Atolm2000
atolm2000@hotmail.com
*I stake no claim to Legend of Mana, Kathinja, Mephianse, etc., etc., or the cameo guest at the end. I am not Squaresoft.*
The weather was bright and fair, and not one of the
citizens of the prosperous city of Geo was aware of the danger brewing
at the Magic Academy. Oh, it wasn't that rare of an occurence for
a spell or experiment to go wrong. A botched spell of Thesenis's
had left the city filled with Shadoles for two weeks, who had proved to
be more than a little bit of a nuisance, and was known for a long time
as the worst spell-gone-wrong to have come out of the academy. A
few mischievious Shadoles, however, were nothing compared to the trouble
being plotted deep beneath the city, in secret chambers underground.
The library bookcase slid back down and "thoom"-ed
into place behind a lone sorceress. The secret door sealed tight;
with no more light from behind, and not a trace of it from ahead, the tunnel
was filed with absolute darkness. Then, after a few seconds, a sphere
of flame appeared in mid-air, illuminating our heroine.
Holding the flame was a stern figure, her
unkempt hair seeming almost a second, darker set of flames in the blackness.
She wore steel gray and dark red, and was a rather alien figure, with scales
covering parts of her body, a serpentine tail, with reptilian clawed hands
and feet. Despite how dangerous she could be – she was, after all,
half-basilisk, although that fact wasn't really known outside the school
– she was one of the more popular professors among the students, which
probably explained the cry from beyond the secret door – "Be careful in
there, Miss Kathinja!"
"I'll be fine, and I'll be back in school
on Gnome Day. Go get some fresh air! Honestly, Brownie, you
spend far too much time in this building." She stared back at the
closed door, which had no opening mechanism on this side; from here, she
had to leave via one of the other exits, get someone to open the door for
her, or blast it open, if desperate. She didn't much fear the latter.
She had been in the catacombs before when helping Thesenis with research.
Granted, she didn't know the tombs as well as the other professors; she
preferred to spend her days off in the open-air cafe/tavern in the fruit
market, where she could enjoy the sunshine and forget about work for a
while.
The tunnel wound on for almost half an hour,
coiling deeper and deeper under the city. The only sound to be heard
was the clicking of Kathinja's claws on stone. The tunnel straightened
out, then abruptly stopped at a gateway flanked by two huge and vicious-looking
wingless gargoyles, each easily three times her size. She paused
at the entrance to the gateway chamber, then slowly advanced. She
only made it halfway into the chamber before both gargoyles snapped their
heads to glare at the intruder, ruby eyes blazing. The rightmost
one spoke, a rumbling voice of thunder and grinding earth.
"WHO DARES DISTURB THE GUARDIANS OF THE FORBIDDEN
TOMBS?"
Unruffled; Kathinja glared back at the gargoyle,
who swiftly lost the impromptu staredown, largely because the stone beast
was well aware of her sometimes half-controlled ability to force things
to explode with her gaze. (Being stone now, it didn't have much fear
of petrification.)
"Eh, shut it, you know who I am. You
seen Mephianse or any of his students pass this way?"
"NO, LADY KATHINJA. IF THEY ARE HERE,
THEN THEY USED ANOTHER ENTRANCE AND HAVE NOT DISTURBED ME."
"Great. He hasn't checked this path,
so I'll have the element of surprise on him. Fine then, open the
door."
"THOU ART STALKING LORD MEPHIANSE AS A FOE?"
"He's researching summonings, and being Mephianse,
he had to pick the most hopelessly grandiose and dangerous way to test
his new knowledge – he's decided to summon –" Here she lapsed into a rather
excellent impression of the solemn and powerful professor – "A Demon of
Destruction, of Limitless Power.' So, yeah, I'm down here to stop
him."
"I SEE. PASSAGE IS GRANTED, LADY KATHINJA."
The heavy stone doors ground open on a 10'
wide passage, the floor covered with loose flagstones. Kathinja paused
at the doors, then launched into a performance that looked like nothing
so much as a game of hopscotch across the rocks. Each flagstone had
a small symbol on it, and as she paused on each stone, she quietly recited
the pattern under her breath. "Wisp, Shade, Dryad, Aura....Salamander,
where was Salamander...ah, yes, three stones right, and Gnome, Jin, Undine,
and back to Wis-" Just as her claws touched down on the stone, she practically
heard Thesenis's voice echoing in her head, a memory of when her mummified
friend had explained the pattern as Kathinja first hopped from stone to
stone, Thesenis flattening to a shadow and moving between stones that way
as she spoke. "It goes through all the spirits of Mana once, then
reverses – when you reach Undine, it goes back to Jin and so forth, going
back and forth through the sequence until you reach the end of the tunnel.
