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Chapter 60: Noble Sacrifices
🕑 Added 2025-03-03 09:00:05 +0000 UTCThe initial action of the war occurred with the surface world none the wiser. Some of the rivers lost their flow as their opening to the oceans were blocked, but at the time, none on the surface knew the significance of the the river or the Great Plume they created.
Cedric Bospian. In The Last Dragon War, 1st ed.
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The room returned to darkness as the sphere rolled into the secret passage, but it was too late. The kobolds had already seen the orb and were determined to get it.
Below Kole saw the other team retreating, a very shiny yet not glowing sphere in hand. A grey mist surrounded the group, and judging by the kobolds writhing in pain beneath it, wasn't something Kole wanted to experience first-hand.
He had other concerns on his mind at the moment though as he ran towards the tunnel entrance. He heard the kobolds climbing the steps behind him and flicked his hand back, firing a Radiant Bolt without looking. From the sound of carnage behind him, his shot had found a target and the allure of a glowing kobold was enough to distract them from their frenzy—for a moment at least.
Kole made it to the tunnel just as Zale appeared back on the ledge. Doug covered their flight, and Kole spun around to see the kobolds were much faster than he thought. On instinct, Kole sent out a Thunderwave, sending the group flying into those coming behind. Half were slain outright by the conclusive blast, but the rest scrambled back to their feet and ran.
“Take it to the start!” Zale shouted. “I’ll stop them here!”
“No!” Kole said, his heart dropping from his chest as he considered her sacrifice—but then he remembered that this wasn’t actually—probably—life or death, and that she’d be whisked away to safety if she got too badly hurt.
“Will do!” Kole said, in a less panicked, much more confident tone.
Despite the situation, Zale laughed.
“I promise not to die,” she said, and then the kobolds were on her.
Rakin and Doug were ahead of Kole in the tunnel, Rakin had the sphere, and the light glowed from around the corner. When he got outside, Kole saw that the orb laying in the dirt at the bottom of the ziggurat, and Doug and Rakin were two levels down, jumping down to the third. They leapt off each edge, landing in a roll that Kole was certain he couldn’t pull off.
Instead, Kole got to the first edge, turned around and slid over it, releasing the edge and dropping only a few feet.
This is going to look so embarrassing in the replays, Kole thought, but wasn’t going to risk getting ejected from the match just so he could look cool.
It’d probably look ridiculous if I tried and failed.
Kole repeated the process twice more and sprinted towards the bridge. Across the way he saw Rakin and Doug waving their arms, and the words they’d been shouting to him finally registered.
“Traps!” they had been screaming.
Kole was halfway across the bridge by then and froze.
Ahead of him, Doug conjured an arrow to his hand and fired. Turning only his head, Kole saw that some goblins had come around from the front, and Doug had fired an ensnaring arrow at it. The roots were already constricting it and reaching to grab hold of its comrades. Doug kept up his fire, and Kole made a decision.
He was going to run.
If triggered a trap, he’d be out, but if he’d stood here, he’d be equally out.
He madly tried to remember the steps they’d taken in, but his heart was pounding in his head, making things like rational thought difficult. It occurred to him only when he heard the shifting of stone signaling he’d triggered a trap that he could have briefly entered his vault to review the memory in his spellbook.
Kole ran and felt the ground falling out beneath him.
“No!” Doug shouted.
Kole felt a tug at his soul. He sensed he could push back against it, bar the effect from taking hold but the sensation was recently familiar and didn’t feel malevolent. He let it take hold and his perspective shifted, but he was still falling and he felt a familiar nausea that was not from the descent. But the queasy belly was the least of his concerns. He’d been teleported, but not completely to safety. He was still falling—now however he was falling towards the ground fifteen feet below instead of a bottomless chasm.
While at first glance this situation was far better for Kole, looks could be deceiving. Falling into the chasm would have seen Kole teleported out to safety as soon as it’d become clear he wasn’t going to grab hold of an edge or cast a spell to save himself. He’d have no such luck here.
He landed hard and felt excruciating pain as a bone in his leg broke. Kole cried out in pain, but the sound of his own voice was lost as parts of the bridge continued to fall.
Doug stood over Kole, firing arrows at the last kobolds on the other side of the bridge.
“Go without me!” Kole told them. “I’ll be fine. Finish the game, I'll take care of any that make it past Zale.”
They didn’t argue. Rakin gave Kole a supportive slap on the back, which caused him to shift on his leg and wince in pain, and then they were off.
Another kobold came out of the front, crawling over the dead until it reached the bridge. It stopped, examining the bridge briefly before leaping from safe spot to safe spot.
Kole cast Shatter.
His whistle echoed off the walls of the cavern, the sound building on itself until Kole thought his head would burst. Kole weathered it, but the kobold not as much. Its scream was lost to the echoes, and it collapsed. But the effect of the spell didn’t end there, the platform it had been standing on had fallen into the chasm with it. A large section of the bridge was gone, the sound of collapsing stone seeming quite after the piercing whistle.
It was then Kole had a great idea, one that made up for his previous fumble in forgetting to review the traps in his mind. He dove into his mental vault, quickly reviewing the bridge’s original appearance from his first crossing.
Holding the image in his mind, Kole entered the Arcane Realm with a sorcerous splinter of his mind and began to harness the Font of Illusions following instincts just beyond his comprehension.
When the time came to picture the form the Illusion should take, Kole didn’t even need to try. As soon as he tried to recall the details of the bridge, the image sprung from his memory and the spell completed.
It all happened so quickly and with so little effort he thought it’d failed. But back in the Material Realm he opened his eyes to see the bridge, complete and whole once more.
Just in time too, as the kobolds poured out of the secret tunnel on the third layer. They threw themselves down the levels of structure, their small bodies handling the fall better than Kole’s had his own. They came in a wave, moving far faster than Kole thought possible. When they saw Kole, the clicking chatter they emitted increased, echoing off the caverns, giving the illusion Kole was surrounded by thousands of the creatures.
But Kole had illusions of his own. The lead kobolds didn’t hesitate, leaping to the first ‘safe’ tile of the bridge, where they fell through and disappeared into the depths. Those behind it didn’t notice, as the ones leaping ahead blocked their view. They fell as well, unnoticed by the majority of the horde.
There had been more than one safe path however, and some made their first leap, but they were not as lucky with their second. It took until half their number were gone for the shiny crazed feralkin to realize they should stop. But by then they were all nicely grouped up for Kole.
Exhausting the last of his Will, he cast Shatter once more, the illusion vanishing with the spell’s completion. Once more the cavern reverberated with a high-pitched whistle, quickly followed by the sound of the rest of the bridge collapsing into the chasm.
And once more, Kole felt his surroundings shift, bringing him to a familiar dimly lit room—now not dim at all thanks to his dark vision.
The teleportation spell shifted his weight onto his broken leg, and he had only a moment to wonder why this teleportation magic didn’t make him nauseous before the pain coupled with his Will drain caused him to pass out.
