Libriohexer ~ 24!

Sam bolted down a spiral staircase that cut through the annex, his legs pumping furiously as he tried to make up a little extra time. He rounded the last turn when a wave of vertigo slammed into him like a shield bash. The whole world wobbled and his knees threatened to give out on him completely for the briefest moment. He grabbed hold of the wrought iron handrail to steady himself against the sudden push and pull of gravitational distortion. Most of the Spatial Magic connecting the College like an inscrutable labyrinth was flawless—the transitions from one plane to another completely seamless.

The Annex… not so much.

It was one of the oldest parts of the College, created back when Sage Cognitionis had first been cobbling things together. Spatial Magic done poorly could have all kinds of complicated side effects; everything from time pockets and gravity wells, to spatial anomalies and axis inversions. As a result, the College Annex, like most annexes, was where they stuck the people the College loathed. Those Mages who had gotten on the wrong side of the Arch-Mage, or the handful of non-magical professors who taught more mundane subjects like dungeoneering or monster anatomy.

Sam wasn’t bound for the Annex—no, the Repository of Trustees was buried even more deeply than that. The nauseous feeling finally passed, and Sam resumed his downward trek, spinning round and round and round like a corkscrew drilling into the earth. Finally, the staircase dumped him into an ancient hallway of gray stone, dimly lit by an iron candelabra protruding from the walls. The air down here was damp and cool, but also so thick with mana it was almost palpable.

<Can you feel that?> Bill inhaled deeply, like someone smelling an apple pie fresh from the oven. <I just want to stand here and soak it up. We gotta be getting close now. Stay sharp. There’s no telling what we might run into this deep.>

<What is that supposed to mean?> Sam was taken aback at the concern that ran through Bill’s thoughts.

<Nothing. Just, you know. There could be some weird stuff down here is all. When mana pools like this, it can have all kinds of odd side effects. Remember the jellies down in the sewer?>

“How could I ever forget? Those were some of the first creature’s I ever fought in Eternium.” He shuddered at the memory of the gooey blobs of elemental magic which could only be killed by Mages thanks to their magical nature.

<Those were the result of congealing residual mana,> Bill continued his explanation. <This much power just hanging around in the air could have equally unpredictable consequences. So, head on a swivel is all I’m saying.>

<You’re such a comforting presence, you know that?> Sam picked up his pace, while simultaneously trying to look in every direction at once. Admittedly, it was creepy down here, though he wasn’t sure if that was because it was dark and dank or because Bill had just opened his big fat mouth.

Sam padded along on silent feet but slowed when he heard a rustle of movement up ahead, just around the next bend. If there was someone or something down here, there was no way he’d be able to talk his way out of a fight. The trial was already in full swing up above, and no one came down here by accident.

Sam licked his lips and summoned his Orbital Tomes. They sprung free from Bill’s Soul Space, spinning slowly around Sam in a lazy circle. He quickly cast Papier Mache Mage, then rotated Fire and Ice Orb Shurikens to his front two positions. Spells at the ready, Sam inched forward. He rounded the corner and came face to face with the business end of a sword.

Then let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh, thank celestial, it’s only you,” Arrow dropped his blade.

“Did you guys have any problems?” Sam quizzed as he joined up with the group.

“No problems getting here,” Dizzy quickly brought him up to speed, “but there were a few tiny issues waiting for us…”

She stepped aside to reveal two dead guards next to an ancient-looking wooden door. “No one mentioned there would be sentries. But we managed to get the jump on them before they could sound an alarm. How about you? Any issues?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Sam cracked his knuckles ominously.

“Hey, hate to break up this fun little reunion,” Bill spat at them, “but our window of opportunity is closing fast. At best, we have minutes left until the old Arch-Mage gets done bumping his gums and punishes that kid. As soon as he finishes that, every Mage in the Kingdom is going to pour into the halls. We want to be scooting along way~y before that happens, so how’s about we get this show on the road?”

