Men and women were visible working below, surrounded by the sputtering, bubbling, and sparkling paraphernalia of alchemists and artificers. The crackle and flare of spells being cast, subtle and overt, accompanied the work below, which seemed to be centered around various objects of magical nature and fairly unique appearances.
A poof of fire drew both their eyes over to where two large rubies were set up on tripods. A crackle of lightning to the second ruby followed a moment later, and the two men in red and brown armored robes conferred before writing notes down.
“The missing Crimson Stars,” the Mick verified under his breath to Princess Kristi. “That be a Sword of Soduku, a Crystal Sword, an’ some o’ the Weapons o’ the Fallen an’ the Bosses o’ Caul Island. I ain’t seen a Plaguefang Robe in near twenty years, nor a Staff of Gikar, or Atakir’s Dagger,” he murmured, pointing out each of the devices. “I think that be Lilitha’s Bow there, too. Hunter’s Leap were up around Cragstone and Holtburg...”
“They’ve been busy,” Princess Kristie Rantha purred in a voice which carried absolutely no further than his ear. “What say we steal all their hard-earned labor for ourselves?”
“Och, Highness, ye be so grimly ironic,” he replied, then directed her attention to a doorway which had just opened.
A tall woman with dark skin and tightly braided hair, on the surface a Gharu’ndim maga, had walked out of a room on the opposite side of the chamber, looking out over the work being done below with an expression of satisfaction on her face.
Lord Mick didn’t recognize her at all, but the very soft hiss from the Princess basically confirmed his guess. “Oh, Ryin would walk in and just waste this place to kill her, I think, but…” her finger pointed further off to the right.
The Mick shifted his dark gaze, and saw there was a flicker of motion from the light behind the woman. A voice called out, and she turned back to re-enter the room. The Mick saw two guards shift positions from where they’d stood unmoving against the stone walls, almost invisible themselves.
Zharalim, the scholar-assassins of the Gharu’ndim, and Nuhmudira’s favorite servants.
“They are undead,” the Princess stated in whispered confidence. “She’s been Animating her favorite servants.”
The Mick stared at them and their absolute motionlessness. Not even a sign of chests rising and falling to breathe, or the faintest stirring of cloth. Guards could be motionless, but they’d show some sign of life, even if it was the minutest shifts of position from blood pumping through their veins.
Undead scholar-assassins. Wonderful.
“There’s another set of stairs over in that direction, it’s why we went this way.” Kris flowed backwards. “We’re going to sit in that empty office there, which has the smell of absolutely nobody having gone into it for at least three days.”
“Those guards be in Raven colors, wearing dyed Shadow Amuli there.” Just a tilt of his head to point them out. “Aye, they be working with her. Ye think those doors lead t’ the inner island?”
“Would not be surprised. Let’s go and sink into the shadows for a few hours, until they decide to head out for the night, and then do some pilfering.”
Getting into the empty workroom was the work of seconds. The two simply ensconced themselves out of sight of anyone entering the doorway or glancing inside, sitting curled up and falling into quasi-meditative states.
The Mick was aware the Princess and Magos shared a strange bond of their own, so the Roaches were in fine hands and would find some way to keep busy.
He stepped into the shadows of his mind, a place easy to return to and a mindset he’d known all of his life, and settled down to wait.
------
“Up.”
There was no more sounds of conversation or motion outside. The Mick raised his head, exhaling softly, and let out all the stiffness from the hours of not moving drain out with it. He pushed himself to his feet with just a whisper of motion and effort, Princess Kristie already moving for the doorway.
Nothing living was moving in any of the chambers about, or the main room. Of course, the four undead guards, two by that door on the opposite wall and two down at the presumed exit to the surface, hadn't moved at all.
However, the psychic pressure from the magic he'd sensed was also no longer present.
“We need illusions of the room remaining undisturbed around those two sets of guards. Any problems with that?” Kris asked the Mick softly.
“None at all, lass,” he said with a small smile. He didn’t employ much of the combat magicks of the Matrix side, preferring the versatile and subtle stuff, letting Bunita take care of the violent side of things. Illusions and dimension-hopping stuff were his particular favorites, along with Cantrips to clean up his armor and clothes with a snap of his fingers.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Do it.”
The spell he needed was a simple one, Illusionary Wall. It did nothing more than sit there and look like a wall… or in this case, like an image of the space behind it at the moment it was set up. Used smartly it was an easy way to set up an ambush, as it could totally conceal anything on the other side of the Wall.
If you had a motionless sentry, it could also fuck around with the shite-heads who just sat at their posts. It would only last a few minutes, but how much time did the two of them need?
Kris was already sprinting downstairs as he wove the spell around the two sentries down by the exit. She was in the room below the vision of the two higher-posted guards before he got to the second spell, grabbing the objects all the alchemists and artificers down here had been working on, all their research notes, and maybe a few other objects of value or interest as applicable.