If you mistake the pattern, then it sets off all the traps in sequence,
all the way down the tunnel. It's a rather unpleasant spectacle when
that happens." Then the stone clicked downward, and there was a silent
moment as she balanced tip-toe on her claws, standing on one foot on the
fateful flagstone. "Damn."
A flurry of movement followed. The first
trap to go off was a guillotine blade dropping straight down on the Wisp-marked
flagstone, barely missing the tip of Kathinja's tail as she dove forward,
already shoulder-rolling under a volley of arrows aimed chest-height, and
doubtless poisoned. Then came a leap as a spinning saw-blade passed
out of the wall at ankle-height; it continued moving forward for ten feet
straight, with Kathinja nimbly dancing on the blade in a vicious circus
balancing act. Then the blade moved back into the wall, forcing her
to put one foot on the wall for leverage as she dove through a torrent
of flame pouring up from the floor. She barely landed on the other
side when a crazy pattern of spears came down from the cieling and up from
the floor, forcing her to dodge back and forth across the floor.
The last spear had just chinked into the floor when Kathinja realized she
had reached the point where the tunnel abruptly narrowed to five feet wide
and began sloping downhill. She swiftly learned why as she launched
into a dead sprint, barely avoiding the boulder that smashed down where
she had been standing when the spears quit coming. The tunnel zigged
and zagged a few times just to make it harder to keep ahead of the rumbling
boulder – it occured to her that it was such a cliche trap, a boulder coming
after you, and she resolved to talk to Thesenis about switching that trap
for something more creative, as she suddenly found the ground under the
front half of her claw not there anymore- a deadfall. She made the
unexpected leap rather impressively, jumping a good fifteen feet forward;
unfortunately, the floor fell out in an eighteen foot span.
In grasping for the opposite ledge, she only succeeded in clawing the pit
wall just below the ledge, as the boulder dropped off just behind her,
both falling into the abyss. She briefly thought of her students,
of her fellow professors, of the incident just a week and a half prior
with Mephianse in the desert, of all the things in the world that she had
never really bothered to get out and see, and came to one conclusion about
her predicament – "This sucks." That conclusion
was reached at about the time a monstrous SPLOOSH came from the boulder,
with a slightly smaller splash into the swift underground river from our
unfortunate professor.
Claws pounding sand, struggling against a
conjured desert wind as it subsided, she paused only briefly to make sure
her unexpected ally was alright, then made straight for the clearing in
the desert where two green-robed students stood by a monstrous apparatus,
overseen by a tall, imposing figure that stood on a sand dune that only
half-buried some huge and ancient beast skeleton; a figure swathed in robes
of brown and red, with a deep golden yellow scarf wrapped around his feline
face, blazing yellow eyes cutting through the desert night, ears perked
up in anticipation of victory, horns curved back behind him keeping a mane
of dark red-black hair in check, he turned to face Kathinja and her unfamiliar
companion with a sweeping gesture at the strange and huge cannon – "You're
too late! Now, I shall make the stars fall from the sky!"
The apparatus triggered with a thundering
report that echoed all the way to the Norn Peaks, as a multitude of flames
– shooting stars? Streaked up out of its mouth into the sky, where they
briefly vanished, followed by an impressive, even beautiful, display as
bursts of color and light covered the sky, visible all across Fa'Diel,
turning the desert night briefly into a multicolored dawn as Mephianse
inadvertently rediscovered fireworks...
...and then Kathinja sputtered awake, sopping
wet, cold, spitting out brackish water, jarred conscious by something jabbing
her in the side. Glaring up, she found the nuisance to be a trident,
in the hands of a bizarre figure – slimy green and yellow scales, bulging
eyes, an atrophied fish-tail, two clawed legs half-formed from fins, with
similiar arms clutching the trident.
The sahagin poked her again, at which point she snatched the
trident, yanking the fish-man off his feet and flat onto his face, then
levered up on the trident and planted one taloned foot on the fish's back.
Jabbing the overgrown guppy slightly with
the trident, she glowered and growled, "Listen pal – if you don't want
to be a statue decorating the academy, you'd better give me the respect
I deserve, and answer me quickly. Where the Hell am I?" The
fish spit out bubbles and struggled. "Fine, object lesson.
See that big crab over there – yeah, the one big enough to be a threat
to poor humans, that's hoping to get the leftovers of your little scavenging
expedition?" She poked forward with the trident, catching the crab's
attention; the beast came forward, pincers out, and as it did, it made
eye-contact, which was a mistake. The sorceress's eyes glowed briefly,
and sparks outlined the crab as it became a perfect statue of a crab.
"Now, where am I?"
It sputtered for a second, then spit out,
"glg-glg-Ma-dore-ah!"
