Soul Script (Chronicles of Valmaron Book 1), page 31
“You valley people have always thought so small,” said Zen Daaz. “Alright Jaron, I’ll bite.”
“Keep him talking,” Valara whispered behind him.
“I never needed you or the Slicer, that was misdirection to get you focused on the wrong things. And now you’ve brought me the right things: an unconscious Soul Codex, and the Mind of Vaelonn.”
“What are you talking about? What mind?” asked Jaron.
“Her mind.” Zen Daaz pointed at Devari. “She carries the Mind of Vaelonn, just as I possess his Eyes. And the Hex contains his essence. Soon I will have the Voice, and Chloe’s unborn Codex with which to place them in.”
Chloe gasped in horror. Zen Daaz giggled.
“You thought I didn’t know? Oh please, give me some credit. I didn’t spend so much time making that seductive nightwear just so it could go to waste! With these eyes, I knew the moment you conceived.”
Jaron felt his rage boiling. “So it was never Ash’s job to get the Codex, you were just toying with me. Why go through the trouble when you could’ve taken it all yourself?”
“Once again thinking so small,” Zen Daaz chided. “The Soul Codex has protections, protections that only you can waive. I needed you to come here voluntarily, so that Vaelonn can rise in physical form. Ash fulfilled her function adequately.”
“You’re going to kill Vaelonn?” Princess Valara’s voice shuddered.
“No,” Zen Daaz slowly shook his head. “I will succeed where Lord Buun failed. I’m going to become Vaelonn.”
“Not without this,” said Devari.
Zen Daaz looked down at his empty hand, and then over at the group. When Jaron turned to see Devari, she was holding the Hex on her palm. She winked at him.
“That’s inconvenient,” Zen Daaz sighed and held his head low. “Bring the girls, kill the rest.”
He vanished into a mass of fog and flew away. The Praetorian Guards lifted their heads, raised their spears, and charged at Jaron and his entourage.
CHAPTER 71
“Protect Devari!” Sephaeus shouted while moving to the front and swinging his great-sword across, sending an arc of golden light into the group of Praetorian Guards.
The guards were all struck in the chest, knocking them off their feet while tearing portions of armor off their breastplates. They clumsily got back up as a blue shield wall from Esmerelda kept the guards at bay. The guards thrusted their spears into the shield, boring holes through it and dissolving the surrounding aether.
“That should’ve finished them,” Sephaeus snarled. “Their equipment is Miasmic, don’t touch it!”
“Sephaeus, fall back!” Jaron warned. “Support Valara!”
Devari moved behind Princess Valara, who summoned a blue bubble shield around them. Esmerelda and Chloe floated up and hovered in the air while Trixie and the Dirty Dozen manifested green staffs of solid aether. The Two Terrors began glowing gold, thrust their splayed fingers forward and cast golden beams onto each member of the Dirty Dozen. It imbued them with a golden outline and fortified their staffs. Trixie looked up in astonishment.
“Gold aether?” Trixie smiled and shook her head. “You two really have to be the best at everything don’t you?”
The Dirty Dozen roared like Tolians and charged forward as the Praetorian Guards broke through the barricade. Jaron blitzed up the middle and cut through the spear of the lead attacker. He cut across and incised the guard’s chest armor, creating an opening.
Jaron ducked down as Sephaeus threw a mighty golden lance which impaled the guard and flooded it with golden aether, obliterating it from the inside and reducing it to a pile of disjointed armor. Another guard lunged with his staff. Jaron stepped aside, caught it with his left hand and then spun into a wide cut that removed his attacker’s head.
The Dirty Dozen engaged them at melee range, using their aether staffs to lock and parry the spears the guards were using. Esmerelda summoned shield boxes to isolate individual guards, buying time for the Casters on the ground to whittle down individual units.
Sparks of aether burst out from where their staffs made contact, chipping away at both the armor and the aether constructs. Sephaeus hurled aether lances to finish off the vulnerable Praetorian Guards. The Dirty Dozen used techniques Jaron had seen from Tolian soldiers. They’d been training too. Jaron corralled the flank as they broke their individual containment boxes, stabbing them repeatedly through the bottleneck with the Slicer and cutting off the tips of their spears.