“No better time than the present,” Dizzy held up a ring of keys and gave them a little jingle. She slipped a huge brass key into the lock and turned the tumblers with a click.

“On three,” she whispered, readying her heavy mace. “One… Two… Three!”

She reared back and kicked the door open, then rushed in with a war cry. Kai, Sphinx, and Arrow followed hard on her heels, leaving Finn, Sam, and Bill to bring up the rear.

Sam was half expecting an arcane dungeon, complete with shackles, torture equipment, and chandeliers crafted from human remains. Instead, it looked like the medieval version of a cubical farm. There were neatly ordered desks, situated in neatly ordered rows and columns. Each workspace was covered with stacks of parchments, scrolls, and dossiers. A red-faced Mage with thinning hair, basset hound jowls, and a prodigious gut straining against his fine sapphire robes sprang to his feet.

“What is the meaning of this!” he bellowed, hands balling into tight fists. “You lot know full well, no one but the Trustees are allowed to set foot in here! Why, I’ll have your credentials pulled for this insolence!”

“That ship has already sailed,” Sam replied, pushing his way to the front. He dropped his cowl, pulled his foppish hat out, and placed it on his head. With Bill floating by his side and six magical books orbiting around him like planets, there was no mistaking exactly who he was.

“Impossible,” the red-faced Mage sputtered. “It can’t be. You’re… you’re that warlock. The Bibliomancer. But… but how?”

“That’s not the question you should be asking,” Sam’s books were in position. “The real question you should be asking… is how you’re going to get out of here alive.”

“Wilhelm,” the man bellowed at a mousy mage with a shock of silver hair and thick bifocals. “Sound the alarm!”

The mousy mage broke from his desk and dashed to a nearby section of wall covered with runic script. He didn’t make it three steps. Arrow peppered his torso with feathered shafts, dropping him on the spot.

Experience gained: 1,620 (College Trustee, Sage Ildor the Meticulous, Lv. 25)

Some small part of Sam felt bad about this, but then he reminded himself that this was all part of the game. Not to mention the fact that they were at war—one he intended to win. The sudden influx of experience was also nothing to scoff at. Sixteen-hundred points for a single kill? That was insanity, and it had taken Arrow all of three seconds to put ol’ Wilhelm on the floor. Sam strode into the room with a smile, and began slinging spells. Shurikens screamed through the air, but the red-faced Mage wasn’t ready to go down without a fight.

He thrust his hands forward and conjured a hexagonal shield of brilliant crimson light.

“You’ve made a grave mistake,” the mage snarled, “and now you shall pay for it in blood!”

He unleashed a blob of burning red mana that smashed into Sam’s pauldron, eating through a portion of his armor and health. “Archibald! Wynnefreede! Battle Stations! Letterford, free the Mana Kraken! The rest of you, retreat into the Vault. Quickly now!”

“Mana Kraken?” Sam mumbled. “That probably isn’t good.”

“Bill, I thought you said they were as harmless as kittens,” Sam hollered as chaos erupted all around them when the Trustees broke into action. “‘They couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag if you gave ’em a map and a sword.’ That’s a direct quote!”

“Clearly, I made some tactical miscalculations. But you listened to me, and you have no one to blame for that but yourself. Now, if we are done pointing fingers in all directions—because I think it’s safe to say we all share some of the blame here—let’s figure out how to kill all these geezers!”

A willowy mage thrust both hands forward and started hurling javelins of silvery energy, but Finn responded in an instant. He chanted, hands flashing through a series of complex motions as he conjured icy orbs that intercepted each bolt.

Meanwhile, Dizzy charged in, slamming into the red-faced mage with her shoulder. His shimmering crimson shield saved him from suffering any damage, but it didn’t stop physics. Force equals mass times acceleration. Dizzy was huge, heavy, and moving like a freight train. The man flew backward through the air, slamming into a desk and slumping to the ground. Without focused concentration, his force shield guttered and died. Sam took the opportunity to Bookmark the mage before unloading a barrage of Shurikens. His paper stars landed with deadly power, slicing through fine robes and exploding in flashes of orange and gold.

