out with his mind, drawing on the last dregs of the strange energy he’d used earlier to overcome the dead wizard’s control.
Its core was exposed, only half-bound in the silvery white light he’d come to associate with his will. The remainder of the Luoca’s being raged angrily, hurt, hungry, and eager to destroy as much of Karell as possible before it was once again banished to Elsewhere.
“Fuck,” Micah whispered, his eyes widening.
It took another step toward him, its mouth opening wider than should be possible to reveal a fang-filled leer as it basked in his discomfort.
“What in the hells happened, Micah?” Trevor shouted from the side as he came down a stairwell, Esther in tow. “I found Esther, but then I leveled up. Twice. What in the name of the Sixteen were you—”
His brother’s voice cut off in a strangled yelp as the Luoca whipped its head around to stare at him. Esther slithered behind him, whimpering.
Micah reached out, stretching whatever sense he used to control the Luoca in the past to its limit as he slammed his will into it. The daemon staggered slightly and whirled back to face him with a snarl, the runic seals covering its core glowing brighter.
It lunged forward, and Micah fell to his knees, every iota of energy in his body focused on one final mental thrust. A storm of silver light, visible only to the daemon and him, flowed over it, slowing its movements and reigniting the dormant runes that bound its core one by one.
For a moment, hope began to fill Micah. With just a little bit more, he might be able to reassert control. He slumped forward, hands slapping into the wood of the lodge’s floor as he redoubled his efforts.
It turned from him with a snarl, locust wings blurring into motion, then slammed its battered body through one of the building’s walls. For a couple of seconds, he heard the click buzz of its wings as it flew away, but then there was nothing but his breathing and the crackle of the flames.
43
A New Home
The light from the ritual faded, leaving a dimly glowing ring in the center of the engraved circle. Micah tapped his chin with his index finger, contemplating the complex and beautiful piece of platinum jewelry.
He picked it up, holding the cool piece of metal in the palm of his hand. Even with the amount of destruction done to the ritualist’s body by the failed teleportation, he’d managed to collect four rings, a necklace, and her control rod. In any other circumstances, between putting down a hated rival and collecting a significant amount of heavily enchanted loot, the raid would be considered an unmitigated success.
“What’s it do?”
Micah blinked and looked up at Trevor, leaning on his spear in the doorway to the crude log cabin where he’d been casting his spells.
“The ring stores enough mana for a use of the spell flash freeze.” He unfolded his crossed legs and stood up, pocketing the jewelry. “It casts automatically when the bearer is hit, encasing whatever struck them in a block of ice. The only downside is that it takes about two days to recharge on its own after use.”
“That sounds useful,” Trevor said, nodding agreeably. “Anything else worthwhile in the haul?”
“She had another ring that keeps regeneration running constantly.” Micah walked to the door of the cabin, Trevor stepping aside to let him pass. “The pendant creates a forcefield that absorbs 500 hit points’ worth of damage per day before deactivating, and the last two rings look like they’re supposed to work in tandem. One summons a fairly large globe of water, while the other lets the bearer move and breathe freely underwater.”
Trevor whistled appreciatively as he fell into step behind Micah, the two of them walking over to the new construction dotting the edge of the lake. Esther was running back and forth on the shore, mud covering her clothes.
“How are they settling in, anyway?” Micah inclined his head toward Esther. “I know moving out of the city must be rough for them.”
“You know how they are.” Trevor shrugged. “Dad’s pretty resilient, and Esther misses her friends, but honestly I think it’s been pretty good for Mom. Of all people, Sarah has started to warm up to her. Whenever she’s not out hunting, the two of them spend a lot of time together around the camp. Frankly, I think it’s been good for Sarah too. Now that she’s met our family, she’s a bit less distrustful of both of us.”
“That’s good,” Micah sighed. “I don’t think we can safely move them back to Basil’s Cove until we resolve matters with Baron Hurden. It’s just too much of a risk. Only the ritualist was involved in Esther’s kidnapping, but who knows what she told the baron.”
“Speaking about the ritualist, what’s the story with that metal rod she had?” Trevor asked, a slight smile on his face as he watched their sister shriek and jump into the ankle-deep water.
“A daemon control focus,” Micah responded. “It can be amplified by a ritual, but the general idea is that it lets you wrest control of a free daemon, or one bound by someone else. As best I can understand, unless you have a rod of your own, combating it should be impossible. If it weren’t for the fact that I picked up a fairly obscure skill in a previous timeline, she would have grabbed control of the Luoca from me.”
Trevor stopped, prompting Micah to stop as well. He turned around to find his brother frowning at him. The other man chewed his lower lip for a minute, clearly mulling over something.
“We would have been dead if that happened, right?” Trevor asked, the question clearly rhetorical from the certainty he said it with. “Like, you probably could have managed a fighting retreat against either one of them, but combined, that would have just been a game over, right?”
