Blessed Time: The Complete Series: (A LitRPG Adventure Box Set), page 99
The chains fell from Drekt’s wrists and the big man rumbled to his feet, massaging his hands as he tried to return blood to them. He nodded at Micah, then grabbed Trevor gently by the back of the shirt and wrenched him to his feet.
“The Third Prince isn’t a ‘he,’” Micah began, turning back to face Leeka as Drekt took over his duties freeing the remainder of the party. “The Third Prince is a daemon of unprecedented power. It exists outside of Karell and is almost as powerful as a god.
“Actually”—Micah cocked his head thoughtfully—“it might be more powerful than some of the weaker members of the Sixteen. Regardless, a careless ritualist failed while performing an incomprehensibly powerful feat of magic, and now it is here in Karell. Originally the gods created safeguards to stop things like this from happening—as best I understand it, there is no way that a Prince of Elsewhere could enter Karell without being invited in—but right now they are in a bit of a rough spot. Karell isn’t meant to accommodate beings of their power. They could beat the Prince in a straight-up fight, but it is lurking and hiding from them, preventing them from confronting it without destroying all of creation in the process.”
“Shit,” she mumbled. “You really weren’t joking when you talked about your mission being apocalyptic. Still, no offense Micah, but if this Prince thing is that powerful, I really don’t think you stand much of a chance. Like, sure, you’re really strong, but every story I’ve heard about ‘challenging the gods’ in power usually ends with a parable about ‘suffering being the price of hubris.’”
“Oh, I fought it once,” Micah replied with a self-deprecating grin. “I have Time magic that I thought would let me escape anything. That’s how I found this place, to be honest. But even at my most powerful, armed to the teeth with enchanted items, I couldn’t match it. It was barely a contest, mostly me buffeting the Prince with spells while it charged me. The gods themselves needed to intervene to save me.
“That’s why we’re traveling halfway across the world—to loot the artifacts I’ll need to have a fighting chance against the thing,” Micah finished with a shrug.
“Gods”—she shook her head—“that’s just a lot to process. So you’re saying that if we fail, that’s the end. Everyone dies?”
“More or less,” he responded. “The last time I fought the Third Prince, it had a flying castle, patrolled by high-tier daemons and powered by the souls of tens of thousands of sacrifices. In the castle’s wake, crops withered and volcanoes burst from the soil. Given enough time, the Third Prince would have rendered Karell’s surface utterly uninhabitable, and that’s only if it couldn’t find a way to rip a hole in the wall separating reality from Elsewhere first.
“As best I can understand, its eventual goal is to tear down the barrier that protects Karell from Elsewhere,” Micah said. “As soon as the wards come down, we’ll all be tossed into the mists of Elsewhere. Even if your body can maintain its form, your soul will be devoured by daemons within the hour.”
Micah knelt down next to the teleportation formation, trailing his finger along the outside of the circle. He could make out most of the runes, but at least half of them were unintelligible. Some had been cracked and smeared by the circle’s use, but others were completely alien. New sigils that Micah had never come across in his years of study.
“But we’re going to stop it,” Esther interjected happily. “Together, Micah, Trevor, and Drekt can defeat anything. Just you watch, new lady—they’ll handle it.”
Before he could respond, a warm, fur-covered head shoved itself beneath his arm. Ravi didn’t say anything, instead electing to rub her cheek against his bare skin, purring loudly enough to vibrate his entire body.
He reached up with his left hand, scratching her behind the ears as he traced the runework of the teleportation formation with his right. Closing his eyes, Micah was unsurprised to find the entire circle glowing a deep cherry red as he surveyed the ritual site with his Arcana skill. More importantly, the runes destroyed by the teleporting forgotten were restored, shining balefully in their original forms.
Ravi’s deep, purring breaths served as an anchor as Micah reached out with his mind, tracing the connections formed by the circle. A couple of seconds later, he pushed a fragment of mana into the formation. The bolt of energy flashed cobalt in his mind as it activated the runes, carving a winding tunnel through Elsewhere.
