Stealthcaster Read online
Page 12
“What brings you here?” the cloaked figure asked in a ragged husk of a voice.
Dark energy seemed to crackle around him and where his eyes should have been there was a pale purple light, throbbing like a closing fist.
“We were just leaving,” Solomon replied.
The cloaked figure shook his head slowly, the thick cloth rustling as he did.
“No. No, I don’t believe you are.”
Solomon looked at the man for the first time, narrowing his gaze to try and get a feel for what they were dealing with.
Alcronus
(High Elf Necromancer)
Level: 12
HP: 275/275
MP: 685/685
Skills:
Raise the Dead
Crippling Decay
“Uhhh… Woody?” he asked quietly. “We’ve got an elf. A high elf. Who is a necromancer. A necromancer who is a high elf.” He looked over at his friend with a strange look.
“Human filth,” the elf sneered. “And shame on you for siding with them, Harefolk.” Alcronus stopped walking, standing at the edge of the flattened, ruined town, glaring at them.
“Scavengers,” he continued, “tear them apart.”
Chapter 19 - Darkness and Light
* * *
The six Abyssal Scavengers screamed as they charged over the rough ground of the two, leaping towards the group on four legs, their long, bony limbs propelling them forward at an inhuman gait.
“So I thought we banished all these beasts when we stopped G’Lorath and Rulaaz!” Solomon said, pulling his axe out and dropping into a battle ready stance.
“In a large enough group, the Abyssal Scavengers can open portals to the demon realm,” Woody breathed. “Perhaps they took refuge there for a time, then returned after the demons were vanquished?”
“Uh, no offense, you guys,” Lionel replied, “but I’m not too worried about the how, more about the ‘what the heck do we do now’?”
Solomon took a skipping hop forward and swept his arm in an arc, activating Axe Throw, sending his weapon whirling toward the first approaching Scavenger. It struck the creature between the sides of its gaping mouth with a wet snap, splitting the head the rest of the way, carving off its entire swath of hit points with a single accurate strike.
Activating Long Jump, Woody moved forward and leaped high in the air, clearing two charging demons, then tucked his knees up and landed smoothly on the other side, tucking into a forward roll, his short sword coming out with a swift sweep. It hacked through a demon, sending it stumbling, then he moved forward and swung again, burying his blade in the shoulder joint of a second. Planting one large rabbit’s foot on the scavenger’s chest, he yanked the sword free and parried an attack by yet another one of the pale-skinned creatures.
Lionel shouted a warbling, victory cry, leaping forward, gripping his broad sword in two hands. He brought it down quick and hard and struck the demon that Woody had hit once already, cleaving another chunk of damage from its health bar, though it was not yet dead.
The two creatures that Woody jumped over converged on Solomon, who tried to avoid their attack, but he discovered the hard way that his relatively low agility and dexterity left him vulnerable. One of them raked long claws over his ribs, while a second lunged forward, clamping tooth-filled jaws on his leg and squeezing hard. Pain raged through Sol’s lower extremities and he fell sideways, his HP blinking away.
You are injured!
The demon has broken your leg.
AGI: -3 for one minute
DEX: -3 for one minute
“Little help!” he shouted, falling to his shoulder, trying to pry his leg free from the clamping jaws. Lionel glanced over as he side-stepped a strike, and brought his broadsword down again, slamming it hard into the stiff hide of a scavenger. Solomon could tell that his lower level strength was impacting the damage he could do, and these Abyssal Scavengers may just be on the upper threshold of what he could handle.
Woody, on the other hand, seemed to be doing pretty well.
Ripping his sword from a now dead scavenger, he whirled and rammed his sword forward, punching the narrow blade into the gut of the demon Lionel was attacking. That creature went down, leaving three of them dead, with two of those three converging on Solomon to finish him off.
