Eli placed Vespera down lightly beside Minerva while their contingent of demons fought savagely against the skeleton army. They roared and screamed as they removed heads and crushed skulls with every strike. Despite their brutal efficiency, their efforts were barely enough to maintain a stalemate against the tide of undead bearing down on them.
“What’s the plan?” Minerva asked tersely, glancing around as she hovered a few feet above the ground.
“I was thinking I’d go dragon on his ass.” Eli replied, reaching for the latches in his armour. “No sense prolonging this more than we have to.”
“Can you do that without crushing the tower?” The angel questioned. “I know I’m asking a lot, but this place could hold the answers to so many questions my people have about The First One – questions that would be a lot more difficult to answer if we have to sort through the rubble.”
Their conversation was interrupted when another spear made of rock slammed into Eli, shattering against his armour but winding him. At the same time several skeletons slipped through the demonic front line and charged towards them, causing his angel and demon to spring into action. They worked in perfect tandem – Vespera beheading the skeletons with her sword while Minerva used her light magic to shield her from lethal blows.
Impressive. He thought to himself, blinking in surprise. They’ve been practicing.
“There’s also the risk that you might crush more of those enchanted glass orbs.” Vespera added as she retreated to Eli as if nothing had happened. “If the lich crushed one glass ball and summoned this many skeletons, I don’t even want to think about how many would be summoned if you accidentally crushed all of them.”
“Unless crushing the glass ball also lets you control the skeletons.” Eli countered. “In which case that’s exactly what I should be doing.”
“Are you confident enough to take that chance?” Minerva asked.
Three more skeletons slipped through the front line, but this time Eli was ready. He darted forward through the air with his hammer ready, crushing the first one’s head through its plate metal armour. The movement sent him into a spin, one which he used the momentum of to land a heel-kick on the head of the second skeleton that caused its spine to pop apart. He rode the skeleton’s shoulders to the ground as it collapsed, stepping to the side just in time to catch the next rock javelin mid flight and toss it into the third skeleton.
Unfortunately for him, javelin-throw was not his strong suit and he didn’t know how to call upon his instinctual orcish weapon knowledge in his Nephilim form. The weapon bounced awkwardly off the undead’s chest plate, the weight causing it to stagger backwards but stay standing. Grunting in frustration he charged forward and slammed his hammer down on the creature in a two-handed overhead strike, destroying it.
The move caught the eye of the nearby demons, causing them to roar in approval. They redoubled their efforts against the skeletal front line as Eli holstered his hammer and moved back to a nervous-looking Minerva and Vespera, his mind made up. Taking a mana potion from one of his pockets he drank it quickly, topping off his reserves before answering his angel’s question.
“Your point is a good one. I’ll do this the old fashioned way then.”
“Good.” Minerva said before furrowing her brow. “Remind me: what exactly does that entail?”
“I’m going to use his own mana against him.”
She looked at him for a moment before leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. “Good luck and come back safe. You still owe me that library date.”
“Wouldn’t dream of missing it.” Eli replied with a grin as his eyes glowed gold.
A moment later he launched himself into the air, feeling the rush of snow and wind as it whipped by his face. His mana vision quickly found a speck of multicolored light floating on the other side of the dome, dancing from one spot to another as if to taunt him. His grin grew as he rocketed towards the light, watching it turn from a small speck into the outline of a humanoid form.
Something whizzed by him in the blizzard, causing him to roll wildly to the right. It was quickly followed up by a second projectile, then a third. They were no longer stone javelins either – instead, they were metal swords and spears, clearly scavenged and repurposed from the battlefield below them.
That’s fine. Eli thought to himself as he summoned his mana. We can do this the hard way too.
“Protego!”
His trusty ice elemental appeared on his shoulder a moment later, just in time to summon a block of ice that deflected an oncoming mace. With a widening grin Eli shot forward once more, trusting in his magical companion to keep him safe. The increasing number of thunk noises as he neared proved his trust to be correct, and in moments he was face-to-face with the lich once more.
“Trahere!”
The lich’s arm lurched forwards as the sword shot towards Eli. To its credit it managed to slow its inevitable flight towards him, pulling back with unholy strength against the spell. Its joints creaked and popped precariously as it tried desperately to hold onto the curved scimitar slipping through its fingertips.
Seeing that it was fighting a losing battle, the lich suddenly changed tactics. It stopped trying to use its magic to hold itself in place, instead letting go and allowing itself to be carried towards him sword first. The move was a shrewd one that would have caught most combatants off-guard and resulted in them being skewered.
Not Eli though.
