Chapter 24: Dungeons and Dragons
Before Xadia was divided in two and long before the arrival of the UrSkseks, the elves under the singular leadership of Licht; many temples housing many artefacts of immense Primal magical power were built around the whole of the continent. Many of which were laid in the west. The Arcane Temples were of the original six primal magics: Moon, Sky, Sun, Earth, Ocean and Stars. This was before each arcanum became adopted by a single elf clan after Licht's disappearance, and the disintegration of the elves as a singular civilisation.
Many of the varying temples had their magical artefacts and totems of worship, were taken back into elven possession when Aaravos's treachery was made public, and his creation of dark magic was passed onto humanity. Whom in turn began discovering and learning more secrets of dark magic. However many of the temples couldn't be reached in time and so the order given from the elves guarding them, was to destroy and bury them deep underground. Thereby keeping the secrets of primal magic out of the hands of human dark mages, corrupt kings and other duplicitous individuals.
However, what the elves never expected or considered a possibility was that the destroyed and buried temples would become rediscovered, centuries afterwards due to earthquakes and landslides uncovering them. Such probabilities were not determined to be factual due to the relative stability of the geography of the western half of Xadia. As a result of the elves miscalculation, humans subsequently gained entrance to some Arcane Temples; whenever the land split open revealing such.
And so it was this kind of scenario that led Zeren and Sarai, along with Thorfinn and Jorvik to be sent to one an area of geographical disturbance, for their first Mage Knights mission. The discovery of another Arcane Temple deep within the kingdom of Duren, right in the middle of that kingdoms bloody civil war, the artefacts within were believed to be that of the Sky Arcane. And sought after High Mage Julius Novachrono.
Meanwhile, inside Duren... Crown Princess Annika was backed by her longtime partner; Princess Consort Neha and the royal army. She, and her allies were engaged in a civil war against her traitorous uncle, whom was vying for the Throne. Duren was no stranger to varying claimants to the throne in its history leading to war, but Princess Annika was seen by some as being undeserving of the crown. And that was even before anyone factored in that she was gay. Her uncle, backed up by a sizeable army, took great care to label her as an 'invert'.
However, a sizeable army of nobles and ordinary citizens supported Princess Annika due to her compassionate nature and her no nonsense attitude towards corruption. Of whom many of her uncles forces were. Due to the earlier notice given to Duren by Katolis about not being able to send military aid to back up Annika's claim to the throne, the ambassador Lord Flevence had been peeved but begrudgingly accepted that the border between humanity and Xadia did count as more important.
But... when the Temple was discovered Crown a Prince Harrow as well as captains Vangeance and Yami offered to send some of their recruits to aid the fight against Annika's uncle, in exchange for the sole rights of everything 'magical' within the Temple. All treasure was and would belong to Duren, but artefacts deemed to be sensitive magical artefacts for the Citadel, and the Rogues, was to be returned to Katolis. The answer that was received from Princess Annika's court was a very bitter "agreed".
"How far is the dungeon from here?" Thorfinn complained, frowning at way the dark haired boy, holding the map, was standing next to Sarai. And who appeared to have her entire rapt attention, all to himself. Looking up from the map and back toward the letter, given to him by Captain Vangeance, Zeren acknowledged the discomfort and rising annoyance from Thorfinn. "We are not very far from the Manu Falls from which, according to Captains Vangenace's letter, the dungeon is four hundred metres from".
"Thorfinn", Zeren added, "I know you're excited about this mission but we all must remember that there hasn't been a discovery of an Arcane Temple in nearly a hundred years. So we must be careful". The group of four sixteen year old knights were currently walking along a dusty forest track, on the border of Katolis and Duren, that winded alongside a river that was led to the famous Manu Falls. "Come on", Sarai spoke up, twirling her spear in her hands, "where's your excitement for adventure?"
Thorfinn wanted to hurl an angry retort back at Zeren and frown at Sarai's laid back attitude but found himself stopped by Jorvik, who raised his hand and pointed at the ground. Whereupon, the group saw vicious fissures spreading along from further ahead and below a small gully.
"Those must be the radiating cracks formed when the ground split open and revealed the Temple", Zeren announced. "We will recover the artefacts for our captains, and then rendezvous with the army of Princess Annika".
Reluctantly, Thorfinn accepted Zeren's words. It wasn't that he found his fellow teenage knight annoying or that he despised him for him; for obviously being noble in heritage, despite him never having admitted it. Thorfinn found that the familiarity that seemed to exist between the two Golden Dawn knights was irksome and annoying. Contrarily, Jorvik got on extremely well with their de-facto team leader and already regarded him as a friend, just like Gyda.
"Over there!" Jorvik yelled, pointing towards a half buried archway protruding from the Earth with ancient looking runes written across it. As the four knights approached they became aware of an elf skeleton laying in the ground, its horns clearly marking it as such as did its obvious half decayed elvish clothes. "It's an elf..." Thorfinn blanched, having never seen the sight of, either living or dead, the 'enemy' of humanity.
"It's hideous", the blonde boy snarked, kicking the bones with his boot, not seeing the narrow eyes and clenched fists of Zeren. "These creatures... if they could only just accept humans using magic the we could all live in peace. But no... they despise us!" Jorvik nodded in agreement as Thorfinn ranted, whilst Sarai scowled at the desecration of the dead.
As the only one of them who had seen Zeren's reaction, she was now believe that the secret that he was holding was that he was part of the human pacifist movement, that wanted to abandon all forms of magic and move closer to elves and dragons again. 'I can understand why he may want to keep this secret... the pacifists are almost as persecuted against as the Amari's were'.
"Hey... Zeren", she uttered, attempting to broach the subject with him, however she found herself suddenly deafened by an excruciatingly loud roar from high above. "Dragon!" Yelled Thorfinn, bringing out his crossbow and quiver of poison bolts, whilst Jorvik withdrew a broadsword, wreathed in dark magic, which only alerted the dragon to them.
"Umbiri Desoto". Before Zeren could take control of the situation, Jorvik raised his sword high in the air and then proceeded to cast a dark magic spell, at the same time as carrying out a massive diagonal slash through the air. The resulting slash, tore through the air straight into the dragon and bifurcated it. From nose to tail, two halves of the great beast fell to the ground each side of the gully.
"Well", Thorfinn grinned. "Thanks to Jorvik, we now have a source of material for magic and money. And our path forwards is clear!"