Blessed Time: The Complete Series: (A LitRPG Adventure Box Set), page 98
“I have business inside,” he answered with an apologetic shrug. “Say, do you mind letting me know why the ruling council doesn’t want people getting out of the city? That doesn’t seem like an ordinary edict to me.”
“Probably to keep people from spreading the news that we aren’t letting folks leave?” the guard mused. “Might be about how rough the supply lines are getting. If another city-state found out, we’d probably lose all of our resource colonies within the next month or so.”
“Jessica!” the male guard on the battlements shouted down. “Quit your jawing and let ‘em in. The rules are in place to prevent information leaks. They don’t do much good if you just stand there leaking all of Jakint’s secrets to every stranger that wanders by.”
The woman stepped to the side, her exasperated partner joining her. As Micah and Leeka walked past her, Jessica shot both of them a smile before continuing their conversation.
“There you have it. Once you’re inside, you’re inside. Can’t have anyone other than me gossiping and blabbing all of our secrets.”
Then they were inside the city. A cordon of guards, their pikes locked together and keeping a crowd of citizens at bay, surrounded the gateway.
Almost immediately, Micah had to dodge to the side as a glob of excrement was thrown over the wall of soldiers, splattering onto the paving stones of the main entrance. His nose twitched as the smell of the feces combined with the general scent of unwashed bodies, woodsmoke, and desperation that filled the city.
The mob surged, finally noticing that the gate had been cracked open. Metal clanked along the left wing of the guard formation as the defenders snapped into position. Moments later, the thrum of the crowd was replaced by screams as their charge was dashed upon the well-trained steel curtain of spears.
“That isn’t…” Leeka began, only to trail off. She frowned as she watched a man in a ragged cloak drag another man with a chest wound back into the mass of rioters.
“Don’t look at it,” Micah said quietly, putting a hand on her wrist as he began to cast flight. “When people get desperate, this is what happens. It’s almost impossible to stop from the outside. All we can do is get out of here and hope that they manage to tire themselves out before something awful happens.”
“But,” she croaked, her voice barely audible over the swelling anger of the crowd, “someone might die, Micah. If we leave things like this, those guards are going to kill some of the civilians. Look at them—most of that crowd is forgotten. They can’t even defend themselves.”
“Don’t worry,” Micah replied, casting flight on himself. “The forgotten of Jakint can defend themselves. A bit too well actually. If this comes to blows, I’m not sure that my attunement is on the guards, and if that were to happen, things wouldn’t be safe for any blessed.”
Leeka swiveled her head to squint at Micah, her face struggling as she tried to process the scene outside the gates.
“Come on,” he chided her, tapping the side of Leeka’s face to grab her attention. “I’ve cast flight on you. In a second we’re going to take off. I know where a Chorus safehouse is. Follow me and we’ll be in and out before they even know what’s happening.”
“What in the name of the Sixteen is—” she began, only to be interrupted by Micah launching himself into the air and zipping over the tumultuous crowd. “Hey, wait!”
Micah wove in between Jakint’s many rooftops, keeping his pace just slow enough that Leeka could catch up. Under him, the roofs zipped by, transitioning from fired clay to thatch as they traveled away from the city’s richer quarters and toward the rundown forgotten district. No matter where Micah went, the only constant was a lack of activity. Chimneys produced no smoke, and the handful of people occupying the streets walked quickly and with their heads down, trying to avoid any untoward attention.
Leeka pulled even with him, wind whipping at her hair and sending the terrified Jakaw jerking back and forth as it clung to her braid. She scowled at him, shouting to be heard over the tumult of their passage.
“Don’t you think that we could have found a less flashy way to travel? Given how the guards were acting, this seems like the sort of stunt that will get us put on posters. You know, the kind with rewards listed below our pictures.”
“No time,” Micah yelled back. “Plus, it’s not like the City Guard will want to be friends with us once we break out of Jakint. Maybe we can soften the blow by cleaning up the Dread Chorus den where everyone is being held, but—”
“What in the name of the sun, the moon, and the night is the Dread godsdamned Chorus?” she screamed in frustration.