The man was dead in seconds, and even more experience flooded into Sam like a torrent.

Exp: 2,577 (College Trustee, Sage Etrix the Auditor, Lv. 29)

Dizzy didn’t waste a breath, already moving onto her next target; mace swinging for the fences. On Sam’s left, Arrow flipped a desk onto its side for cover, then began picking off the fleeing mages who were making for a heavy circular steel door located at the back of the room. Apparently, most of the mages were harmless—and they were all trying to get out of dodge before the reaper came calling. Kai bounded across the floor to intercept them. One of the Trustees, a gaunt man with sunken eyes and razor-sharp cheekbones, upended another desk and hurled it at Kai with a flick of his wrist.

The monk leapt into the air, glowing like a golden star before slamming a foot into the oncoming desk. The desk exploded in a hail of shrapnel, pieces of wood and bits of paper flying off in every direction. Kai touched down, then bounded into the air again, landing a spinning roundhouse against the man’s temple. The gaunt mage’s knees folded and he went limp, dropping to the ground in a heap of limbs. One swift knife hand strike to the throat finished him on the spot. More experience still.

Exp: 1,215 (College Trustee, Master Lucius Tanicius Excingus, Lv. 22; 405 * 3 difficulty)

Sam grunted in pleasure as a golden light streamed through him, the signal that he had reached level eleven. He almost lost his concentration, but the retreating mages were getting close to a vault door safety. Kai was a thousand times quicker; he vaulted over another desk, leapt into the air, pushed off a wall, and landed in a crouch before the hulking metal door. In a flash, a group of nine mages were suddenly pinned between a deadly monk and a steadily advancing party of mage killers. The mages wheeled around, wide eyed and terrified, looking for some way out. Any way out.

There were still a few standing their ground, but they were fading fast.

A willowy female spellcaster had an arrow protruding from one shoulder and a pair of ice lances sticking out from her stomach. She wasn’t long for this world. A broad shouldered mage clad in glowing mage armor was attempting to go toe to toe with Dizzy, but that was a losing proposition. True, he was technically bigger than her, and he seemed to know how to handle his summoned shillelagh, but he was losing ground to her superior strength and constitution. Once she carved through his mage armor, one good knock to the head would send him off to the afterlife.

In the back, Kai advanced on the party of hapless mages like a deadly wraith. He looked for all the world like a wolf who’d just stumbled upon an unprotected flock of sheep. Unfortunately for the sheep, wolves tended to travel in packs. With a primal howl, Sam and Bill opened up with a bevy of spells. Fireball Shurikens exploded while gobs of viscous ink splattered over robes, quickly gumming up legs so the Trustees couldn’t run. Sensing opportunity, Arrow shifted his focus and unleashed a hail of arrows while Kai danced through the throng of cowering mages.

Bodies fell like hail… and experience poured in like flood waters.

Exp: 1,152 (College Trustee, Master Lovelace the Studious, Lv. 21)

Exp: 2,448 (College Trustee, Sage Wynnefreede the Blunt, Lv. 28)

Exp: 1,857 (College Trustee, Sage Amalia the Ponderous, Lv. 26)

All around the room, more and more of his teammates rose into the air, sheathed in golden light. Finn had finally killed the offensive spellcaster and Dizzy had dispatched the tanky mage, the last semblance of resistance. There were still six mages left standing—quite possibly enough points to drive Sam up another level. Maybe this thing was actually going to go off without a hitch after all.

<Earth to Sam,> Bill squawked in his head. <We’ve got movement at our three o’clock!>

Sam turned his head and noticed a faint distortion beelining away from the hulking vault door. “Nope, not today.”

