Illiana grinned as the wall gave in to corruption and decay. While it was far too late to enact a proper revenge on the Archmagus, slaying his shade would be satisfying nonetheless. She hoped he had enough wits to recognize her after all this time.
The hole reached the size of a human head, and Illiana approached it cautiously to peer through. Flickering blue flames lit the room beyond, revealing gray stone with golden inlay arranged in arcane sigils. Four blocky figures stood sentry over a huge sarcophagus. Three of them held sword and shield while the fourth held a silver staff tipped with a ruby the size of a child’s fist.
Seeing it, Illiana’s hackles rose and a growl rose in her throat. That gem… That gem was the last thing she’d ever seen. It hadn’t even been a fight. She’d phased into the room, tracking that wonderful scent that made her loins ache, and felt a cold magic bind her. Thrashing, she’d looked up into a human man’s malevolent smile beside that gem. Magic lashed out, overwhelming pain. Then darkness. Wasn’t even a fight.
“Ssssh.” Cinder shushed her. “Probably not going to get the drop on them, but growling isn’t going to help.”
Cinder… mate. Illiana pushed back the memories. They weren’t hers. Not Illiana’s. She was here with Cinder and Barnaby for the Archmagus’s eye. Something that the Imperial Academy at Hearthold needed. Was the eye that gem in the staff? Could be. No… the eye was something different, a more subtle power.
“There’s aaah,” Illiana unclenched her face from her snarl. “Four golems. Three brawlers, the fourth got a real powerful staff. Probably fueled by the soul of an apprentice or defeated rival. They are…” She squinted, “inactive.”
“No doubt that will change as soon as we set foot in there. Anything else?”
Illiana glanced at the still-intact door. The wards were still active. She probably couldn’t use her starself within that room. Gathering mana for any spell might be tricky. Her eyes drifted down to the cleaver. Tempting but demonic weapons always were.
“Burial chamber’s still warded against a whole host of magic, easier to fight them out here. Cinder nodded.
“Barnaby, bottleneck time.” Cinder said. “We’ll focus on the caster, you hold off the others.”
“For justice!” Barnaby saluted, tromping up to stand beside the growing hole, ready to use his great shield like a door. Cinder knocked an arrow tipped with a satchel of black powder.
Illiana doubted she could take out the spell golem with a single cast but she’d give it her best. She still had over half her mana reserves. Although against four golems that were likely hardened to magical attacks she’d probably need all of it.
“Earth and stone are no match for heaven’s wrath.” Illiana claws crackled with energy as she traced the elemental spell in the air. “Against the power of thunder, they can only SHATTER!” A jagged bolt of eye-searing power leapt from her hands into the burial chamber, striking the slimmer golem with an ear-splitting crack. The golem’s left arm exploded into powder. Uncomfortably, that was not the arm holding the silver staff.
The golem moved with mechanical precision and speed, turning to point the gem in Illiana’s direction, who dived to the side as her starself went opposite. A crimison beam shot from the gem and scythed toward Illiana, cutting through the stone wall like butter.
<fzzzst>
The beam passed through the center of Illiana’s starself, while her fleshself rolled up to her feet, the sides of her ribs tingling.
“What kind of spell is that?!” Cinder hissed.
“The sort that can kill a Glitch Saber that can’t dodge.” Illiana called back, sending her starself running toward the opening. Immediately she stared down the length of the staff, gem pulsing, but the golem didn’t fire. The damn thing had some smarts. The other golems were rushing forward, but not towards the hole.
Crunch! Large cracks appeared in the door and rubble fell from the ceiling. They were breaking down the door from inside the burial chamber!
“Barnaby!” Cinder called out.
“On it.” The knight charged for the door, passing in front of the widening hole, now the size of a household window.
The golem fired as his shield entered its vision. It held for a second as he charged, bursting through his shield when as three quarters past, he yelled in alarm as it cut across his armor, his charge turning into a stumble but he didn’t fall. Cinder stepped into the line of fire as the beam faltered and loosed her arrow before ducking and weaving in the opposite direction. A loud boom accompanied a flash of light that removed half the chiseled features of the golem’s face. Yet its arm remained steady.
