The Conciege
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(TLO) Chapter 142: Shroud Wraiths
🕑 Added 2024-02-01 11:09:49 +0000 UTCInside the building was utter chaos. Reia beasts filled it from the very entry so that Jonathan had been forced to slay the first beast on entry, cleaving it in two with a spear, the traditional weapon of house Darnesh.
While it was a mystery how the beasts had already ventured as far as the entrance but refused to go further, they kept their attention on the battle before them. The place was filled with the colorful rondo of varying affinities as the silvers they’d brought activated their skills in battle. There was the forest green of those on the path of the wind. Pale blue of those who leaned towards water. There was a silver mage who had skills that harnessed the power of green lightening. Jim was certain it was a mix of lightning and something else he could not deduce.
As their subordinates fought, killing beasts and advancing with an efficiency born of those who’d gone through enough battles together, Jim, Jonathan and Nikolai merely walked on. They activated none of their skills, and except from Jonathan’s instinctual slaying of the first beast, they didn’t face combat.
Their subordinates guided them up a flight of royal stairs with broken balustrades on both sides. Coupled with the raggedy remnants of what could’ve once been a royal velvet carpet this place screamed of once belonging to only the most important of persons.
At the top of the stairs Jonathan took lead. It was not a designated position neither was it a show of power. all three gold mages could see the reia in the air and followed the direction it was most dominant. Jonathan just so happened to be walking ahead of them.
They walked down a long hallway and came out to a high corridor. Here they saw the real chaos of the fissure nest.
Below them silver adventurers fought for their lives, overrun by countless shroud wraiths. Looking closely revealed variations of the beast they had not seen. Their undulating hair that covered their entire body, each strand as long as a foot, gave them the visage of ghosts at night. Their long clawed arms slashed and swiped at adventurers, cutting and slashing, bringing injuries and death.
Normally, they were enough of a strain to silver adventurers, but to have them in differing variations was a terror. There were a few that carried metal shields on their backs. Jim wondered how strong the simple massive shield would be when a silver adventurer struck it with a skill that rebounded of it. The wraith turned to the confused adventure and swung its hand. It drew a gash along the adventurer’s neck and she fell as lifelessly as the dead.
“Do you still think it was a good decision to leave an Iron with a team of Silver?” Jonathan asked beside him.
In Jim’s head he’d already begun drafting his report to the Monsignor. In it he would render his deepest apologies for his incompetence. He didn’t fear punishment, not really. He merely knew that now the path to Barony was one he would have to find on his own. What infinitesimal hope he’d had of being assisted by the seminary died with the silver adventurers below him.
Nikolai opened his mouth to say something when a shroud wraith picked up a discarded sword from the ground. It held it by the hilt and stared at it in what could only be assumed to be amusement. Then it turned its attention to a random adventurer.
“Is it trying to adapt?” Jim asked absently.
Every once in a while a humanoid reia beast displayed such tendencies. They were not necessarily as dangerous as it implied, but they became more dangerous than their counterparts.
“Kill that one,” Nikolai ordered.
A subordinate of his stepped forward with a rifle in hand and fired off a shot. The air cracked with the sound of the gunshot, halting everything for a moment shorter than it took to blink.
Then the armed wraith did something Jim had hoped it would not.
It blinked out of existence and the rifle bullet pierced the air where it had been. The beast appeared behind an adventurer and brought the sword down on him.
All three golds looked at each other. A soul beast adapting was a greater fear than a reia beast adapting. They commanded their team forward as another wraith teleported, blinking out of existence to avoid an adventurers attack.
Impatient, Jonathan vaulted over the railing in front of them. Jim followed immediately, landing loudly beside the quiet gold Lord. A moment after, Nikolai hit the ground with a force powerful enough to shake the ground.
Jim and Jonathan turned their gaze to the aging gold.
“What?” he complained. “I’m big boned.”
Jim shook his head and returned his attention to the battle in front of him. “Lord Darnesh, you brought your dilator as planned?”