The mana raced down the invisible pathway, guided by Micah’s mind as he forced it past the twists and dead ends created by the formation’s damaged runes. Distantly, he could feel grasping claws reaching toward him as the mists pressed in and clustered around the barriers created by the ritual.
His perception exploded into the outside world. For a brief second, Micah was in a forested clearing, rolling hills looming over him. In the distance, a bird warbled cheerfully.
Then he was back in his body, the route traced by the ritual burned into his mind. Micah shook his head to clear a ringing from his ears. Somewhere to his left, Eris was talking to Leeka.
“… then what did Uncle Micah do?” Micah winced at his niece’s excited interrogation.
“He threw me off of the godsdamn boat!” Leeka complained. “One minute he was telling us we needed to go, and the next I was in the river—wait. Oh, gods, I’m so sorry, Drekt. I shouldn’t have sworn in front of your daughter; I wasn’t thinking!”
“Don’t worry yourself too much,” the big warrior replied. “She’s around her father enough that I hold little hope about rescuing her vocabulary. As much as Trevor tries to blame it on the rest of the mercenaries, we all know that the man can’t hold his tongue.”
“That wasn’t what you were say—” Trevor began.
Micah could almost see the shit-eating grin on his brother’s face as he cut him off. “I’ve got a lock on where the woman that imprisoned you went. Find your weapons and armor—I just need to repair the runes on the formation, and we’re going through.”
Up above, a woman shouted something incoherent from the ruined floor of the tavern and footsteps pounded on the wooden floor.
“If someone could take care of that disruption,” Micah continued, motioning upward with a flick of his head, “I’ll get started down here. It’ll take a couple of minutes, but I’d prefer to not have to fend off the possessed forgotten while I’m trying to recalculate our current altitude and the phase of the moon. Screwing up rituals tends to lead to poor outcomes under ordinary circumstances, but given the Third Prince’s involvement, I have a feeling that failure might involve us being eaten by daemons mid-teleport.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Micah watched Trevor hand Eris her swords before throwing a spear to Esther. His brother grabbed his own from a pile of weapons and equipment that had been haphazardly made against the basement wall before motioning upward.
“Come on, girls, we can have Eris try out those new sword forms on the bad guys,” Trevor remarked cheerfully. “We’ll let Drekt, Telivern, Ravi, and his new friend keep him company while he works.”
He jumped through the hole in the ceiling, stabbing something with his spear before leaning down and extending a hand to Esther. A wave of cool air washed over Micah as green flames flashed from above.
Micah dismissed Trevor from his mind, instead focusing on the mess of runes in front of him. The glyphs that maintained the path through Elsewhere were still valid and intact, but it took him at least a couple of minutes to recreate the markings associated with initiating and ending the teleportation itself.
Distantly he heard fighting as he scratched the last of the runes into the floor. Micah pressed a fragment of his mana into the formation, causing the circle to glow green for a second while he ran his Arcana skill over the connection.
With a nod, Micah stood up. Above him, Trevor was congratulating Esther in between commenting on Eris’ form. Micah inclined his head to the side, gratefully feeling his neck pop after having held the same uncomfortable position for so long. At some point, the bodies of the forgotten guards in the basement had guttered out, the green flames extinguished and dropped the room into a dim twilight as they ran out of souls to consume.
“And there we go!” Micah called out. “We’re ready to go. The sooner we leave, the easier it will be to track down the ringleader behind all of this.”
“The Bishop,” Eris replied as she jumped back into the basement. “That’s what everyone kept calling her as she gave unhinged speeches about how she was going to flay our skin from our bodies and use our tendons to string a violin.”
“Are you doing all right?” Micah asked, “I’m sorry that you had to go through all of that. I wish I could have been here earlier, but I was stuck halfway across the continent hacking my way through a jungle.”
