Mage academy 4 a litrpg.., p.30
Mage Academy 4: A LitRPG Magic Academy Light Novel, page 30
Lightning, fire, flame, magma, arrows, it all came at him hard and fast, but he avoided it all.
Danny paused… Then suddenly noticed a figure creeping through the grass.
It was Barbara.
He opened his mouth to call down, to alert Nicodemus, but paused.
Barbara wasn't heading toward Nicodemus. She was angling up behind the Lords.
A knife flashed in her hand, and Danny felt his heart lurch.
"Ahh!" Nicodemus was suddenly lifted off his feet by a sharp blast of lightning.
As he landed, the flap-flap of the approaching dragon drew louder and louder.
Danny looked up to see the mighty beast rising into view over the hills, and his jaw dropped.
The thing was massive, a proper drake from the depths of the earth.
From tip to tail, it must have been three, maybe even four hundred feet long.
Its scales were red and black, and it had no fewer than four wings that beat steadily to keep it aloft.
Its claws were so large that Danny thought it would be able to scoop up an entire carriage without blinking, or really even noticing it.
As it flew down and lower, it opened up its massive mouth, and a great fire began to brew deep within its gullet.
The scales on its chest began to glow, and fire rolled up from within the beast and began to punch forward.
Both Lords leapt at Nicodemus, well aware that their only chance of survival was to kill him before it arrived.
At that exact moment, Barbara leapt forward, driving her knife through the back of one of them and launching a spell at the other.
It wasn't much, but was enough to knock them both aside.
Nicodemus raised his hands, and-
FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The heat was greater than anything that Danny had ever experienced.
A shock wave from the displaced air hit him a second later, blasting him down the other side of the hill.
His golem was killed instantly, and he hit the ground and rolled, head over heels, to land at the base of the hill where his father and Obadiah were standing.
Ward spells flickered in their hands, and the great blast struck a moment later.
Fire and heat and wind roared against the small group, rolling over and around them, forming a small dome.
Everyone huddled close, fearful of stepping too close to the edge.
Even with the wards, it became so hot that Danny could hardly breathe, and he smelled smoke.
And then, just as suddenly as it had hit, it was over and gone.
The fire rolled away, leaving a blackened prairie in its wake.
Danny gasped as the Ascended Mages lowered their wards, and he rushed up the hill just as fast as he could go.
Grass crunched beneath his feet as he slogged through the ash, and with that, he reached the top.
Down below, lying on the ground, was a large pit, empty of water, surrounded by bones.
He could see skulls scattered this way and that, bones piled upon bones.
There was no way of telling what had belonged to who, not without extensive testing back at the Precinct.
Danny put his hand over his mouth, and Margot stepped up next to him.
"He was a good man," she murmured.
"He might have survived," Danny whispered.
"Maybe." Margot paused. "But… You know he didn't want to."
Danny could only nod as he lifted his gaze.
Indeed, he could still see the outer layer of flame, crackling and continuing to spread, almost a mile away.
There was no chance that Nicodemus had survived the blast, right at the epicenter.
Not when his magic had certainly been keeping the Lords in their place, preventing them from teleporting away.
"Come on," Danny muttered after a moment. "We've got to be getting back."
He drew in a deep breath and tried to swallow the pain.
"Learning about this stuff was only half the battle. Now we actually have to go prevent it."
Auto save - [Savefile: Information]
Health: 34%
Mana: 12%
Quest: Prevent a war.
Location: Open Plains, Central Empire
Inventory: Essential Supplies, Basic Armor, Iron Sword, Sword of the Wasp, Aquamarine Sword, Frostbite Sword
Skills: Monster Summoner (Lv. 39), Flame Combat (Lv. 2), Wind Combat (Lv. 5)
Relationships: Friendly with Janna, Family Bond with Nicodemus, Family Bond with Zechariah, Ascended Fire Mage, Friendly with Margot
Time of Day: 3:28 p.m.
Zechariah
The company quickly started back toward the Imperial City, though that soon proved to be a somewhat more difficult task than they initially imagined.
For starters, all of their horses had been either killed by the Deepcorp or set loose.
Some of the soldiers said that they saw dead horses off to one side when they first emerged from the pit, but Danny and the other mages couldn't remember for sure whether the bodies had been there or not.
What was certain was that if they had been in the area when the dragon lit the place up, they were dead now.
The little group smelled of smoke by the time they made it back to the main road.
The fires seemed to have mostly died down, but the whole area was still quite scorched and continued to be so for several miles out.
They trudged down the road, ash rising with every footfall, until, finally, a wagon rumbled along.
It was coming from the south and was driven by an old farmer.
"Quite a storm must have come through," the weathered man said as he shook his head. "Bit of lightning got at the prairie again, I suppose. You folks in need of a ride?"
It was late in the day when they rumbled back through the open gates of the Imperial City.
The group climbed down off the wagon and, for a long moment, stood there in the marketplace that dominated the street in that area.
As they looked at one another, Janna sighed.
"What do we do now?" she asked.