Sol glared at the platinum axe, still buried within the skull of a dead demon, and held out his hand, trying to reach out to that magical enchantment. He could see his MP meter starting to slowly shrink as he spent mana in an attempt to call the axe to his hand. The handle of the weapon quivered, and he could hear the low scrape of blade on bone, but it seemed to be wedged a little too tight.
Shaking his head, Solomon reached over his chest and closed his hand around the Demonic Scimitar. As an evil blade, its power against already evil creatures was negligible, but he was desperate. The creature attached to his leg squeezed its jaws again and a fresh slice of pain tore through his leg, bringing tears to his eyes. Swinging the sword around, he drove it had, burying the blade into the back of the thrashing monster, spewing a dark blood with an almost tar-like consistency. Its jaws sprang open and it hissed, pushing itself upright and drawing back, mouth opening wider than should be possible. Clawing away, Solomon tried to clamor to his feet, but the creature was faster, already charging forward.
Thankfully, Woody was quicker. Activating Scamper, he swerved around the attack of a scavenger and hurtled forward, swinging his short sword, hacking a ragged gash through the back of the demon closing on Solomon.
“Axe!” Solomon gasped and the Harefolk reached back, tearing the weapon free of the demon it was embedded in, then tossed it back to Sol, who was already jumping to his feet, though somewhat clumsily.
Injured debuff expired.
All impacted stats are back to normal
Solomon looked over and saw Lionel slamming at a demon, knocking off its last few hit points, leaving one last creature remaining. It darted left, then lunged forward, but with the debuff expired, Solomon was quicker, sliding left of its initial attack, then triggering Axe Blow, crashing the creature in the spine, his two favorite words CRITICAL HIT flashing in his HUD.
All six of the scavengers lay dead, and Solomon looked toward the eastern edge of the ruined village, seeing the necromancer standing there. The cool breeze picked up, flapping his torn cloak as he stood there with his arms crossed, draped in shadow, the only feature visible twin slits of pale, purple light where his eyes should have been.
“You are an elf?” shouted Woody, wiping the blade of his sword off on his tunic. The necromancer didn’t reply, he just stood there, glaring at them. “Why did you do this?” continued Woody, gesturing to the town around him. Most of the buildings had been completely flattened, pummeled into the ground, nearly pressed down into the soft dirt where the village stood. Even some of the surrounding trees had been knocked over and crushed.
“You think I did this?” Alcronus asked, taking a few steps closer. “This was an elven village. My family lived here.”
“You keep dark company,” Woody said, gesturing toward a dead scavenger with his sword.
“Dark times require dark company,” Alcronus replied. Joining the soft glow of his eyes, both hands were illuminated softly now, a strange, ebbing of magical energy churning within his palms. A sickening green light bathed the necromancer, casting a strange, luminescent halo around his shrouded form, revealing his pale skin, silvery blonde hair, spilling out from beneath the flowing hood draped over his head. His armor was an intricate weave of fabric and darkly colored mail, ornate etched patterns throughout.
Lionel stood a bit straighter, his eyes opening.
“Guys,” he said quietly. “My spider-sense is tingling.”
Woody coiled his brow, looking at him, but Solomon understood immediately. As a paladin, Lionel’s alignment was pure and good, and as a paladin, he had an innate perception for evil. And for the undead.
He whirled around just in time to see sever
al of the bleached-bone skeletons start to stir, reaching out, pressing bone fingers to the ground, lifting themselves from their unmoving sprawl. The same soft light that shone around the high elf’s hands ran over the contours of the skeletons on the ground, casting their pale bones in a soft green. They moved with an unnatural jerking, joints bending backwards and forwards, clamoring to an shambling, upright posture. When they’d been laying in the dirt, Solomon hadn’t noticed that they still had weapons, but as each one stood and faced off against them, he could see that most of them held swords of some kind. Within moments there were ten of them, standing at various odd angles, hips cocked, heads canted, the pummels of old, rusted weapons held between clamped bone.