The Praetorian Guards kept coming, and their scattered bodies were making it difficult for the Casters to move freely. Sephaeus summoned a large lance and tossed it straight over the group, lighting the massive hallway to reveal a horde of more guards filling the entire corridor.
The lance broke into several fragments and rained down on them, exploding into golden spires of aether with a ‘boom’. The shockwave staggered the relentless onslaught, forcing Jaron to throw the Slicer into the crowd and take down a straight line of guards that quickly refilled with new assailants. The Casters slowed down as their bottle neck began widening. They were getting tired and were about to be overrun while the Two Terrors focused on shielding.
The Slicer returned to Jaron’s hand as a spearhead pierced through a shield box, scratched past a Caster’s crystal and ran her through. She went down with an agonizing cry as her necklace became nullified.
“Leeta!” Trixia called out, who paid for the distraction by being grazed on the shoulder with a spear. She grabbed it with her hand and then turned her aether staff into a pike trying to return the favor. It drilled into the guard’s armor but didn’t penetrate. Jaron’s body erupted into a haze of yellow and red aether, throwing the Slicer to remove her opponent’s arms. Sephaeus finished off what was left by blitzing forward and punching it into the crowd.
“Punish them!” Trixia shouted.
Her entire squad compressed their staffs into yellow aether and blasted a tall wall of it forward. Every Praetorian Guard was struck by the wave, staggering back as pieces of their armor chipped off. The Dirty Dozen pressed the assault with a rapid spray of red aether, mowing down the first line like Blam-Buckets. Groups of guards started throwing their spears, forcing the Two Terrors to parry them with bursts of yellow splashes. This was too close quarters, they needed an opening for the Sentinel Commander to cut loose.
“Trixia, make me lighter!” Jaron shouted.
She touched her wound before nodding and cast an orange glow onto his boots. Jaron ran forward and jumped extraordinarily high. He landed on a wall and ran along it, sailing past the Praetorian Guards and blocking their spear throws with the Chaser Bracer.
“I’ve had enough,” Jaron seethed. “You will fall, now!”
He kicked off the wall and brought the point of the Slicer into the ground, spewing dense yellow and red aether in every direction. It bolted from enemy to enemy, blasting openings into their armor as Esmerelda and Chloe encased his exposed body in a golden aura. Jaron spun around and cut as hard he could, severing legs and then jumping back up into the air. He blitzed down the rest of the corridor and landed behind them. The Slicer was thrown into the crowd immediately upon landing, being recalled and relaunched repeatedly like a yo-yo. Guard after guard was cut down in a matter of seconds. That got their attention.
“Sephaeus!” he shouted. “I need a big ‘boom’!”
Jaron held the Chaser Bracer in front of him, and then dropped down to one knee. The guards abandoned the Casters and prioritized him, surrounding him in seconds. Jaron narrowed his eyes and then touched the Chaser Bracer to the floor beneath him.
“You won’t get close,” Jaron said quietly.
An explosion of golden light swallowed him from below, incinerating the entire Praetorian horde before their spears reached him. The Chaser Bracer protected him entirely, buckling against the force of the Sentinel Commander’s attack. Smoking bodies along with flecks of aether fell like petals in the aftermath. Jaron surveyed the scene, finding only defeated enemies occupying the area. He carefully stepped over them and walked back to the group. Trixia mended her cut by tying a torn piece of her sleeve over it. Esmerelda and Chloe landed majestically while Princess Valara dropped her shield.
Sephaeus walked to one of the bodies and knelt down, looking over his fallen former comrade.
“Who’s hurt?” asked Jaron as the orange glow faded from his boots.
Leeta’s upper body was cradled by another Caster, who looked around in a panic. Jaron quickly tapped his buckle, inflated the satchel and took some of Mudmaster Hattie’s berries out. He fed them to her and she chewed eagerly.
“That’ll make you better, but it’ll take a while to work through the rest of your body,” Jaron stood up and looked at Trixia. “She’ll be alright, but she can’t fight like this.”