Jonathan nodded.
“Good. Then we’ll leave this place to the rest of the team.” He tracked the path of the stronger reia to another pathway. He could sense at least one gold beast and a gold mage. “We’ll go for the fissure.”
A shroud wraith charged Nikolai as they walked forward and the government official gave it none of his attention. At gold, a silver beast couldn’t leave any lasting effect, especially with all the armor on him and the massive club resting over his shoulders.
The beast ran into his side and a loud bang echoed out of Nikolai. The beast was flung away with its hair ablaze. On the shoulder of the armor a rune lit up.
“I see the government’s runecaster still does a good armory job,” Jonathan complimented.
“He does,” Nikolai chuckled.
“And how much would one of those cost?” Jim asked as they moved, avoided by beasts attacking weaker opponents.
“I have no idea,” Nikolai answered with a smirk. “He runecast this one for me free of charge.”
Jonathan turned to him, surprised. “And how exactly did you get that stingy muck to do that?”
“Because that stingy muck is trying to date his sister,” Jonathan answered while they drew nearer to the path that would lead them to the gold reia beast.
“A Baron dating a Silver,” Jonathan mused. “How’ll that work.”
Nikolai shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. He should just keep the runecasting coming.”
Jim was about to utter something deprecating about the man’s care for his sister when a mage stumbled out of a door to their side.
He wore a pair of black trousers and a long sleeved shirt torn at the sleeves. A gun dangled from one waist along with the scabbard of a longsword. On his other hip was a sheathed katana. In his hand he held a familiar shortsword and a shawl masked his lower face.
His hair was disheveled and he had a manic look in his bloodshot eyes. In Jim’s eyes there was something wrong with the reia that oozed out of him. It was almost without color save the iron hue that all Iron mage reia possessed. But there was something tainted about it, something wrong. Struggling with the Iron was a dense hue of silver that looked horridly dense and disgusting. If reia had smell, he had a feeling what he looked at would make him gag.
Nikolai and Jonathan stopped beside him, staring at the boy with equally withheld disgust.
The boy turned his eyes and they met Jim’s. There was no recognition in those manic eyes, no humanity. The boy seemed an embodiment of one of his moniker: a broken mage.
Without turning his head from Jim, Seth flung his shortsword with a twitch of his shoulder. The blade scaled the distance and embedded itself in the chest of a shroud wraith. It fell to the ground screaming and clawing at its chest before death took it.
Two other wraiths turned to the boy and Nikolai turned an amused attention on them. They shrieked at the boy as if slighted by the death of one of their own and advanced on him.
Beside Jim, Jonathan waited, watched with the lazy interest only a gold could show in the midst of silver beasts. Nikolai’s attention had also returned to the boy. Like Jim, they were curious to see what would happen next.
Seth turned lazy eyes to both wraiths and took a stance Jim knew all too well. He would use the skill he called [Quick Strike] to face them. An Iron against a silver beast was an easy loss. Against two would be a well portioned decimation. But the state of the boy’s reia, Iron mixed with a corrupted silver, had them curious.
Seth’s hand went lazily to his hilt. He gripped it tightly, then drew. The katana came unsheathed and clattered to the ground.
Each of them watched the blade, stunned. Seth looked at it as well, confusion written over his empty face.
“Is he who I think he is?” Jonathan asked, quietly.
“I believe so,” Nikolai answered with a confused face.
The wraiths were drawing closer now. They’d paused when he’d reached for the sword, but had resumed their advances when it clattered to the ground.
They shrieked again in anger. Then the most confusing thing happened.
The ends of Seth’s hair rose slowly, undulated in the air, and he let out an unholy shriek much like the wraiths that pierced the air and sent the reia around him trembling.
It halted both shroud wraiths and confused Jim and his companions.
Then he teleported.
Comments
Rehoboth Okorie
dude clearly your path to barony was that of cliffhangers