"Great. Good for you. Here's your pokey
stick, now go on and leave me alone!" She dropped the trident in
front of it, and stalked off toward the tunnel leading up.
The tunnel wound around randomly as natural
caverns tend to do, then opened into a broad chamber. She could already
smell the ocean, as salt water dripped from stalactites and pooled in the
ground. Had she cared to notice, it was a rather gorgeous cavern,
sculpted for centuries by the nearby ocean, delicate salt florettes decorating
the walls like summer snowflakes. Right now, she was more annoyed
by the trio of oversized crabs intent on having her for lunch.
The explosions echoed all the way to the surface,
and made such an impression on the other hostile denizens of the caves
that while a few of them showed themselves, none quite dared to challenge
the drenched and irritable professor. This was all the better for
Kathinja, whose only thought was getting back to Geo and stopping Mephianse,
assuming she hadn't already been delayed too long.
So it was that, about half an hour later, a
still slightly-dripping figure came along the white sand beach into Polpota
harbor. She wordlessly continued straight up the stairs, past the
outdoor restaurant, and straight through the resort hotel, pausing at the
entrance to the small open-air market when she saw a rather familiar (and
short) set of green student's robes, teetering under a pile of seashells,
jars, odd crystals, and various other potential spell components.
She stopped right in front of the student, also in the middle of a rather
large blind spot. It was to the student's credit that the boy only
bumped Kathinja without dropping the load of stuff.
A blue-eyed face tentatively peeked out around
the mountain of stuff, and found himself staring at a familiar pair of
red-clad knees, scaly where the cloth didn't cover them. Continuing
up, he stopped just short of the professor's face, instead nervously focusing
on her chin.
"You're a little far from Geo, Thyme, and
you aren't one of the students out selling minerals the academy has no
use for."
"M-miss Kathinja!"
"Uh-huh. You know, we haven't seen you
in a couple days, which leads me to believe that yet again you've gone
off with Mephianse on one of his insane experiments, eh, Thyme? So
what are you doing all the way out here?" She kneeled down to be
on eye level with the boy, which only made him more nervous.
"M-m-mister Mephianse sent me out t-to find
some things he n-needed for the spell an-an-and didn't have there....please
don't make my head explode..."
"So he hasn't summoned anything yet?"
"N-n-n-noo...."
"That's good. You know, you can relax
– I haven't blown up or petrified any students – yet. Just drop that
pile of junk, or better yet sell it off, and get back to Geo where you
belong." She stood back up and walked away, not really bothering
to watch if the student carried out her instructions. Thyme was in
on most of Mephianse's experiments and expeditions; he had even been the
one who touched off the fireworks display in the desert. If the boy
was all the way out in Polpota Harbor gathering components, then she had
more than enough time to stop Mephianse's experiments, even if the kid
did bring the components back to Mephianse.
As she left, she was stopped by another young
voice from a corner of the market.
"Miss Kathinja- is everything alright?"
She glanced over her shoulder to find blue student's robes.
"Yes, Cayenne, everything's fine. You've
been doing well out here. Keep up the good work and enjoy the weather
out here, 'k? I'm heading back for the academy."
"'K, Miss Kathinja – good luck!"
"Thanks, Cayenne! You too!" She
waved back far more cheerfully than she actually was as she headed for
the road back to the rest of Fa'Diel.
Not far out of Polpota, Kathinja found herself
hopelessly lost among the rolling hills. She knew about which direction
Geo was – south and east – but that was about it, and it really didn't
help her with the roads any, as she didn't really feel like going straight
*over* the rough and rocky hills. She had been so wrapped up in getting
there quickly that she had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and the road had
grown unfamiliar.
She was muttering to herself as she walked
on, cresting a tall hill. "So, if I go straight west, I'll hit Lumina,
where I could probably get help, but then I'd be taking time off from heading
for Geo...Straight east should be the Ulkan mines, and that'll be no real
help, except that it's straight north of Geo...South's the jungles, I certainly
don't want to wander in there and wind up pixy-led....but this road is
going straight south...." It was about then that she looked up and
saw a green-clad centaur pausing in a clearing to study a map. A
red feather curved back from a broad-brimmed hat, and he had several small
bags hanging off his flanks, with a lute among them. A travelling
bard, perhaps the perfect person to ask for directions.
She scrambled down the steep hillside.
"Aaah, excuse me sir, you wouldn't happen to know the fastest road to Geo
from here, would you?"
The bard turned quickly, slightly startled.
"Hm? Geo?"
"Yes, I have some business there, and I took
a wrong turn and wound up a little lost, so I'd appreciate it if you could
point me back there."
"It'd be my pleasure to guide you to Geo!