Another Caster helped the wounded Leeta to her feet, serving as her support. Sephaeus stood up and clenched his gauntlet fist.
“Zen Daaz has committed a grave offense,” Sephaeus turned around. “And I will punish him personally.”
CHAPTER 72
Esmerelda cast a light orb to follow the group overhead while they moved through the armory level. The nearby Caster barracks were completely empty as Jaron took point and glanced into each door checking for enemies. Sephaeus brought up the rear, the Dirty Dozen circled around Princess Valara and Devari, while the Two Terrors remained airborne.
“That has to use a lot of aether. How long can they keep that up?” Trixia asked Jaron.
“I don’t know their limits,” Jaron replied as he looked toward them. “Are you two alright up there?”
“I’m alright,” said Chloe.
“This is nothing,” Esmerelda answered.
Sephaeus grumbled loudly. “You’ll need to come down soon. Your Casting will be stronger when you aren’t dividing your concentration.”
Esmerelda and Chloe acquiesced and floated back down next to Valara.
They reached a room that branched into three directions. Two led to more barracks, the one ahead led to Quartz’s armory beyond the study hall.
“Hold position!” Sephaeus stopped and lifted his great-sword up. “There’s something here.”
Devari clutched onto Valara tightly, while Esmerelda and Chloe gained golden outlines over their bodies. Something heavy took a step. Thud. It came from the left hall. Another one came from the right. Thud. The steps got closer, slowly. Deliberately.
“Get to the study hall! Run!” Jaron commanded.
Before anybody could move, something large came into view down the hallway in front. They were boxed in.
“Lights!” Sephaeus shouted.
Every Caster pointed up and flicked a flare of yellow light into the space above them, illuminating the passageways. Three Cyclopses, one in each hall, created from Miasmic metal.
“Oh my…what are those?” Trixia buckled in terror while the Casters started murmuring amongst themselves.
“Cyclopses,” said Esmerelda.
“So that’s what they look like,” said Sephaeus.
“No. The last one was made from mud and rocks, these are worse,” said Esmerelda.
“What do we do?” asked Princess Valara.
“We can’t fight them in here,” said Jaron. “Sephaeus, I need your help to move the group. They can’t turn worth a damn. We go forward and cut between its legs. Fight them one at a time with more space. Can you do it?”
Sephaeus nodded.
“Esmerelda. Chloe. I need the strongest shields you can put around us,” Jaron turned to Trixia. “I need you and your Casters to harden the shield in front of us. I’ll supply the aether.”
“It’ll be done,” said Trixia.
“Sephaeus, on two!” Jaron summoned golden aether simultaneously with the Sentinel Commander. “One.”
The aether formed a spinning bubble around the entire group.
“Two,” Sephaeus finished.
Everyone blitzed down the forward corridor as one. They struck the blocking Cyclops and blasted its legs apart on their way in. The mangled creature fell down, partially obstructing the corridor behind them. The blitz ended in the study hall, where everyone jerked forward as it came to an abrupt stop.
“About face!” Sephaeus shouted.
The group all turned around, with Princess Valara and Devari falling behind the line of Casters. Jaron switched position to join up with Sephaeus as the injured Cyclops started stirring.
“We’ll have to do a lot of damage at once to finish it at once,” said Jaron.
“A War Wagon through the chest worked well enough last time,” Esmerelda added.
“Then I will run them all through,” said Sephaeus, who pointed his great-sword up toward the high ceiling.
Golden aether began swirling into a sphere above the Sentinel Commander, lightly disturbing the air around it. It swelled until it couldn’t grow any larger without touching the ceiling. The fallen Cyclops got back to its feet, right in front of the other two. Sephaeus lowered his great-sword and pointed it at the encroaching creatures.
Thoooom! The sphere discharged itself into a great beam that forced everyone else to cover their eyes. A loud and deep vibration shook the entire hall followed by a concussive shockwave.
The bright flash faded, and every Cyclops stood with an entire section of its body blasted off in the aftermath. The one in front was reduced to a husk on the floor. The other two plunged their heads into the remains of the first, melding their bodies into one.