“Keep hammering it!” Cinder cried out as the door bowed outward from another blow, the stone falling away to reveal black metal reinforcements within it.
Both Illianas began to cast their shatter spell. If she switched at the last second she could release it from where her starself now stood. The only trick would be surviving the answer to the attack because the golem kept that gem trained on her starself.
Fortunately there was about to be a second angle.
With the thrid strike from inside the burial chamber, the door burst open and a golem stepped through it. Right where an injured but still very much alive Barnaby waited for it.
“For justice!” He shouted as his searing hammer struck the golem’s shoulder, and its shield arm fell away.
Illiana smiled as she ran, they’d planned for both undead and golems. Then she turned, sighting the rod wielder through the doorway, over the shoulder of the golem fighting Barnaby. Shouting the words, she loosed the spell she clutched in her fist.
“Shatter!” The lightning whipped out and sent the golem’s head flying from its shoulders.
“Who dares disturbs my rest?” A voice crept out of the walls and slid down Illiana’s back. Tendrils of shadow extended out from the lid of the coffin.
“Archmagus Ferrious!” Barnaby shouted as he struggled to hold back the one armed golem. Both the golem and his shield were sporting numerous cracks. “We have come to retrieve and return your eye to the people of Hearthold. From which you stole it centuries ago.”
“Also anything else that's of value and not nailed down.” Cinder added, but much more softly.
“You shall have to pry the eye out of my cold, dead skull. I shall never give it up.” The shadow tendrils bent upward, twisting together over the lid of the sarcophagus. There an indistinct form coalesced, of a robed man with a single glowing eye. “Besides, the gem was a gift. A reward for not burning their pathetic settlement to the ground.”
“No need to pry anything out. I plan on shattering every bone you ever possessed.” Illiana growled, sending her star self running through golems and into the burial chamber. The fading wards pulled at her essence, but she remained a coherent constellation until the gaze of his eye fell on her. Illiana’s starself froze midstep, a deep cold seizing each individual star.
“You!” He seethed, “Of course it's you! You traitorous artifact. I’ve felt you slinking around for centuries. I should have destroyed your spirit the moment I detected it.
“The cloak wouldn’t have been have as powerful if you’d done that.” Illiana’s fleshself said, standing at the widening hole, now big enough for her to step through. Her tail lashed confidently.
His head turned and before his gaze fell entirely on Illiana’s flesh self, she switched.
<fzzzst>
“And you so enjoyed tormenting me, along with all the others.” She said, stepping forward. With every switch she felt more and more like her old self. Her tentacles reared back, no longer tied to the cloak but anchored in her back, where they should be.
“Ruugh!” He exclaimed, shifting his gaze back to the other.
<fzzzsT!>
“I’ll end this the same way I did the first time.” He extended his hand his hand and the silver rod flew leapt towards it.
“Illiana stop switching!” Cinder called out. “I’ve got the bastard!”
The Archmagus’s shade jerked his head toward Cinder’s voice just as the twang of her bow whispered through the air. The glowing eye widened as a bundle of arrows streaked toward his head. They exploded in blinding flashes of light.
The wraith shrieked in pain, twisting around to cover its eye.
With a roar Illiana sprang up toward him claws beared.
At the last moment, he jerked his head up, in the glare of his eye Illiana froze in midair.
“Not so fa-” He jerked suddenly, the point of the unicorn horn pushing through his chest. Its base was held by Illiana’s tentacle which arched over his head and out of view.
“Uuuugh.” The groan flowed out of him along with the melting of his shadowy ectoplasm as he looked down at the wound.
Freed of his stare, Illiana touched down on the cold stone of the lid of the sarcophagus
“Enjoy annihilation, shadow of my murderer.” Illiana whispered. “I’m going make sure you are entirely forgotten.”
“Waaaat?” The fading shade gasped, confusion swirling the shrinking light of its eye.
“This region is going to become an entirely new legend.” Illiana said.
Comprehension dawned on the shade as it fell back onto the lid, its shadows transparent. “You can’t have that kind of power. You died. I killed you. You are a remnant.”
