BT IV - Chapter 22

The mists of Elsewhere poured out of the rift, obscuring the battlefield.  Blasts of green light speared through the roiling fog as if it weren’t there, driving Adrian and his men further back.  The group’s healer was using Refresh repeatedly on the drunk nobles, sobering them up and restoring their stamina as they fell back into defensive positions.

Now that their wits were back about them, Micah suspected that the fight would be a lot more even, but that wasn’t his primary concern.

A hand, human except with eight fingers ending in sickly blackened nails that were filed to a razor edge pushed through the crack in reality.  It was easily the size of Micah’s torso, and had no trouble gripping the edge of the portal. Then another came through its back to the first and barely making it through the opening.

Micah dove toward them casting Explosive Thicket as he dashed through the air, but he was too late.  He had opened up too much distance to avoid the dangerous suicide attacks from the converted that were protecting the summoners, and now that mistake was coming back to haunt him.

The hands pulled, and with the screech of metal on porcelain reality ripped.  Micah’s spell scored the bottom of the hands, but as close as they were to the portal, his spell barely had enough cohesion to stay together long enough to draw a couple drops of brackish blood.

Another pair of hands pushed through the widening gap, and Micah could feel the energy from Elsewhere flooding into the world.  The stone blocks of the well melted, fusing together and turning into a slurry of gray refuse that flowed across the town square.

The forgotten surrounding the summoning raised their hands exultantly, no longer bothering fire bolts of green fire at the nobles as they turned and slowly began to walk toward the tear in the world.  Their conversion protected them somewhat, but by the time a third pair of hands came through hole and began ripping at it again, it was more than their forms could bear.

Faces lost definition as their features dissolved and flowed together, and sure steps fumbled as nerves died and legs lost their ability to move.  At least in one case, a man’s foot fell off entirely.  One second he was pacing forward and the next, his shoe and half of his calf was sitting upright on the ground and he was tumbling face forward.  Slowly, the definition and outline of both began to dissolve.

Frantically Micah glanced around the oasis.  He had his gear, but it was equipment for putting down cultists and ordinary daemons.  The thing clawing its way out of that portal was as far from an ordinary daemon as he was.  Unfortunately that meant that all of his weapons and spells would degrade under the force of its aura before they even had a chance to hit it.  He could still do damage, but there was no way that he would be able to defeat the monster without a protracted battle that would tear up half the desert.

A mantis head, the size of Micah’s torso pushed its way through the portal as the hands flexed again.  The high pitched screeching sound that accompanied the rip widening assaulted Micah’s ears, and the arms accompanying the hands flowed unnaturally as the creature began to force its way fully into Karell.

What he needed was weapons made from the glass created by the last greater daemon.  Unfortunately, that was a project he kept considering but had never gotten around to making any progress on.  They were always traveling, and enchantment required the runes to be precisely formatted to the ritual’s exact location.  Even when they stopped for a day or so, most of Micah’s time was spent on rooting out cultists.  He never had a proper moment to actually sit down and work on the next step of any of his plans.

The straining walls of reality shattered, and the daemon burst through, its aura instantly consuming the handful of remaining cultists.  It stood taller than a house, glaring balefully up at Micah with the bulbous and compound eyes of a mantis.  The creature’s torso resembled a boulder, a large mostly round chunk of stone from which eight tentacles sprouted, each ending in a hand with far too many fingers.

Micah began lobbing Pressure Spears at it to buy time and distract it from the gawking nobles.  They wouldn’t even make it close enough to land a blow on the monster.   Literally its existence would be enough to destroy them body and soul.

It lifted one of its tentacles toward him, hand palm outward.  His spells slammed into the flesh of the humanoid hand, drawing blood but not doing any real damage.  Still, they served their purpose.  It had been glaring at Micah before, but now it leapt into the air after him, the remaining seven hands reaching up to grasp handholds of crystalline glass that seemed to materialize from nothing as it clambered up the empty space after him.

“Crap,” Micah whispered to himself, urging Flight to take him higher and buy some distance between himself and the charging monster.  With the help of his arcana skills he would be able to survive close quarters combat, but that didn’t mean it would be pleasant.  His last battle left him with the sort of sunburn that you usually needed several days shipwrecked to earn.

Worse, it hadn’t healed properly when he used Regeneration and Augmented Mending on it.  There was something about daemonic erosion that just resisted all ordinary attempts to treat or mitigate the damage.

Then, the monster opened its mouth and the buzzing started.  The noise wasn’t loud, but it was insistent.  It hummed across his skin, causing a rash of gooseflesh and a deep ache to settle into Micah’s teeth and bones.  He shook his head as his vision blurred and reached up with his left hand to wipe off a single rivulet of blood that ran down his face and pooled on his upper lip.

It was catching up and he didn’t have any weapons that could damage the daemon.  In all likelihood he could use the scepter to batter it while pelting it with spells, but that would take hours, and there were no guarantees.  Micah had only seen a smattering of the monster’s abilities and there was a possibility that it had a power that he just didn’t have an answer for.  Even if everything went right and he could win a battle of attrition, healing any injuries the monster inflicted on him while slowly battering it to death, there was no way he could defeat it without crippling or killing Adrian or one of his friends

Only one real option then.

“Cover me!”  He shouted to the scrambling nobles below.  “This is about to get messy!”

Walter shouted something at him, but it was impossible what Micah’s erstwhile travel companion was saying over the aggressive drone from the daemon.

Micah dodged out of the way as two of the monster’s huge hands slapped together with a thunderclap.  The force of the pressure wave from the attack flung him backward, the whole world blurring as he reeled from the blow.  The alien words

Deja Vu had worked the last time Micah fought a greater daemon.  It was time to see if it would work again.  Of course, the spell might not suck the creature into another battle of wills, but if that was the case and it functioned as intended, the battle would be over before it began.  All he would need to do was disrupt the summoning circle before they could finish their ritual and let Adrian mop up the rest.