Warrior Skeletons
(Undead remains of an Elven Horde)
Level: 8
HP: 68/68
MP: 0/0
Skills:
Shambling Thrust
“Why are you doing this?” Woody demanded, looking back at the necromancer.
“Ask your human friends!” Alcronus spat back, jerking his head toward Solomon. “This is their doing, not mine! They forced my hand!”
“We did nothing to you!” Lionel shouted, just as the skeletons lurched forward.
Solomon took a step forward as well, drawing in a deep, steadying breath. His health stood at less than half and he looked nervously toward the approaching horde of undead. Alone, the skeletons didn’t seem to pose much of a threat, but together as a group? They could be lethal.
Lionel pushed his way through, holding his sword in two hands, a cocky, crooked smile on his face.
“Let me handle them, boys!”
“Careful!” Solomon warned, but Lionel was already charging forward. Halfway toward the group of skeletons, he activated Blessed Blade, his sword glowing, pale and bright. He brought it around in a hardm if somewhat over aggressive swing, and the blade cleaved clean through the rib cage of the first skeleton, smashing it into pieces and sending it scattering to the ground. Holding the swing, he swept back the other direction, the softly lit sword striking a second skeletons skull and blistering it into jagged fragments of bone. Both skeletons fell into piles of lifeless bones and Lionel turned to face a third, but he’d been too caught up in the first two. By the time he’d prepared to fight the third, the group at large had converged on him and were pressing closer.
Solomon shook his head, running toward the undead, letting fly with his arm, letting Axe Throw send his hatchet whirling. It drove hard into the chest of a skeleton, blasting it apart, then he sacrificed some mana to reach out and grab the axe, pulling it back to him, letting it thump softly in the palm of his left hand. Woody thrust his sword up, ramming the blade underneath the chin of another, skewering the skull like a tomato on a spit. As the group slowly dispersed, Lionel barreled forward, shoulder first, knocking some others aside, then halted and swung, whipping the long blade through two shambling skeletons, throwing them to the ground in parts, their swords scattering away.
Solomon drove his axe hard into the exposed collarbone of another, then winced as a sword raked across his back. Woody turned to help, but a blade impaled his leg as he started toward Solomon, and he fell forward into a kneel, sucking in breath.
Three other corpses leaped onto Lionel, clawing at his armor with their bone fingers, clutching at him, trying to bring him down. Kicking out with a large, armored boot, he drove one to the ground, then shouted as a sword dug deep into his side.
“Too many of them!” shouted Solomon, wrenching his leg free from the grasp of one as it lay on the ground. Woody swung out with his sword and hacked at the knees of another walking corpse, and the skeleton crumpled to the ground, yet remained moving, crawling in his direction.
Swinging with reckless abandon, Lionel brought the long, wide blade down in a swift arc, pummeling the crawling skeleton into two halves barely connected by a wide arc of bone dust. He lifted the sword and swung it again, whirling it in a complete circle, the blade clawing through another approaching body, hewing off shorn ribs and throwing them into the air as the skeleton sprawled backwards.
“Holy crap,” Solomon whispered. “He’s actually doing it.”
Lionel shouted a loud, triumphant scream and charged again, back into the group of remaining enemies, the sword slashing, once again glowing with that same supernatural light. Two more exploded under the barrage, then the next swing missed clean, but a sudden arc of white light sprayed from the blade’s swing and blasted into a third, blowing it into bony fragments. Solomon kicked away at the skeleton as it crawled up toward him, over his legs, reaching for his tunic, fingers scratching and scraping. Lifting his axe, he swung it awkwardly, breaking off the enemy’s head and sending it rolling along the packed dirt and wrecked village.
The battleground grew quiet as Sol looked around, searching the trees and buildings for any more shambling skeletons. There were none. Using his axe for leverage, he pushed himself up into a standing position, looking as Lionel helped a limping Woody to his feet as well.