I am Gilbert, the Poet of Love!" He bowed deeply, as somewhere deep
in Kathinja's mind, a bunch of little warning lights began blinking.
"ah – Kathinja. Professor at the Geo Academy of Sorcery."
"Lady Kathinja...I'm honored to meet you.
We're in luck, the fork just ahead of here leads almost straight to Geo."
"That's...great...I really need to get there
yesterday, y'know?" She started walking; the sound of centaur hooves
just behind and to her left wasn't lost on her. "Don't you have somewhere
to go, something to do?"
"I have no other business than to be by your
side." The warning lights began blinking a little brighter, and were
joined by a small siren and a little golem voice repeating, "Danger, Miss
Kathinja! Danger, Miss Kathinja!"
"Rrrriiight...so how long do you plan on following
me?"
"I could walk in your footsteps for eternity,
baby." On that last word, the warning lights exploded, the siren
blared louder, and the one little golem voice became a loud chorus, as
Kathinja's heart skipped a beat (Not from affection, but about the opposite)
and her feet skipped a step, sending her stumbling forward. Gilbert
was there in a flash, helping her regain her balance. "Are you alright,
m'lady?"
"I'm....fine...just...fine." She quickened
her pace a little and muttered, "Oh Goddess of Mana and all her eight Moon
Gods of the Elements, what have I gotten myself into?"
Several hours later, the sun was setting and
the main gates of Geo finally came into view. When the rather odd
conversation had died, Gilbert had resorted to singing, which to Kathinja's
mind was merely adding insult to injury. Not that he was a bad singer;
quite to the contrary, he had a nice voice, and was quite good. Kathinja
believed that was perhaps the only reason he was still alive – she didn't
see any weapons on him, he was too fluff-brained to know any magic, and
too blind in the head to survive long in this world without at least one
talent, which the Goddess had been merciful enough to provide. (As
naive as he seemed, he couldn't last long as a merchant, he'd be taken
for everything he had.) No, the problem was that most of the ballads
were in Kathinja's praise. Some small voice commented that it was
rare for someone to be competent enough musically to compose on the fly
like that, since he hadn't even known her before that night and none of
the melodies sounded familiar enough to be modifications of existing ballads.
That voice was swiftly clobbered by Common Sense and Dignity, then drowned
out in its last whimperings by the golem chorus racing back and forth with
their alarm sirens.
As they entered the darkening city, Gilbert
damped down the sound to a low murmur behind Kathinja. They were
met at the gates of the academy by an impossibly slender figure obscured
by mummyish robes of aging white strips, head hidden under an aging yellowish
scarf of indeterminate original color; nothing was visible of the figure
under the ancient cloth save a pair of deep-set eyes.
"Kathinja! We haven't seen you in two
days since you headed into the catacombs!"
"Wait – this means tomorrow's Gnome Day, right?
Damn...Thesenis, I still need to do something about Mephianse. Can
you take care of my classes until this is over?"
"Is that it – Mephianse on another of his
experiments?" Kathinja nodded, and the graven figure sighed.
"I'd be happy to help. I'll be taking over your classes until you're
ready to come back. Good luck, Kathinja."
"Thanks, I think I'm gonna need it."
"And who might this fellow be?" Gilbert
took several steps back as Thesenis glided forward to face him, leaning
forward to study him quite closely. "If I didn't know better, I'd
say you had an admirer."
"A bard who helped me find my way here."
She added, in a low hissed whisper, "Don't encourage him."
Thesenis chuckled drily. "I see how
this goes. Looks like you'll need a bit more than luck, eh?
Well, I'm headed home for the night. Goddess be with you."
"And with you." Thesenis melted off
into the shadows in front of Gilbert, although an impossibly dark spot
was visible creeping off down the road at a fast pace. Gilbert had
turned to watch the splotch leave; Thesenis had clearly rattled him, a
fact that Kathinja found oddly satisfying. "That was my good friend
and fellow professor, Thesenis. She's not all that bad, when she's
not accidentally summoning Shadoles or such." She allowed herself
a slight fanged smile at the fear-edged blank look on the bard's face.
"The passage down is in the library, this way. Shall we be going?"
She conjured another small flame sphere to
light the way through the darkened academy halls, but banished it on entering
the library, where the lights were still on, Gilbert following a bit behind
her. She came off the stairs and was examining the shelf for the
trigger when a voice thundered behind Gilbert.
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?!"
Gilbert tripped down the steps with a cry, landing at the bottom with a
thump and a despondent twang from his lute. Behind him, out of nowhere,
was a floating two-dimensional creature, a brightly colored magical circle
with an almost stained glass look to it, the arcane lines and markings
forming a barely recognizable abstracted face.