“I’m fine,” Eris said with a smile. “Trevor just kept saying that we shouldn’t worry about it. That if we spent enough time with you, Uncle Micah, the melodramatic villain monologues would all start to run together after a while. That made her really mad.”
“What?” Micah whipped around, glaring at Trevor as the man lowered himself into the room. “Why in the name of the Sixteen would you antagonize someone that not only had the power to capture you, but actually had imprisoned you? That’s how you get killed.”
“Eh,” Trevor replied, scratching the back of his neck with an embarrassed look on his face. “She was gonna kill us anyway. By pissing her off more, I ensured that she would take us off site so that our suffering ‘would be truly legendary.’ But seriously, Micah, you really should have heard her speech. Four out of ten at best.”
“She really didn’t like it when Trevor started rating it like that,” Drekt said with a wistful smile. “For a second there I thought she was going to kill us out of hand too, but Trevor had her sputtering with anger and frustration within minutes. I’m not sure his strategy was to annoy her enough that she would keep us alive to torment us later, but his commentary certainly had that impact.”
Micah stared at Trevor in disbelief. His brother had the grace to shrug awkwardly rather than try and justify his actions, leaving Micah unable to do anything but shake his head.
“An understandable response on her part, but we’ll talk about that later,” he said. “Now everyone get in the formation so we can get out of here before the town guard and the forgotten start fighting over who gets to kill us. We have a bishop to catch.”
TWENTY-THREE
THE CHASE
Micah appeared in a forest clearing, the chill of Elsewhere still clinging to his armor after teleporting. Leeka stumbled past him, falling to her hands and knees as she struggled with the disorientation from her trip through the hostile plane.
Mountains rose above the trees, dark brown slopes that all but disappeared into the clouds. When Micah took a step forward, his shoes clicked on the plate of granite that they’d arrived on. Already, the circle of runes etched into the stone were beginning to cool as the residual energy from the teleportation wore off.
Fighting down a flicker of nausea, Micah surveyed his surroundings, eyes sharp for any sign of an ambush. Although he suspected that his companions hadn’t noticed, their journey through Elsewhere hadn’t been entirely uneventful. He had only been in the tunnel created by the teleportation formation for a matter of seconds, but that time was enough for him to sense great beasts, unseen but filled with ancient power as they prowled along the boundaries of the ritual.
He wasn’t sure if the Third Prince had done something to draw the attention of the entities that had raged at the boundaries of the teleportation channel, but Micah was certain that they weren’t entirely safe. It was simply too malevolent and feral to leave him alone once it knew what Micah was up to. The Prince would pursue him to the ends of the world if given the opportunity.
Seeing nothing that sparked an alarm, Micah took another handful of steps into the clearing. To his right was a thin path—something he ordinarily would have mistaken for a game trail, except for the single scuffed and muddy boot print—barely visible a dozen or so paces into the forest itself. Other than the narrow gap in the foliage, the only other remarkable feature of the clearing was a small firepit, its ashes cool and long unused.
Micah strode into the woods, stopping at the bootprint. He sank to one knee and pressed a finger into the mud. His Arcana skill tingled, and Micah closed his eyes. One glowing red footprint after another appeared in front of him, each sunk deep into the soft soil and about four paces apart.
“Ravi, come over here,” Micah called out with a frown. “This is definitely the way the Bishop went, but it looks like she’s moving inhumanly fast. I don’t know what sort of ability she’s using, but when we catch up with her, I want you all to be careful. It looks like there’s a lot more to her than just blasts of fire.”
“Papa,” Ravi said, her childish voice sounding inside Micah’s head as her shoulder brushed up against his side, “Ravi help. What can Ravi do?”
“Scent the Bishop,” he replied, tapping the footprint with his forefinger. “Given how fast she’s moving, I don’t see any point in testing my tracking skills. You’re a lot better at this than I am—unless something strange happens, you should be able to follow her at a dead run.”
The big panther purred once, rubbing a furry cheek against Micah’s head before burying her nose in the forest soil. A second or so later, she pulled herself up, sniffing deeply once before shaking her entire body as if trying to shed some unwanted hold over her.
