Dire Circumstances
POV: Illrune, Younger Son of the Abascal Crime Family, On the Precipice of Glory
Illrune chewed absently at the corner of his thumbnail, his teeth gnawing until the flesh turned raw. He didn't notice the sting. Not truly, anyway. The pain was background noise, like the whispering winds that swept through the sparse gray pines clinging to the rock-choked foothills of Mount Alkazab.
His men milled about on edge, casting frequent glances up the ridgeline toward the path they'd slid down not an hour earlier. Now they waited, a mismatched collection of unfortune souls wrapped in stained leathers and even more stained loyalties. Pirphal had used his Sending Spell to send word to the others they had left behind before they started their ascent up the mountain. The carriages were en route. Greed awaited. And so did his father's judgment.
Illrune hated waiting.
He flicked his nail shard into the grass and glanced over at the two humans lying prone, curled near the base of a large, flat-topped stone. They were trussed up like hogs, coiled in black, rune-etched chains that writhed occasionally with soft metallic clicks. The girl's skin—what little wasn't hidden by battered armor—had a pale, sickly tinge. The gunman lay still as death, only the slight twitch of his fingers betraying the fact that he hadn't quite joined it.
Illrune should have died back at the dragon's nest.
He felt a cold sweat break along the back of his neck just remembering it. The human had come within two steps of him, weapon drawn and ready to fire, before Dain had swept in like some shadow out of a children's tale and driven a blade into the man's chest. Fast, efficient, and silent. Dain was always silent.
Dain, he thought bitterly, the name tasting like ash. Why did he save me?
That question had weighed heavily on Illrune's mind since the skirmish at the nest. He couldn't imagine it was because Dain wanted to, out of the kindness of his heart. Ever since Illrune knew that man, he hadn't seen a drop of selflessness. There was surely some ulterior motive. The elf had been climbing the ladder of the Abascal Family ever since he had joined the family's employ. Perhaps father would be upset if I died here after all, he thought bitterly.
He shifted on his stone perch and tugged his robes tighter. The heat from the battle had long since fled, replaced with the creeping cold of mountain shadow. He watched as Fylson—stupid, eager Fylson—hunched near the base of the stone, trying to recarve a glyph into a palm-sized stone that had already failed twice.
"Overcompensating again, idiot," Illrune muttered under his breath, observing the attempt. Not only was Fylson's glyph-work sloppy, his mana control was like a toddler with a dinner knife—dangerous, loud, and likely to end with someone losing a finger.
After the fight had ended, Illrune commanded Flyson to conjur chains to bind the two humans. The idiot had conjured far too many chains, nearly draining himself dry in the process. Once the dolt commanded the chains to snake themselves around the two humans, Illrune handled the rest of it himself, using several curses. Fortunately, the classics worked just fine here.
Curse of Enervation.
Curse of Life Drain.
Curse of Mana Poison.
These were basic curses he had learned early in his magical education, though he had quickly abandoned any focus on curse-craft. Curses had little application in actual combat, though knowing enough to be dangerous proved useful in interrogations. And to keep captured humans strong enough to kill two Storm Dragons incapacitated, apparently.
Illrune glanced at the girl again. She had a scar running up her neck now—fresh, red, angry. Probably dragon lightning. That thought alone sent a shiver up his spine. She was practically unscathed all things considered. The others couldn't believe these strange human outworlders had actually killed an Adult Storm Dragon and its offspring. But what was there to believe? They all saw the corpses with their own eyes.
How in the ever-loving Abyss…?
The girl had clearly been running on fumes, barely mobile when they'd caught her. But the man—the gunman—he'd fought with ferocity. Wild and desperate, like someone who didn't realize he was supposed to be losing. If Dain hadn't intervened when he did, Illrune might not be here, nursing his nerves. Might be worm food halfway up the ridge.
He swallowed that thought.
"Pirphal," Illrune snapped, not looking.
A portly elf in dirty robes stepped closer from the shadows, still chewing the last of a mana cracker.
"Yes, sir?"
"Carriages?" Illrune asked. "Status."
"En route. Within the hour, I imagine," Pirphal said, wiping crumbs from his lips. "I sent them the coordinates just after we touched down. The point where we started our climb isn't too far from here."
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Good," Illrune said, exhaling. "Once they're here, we move immediately. No delays. I want these… curiosities delivered before sundown tomorrow."
The elf gave a nod and turned back into the gloom. Illrune leaned back and looked toward the dark silhouette of Mount Alkazab, now a jagged void against late afternoon light. He remembered the mother dragon's corpse. The thing had already begun to smoke when they reached it. Its massive form collapsing into its own aether. The core was gone—burned up most likely. Nothing left but the acrid tang of dying mana and broken scales.
The humans were able to harvest the wyrmling's core before the corpse and free radical mana dissolved it into nothingness. The core was a rare magical item. Even a wyrmling's was extremely powerful. It was an unexpected boon. They were lucky.
And luck, in the Abascal family, was just a different kind of currency. The core now sat on one of the thick slabs of earth that Illrune had summoned to speed their transport down the mountain to the rendezvous point.
Illrune continue to gnaw at his fingertips. His nail cracked audibly between his molars and he winced as iron-tanged blood hit his tongue. He spat the shard aside and jammed his thumb into his cloak to keep from doing it again.
Behind him, bootsteps crunched gravel, light as mist and twice as cold. He didn't need to look and see who it was.