"It's alright, Nunuzac, he's with me."
"Ah, Kathinja, so you are still around!
Nobody's seen you for two days." Geez, had she really been out that
long?
"It's nothing. I'm just going off to
stop another of Mephianse's grandiose and potentially incredibly destructive
experiments. I might not be back for a few days, so I asked Thesenis
to take over my classes while I'm away."
"Thesenis?" The face rippled, colors
going darker. "The students aren't going to like that." Gilbert picked
himself off the floor, brushing dust out of his clothing and coat, then
examining his lute to make sure itwas alright; the two professors were
oblivious.
"Yeah, well, it's not like I can just ignore
this. They can stand it for a few days, and that's just assuming
I get set back again; if all goes well, I should be back by morning, in
which case she'll only be teaching my classes tomorrow, because I'm going
to be dead on my feet after this."
"Well, can't say I fault you for this; I suppose
we'll be seeing you and Mephianse again whenever this is all over."
The circle winked out of existence.
"That was Professor Nunuzac. He got
trapped between dimensions in the last war, so he can only manifest with
a magic circle to represent his form."
"This Academy has a very odd collection of
Professors. This Mephianse that you're after?..."
"What Mephianse ss like...picture a more civilized
and cultured version of your average demon with a passion for sorcery and
discovery that occasionally blinds his moral compass." Mephianse
was human, but it was the fastest way to describe him she could think of.
"...I see." The bookcase slid up, revealing
the dark tunnel beyond.
"You still going to follow me?"
"To the depths of the Underworld, if need
be." Oh well, it had been worth a try.
And again through the winding tunnels, the
sound of her clicking claws joined by the clattering of hooves and the
sound of Gilbert nervously re-tuning and testing his lute. This time
she didn't even slow down on reaching the two guardian gargoyles, although
their sudden movement startled Gilbert into jumping back almost to the
entrance of the chamber.
"WHO DARES DISTURB THE GUARDIANS OF THE CATACOMBS?"
"Ah, shut up. I really don't need this.
Just open the damn door."
"APOLOGIES, LADY KATHINJA. YOU AND YOUR
COMPANION MAY PASS." The doors ground open yet again on the trap
corridor, where Kathinja paused, a problem occuring to her as she tried
to envision the centaur hopscotching across the pattern on four hooves.
There simply was no way he could stand on only one flagstone, which meant
they were forced to resort to a mad dash through all the traps yet again.
She had only barely missed the last jump across the deadfall, and that
only because it had come up so suddenly; she reasoned that Gilbert could
easily make the jump as well.
"All right, we have a small problem here."
"What would that be, my love?"
*twitch* "See these flagstones? There's
a specific pattern they have to be stepped on in, and if they're not followed
exactly, it'll trigger a ton of traps. Now, with the two of us, especially
with you, there's no way we can follow the pattern. How're your reflexes?"
"Ah, reasonably good, I'd guess..."
"Great. Just stay right behind me and
follow my lead, I've run this gauntlet before. Oh, and be warned
– there's four bends in the tunnel after the boulder trap; after the fourth
bend, there's an 18 foot deadfall we're going to have to jump. It's
impossible to make if you're not expecting it, so I'll give you a heads-up
about it now."
"Understood." He looked down the tunnel
uncertainly.
"Alright, the first trap is a dropping guillotine
blade five feet in. After that, hit the dirt, because there'll be
a volley of arrows at about my chest height. Once past the arrows,
a saw blade will come out of the wall; you should probably just stay behind
that one. When the saw blade goes back into the wall, there's going
to be a jet of flame going straight up, followed be spears coming down
from the cieling and up from the floor. When the last spear hits
the ground, before it even retracts, a boulder will drop out of the cieling;
we'll need to outrun in through the tunnels, and then there's the deadfall
I warned you about before. As far as I know, that's all of them."
"Ah well, nobody lives forever, correct?
May as well make the most of the time we have."
"Alright, here goes..." She dashed forward,
Gilbert clattering right behind her; he actually had to concentrate not
to overtake her. This time the guillotine easily missed Kathinja's
tail, but it clipped off the front of Gilbert's hat, as he screeched to
a brief halt then jumped over it, keeping behind the arrows as they followed
Kathinja. He tailed the sawblade at a nervous walk while Kathinja
jogged along its edge, and wound up singed by the flames that Kathinja
was one step ahead of, his hat crisped and blackened in places. He
then joined Kathinja in dodging through the train of spears; Kathinja actually
outran the spear trap somewhat, partly because she was already judging
how much space Gilbert would need to dodge the boulder when it fell.
Past the spears, she hit a dead run, outpacing Gilbert, who barely got
ahead of the boulder when it dropped. Gilbert kept pace alongside
her after that, still going slower than he could to make sure he didn't
outpace Kathinja.