As if in slow motion he juked to the side when the lich neared, releasing control over the spell as he did. Even as the momentum carried the undead creature closer he was switching gears mentally, preparing his next spell. A split second later the two of them were face-to-face, with Eli’s hand outstretched towards the flying monster.
“Arennis!”
The powerful stream of sand shot out from his hand instantly, severing the creature’s bone at the shoulder as it sailed past. A moment later it brought itself to a midair stop, but that moment was all the time Eli needed to reach out with his other hand and grab the falling sword. Ignoring the still-flailing arm Eli gently placed his hand on the blade, intent on absorbing the mana from it.
“Huh.” He said a moment later, glancing at the unmoving lich. “It’s not enchanted. So I guess this isn’t your phylactery then, is it Dave?”
He dropped the arm as the lich charged forwards with its staff held high. Eli made no movement to dodge the assault, trusting in his ice elemental to protect him. When the weapon bounced off a block of ice summoned only inches from his face a moment later, his hands shot out to catch it mid-backswing. His legs darted out after that, kicking the lich hard enough to break its grip over the weapon.
A moment later, a rush of mana entered Eli from the staff. It overflowed his reserves like the banks of a river after a rainstorm, causing him to glow gold uncontrollably and shout in pain. Given its source – the phylactery of an ancient, powerful being – the process was unsurprisingly far more painful than the other lich phylacteries he’d absorbed, akin to being stabbed all over his body by tens of thousands of flaming hot pokers.
The lich made the unfortunate decision to attack a moment later, giving Eli the perfect outlet for his overabundant mana. He wordlessly released a beam of pure mana that was large enough to atomize the undead creature’s body, destroying all traces of it. The beam continued far past their aerial battlefield, carving a 6-foot wide hole through the castle walls and deep into the ground below it. By the time he’d finished draining the staff he’d easily breached the crust and reached the mantle, as evidenced by the red glow of exposed molten rock and raw metal.
The wave of exhaustion that hit him after the spell finished threatened to cause him to fall out of the sky. Thankfully for him the blizzard around them had subsided, allowing him to easily find his group again. His weary wings beat slowly as he drifted towards them, the sounds of battle still ringing out underneath him as he lost altitude.
When he was only 20 feet from the ground he felt Minerva’s soft arms wrap around him. His heavy eyelids closed as she guided the two of them safely to the ground, placing him in the snow. A moment later the foul taste of a mana potion entered his mouth, causing him to sputter and sit up.
“Sorry, but we need you awake.” Minerva said apologetically. “We’re not quite done.”
He shook his head before downing the rest of the potion as his mind caught up. “Hang on. I killed the lich. These skeletons should be falling apart now.”
“Are you sure you killed it?”
“100%.” Eli nodded. “Drained Dave’s phylactery and destroyed his body.”
“Then there’s something different about these skeletons, because they’re still fighting.”
“Fuck.” Eli swore as he got to his feet.
Drawing his hammer once more, Eli charged towards the front line. He passed the bodies of several demons on his way, noting their locations so that he could go back and heal them once they were done. Even as he reached the front line he saw that the remaining ones were covered in cuts, bruises, and wounds.
In the middle of the chaos was Vespera. She fought with the grace of a dancer and the ferocity of a cornered honey badger, removing skeletal heads from shoulders with every swipe. Between her tail blade and her natural agility she deftly dodged and parried their strikes, proving herself to be at least as powerful of a warrior as her rage demon cousins. When a pair of lucky spear thrusts caught her off guard the first one skidded off her plate armour harmlessly, and the second bounced wide due to a magical shield of light thrown up by Minerva at the last possible second.
“A little help here?” She called back to them even as she dove back into the fray.
Not one to let his bond mates suffer, Eli transformed back into his orcish form as he leapt into the fray beside her. The two of them worked together to slowly turn the tide of the battle back in their favor. Minerva stayed close by, supporting all of them with magical shields until the steady stream of skeletal reinforcements turned into a trickle, then tapered off entirely.
When the final enemy fell Eli raced back to the fallen demons and used the last of his mana reserves to heal who he could. In the end three of the satyrs and one of the larger rage demons were beyond saving – an outcome that they assured him through Vespera’s translation that they were not only accepting of, but happy with. They proudly informed him that they would be celebrating their deaths in the demonic dimension in the coming weeks by drinking something they referred to as ‘blood wine’.
“I’m gonna say it now: rage demons are weird.” Eli muttered to Vespera as their red-skinned allies walked back to the edge of the ice dome.
“I won’t argue that point with you. Are they really that different from orcs in this regard though?”
He considered it for a moment before shaking his head. “Yes and no. Orcs mourn differently, but… I guess it’s all different. After all, who am I to tell someone else how to mourn?”