"We should stick together," Zechariah said. "The people who attacked us, they have spies in the city. They're based out of the Imperial Palace, and I'm sure they've been waiting for us ever since they saw the blast. If we split up, they'll only pick us off one by one."
"I think we ought to start hunting them down," Janna countered. "We need to get them now, before they can do any more damage to mage-Corp relations."
"I agree." Obadiah nodded. "I didn't just come back from the dead so I could hide out and wait for something to happen."
"I'm with you, Dad." Margot gripped her father's hand.
"And I'm not saying that we don't start hunting them down, only that we-" Zechariah started to protest but stopped as hooves pounded on the cobbles.
Captain Logan and half a dozen other soldiers all came riding up.
By now, a crowd was starting to gather, and Logan held up a hand.
"Zechariah Youngblood! You are hereby being placed under arrest."
"Again?" Zechariah sighed. "Now's really not a good time."
"Don't worry, you won't be alone. I'm here for Janna Windbreak, along with anyone else associated with them," Captain Logan sneered. "You've been on our watchlists for a long time anyway, and with what just happened down south, you're really in for it."
"And what, pray tell, happened down south?" Zechariah raised an eyebrow, looking exhausted. "Were you down there, too? Please, in your all-knowing wisdom, enlighten me."
"You just destroyed a secret government outpost," Captain Logan answered. "A single survivor managed to magically teleport back, but he's badly wounded, and will probably die. You, and you-" He pointed to Janna. "Are to be executed at dawn."
With that, he wheeled his horse around and galloped away.
The soldiers dismounted from their horses and started walking toward the group.
Danny balled his hands into fists, but Zechariah raised a hand.
"No. We can't play their game." He turned to the others and spoke rapidly. "This is it. The final inciting incident that I saw in the file was the execution of one of the mages on trumped-up charges. If I run, if we react, it will only pour fuel on this fire. Janna and I will go with them. Don't worry, I have no intention of letting them execute me, but I'm also not going to escape until I know you've all failed. Don't fail me."
The soldiers grabbed Zechariah by the arm and started to haul him off.
One of them slapped handcuffs on him, and a flicker of magic rolled across his body, probably preventing him from using any of his own magic.
Janna was dragged off as well, though she was simply slapped in normal cuffs.
A moment later, they were gone, and Danny shuddered.
Janna's remaining troops glanced at the others, and one of them lifted a finger.
"This way."
A moment later, they all stood in a darkened alley.
The soldier puffed out his cheeks then glanced at them all.
"When Janna first came on as part of our precinct, I had my doubts, but she's proved to be an excellent leader, a true credit to the Corp. I won't have her killed to fuel a war between our two sides." He gritted his teeth. "Much as I hate to admit it sometimes, the Corp needs the mages."
"And the mages need the Corp." Danny clapped the man on the shoulder. "We're in this together, and we probably have the whole city working against us, whether or not we know it. Do you have a plan?"
"There's no way we're going to be able to expose those monsters," the soldier answered simply. "So we've got to get them to expose themselves. That's the only way we get through this. We need a common enemy that the Corp and the mages can team up to fight. Now…" He clapped his hands. "Who here has any ideas?"
There was a long and painful pause.
Danny bit his lip, and a small flicker of an idea came into his head.
"Does anyone know where Anne is stationed?"
That night was a long one, filled with a great deal of chaos as everyone ran around frantically.
Their enemies were just as busy, and every time one of them began to feel tired, another reminded them of the effort that the Deepcorp was certainly making.
The stars turned overhead, the moon looked down upon a sleepless city, and slowly, things began to piece together.
When the sun finally rose, it found a busy and chaotic metropolis.
The Town Square was packed full of people long before the sunrise.
A large platform stood in the middle, right over the town well, where several Corp soldiers marched back and forth.
Zechariah and Janna stood there, shackled in dozens of chairs that glimmered with anti-magic fields.
From his post on a rooftop overlooking the courtyard, Danny could see civilians, Corp soldiers, and mages alike filling up the area.
"Do you think this will work?" Danny asked.
"Your guess is as good as mine," a soldier next to him murmured. "It looks like Anne is in place. I think we're good to go."
"And Master Barrydew knows the plan?"
"Yes." The soldier nodded. "And… Here comes the executioner. I think it's all starting to work together."
"Then let's get ready." Danny balled his hands into fists as the soldier ran off.
Margot walked up next to him and knelt down, peering out over the crowd carefully.
"I don't know about this." Her voice was soft.
"It's going to be okay," Danny assured her. "I promise."
"You can't promise anything," Margot scoffed. "And you know it."
"That's fair." Danny shrugged. "And yet… I feel it."
"I sure hope so." Margot shuddered. "I really do."
The crowd was thick as Captain Logan appeared, shoving his way along.
A huge man with an axe followed behind, snorting and knocking people aside as he came through.
As they did so, Danny watched the crowd. They fell deathly silent, and Anne slowly started to worm her way through the crowd.
She was dressed exactly like Barbara in her full witch attire.
Danny didn't love making someone look like something so evil, but… That was just what they had to do, sometimes.