Then the deadfall hit. Kathinja barely
cleared it, catching the other side and dangling over; Gilbert, surprised
despite her warnings, followed much the same performance she had done earlier,
save that as he dropped past her, a serpentine tail wrapped around his
lower body and a clawed foot caught one of his arms.
They dangled like that for a few long seconds,
as Kathinja marvelled at just how heavy a smallish looking centaur (he
was only her height, after all) could be. She obviously couldn't
pull both of them up by herself, and she couldn't just drop him either,
which left only one option. "Gnomes of the Earth, come to our aid..."
The ground trembled as the pit walls warped,
lifting them up to the tunnel floor safely, then retreating back to their
normal shape. Kathinja stood up as Gilbert stumbled to his four hooves,
gazing back down the pit absent-mindedly, then looking back at her.
"You saved my life! I am endebted to
you, my love." He bowed deeply.
Damn. She had missed her chance.
It wasn't like the fall would've killed him; centaurs were famous for being
a fairly tough race, and if she could survive it, it shouldn't be that
hard for him. Plus, it probably would've gotten him out of her hair.
"Hardly. You would've just fallen down
into an underground river, then washed up in the Madora caves not far from
Polpota Harbor. I missed that jump last time I came down here, that's
why I was so far from Geo when I ran into you."
"You sell yourself short, my dear. What
you just did was noble and admirable, no matter what the threat truly was."
"....Whatever. Let's get going."
Another set of doors blocked the way, at least
until Kathinja forced them open, not feeling like fumbling with whatever
lock or puzzle sealed them. They opened on a large, round chamber
littered with old bones, weapons, and armor. The golem chorus paused
as Kathinja surveyed the room, then took up the warnings even louder.
Sure enough, they barely got five feet into the room when both the doors
in and the doors out slammed shut, and the bones clattered together, forming
five vicious-looking skeletal warriors.
"You can fight, right?"
"I don't carry a weapon..."
She should've known. "...fine, just
do what you can and stay out of my way." The skeletons ringed around
them and began to close in.
The first skeleton to draw closer went down
in a blast, a victim of Kathinja's own innate powers. Gilbert nimbly
ducked out from between two others that smacked into each other, then untangled
themselves and turned to chase the centaur further, as the remaining two
flanked Kathinja. A fire spell took out the one to her left.
The two facing Gilbert split apart, one attacking him from the front as
he dodged, the other attempting to slip around behind him; as it raised
its sword to strike, Gilbert kicked back, hooves denting the worn breastplate
and kicking the skeleton back into the wall, where many of the bones broke
apart as it fell to pieces. The second one facing Kathinja found
its legs pulled out from beneath it by a scaled tail, right before the
stones snapped upward in a pair of jaws, crushing it. She turned
to check on Gilbert, who was still avoiding all of its attacks. Another
small fireball finished it off.
The doors reopened; the hallway they now faced
was lined with torch sconces. Kathinja quietly counted off the sconces,
then pulled down the fifth one on the right, causing that section of hallway
to rumble, then jerk around, turning to another straight passage with a
dead end to one side. "You seem to know these tunnels quite well,
my dear."
"Not really. Thesenis, and even Nunuzac,
spend far more time down here than I do. But there's only one chamber
large enough for what Mephianse wants, and this hidden passage is a shortcut
Thesenis showed me."
Another hundred feet, and a door at the end
of the tunnel with a switch next to it; on pulling the switch, it ground
upward, then slammed back down behind them. From the side they were
now on, it was indistinguishable from the rest of the wall. To their
right was a long and winding corridor heading to a pair of stairs up; to
their left, barely fifteen feet, a huge pair of carved doors, normally
rather quiet. Now, however, a pair of empty suits of armor armed
with swords moved to block the doors.
Gilbert was bracing himself for another fight.
The sorceress, however, muttered, "I don't have time for this...", then
called the walls on either side to smash together, crushing the armored
phantoms. She walked forward and kicked the doors open.
On the other side was a huge circular room.
Ornate candle-holders stood on each point of a hexagram enscribed on the
floor, rimmed with runes and arcane markings, with braziers on lower prongs
of the candle-holders burning incense. A pair of blue-robed students
looked up from tending the braziers. At the point nearest the door
stood Mephianse himself, standing at a pedestal upon which was layed out
an array of crystals in a strange formation.
"This experiment's over, Mephianse."
One ear ticked back, and Mephianse turned to the door. He didn't
seem angry, or frightened; if anything, his expression revealed a dull
irritation.