The two of them whirred through the air, Micah jerking out of the way of a dozen palm thrusts in a second, all of the attacks moving so fast that he doubted the blessed on the ground could even begin to track them.

As soon as the man filled Deja Vu’s spellform, Micah didn’t waste a second, immediately unleashing the spell.

Micah felt the familiar backward pull grab hold of him.  Time slowed to a crawl for everything but the daemon and him.  For a second they hung in empty space, staring at each other but otherwise unable to move.  Its hands clutched, opening and closing on empty air as it sought to solidify more crystals and haul itself toward him.

Then both of them began to retrace their steps and the world all but fell apart.  The greater daemon slumped, its body an inert, lifeless shell as a rod of mist hurdled from its corpse and slammed into Micah.

“Wake up Micah.”

He groaned, opening his eyes despite the pounding headache.  Trevor was standing over him, a massive grin on his face.  Other noises filtered in.  Talking.  A boisterous and off key drinking song.  All of it was a constant assault on his ears that made Micah want to-

“Don’t throw up buddy,” Trevor said with a chuckle.  “You already did that once, and I don’t think you have anything left in your stomach.  Believe me, you don’t want to be stuck throwing up bile.  That stuff hurts like the dickens and you’ll be sorer than a hard day of training once you’re done.”

Micah propped himself up.  He was on the floor of the inn attached to his old adventurer’s guild.  To his left was a table covered in empty juusht mugs.  He had a vague memory of sitting there and dri-

He barely managed to roll over before he dry heaved.  Trevor was right.  Nothing came out, but that only made the experience worse.  Micah’s eyes were clogged with tears as his entire body spasmed, trying to expel food that wasn’t there.

His arms felt weak, barely able to hold himself up as the convulsions wracked his body.  A spatter of foamy, yellowish liquid hit the wood panels of the bar’s floor, a counterpoint to the puddle of what looked like liquor and beef stew that decorated the ground a pace or two to his right, evidently his first foray into being sick.

“Go on an’ get him outta here Trev,” a male voice boomed.  Distantly Micah knew that they were talking about him, but he was mostly focusing on the end of his heaving.  The spasms rocking his stomach weren’t nearly as bad, and he had almost managed to cut the last one off through sheer force of will.

“I know it’s the kid’s birthday,” the anonymous voice continued, “but you’ve funneled too much of the hard stuff into him.  I don’t want him throwing up again, and he’s had more than enough.  Get ‘em to bed and get some water into him.  He’s cruising for a headache that will make him wish he’d never been born at this rate.”

“Come on Danny,” Trevor boomed, picking up a glass of juusht from Micah’s side of the table.  Hazy squirming memories of only making it to the first sip of his fourth mug came back suddenly.  “Micah’s having a hard time, but he just needs to rally.  A couple more drinks and he’ll be back on track in a jiffy.”

“No, no,” Micah said with a grimace as he forced himself to his feet.  “I think I’ve drank and expelled enough juusht for the night.  Water and some fresh air seem like a better idea.”

The bartender let out a bark of laughter, dipping a cheap wooden mug in a barrel next to him and sliding it onto the counter in front of him before he replied.

“You sure he’s your brother Trev?  The boy just turned eighteen but already he has twice as much sense as you.  By now I’d have had to summon some senior guards from the Lancers to pull your drunken ass out of here.”

Micah shot the man a grateful smile, weaving unsteadily through the room to take the offered water while Trevor sputtered theatrically.  Eighteen.  It was his birthday, but why did the number seem wrong?  He felt… older.  Even his older brother looked like little more than a child.

He took a gulp from the water and looked around the bar.  It wasn’t cold, but it helped wash the taste of foul liquor and bile from his throat.  Still, as crowded as the room was, people were missing.  He didn’t see anyone from his party here, and-

A frown creased his face.  His party.  Micah was part of the Lancers, an adventurer for the past two years, but he didn’t remember the names or faces of anyone in his group.  Something was wrong.

Before he could follow that line of reasoning, Trevor hand slapped down on his shoulder, his brother leaning on him with an uncomfortable amount of weight as he tried to steady himself.  Evidently, drinking for two was a bit much for his brother.

“Micah,” Trevor said, the word trailing off in the barest hint of a slur.  “I know you don’t want to drink anymore but we can’t end the night right here.  You’re a man now and there’s a place I wanna show you.”

“Oh gods,” Micah whispered in horror before downing the rest of the water, but Trevor already had him by the forearm.

The streets of Basil’s cove rushed past, cool and dark.  Micah didn’t exactly remember when the sun had set, everything from before he started drinking was a bit of a blur, but there were still people on the street.  None of them approached the two of them as Trevor hurried them toward a noisy but upscale part of town.

Closed storefronts were replaced by outdoor bistros and bars advertising drinks and finger food at outrageous rates.  The garb of the pedestrians changed too.  Trevor and him were the only two wearing middle class tunics and breeches.  Most of the men were in fashionable silk robes that stopped at their knees, and the women.

Well the women weren’t wearing much.  In fact, some of them seemed to be wearing more perfume and jewelry than clothing.

Micah’s eyes widened and his steps faltered as he turned to look at Trevor in horror.

“Where in the name of the Sixteen are you taking me?” He asked, suddenly noting the flushed cheeks, smirk and jaunty step on his brother.  “Please, tell me it’s not-”

“Welcome to the Rose Petal Winehouse,” Trevor replied theatrically, throwing an unsettling wink MIcah’s way.  “Home to the best drinks and women in Basil’s Cove.  It’s time to finally make you a man.”