“Normally, I’d enjoy this philosophical debate.” Minerva interjected as she joined them. “However, there’s a hall full of mysteries under the tower that I’d really like to look at. Could we please do that instead?”
The two of them laughed in response before starting the trek through the snow. In minutes they were beneath the tower once more, with Minerva rushing ahead towards the stack of books still sitting next to the throne. As she began to flip through them Eli and Vespera moved slowly through the hall, looking for any other magical artifacts Dave left behind.
After an hour of fruitless searching they moved up to the first level where they met Seraphina and several of her dark elven guards. “Lord Consort.” She said as she approached.
“Phinny.” Vespera replied teasingly.
Ignoring the comment, the dark elven guard captain continued. “We became worried when the demons crawled out of the ice hole without you. It looks like you’ve got everything well in hand though.”
“They left already?” Eli asked, surprised. “Does that mean we have to tunnel our own way out?”
“No. The hole they cut is still intact.”
“Huh. I guess the ice-regeneration enchantments were tied to the lich somehow.” Vespera shrugged.
“Either that or I destroyed them inadvertently mid-battle.” Eli suggested.
“I’m sorry, did you say lich?” Seraphina questioned.
Eli chuckled in response. “It’s dead now. Or rather, it’s dead again.” He waved his hands. “Come on. I’ll tell you the story while we check in with Minerva.”
He recounted their adventure as they moved back down the hidden stairs and through the corridor lined with enchanted glass balls. When they reached the end they stopped next to Minerva and waited a full minute for her to look up from the book she was engrossed in. Seeing that she was fully focused he gently leaned over the throne she’d claimed and kissed her on the cheek, breaking her out of her trance.
“Oh! Sorry.” She blushed as she looked around. “I was reading and I lost track of time. Can you believe that we recovered the journals of The First One? Incredible. To see our history written from his perspective changes so much.”
Eli chuckled. “Learn anything interesting?”
“So much.” She replied with a wide smile.
“Anything you want to share?”
“How many hours do you have?”
“Ah.” Eli replied, realizing he should have been more specific. “How about this: did you learn about any magical artifacts stored here? That’s why we came here in the first place, after all.”
“Yes!” She said excitedly before flipping through half the book. “These glass orbs!”
“I thought you said they raised the dead?” Seraphina asked, turning to Eli.
“They do, but that’s only incidental to their main purpose.” Minerva responded, tracing through a page with one pale finger. “Ah! Here it is. Towards the end of his life he discovered he had an incurable disease. He came here with several thousand of his most fervent supporters and began to experiment on them using a combination of different schools of magic to try and find a cure. Eventually he settled on the idea of trying to remove someone’s ‘essence’ and place it into another, healthier body.”
“Their ‘essence’?” Eli questioned.
Minerva shook her head and shrugged. “That’s the word he uses. At least I think. This is written in an ancient dialect and I’d need some of my reference materials to confirm it.” She paused. “He called it ‘soul transference’, but that’s a shockingly unhelpful name as well.”
“This whole thing screams evil.” Eli muttered.
“They volunteered.” Minerva countered.
“Still doesn’t sit right with me.”
“Did it work though?” Vespera asked.
Minerva tilted her head from side to side. “Yes and no. He tried on a live body, but the effects were…gruesome, to say the least. The words ‘spontaneous bodily combustion’ were used.”
“Yikes.”
“Yes. So after that he tried a different approach – transferring their souls into these glass balls around us.” She gestured. “He intended to transfer them out into healthy bodies afterwards once he figured out how, but apparently his sickness began to worsen after that. In a last ditch effort he created the magical staff you saw him wielding, designing it so that it drew power from the glass balls you see around us in the same way that your mana crystals power your hammer.”
“Ingenious.” Eli nodded before seeing the looks on the three women’s faces. “Don’t get me wrong – he was insane and sounds more than a bit evil, but I can respect the fact that he invented something powerful.”
“Yes well, the writings start to trail off after that.” Minerva said, continuing the story. “They become less coherent, complaining about how much pain he’s in. Then they stop.”
“I think we can guess the rest of the story from there.” Eli nodded. “He died, and the staff resurrected him as a lich, acting as his phylactery.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “So the artifacts are these glass balls then?”
“Exactly. Destroying them will release the contained death magic, resurrecting any nearby corpses as skeletons.”
“Are the people whose souls are in there still… I don’t know, alive?” He pressed.
“No. That part was clear in his research. The soul transference process killed the person, retaining only energy.”
“Good. Let’s get a portal open and get all of them packed up then.” Eli replied. “I think we just found the power source for our golems.”