"What's on your mind?" came Dain's voice, sharp and smooth, like a blade dragged across silk.
Illrune sniffed. "The mage."
Dain stepped up beside him, barely making a sound, as always. He stood like a statue carved from shadow, expression unreadable beneath his angular features and heavy hood. His eyes, though—dead things—turned toward the two prone forms chained at the edge of camp.
"The girl or the gunman?" Dain asked.
Illrune shook his head. "No. The third. The one I first ran into back in La Galcia. Another human. A mage. Didn't show up again during the fight with these two. He's still out there. Somewhere."
He didn't say it aloud, but the absence nagged at him. Why wasn't he with the others? There were no signs of his corpse either. Perhaps he had fled at the presence of the dragons? Leaving his allies behind to fend for themselves. That wouldn't surprise Illrune. The human had proven himself cowardly back in the city, too. Still… Something didn't sit right in Illrune's mind.
"And what about this mage?" Dain asked.
Illrune nodded slowly, absently, casting his eyes skyward, toward the mountain's peak.
"He wasn't normal," he said, voice tight. "I underestimated him. I won't again."
Dain tilted his head, curious. "Think you'll cross paths again?"
Illrune smirked, just a little, teeth still bloodstained. "I think so."
He turned toward Dain, cloak swaying like a curtain in a draft.
"Back in the city," Illrune said, "I cast a spell on him that would cut off the magic of any other mage. It didn't work. And the way his spells… behave. It's very… odd."
Dain raised a brow. "Odd? How so?" He crossed his arms.
"My theory?" Illrune said, licking his lips. "He doesn't use mana. At least, not the normal kind. I think he uses… something else. Perhaps his body's own vital energy. Like those weird blood zealots from the south."
Dain's eyes narrowed slightly. "Burning your body to cast spells? That sounds suicide."
Illrune simply shrugged.
Dain was silent for a long moment, then looked back toward the mountain.
"You plan to face him again," he said at last.
Illrune's smirk widened.
"No," he said. "But I'm planning for when he comes for me."
POV: Joseph Sullivan, Confused Hero
"Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit."
I'm already moving before the words leave my mouth, pulling open my larger [Map] interface and praying I misread something. But no, I didn't. The image flares hot against my retina again, two blinking red dots—Clyde and Veronica—pulsing at the edge of the map like emergency flares.
"They're in trouble," I say, heart pounding. "Jelly Boy, I don't know what happened, but Clyde and Veronica are both at zero HP. They're—" My voice cuts off, throat tight. I don't need to finish. Jelly Boy lets out a righteous, furious buzz, like a wasp nest got jammed in a microwave and hit 'popcorn mode.'
The three slimes behind us—Tom, Jax, and the other Tom—jerk into motion like a trio of flan people trying to form a conga line for the first time. One of them trips over a half-buried scale the size of a serving tray, faceplanting into the ash and then apologizing to the scale. The second Tom picks him up while the first Tom salutes me. Or maybe it's the other way around. I don't know. They're identical blobs of blue gelatinous energy.
The dragon nest looks even worse than I remember. The corpses of mother and child are still here, but the steam coming off the mother's body has intensified. Sizzling, bubbling, like the inside of a pressure cooker left for too long and about five seconds before it turns the kitchen into an abstract expressionist painting.
I scan the area. The entire nest is a mess of carnage and destruction. Which is exactly how I'd left it when I went after Jelly Boy. I circle the headless corpse of the mother Storm Dragon. Something has my [Perception] freaking out. There's more here than just the aftermath of our own storm-charged death ballet. I know it. And then I see it.
Chains. Shiny, metallic, glinting under the haze and piles of Storm Essence dust. The coils of dark metal are covered by settled ebony dust. Had I missed those before? There's no way, I think as I stumble forward.
I kneel next to them, pulling them up from the floor of the nest. I examine them a little more closely, my fingers brushing against the links. They hum faintly with residual magic, triggering a sensation within my core. I expect a helpful System message to pop up and give me some answers. Unfortunately, I'm only met with a series of impressions. Cold, binding, parasitic. My fingers tingle. I don't know what it is, but these were used recently. And there's no reason to bind two corpses. A kernel of hope sprung to life in my chest.
"Someone took them," I mutter. "And fast. No way they moved that far on foot."
Jelly Boy flops beside me, his normally cheerful squelch sounding angry now. Even he senses it. His gooey surface ripples like something angry and caffeinated lives just below the surface. He buzzes again and peers into the distance, in the direction of Clyde and Veronica, I realize.
"We need to move, and fast," I say.
I clench my fists and stare at the minimap in my interface. They're too far. Way too far. I have no idea how the hell they moved that far that quickly. Whoever—or whatever—has them can't be human. Perhaps there were speedy, mountain traversing beetles in this world? It didn't matter. The only question now was how that hell was I supposed to get to them fast enough?
I turn slowly, eyes drifting from the chains… to the three humanoid-shaped slimes… and then to the dragon's massive corpse.
Steam rises from its body like a series of smoke signals. The three slime guards are buzzing in the approximation of a conversation. One—Jax, I think—slaps one of the Toms. A thought strikes me. An idea. A stupid, reckless, there-is-no-way-in-hell-this-works idea.
"Jelly Boy," I say slowly, turning toward my slimy best friend. "I have an idea I'd like to try."
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