He raced after her in the quiet after he finished the second spell, down the stairs, around, and into the room like a streak of blackness. He swept his eyes over the nearest table, picking up the Aun-designed, Totem-powered Palenqual Tewhate there, an Axe of the Living Weapon Tradition which should only have been available on Marae Lassel with access to the old Shrine there.
So, they had access to Marae Lassel. Which was not unexpected at all.
The Axe and array of Totems vanished into his backpack. There were also a couple Explorer Weapons, as well as the old Assault Weapons supplied by the Virindi to the Hea. Many of the new versions were thrown before the Shrine to the Betrayed at Dryreach, but these were the old ones, with different methods used to make and empower them.
Gems, jewelry, special rewards... Gor, that were a Skeletonbane Infusion or he were an olthoi grub…
The two of them swept through the tables with speed and sure skill, making sure to grab all the paperwork. No need to replicate all the work already done for them, right?
He passed by Princess Kristie as she was opening up cupboards in the work tables and emptying them of some expensive reagents with aplomb, sweeping past her to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important. He only needed to grab a Barbed Fletching Tool that had been discarded to the side and looked unimportant, as well as some scattered rock and stone chunks.
There was still a minute left as they slid past the two undead Zharalim guarding the door out, sliding between the illusions in silence and shadowy ki reducing the air motion to virtually nil. Then they were heading down the corridor at a smoothly confident clip, not bothering to investigate the halls to the right of the complex.
The tunnel changed as they saw the faint light of stars ahead, looking more volcanic and not carved by hands or tools, although there were still signs of travel along it with armored shoes if you weren’t blind.
Also, four quietly seething Magma Golums ahead of them, guarding the corridor and making it look like something other than what it was.
The Mick flicked up a horizontal Illusionary Wall, rather than a vertical one, effectively removing the bottom of the corridor from the view of the golums. The two of them simply crouched down and skated right between the four golums, completely unnoticed by them. They glided right out the exit and around the side, out of sight of the Constructs standing patiently there.
The place beyond looked like lava had gone flowing in too many streams and directions, completely defying gravity as it crept up the hills and along the valleys there, slick and black and touched with Shadow. Weird crystalline protrusions erupted here and there where the blackness terminated, glowing virindi purple and pulsing with inner lights in an unclean beat. What vegetation was visible on the scarred landscape was all scrub and grasses before them, tortured rock swept by winds and fire dominating most of their vision.
Behind and above them rose the outer ring of the Singularity Caul, higher than all of the hills and mounts within it, save the very central ring of what had to have been a volcano to the north in the center of the island ahead of them. All the tracks of power and winding hills visible to them seemed to bend and twist in that direction.
-OUTSIDE AND MOVING WEST ALONG THE HILLSIDE,- Kris /tapped out along her Magebond, and received two taps back instantly.
“Always hated this place,” the Mick murmured, following along behind her as they easily lightfooted it over terrain normal climbers would have had to clamber awkwardly over. “Everything spawns in damn clusters o’ five an’ more, an’ were way too tough t’ kill in a reasonable amount o’ time. Not worth the time spent t’ fight here, an’ the pleasant scenery didn’t change that.”
Kris looked down at the hillside and valley below them, populated with scores of spawns visible to her, each with at least five creatures, reaching up to a dozen, and often situated very closely together.
It was a very weird mix of mutated creatures, such as mites over seven feet tall and twisted zefir, virindi Marionettes, Dolls, and Rifts, and creatures born of Shadow, such as powerful shades and at least three varieties of marguls. Carenzi sporting either disease or mutations, more massive slate-gray reedsharks of the Doomshark type, and even pus-dripping Rats in clusters all seemed more than capable of holding their own against the other spawns.
“Shadow and virindi infestation everywhere,” Kristie observed acerbically as they came to a sheer wall. Opting not to use magic, her nails drove into the basalt and she clawed for height with little physical effort, scrambling up the sheer stone like a spider. The Mick stuck to his Shadow mindset, and flowed up after her at a more controlled pace, using the handholds she was making for himself, exactly as intended.
A hundred feet above, Kris flipped effortlessly over the edge, and they were well and truly out of the line of sight of anything below, sitting on the rim of Caul Island.
The Mick came up a moment later, reaching up a hand to grab hers and was hauled right over the edge and to his feet in one effortless heave, spinning once to survey the top of the island once.
“Here they come,” he pointed out, and Princess Kristie turned around, seeing Ryin come over the outer rim with the Roaches on Disks in tow.
It didn’t take long for them all to link back up, touch contact dumping Visual Files and Markspace maps for everyone to update with and report what had happened.
“Magos, look at these.” Kristie pulled out four items only the Mick had seen outside of illustrations.
Ryin accepted them with glittering silver eyes. “Impressive. A Wand and an Orb of Black Fire… and with intact matrices, no less.” She lifted up the smooth pair of Casting Implements. “And a Crown and Ring, and Potion and Gem of Black Fire, as well. Looks like the full set. They really are resourceful if they dug out a full set of them…”
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