He took aim and let loose with more Shurikens. The blur fizzled and faded, revealing a pudgy man in his middle years with flowing silver hair. One of Sam’s Shurikens grazed his bicep, leaving a deep slash in his opulent robes. “There’s no escaping this, pal.”

“Who says I’m trying to escape?” The man gave him a cold smile that never quite reached his eyes. He turned on a heel and dove, his hand slapping against a plain section of wall near what looked like a tea-station. The man fell to the ground with a thud, but the bright red handprint on the stone wall began to glow and pulse. The mage slipped onto his hands and knees and quickly scampered toward an overturned desk. “You never should’ve come here. Now you’re about to find out why.”

The floor rumbled and a huge fissure formed down the face of the wall. Sam watched, horrified, as an ethereal blue tentacle studded with suction cups and as thick as a tree trunk emerged from the crack. A second tentacle joined, then a third… a fourth, and a fifth. Those ghastly limbs pulled a bulbous head covered with glow red eyes from the wall. It looked like a giant squid, but one made entirely out of mana.

“What the abyss is that?” Sam’s whisper was the first sound to break the sudden, horrified silence.

<I’m guessing the mana kraken.> Bill shouted into his head. <Also, trouble! Don’t just stand there looking at it, run away!>

It was already too late. A tentacle flashed across the room like a lightning strike, wrapping around Kai, who was busy dispatching the last of the Trustees. The mana limb snaked around his torso in three quick loops, and the monk barely even had a chance to cry out in protest. With a mewling roar, the creature flexed the tentacle and crushed the monk like a soda can. Sam watched in sickened horror as Kai’s top half toppled forward, completely disconnected from the bottom half. He was dead before he hit the ground; which was probably a small mercy.

“Fall back!” Sam yelled over the din of battle. “I’ll hold it at bay.”

He planted his feet and let loose with everything he had in his arsenal. Fireball Shurikens ploughed into the ethereal monster but didn’t seem to do more than superficial damage. His Ice Orb Shurikens were slightly more effective, but only slightly. Ink Lance did absolutely nothing.

<Anything physical isn’t going to have any effect,> Bill sent as the others fought for the exit. <Remember how I said pooling mana could have weird effects? This is what I was talking about. That thing has no true physical essence. It’s wild mana with a crude mind. Any physical attack component won’t even touch it. Only pure magic.>

That certainly explained why his attacks were so ineffectual. Sure, each Shuriken had a spell component, but most of the damage was physical slashing damage. Still better than what anyone else could do, with the exception of Finn. Sam kept spamming his spells as quickly as he could cast them. Anything to buy his friends a little more time.

He aimed at the creature’s myriad of eyes, hoping to blind or disorient the kraken. But that didn’t seem to work either. Arrow jumped a desk, only feet away from the exit when a mana tendril lashed out like a striking cobra. It wrapped around his leg and reeled him in with a screech.

Sphinx, who’d actually made it through the door, bolted back in. She sprang onto a desk and vaulted into the air, executing a flawless aerial flip while simultaneously hurling a flurry of daggers. The black-steel blades were about as effective as shooting a duck with a super soaker. The mana kraken simply absorbed them before plucking the Rogue from the air like a pop fly.

Arrow screeched in fury, but only for a moment. Sphinx didn’t even have time to do that. In the blink of an eye, the creature pulled both of them into its gooey mana center. Rogue and Ranger instantly dissolved, their bodies liquifying in the space of a second.

<Do your job and move your legs, Legs!> Bill thundered at him. <I don’t want to find out how long it takes that thing to dissolve magical books.>

As much as he hated himself for it, Sam turned and bolted for the exit while the mana kraken was busy eating his friend. They were beyond help, and he still had friends that had a chance to survive this mission yet.

Just before he dove through the doorway, he sent a half-dozen fireballs at the smug, relieved mages that had managed to survive to this point. Only Bill saw as their laughter turned to snarls of fury and fear in that instant.