Micah stopped, the roaring of the wind in his ears suddenly halting as he hovered over the forgotten distinct. He squinted down at the muddy streets and poorly repaired roofs. Here, gaggles of people were moving about normally, entirely unconcerned with the chaos that had engulfed the rest of the city.
The real problem for Micah was that everything looked different from above. It didn’t help that his only encounter with the tavern had been at night, moments before a major fight. He chewed on his lip as indecision plagued him. Down below, a couple of forgotten stopped in the middle of the street, pointing up at Micah. One of them ran off, shouting something indecipherable.
“Seriously, Micah,” Leeka called out as she soared back to him. “You’ve barely explained anything, just rushed me from one place to another. Before we do anything else, I really need to know what’s happening.”
Micah sighed, eyeing up the rooftops. Finally, he settled on one that was big enough to be the tavern, surrounded by roughly the same landmarks. The only problem was that the word “landmark” was a bit of a stretch. Almost every building in the forgotten quarter was some brand of poorly designed and run down. There were hardly any amenities to draw the eye, leaving Micah with little more than guesswork and luck as he tried to pinpoint the specific building.
“Someone found a way to give the forgotten something that resembles blessings,” he replied, floating toward the larger building. A gentle thrum of energy coming off of it caused his Arcana skill to tingle. “They grabbed my family, and they’re trying to smuggle them out of town. Unless we act quickly, they’ll be able to ship them off to gods know where.”
“Blessings to forgotten,” Leeka whispered, her eyes widening. “That’s amazing. What kind of person would have that sort of power? It seems like the sort of thing reserved for the gods themselves.”
“I never said that my opponent was a person,” Micah replied with a chuckle as he lowered himself onto the bar’s roof. “In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the Third Prince is closer to a god than a person. That said, I want to be clear: what it’s giving the forgotten aren’t blessings. They’re wounds in their souls, powered by the energy leaking out of them. It might give the forgotten the power to fight on par with a blessed, but I doubt that any of them will survive more than five years, and after that it’s not just death. Their souls are gone entirely, devoured back into the mists of Elsewhere.”
“That doesn’t—” she began, only to catch herself. “I don’t understand half of what you said, but it sounds bad. Like, really, really bad.”
“A fair assessment,” he agreed with a distracted nod. “Now get ready—we’re going in through the roof.”
Leeka opened her mouth to reply, but stopped when she noticed Micah’s lips moving wordlessly to cast a spell. A second later, wind blade tore a massive hole in the cheap, rotting thatching of the bar’s roof.
Voices began to shout from the street level, but Micah simply ignored them as he floated down through hole opened by his spell. More screams accompanied his descent, but Micah tuned them out. As soon as his feet touched down on the top floor of a bedroom in the tavern, he began casting wind blade a second time and stomped on the floor, relying on his absurd attributes to blow a hole clean through the poorly fitted wooden planks.
Micah let himself fall into the tavern’s common area. Unsurprisingly, the tables and chairs were in the exact spots he remembered them. The bartender, on the other hand, was washing what looked to be the same glass using the same dirty rag as when he’d first stormed the building. If anyone had actually entered the bar to drink, Micah would’ve been concerned about their health, but that was the furthest thing from his mind as he unleashed the wind blade at the frowning tavern-keeper.
Rather than meeting the wall of green fire that he expected, the high-tier Wind spell cut the forgotten in half, painting the back wall of the bar a deep cherry red. Micah reached out with his Arcana skill toward the bisected corpse only to recoil.
It was like touching the soul of a rabbit or a squirrel. A bare wisp of nothingness with no force or vital energy behind it. Evidently, the damage done to the bartender’s soul in the previous timeline was permanent. Whatever those green flames were, they burned reality on a level that Time magic couldn’t hope to match.