"I'm afraid it's not going to be that easy
to stop me, Kathinja." He held up one hand, a bluish black sphere
of energy forming. Kathinja summoned one of her fire spells in response,
but before she could cast it, a bolt of black lightning shot out of the
sphere in Mephianse's hand; it enveloped her briefly, then she vanished.
Gilbert danced to the side, then turned to
face the professor, brandishing his lute as a weapon. "What did you
do to my darling Kathinja?"
"Nothing much. Just sent her to the
Underworld. Hopefully this will keep her out of my way until my experiment
is done." He paused, apprasing the bard. "And what do you plan
on doing?"
"I will stop you, for my love!" Gilbert
charged forward, but a second lightning bolt easily caught him, banishing
him as well.
"Mr. Mephianse...did you just send him to
the Underworld?"
"No, I just sent him to the cafe in Geo.
He doesn't look like the type that'd know how to escape the Underworld."
"And Miss Kathinja?"
"She's a smart woman. She'll be back
soon enough. I don't think anything less would keep her away long
enough for this spell to be finished."
The blackness cleared away, and Kathinja found
herself in some kind of underground chamber, with sharp stalagmites jabbing
out all around her. A reddish glow illuminated the area from an indeterminate
light source. She was about to question where she was when a bug-eyed
blue and white striped phantom appeared right in her face.
"Hey, Newly-Dead!" Great. A Shadole.
Which made this the Underworld. "Yeah, you. Get up on yer feet,
yer in the Underworld!"
She picked herself up, quietly checking her
pulse on one wrist – still alive. "I'm not dead."
"Boy, if I had a Lucre for every time I heard
that one, I could buy Fa'Diel. Yer dead. Accept it."
"I got sent here by a spell, I'm Not Dead."
The Shadole sighed, and closed its eyes as
it ranted, "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Come on, Newly-Dead, ya gotta get a Baptism
of Fire before you can hang around the Underworld and get anywhere but
Olbohn's Office." When it opened its eyes, it found the room empty,
and could hear claws on stone racing off through the Underworld.
Kathinja barely made it around the corner
when the Shadole appeared in front of her. "Listen, Newly-Dead, yer
on our turf now, and you've got to do what we say. Now get yer tail
over here –" It tagged her on the shoulder, the Underworld melted,
then reformed in another chamber – "And take yer Baptism!"
"I told you, I'M NOT DEAD!" She ducked
past that Shadole, and dodged through a whole gang of them that had assembled
in the nearby corridor. The only open staircase was one coiling down,
so he dashed down there, finding herself in a hallway lined with doors,
all closed but one. She flattened up in a doorway as a pack of Shadoles
raced past in pursuit, then slunk along the wall toward the one open door,
which had to be Olbohn's office. As she drew closer, she heard voices
inside.
"Sproutling...a home, just east....Domina..."
She continued along the wall, pausing in a shadow next to the doorway.
"It's going to be the catalyst for the regeneration of the Mana Tree."
"So the new age begins."
"Indeed."
"I've somewhat expected this; even here in
the Underworld, the pulse of mana has been growing stronger of late, far
beyond any simple tide or astrological oddity."
Right about there, a certain obnoxious Shadole
appeared once again in Kathinja's face.
"Now listen, Newly-Dead..."
Kathinja ducked under it into the doorway,
yelling, "GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU ROTTEN GRAVEWORM, *I'M*NOT*DEAD!!!*"
Then absolute silence reigned as she turned and saw the inside of the office.
At the desk was a strange plant-creature that
could only be Olbohn, the Warrior, master of the Underworld and one of
the Seven Wisdoms. Three blue eyes were fixed on her in an unwavering
gaze. He had three pairs of arms; his chin was propped on one pair
leaning forward, a second pair was crossed, the third pair rested on ther
armrests of the chair. All the other detail she saw was nothing but
an odd impression of dark green, tendrils, costume, with the creature under
it all. In a far corner was the second person she had heard – a raven,
slightly taller than Mephianse but thinner, wearing mostly yellow, but
with a rainbow-colored cloak. A broad yellow hat, trimmed with red
and blue, was pulled down over his face so that all that could be seen
was the beak. His clothing was bright colored, but dusty and slightly
worn, as from long journeys. Even one of Kathinja's newest students
would recognize that figure as yet another of the Wisdoms – Pokiehl, the
storyteller, the Herald of the Cosmic Truth, the archetype of the travelling
bard of which her earlier companion was but a pale imitation.
"uh...apologies..."
Olbohn's eyes moved from the bedraggled half-basilisk,
to the Shadole, and back to Kathinja. "What is all this about?"
"This Newly-Dead's got the worst case of denial
I've ever seen. We were tryin' to get her into the Baptism chamber
for a Baptism of Fire, but she slipped away, and she keeps griping at us.