“Can’t you hit them with something stronger?” asked Jaron.
“Not without taking this whole room with it,” said Sephaeus.
“Help him out ladies!” Trixia ordered her squad.
The Casters all sent repeating streaks of red into the transforming Cyclops, exploding on contact. Esmerelda and Chloe followed up with the same maneuver, except they blended red and gold aether together. The mass rumbled from the impacts as Miasmic matter chipped away from it, causing the surrounding room surfaces to begin warping. The floor was becoming unstable from their combined attacks.
“Hold!” Sephaeus called out.
The attacks stopped, and the formation suddenly stood on eight legs with a single body mass. Its legs ended with three large claws each, and the three eyes from each Cyclops formed in a triangle arrangement on the head. It was now a kind of Tri-clops arachnid. Devari yelped in fright as it moved into the study hall, stretching its massive legs toward them.
CHAPTER 73
Jaron stepped ahead of the group and tapped the Slicer against the Chaser Bracer. “I need everyone to slow it down and keep behind me!”
A spider foot came down and Jaron immediately threw the Slicer at it. It spun fast and went through part of the leg, came back and went through the remainder which severed it. The leg slid off the foot stump and the Tri-clops stumbled but did not fall.
“Snare it!” Trixia shouted.
The Slicer returned to Jaron’s hand as he turned to see the Dirty Dozen get down on their knees and touch their fingertips to the ground. A sheen of green aether spread from their hands and traveled along the floor, binding to the giant spider’s feet like glue and rooting them in place.
“Chloe!” Esmerelda called to her, and they shared a nod.
The Two Terrors flew up into the air and then aimed their underhanded palms at the spider’s head, launching green gobs of aether that stuck onto its eyes and blinded it.
“Spellcraft, now!” Sephaeus shouted.
Princess Valara summoned a shield between Jaron and everyone else. The Tri-clops struggled against the green aether, eroding it. Jaron raised his arm and held the Slicer aloft with a smirk. He only had one thing to say.
“I hate spiders.”
He cut down and all the stored force in the Chaser Bracer flowed out of the Slicer in a rippling cascade of raw force. The giant spider moved sideways and was struck through every leg on its right, severing them from its body. The main body crashed down onto the floor, crushing tables and splintering the wood on contact. The Slicer came back to Jaron’s hand to the cheers of the Dirty Dozen. The Sentinel Commander held up a hand and summoned a second great-sword, wielding one in each.
“It’s not done,” said Sephaeus as he brought up a glow of gold aether around him.
The Tri-clops wrested around and pulled one of its intact legs free, swinging it across and smacking Sephaeus in the side. The Sentinel Commander went flying. Everyone else backed away but the spider’s legs extended and it impaled a Caster with its claws before discarding her like a broken doll.
“No!” Trixia cried out as Jaron jumped in the way of the next swing.
He blocked its arm with the Chaser Bracer and then used the energy to chop that leg off. Sephaeus jumped back into the fray and blitzed at the blinded arachnid, bringing both great-swords across like scissors and removing another leg. The spider went completely down, thrashing about while the wounded Caster was dragged away. Her body was brought behind the main line, and Jaron came to check on her while Sephaeus engaged the Tri-clops.
“She’s gone,” said Trixia.
The other Casters had tears in their eyes, while Esmerelda looked furious. Chloe was beginning to hyperventilate. Princess Valara held Devari’s head against her chest, facing the girl’s face away from the violence.
“Valara,” Jaron looked at her with a firm glare. “Take Devari into the alcove. Bring Trixia and her Casters with you.”
“There might be something waiting for us in there,” Valara trembled.
“Take this,” Jaron handed her the Slicer. “I’ll be right behind you.”
He turned to see the Tri-clops sprouting Miasmic matter from its stumps and reconnecting to its legs. Every time Sephaeus managed to cut one, another one re-attached.
“Sephaeus, get back!” Jaron shouted before turning to the Two Terrors. “I need you keep that thing as still as you can for just one second.”
They nodded as Sephaeus blitzed to Jaron.
“Trixy, go,” said Esmerelda.