The doors burst open as Leeka followed Micah through the hole in the ceiling and into the main room. The two thugs that had accosted them in the previous timeline rushed into the room, only for Leeka’s arrows to sprout from their chests. They died with looks of surprise on their faces as their defensive “blessings” failed to activate.
She cast Micah an uneasy look when he began casting vacuum. Evidently the massacre of “defenseless” forgotten didn’t sit well with her. Micah didn’t really blame Leeka. Apparently the time shift had caught the guards by surprise, and they made no effort to defend themselves as they charged headlong into the attacks.
Micah’s spell finished, cracking a hole in the tavern floor just above where he remembered the chorus. He jumped through the gap and landed in a crouch amidst the macabre orchestra.
This time he was rewarded with a rush of green flame. It came too quickly for Micah to dodge, almost as if the person firing it had been waiting for his arrival.
The attack splashed off his Maarikava armor, the force of the blow rocking every enchantment in the equipment. Micah gritted his teeth against the explosion of ice-cold energy that erupted from the ball of flame. His armor protected him from the worst of it—he could feel the runes inscribed in it straining against the otherworldly energy of the spell—but the small amount of eldritch power that leaked through gnawed at his very core, utterly ignoring his physique and hit points.
He threw his spear, launching the weapon through the flash of green flame that encircled the man who had attacked him and ultimately pinning his victim to the far wall of the basement. A trio of air knives battered the forgotten standing next to him, activating her defensive flames and knocking her off balance.
The low-tier spells didn’t do much more than distract the guard. The spell that glanced off of her cheek might have left a bruise, but Micah’s magic was blunted and slowed by burning armor to the point that it barely represented a threat.
Still, the spells did their work, leaving the forgotten reeling just long enough for Micah to dash past her and wrench his spear from her burning companion. An arrow zipped through the air as Leeka joined the fight, disappearing into a wall of flame. A second later she was on the floor of the basement, bow drawn back as she looked for another target.
Past the two guards were a gaggle of bound and hooded bodies. A tall blonde woman wearing a white robe emblazoned with an emerald torch watched over them. Leeka fired another arrow at the woman as Micah stabbed the remaining guard, thrusting his spear through the protective flames and impaling the forgotten’s head.
The robed woman summoned a whip of green fire and lashed out at Leeka, forcing her to jump back behind the bone harp. As soon as the flames touched the instrument, it exploded, peppering both Leeka and Micah with shards of bone.
The Maarikava armor protected Micah from the worst of it, but the shrapnel still managed to open up shallow cuts on his face and hands. Leeka had it worse. Her thin leather armor wasn’t enchanted, and she had been much closer to the harp when it detonated.
Leeka fell to the ground, blood streaming from a dozen wounds, as Micah surged past her. His spear led the way toward the whip-wielding forgotten. The whip cracked again, forcing Micah to arrest his charge and pull up short.
The ice-cold rope of energy snapped in front of him before winking out. Micah blinked once in surprise, his vision struggling to process the sudden dimness of the basement.
The woman grinned. “Micah Silver. The master will be happy to know that you’ve arrived. He’s been waiting so long to meet you again.”
Then she crushed something in her right hand, activating the teleportation formation that she was standing in and leaving Micah in the dark room with nothing but the chills running down his spine.
TWENTY-TWO
BISHOP
“Hey, Micah,” Trevor called out from among the hooded and bound figures. “I know you’re probably super busy right now, but if you could get around to untying us, that would be great. I’m pretty sure Telivern peed on the ground next to me and it’s starting to soak into my jacket.”
The stag snorted unhappily. Somehow, the forgotten had cut a pair of holes in a burlap sack big enough to fit the bag over the deer’s head.
Micah glanced back at Leeka and winced. The woman was sitting upright, chest moving in short, sharp gasps as she bled against the basement’s wall. It didn’t look like any of the bone shards from the exploding harp had penetrated particularly deeply, but at the same time, the number of tiny wounds was troubling in and of itself. Already, blood was beginning to turn Leeka’s face into a mask of red before soaking into her clothing.