They were all the worse for wear. Solomon himself was down to around 30 hit points, while Woody sat at just under half health himself. Somehow Lionel had almost 50 remaining, even though he’d waded neck deep into the approaching horde and taken down the majority of them himself.
One of the perks of the paladin class, Solomon decided. The three of them stood, shakily, but upright and looked at the approaching shroud of a figure, the green light faded from his hands. Solomon smiled as he looked at the enemy’s MP meter and saw that it rested at about 10% and was building very slowly.
“Out of mana?” he asked. “Raising the dead sucks it down quick, doesn’t it?”
“This is a joke to you?” Alcronus replied. He reached behind his flowing cloak and pulled out a long, gently curved sword, a sculpted stone blade with a neatly carved and ornamental pummel, various elven runes etched into its smooth surface. “I don’t find it funny, human.” As he pulled out his carved stone sword, the elf tossed aside the withered wooden staff, letting it clatter to the ground.
In truth, Solomon didn’t either. Already the necromancer had proven himself to be a fierce enemy, leaving all three of them depleted in health and mana, and he had not yet laid a finger upon them. Judging by his confident stride and the way he was holding the sword, Solomon believed him to be a fierce warrior who had plenty of raw fighting ability beyond raising the dead and demonic minions. Even at full strength he wasn’t sure they’d be able to take him down. As beaten up as they were? This could be suicide.
“The Harefolk and the elves have always been a part of a brother and sisterhood, Alcronus, what has changed?” Woody asked, slowly pacing right as the elf approached.
Alcronus lifted his sword and pointed the blade toward Solomon and Lionel.
“The moment you decided to align yourselves with scum like this, any elven brotherhood was destroyed.”
“What have the humans done?” Woody asked. “Surely nothing worse than what you’ve done to your own village!”
“I did not do this!” Alcronus screamed, leaping forward. Solomon moved in to intercept, bringing his axe around, both weapons slamming together with an echoing clang of metal on unbreakable stone. The impact reverberated through Sol’s hands, tingling his fingers, almost forcing his grip from the handle of his axe. The elf turned on Solomon as he stumbled from the impact, lashing out with a graceful hook and slash of his stone blade. Solomon muffled a shout as the sword raked through the armor on his chest, slashing another chunk of his already depleted hit points and sending him crashing to the ground with a grunt of pain and frustration. Lionel moved in on the necromancer’s rear, bringing his sword around with a firm two-hand grip, but Alcronus whirled, blocking the strike with his own sword, slapping the blade away, then lunging forward, gashing a jagged trench through the paladin’s chest armor, sending him flying back as well.
The high elf stood there, facing off against Woody, both looking at each other, swords in hand.
“The… humans?” Woody asked, taking a step forward, but mitigating his attack. “What do you mean?”
Slowly pulling himself to a half crouch, Solomon looked up at the two would-be foes.
“Those machines,” the elf sneered. “The same ones that freed the pit fiend. They leveled much of this village! Ground our homes to dust! Left our people to wither and die, and most of them did!”
“I’ve heard of these machines,” Woody replied quietly. “Where were they from? What is their purpose?”
Alcronus shook his head.
“I didn’t think to ask as they were killing my entire family and flattening my childhood home.”
“Maybe you provoked them?” asked Solomon, finally standing. The elf tensed and whirled toward him, fingers drumming on the hilt of his sword.
“Fool,” he hissed. “This power you see… these demons? I did this in response to the humans! Our people grew desperate, desperate to protect themselves. Desperation forced my hand, and when the pit fiend opened up this forest to the darkness, I welcomed it. Swore to harness that power so I could use it to fight against the human filth!”
Solomon shook his head, clearly not believing the necromancer.
“Where are these machines now? These supposed humans who killed your people?”
“Returned to Elderand no doubt,” Alcronus said. “Believing they are safe behind those walls. They’ve likely already forgotten about all of those lives they ruined, they’ve moved on to the next.”
Solomon glanced at Woody, who returned his uncertain glare