Suddenly, someone caught hold of Anne's robes and spun her around.
The individual leaned in close and started whispering something, and Anne patted the person on the shoulder, then moved on.
"She's doing good." Margot commented. "Now, let's just hope that no one notices the mana crystals that she's placing on them all."
"Here's to that." Danny nodded.
Anne continued to worm her way around, looking for the world just like Barbara.
She moved on, Danny snapped his fingers, and the Nightingale of the Snow appeared.
He quickly hung a small necklace around its neck, and it flew away until it was far enough from him that he couldn't hear it, and started to sing.
With that, the noise was transmitted from the nightingale's throat down through the air, straight to the ear of the man that Anne had just tagged with an Audible Mana Crystal.
He shook his head, slapped his face, and then wearily walked over and sat down on a chair by a food stall, falling asleep within seconds.
"Just like magic," Danny whispered.
"It is magic," Margot countered.
Finally, Captain Logan and the executioner reached the platform.
Logan climbed up, speaking loudly.
"Men and women of the Imperial City! Today we come to exact justice upon a plot to destroy the Imperial Palace, the very fabric of the Empire itself! Today, we bring these two traitors to justice!"
"Traitor! Traitor!" Someone called out.
On cue, Anne changed direction and began to thread her way in that direction, and Danny smiled.
"Yes, indeed! A traitor to our realm! Down south, there was an outpost, a secret one, used for monitoring threats. It was destroyed by these two only yesterday, with a bomb that would have been used against our very own, beloved Emperor! Now, what should the punishment for such a crime be?"
"Death!" another voice called out.
Anne started walking in that direction next, even as one of the Corp soldiers leaned against a doorpost and slowly slid to the ground.
"Death, indeed!" Captain Logan turned to the executioner who started to stomp up the stairs. "Justice will be swift and-"
"Ahh, excuse me?" Zechariah cleared his throat. "Might I have a word?"
He seemed very calm and collected, and Captain Logan spun around.
For a few moments, he simply stared at Zechariah then nodded.
"Sure…speak, old man…"
"Well, I just want to say that there have been a great many accusations that have flown around this year." Zechariah walked forward a few steps. "The last time I was taken in for questioning, everyone thought that we were involved with a gang. We were cleared of that, but of course there was no public announcement of such a thing. Before that, everyone thought that Radiance Silver was murdering people."
"Which, I should point out, she's never been cleared of." Captain Logan smiled triumphantly.
"Except that she should be." Obadiah's voice boomed through the air.
Captain Logan spun around as Obadiah strode through the crowd, and mounted the platform.
Logan suddenly looked distinctly ill at ease, and Obadiah crossed his arms. "I was the one who killed those people, not her."
A murmur spread through the crowd, and Obadiah flashed a small smile. "And yes, I did it while I looked like a giant spider."
Everyone knew the rumors. Even most of the civilians had likely heard it over the course of the year.
Logan looked utterly perplexed, and he bit his lip.
"I…Well, I… You know…" Logan stuttered.
"Our point is simply that, with all the other misinformation, shouldn't we get an actual trial first?" Zechariah asked. "Death is just the tiniest bit irreversible, and I personally would rather not leave my son an orphan."
Logan was rapidly losing control of the situation, and he knew it.
He waved at the executioner who stomped up onto the platform and marched toward the two condemned mages.
At that moment, several mages started running through the crowd, shoving their way forward.
As Janna caught sight of them, they were thankfully fairly close and managed to stumble into their path.
They both bumped into her and continued but stumbled and fell after only a few feet further.
"Yes," Danny whispered.
Logan looked around the area at the silent crowd.
He had obviously been waiting for the mages to rise up in defense of their own, justifying his actions, but… All of them were silent.
That, of course, had been Master Barrydew's doing.
Danny saw several soldiers in the back, itching for combat.
Suddenly, one of them raised a weapon, pointing it straight at Obadiah's heart.
It was a crossbow.
It wasn't a magical one, it was just a simple crossbow, but that would be more than enough.
Danny snapped his fingers, and a goblin appeared behind the soldier, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him into a dark doorway.
There was a small crash in the distance, but nothing more happened.
As the executioner reached the two mages, he hefted the axe slightly, then slowly looked back and forth.
Obadiah didn't move. Zechariah and Janna didn't move. The entire square was perfectly silent, perfectly still.
"Oh, come on." The executioner turned and hurled his axe to the side. "You told me that I wouldn't have to actually kill anyone."
Logan turned white as the executioner turned around.
"This was a setup! This was nothing but a show. I mean, come on! We haven't done public executions in hundreds of years! This is a sham, this is-"
Snap! Snap-snap-snap!
Arrows suddenly filled the air, and Danny spun to see a small squad of soldiers standing in a side street.
They were all armed with crossbows and launched a flurry attack at the stage.
The executioner was hit twice, Logan took an arrow to the knee, and Zechariah took several.
The squad of soldiers turned to run but was taken down almost instantly… by other soldiers.
As Corp units dove on top of their comrades, driving them to the ground, Danny let out a gasp of relief.