“Just a second, Trevor,” Micah said hurriedly, jogging over to his injured companion and pressing a hand to her shoulder as he cast augmented mending. “Things got a bit wild there and my friend was injured in the fight.”
“The green flames are not to be trifled with,” Drekt observed from his spot pushed up against the basement’s wall. “Even if your armor can handle a blow, the cold will settle into your mind. We weren’t careful when the forgotten attacked because it didn’t seem possible that they would actually manage to inflict an injury. It only took two blasts before Trevor was on his back, eyes rolling up into his skull.”
A smile flickered on Micah’s face as Leeka’s wounds began to close. Somehow, the inane wall of chatter from Trevor and Drekt instantly dismissed all of the concern and tension that had weighed on him since he was forced to abandon the group.
“How are Eris and Esther?” he asked, switching to refresh to help restore the energy Leeka had lost along with her blood. “Are the two of them down here as well?”
“I’m fine, Uncle Micah!” one of the smaller bundles of person called out cheerfully. “Esther is sulking because she got knocked out by a club blow from a forgotten at the start of the fight. She just tried to stab the guy and her spear started on fire. Before she could dodge, he clonked her over the head and she was out.”
“Esther!” another bundle hissed unhappily. “Stop trying to embarrass me. It’s not like you escaped or something. The forgotten got you too.”
“Yeah,” Esther responded defiantly, “but they got Ravi and I last. I finally figured out how to use my martial art to dodge properly, and it took five of them surrounding me with nets to actually catch me. Plus, I managed to kill one of them.
“Well,” she continued, her voice suddenly thoughtful, “I think she died. I could never get a sword through those walls of flame that they could summon, but after the fifteenth or twentieth time I stabbed her, I could see that using the fire was costing her something. So I just kept going. Eventually she just sort of collapsed. I never even left a mark on her, but she fell to the ground looking like she hadn’t eaten in a month.”
Leeka struggled upright, her eyes widening as she looked around the basement. There were torches mounted along the wall, but their feeble light was overshadowed by the emerald bonfires sprouting from the two guards Micah had killed. As soon as her gaze locked on the chorus itself, she stumbled backward, bracing herself against the wall with her mouth agape.
“What in the name of the Sixteen happened down here?” Her voice trembled, cracking before she could finish the sentence.
“Something unnatural and wrong on a fairly fundamental level,” Micah replied calmly, pulling the burlap sack off of Esther’s head. He reached down to break her bonds, only to find a thin silver chain covered in runes biting into the skin of her wrists.
“Ritual magic has the potential to sidestep the rigid delineation of how humans use magic,” he continued, sliding his spear’s tip along the chain until he found a spot with enough slack for him to insert the weapon. “But it is also a path to powers and abilities that many might find unnatural.
“Daemon summoning, spirit binding, and enchantments upon the very soul that can alter the scope and power of a blessing.” He stopped speaking long enough to press the spear forward, breaking Esther’s chain and immediately casting augmented mending to heal the line of blood that the weapon drew from her hand.
“If a caster isn’t careful, ritual magic can go catastrophically astray,” Micah lectured, pulling off the burlap covering over Eris’ frizzy hair and going to work on her hands. “Worse still is a ritualist that has both the knowledge and wherewithal to perform heinous magic, but not the common sense to avoid it. The Third Prince wants to destroy Karell. It simply does not care about the side effects of what it’s doing, because the scars its rituals leave on reality are a bonus rather than a flaw in its plan.”
“But if he destroys Karell, he’ll die with it!” Leeka blurted out. “I understand that you’re fighting on a level of power that I can’t really comprehend, but it’s pretty hard for something to survive without air, food, or a planet to live on.”
Micah didn’t respond at first, freeing Drekt while he thought over how much to tell the woman. He’d already tried to open up a bit about the true scope of his mission, only for Leeka to laugh it all off as a joke. At the same time, he hadn’t been standing a dozen paces from grisly proof when they’d last talked.