“Smells bad,” Ravi grumbled in Micah’s head. “Bad person, unnatural. Dying but healthy. Not good.”
“I know,” Micah said, scratching the fur between the panther’s ears. “She’s doing things that put everyone at risk. We need to stop her before she makes everyone smell like her.”
Ravi leaned over, licking Micah with a sand-papery tongue before bounding off into the forest, pausing some forty to fifty paces in front of him to look back. She gestured with a wing as if calling him forward. Micah chuckled, breaking into a jog to catch up with the big cat.
A couple of seconds later, Leeka matched pace with him, her bow out and an arrow nocked as she moved lithely through the forest. Esther and Eris trailed after Micah like a pair of chicks chasing a mother hen, struggling to keep up even though they were running on the mostly clear footpath. Ranging to Micah’s left, Trevor and Drekt wove through the foliage, keeping enough of a distance that a burst or cloud spell couldn’t encompass the entire party.
Telivern brought up the rear. The stag wasn’t doing much of anything beyond placidly chewing on a mouthful of greenery as it trotted behind them, but after years of living with the animal, Micah didn’t expect any more or less.
“How do you know the lady is running away?” Esther asked in between puffs of breath. “We can’t even see her.”
“It’s the footsteps, dear,” Leeka answered before Micah could. “They’re far apart and pressed deep. It’s almost like she’s jumping from step to step, but the extra depth near the toes shows that it’s from sprinting rather than a more evenly distributed long jump. I don’t know how fast she’s going, but just from the tracks it looks more like we’re chasing a jungle cat than a person.”
“Then how are we going to catch her?” Esther questioned curiously. “Even if Ravi can follow her all the way to where she’s going, if the church lady moves that much faster than us, we’ll never be able to catch up with her.”
“Save your breath,” Micah replied. “The Bishop doesn’t actually have a blessing. She’s being forced to use something else to power her abilities, and whatever it is, I’d bet that there’s a limit to how much power she has access to. She’ll outpace us for a while, but so long as we keep running, we’ll be able to catch up with her eventually.”
“That’s how you hunt the big cats too,” Leeka agreed. “They move faster than almost anyone in short bursts, but if you chase them around the jungle for a day or so, eventually they overheat. You can walk right up to them and stab them with a spear, and they can barely lift a paw to stop you.”
“Watch out when we catch her,” Trevor called out. “I could dodge those fire blasts of hers, but while I was jumping around she made some sort of cloud of green gas. One minute I was running back and forth, firing air knives at her as I tried to wear out her defenses, and the next I had tunnel vision. It felt like the Bishop had reached out and grabbed my soul itself before tugging on it.”
“That is how I was knocked out as well,” Drekt agreed. “Even with their enhancements, both Trevor and I were faster and stronger than any of the forgotten that came for us. It was only when we were bogged down in the mist that the battle seemed like anything but a victory, and by the time I realized what was happening, I could barely move my body. Whatever the fog was, it ignored all of my defenses and left me weak as a newborn in a matter of seconds.”
Micah wracked his memory as they jogged. The only thing he could think of was the blows his soul had taken once the Dread Chorus began playing in the previous loop. It reminded him of the handful of times he had inspected the core of another blessed in an attempt to learn more about their blessing. The weakness segued into nausea and then unconsciousness in a matter of moments.
No spells could emulate the attack, but there probably was a reason for that. The Sixteen didn’t want mortals hacking away at each others’ souls. The entire point of life on Karell was to develop and nurture the soul until it was ready to take the next step. The gods wouldn’t willingly create a magic that undid generations’ worth of work.
Unfortunately, that meant that almost no one on Karell had a natural defense against attacks directed at their souls. It was a blind spot in the magical system granted to the blessed, given that the only way to even get near another living being’s soul was to study ritual magic and arcana to a level that was almost impossible for an unaided mortal.