“Nothing a few snacks won’t fix.” Illiana chuckled.
The shade’s head lolled to the side, spotting Barnaby still struggling with the golems.
“Idiots! Stop. Tell the knight that… thaaaaaa.” The shade’s eye flickered out and the wisps of its body dissolved into the air.
The unicorn horn fell onto the stone with a light clatter.
Illiana started at the noise, a shiver running through her body as if she’d been shaken awake. What was I doing? She thought, her tentacle’s toothy petals and buds puckering in uncertainty.
“What the hell was that about?” Cinder asked, striding into the burial chamber.
“Uuuh,” Illiana reviewed her memories of the last few minutes, the motions were there, but words were hazy. “My cloak really didn’t like this guy.” She said, hopping down off the sarcophagus.
“I think you were about to rip his throat out with your teeth.” Cinder reached up and pulled the tentacle down into Illiana’s eyeline and raised her brows as it wrapped around her wrist. “And no glitching.”
“I’d rather have a tentacle than be dead!” Illiana said, then whispered, “They’re useful…”
“We’re going to have to hide you under a blanket in town at this rate.” Cinder said.
Illiana opened her mouth to argue more when Barnaby interrupted.
“Is it there? The Eye?”
“Hang on, let me check the lid,” Cinder said, and knelt to inspect the sarcophagus. Grateful to avoid further interrogation, Illiana snatched the unicorn off the top and shoved it into the back of her belt. A handy thing to have against the undead and poison. She wondered if be a half as effective against an undead that hadn’t killed it. Stepping back, she watched Cinder circle around the stone box.
“I think its safe to open.” She announced after completing the circuit. It took all three of them to push off the lid, and it landed with a loud clunk on the other side. The desiccated corpse inside did not stir.
Without a word, Barnaby smashed the skull with his hammer and snatched up the perfectly eyeball-sized gem among the fragments. He studied it for a few moments in the fingers of his gauntlet before dropping it into his pouch. A scowl bent his features.
“What’s wrong?” Cinder asked. “That what we came for right?”
“So small yet so evil. I do not see how the academy can use such a thing for Justice. Barnaby said. “It must be purified first.”
“Learned bad habits spending a few centuries inside the skull of a certified asshole?” Illiana chuckled.
“Let me guess,” Cinder’s eyes rolled up slightly as if to read something on the back of her lids, “We have to descend to the underworld and bath it in the waters of the Lethe so it will forget its sin and reborn purified.”
“Yes that will work.” Barnaby said, sounding impressed. “Although I hope the temple will know the location of some bottled Lethe water. Traveling to underworld and returning is… an injustice.”
“We’re not doing that Barnaby.” Illiana said, “We’re giving it to the Dean and getting paid. Fixing the seal is his problem.” Illiana stooped to pick up the silver rod. Touching it made her skin crawl. When she reached her magical senses out to it something stung her mind. As if something had slapped her mental hands away. Apparently, the rod didn’t like her either. Weird. Was it keyed to a certain school of wizardry?
“And the sooner we get paid the sooner we can invest in some decursing services. Tinny might be able to help and keep his mouth shut.” Cinder said, dropping a few bits of gold jewelry she’d dug out the corpse into a brown leather bag.
“Tinny is a boot licking lizard.” Illiana hissed, shaking out her fingers after another aborted attempt at picking up the staff. “Barnaby can you pick this thing up? It doesn’t like me at all.”
“So? He likes licking my boots. You just don’t like them because they’re in the wizard’s guild and they kicked you out.” Cinder snorted.
Illiana whipped around, letting out a sound of an angry housecat before finding words. “They did not! I left!”
“Fine! But you lay off Tinny and you will let them look at you when we get back.” Cinder crossed her arms and gave Illiana a determined stare.
Illiana opened her mouth to protest but Barnaby stepped between them.
“Fighting among ourselves is an injustice. Best we removing ourselves from this evil place.” He said.
Both women stared at his broad face before sighing.
“The lets go.” Cinder said, “Hopefully not too many things have moved into the path we took to get down here.
“I am ready to see the sun, again.” Illiana nodded.
I am ready to see the stars, again. The whisper echoed.