She ran in here before we could catch her. Sorry about this Boss,
I know ya didn't want to be disturbed while the Bird was here."
"She's not dead."
"Eh?" The Shadole blinked and drifted
back a little in the air.
"She's not dead. You can quit chasing
her. I will deal with this. Go back to your business."
"Whatever you say, Boss." The Shadole
winked out of existence.
"How do you come to be here? It's quite
rare that we get a living person down here, and I think this is the first
time I've seen one dropped here against their will quite so abruptly, and
not by the Shadoles."
"ah...I got sent here by a spell. I'm
sorry if I've caused you any trouble."
"This is no real trouble." Through the
entire incident, she hadn't seen the Warrior's expression change once from
flat calm. Olbohn lifted one arm off the armrest, but before he could
do anything else, Pokeihl spoke.
"I think the last thing she needs to see right
about now is another Shadole. I'll take her up to the surface on
my way out. Besides, I think I've already covered about everything
that can really be covered; anything else would just be speculation, and
I've also got some things to keep an eye on, to make sure the new age starts
off on the right foot."
"In that case, I suppose I shall be seeing
you later."
"That's about right." Pokeihl tipped
his hat slightly to Olbohn as he walked toward the door. When he
paused next to Kathinja, the Underworld melted away again, but this time
when it came back, she was in a dark and desolate place of dead trees and
tall dead grass, in front of a monolithic gravestone. The stone was
adorned with an immense stone bat, and inscribed with writing of a language
long dead.
"How much of what was said did you overhear?"
Kathinja started. "Eep – well, I heard
something about a sproutling, at a home east of Domina, and it being a
catalyst for the rebirth of the Mana Tree, and something about the beginning
of a new age."
"Then you know about all that can be known
at this point. I'll be off to take care of things that need to be
finished before this age ends, and I believe you have such business yourself."
Then he simply wasn't there, and she was alone; it was as if there had
never been a rainbow-cloaked myth standing in that spot, speaking quietly
of coming events that would normally be thought of only as fairy tales,
leaving not even tracks in the dust before the ancient gravestone of all
that had died and ever would die. It took Kathinja some time to regain
her bearings after the whole bizarre occurence, and for it to sink in that
she had just escaped the Underworld, and at the same time run into two
of the more elusive among the legendary Wisdoms that watched over Fa'Diel.
When that was absorbed, she slowly returned fully to reality, and remembered
just what she had been doing before getting zapped to the Underworld.
"The last thing a new age needs is a demon
on a rampage."
She sprinted off down the path.
To paraphrase the next few days, Kathinja
made tracks as fast as possible, skirting around the Mekiv Caverns, dodging
bandits on the Luon Highway, cutting through Domina, out across rolling
hills, past Lumina, then south and east back to Geo. That's a vast
simplification of her problems, of course – nearly getting abducted by
wiescracking pirate-wannabe penguins in Mekiv, winding up paying some swindling
rabbit a ridiculous amount of Lucre for a map of questionable accuracy
in Domina, and getting interrogated on the road by an irritible Jumi that
made her long for the polite, if sometimes rambunctious, Esmeralda back
at the Academy. However, those are largely beside the point of the
story, and many are tales for another time.
Suffice to say, she made it back to Geo on
the evening of Dryad day, a full week after she had set out on a supposedly
short quest. After the long trip, her first impulse was to leave
Mephianse to his experiments for an hour or so and get a cup of coffee;
however, familiar snatches of song from the cafe made her change her mind,
and find a few side alleys around the cafe just to be sure Gilbert didn't
see or follow her. She saw a surprising amount of students wandering
the streets, but didn't really care to question any of them, and most of
them sensed the dark cloud of gloom and irritation following her and knew
better then to distract her from her chosen purpose.
She slammed the library door open on her way
back down to the secret door yet again. Thesenis, in a corner of
the library, looked up. "Oh dear. Another setback?"
There was a long stream of unintelligible
muttering, probably kept unintelligible due to the pair of students in
the lower part of the library listening in – Kathinja didn't care to teach
them any of those particular words. "....#@# Mephianse sent me to
the frippin' Underworld, and I got to walk across half of Fa'Diel to get
back here..." She stormed down the stairs, the two students staying
well clear of her path.
"Oh dear – the Underworld? That sounds
a little drastic, even for Mephianse. Well, it's good to see you
back. I'll be in the library working on an experiment should you
decide to leave via that door again." Thesenis turned back to the
large boiling cauldron she was working in, a table next to her spread with
locks of various colored hair. Kathinja somewhat realized that Nunuzac
was at a back table floating over an open tome,but didn't really care at
this point.
The door opened for the third time that week,
then shut. Upon reaching the gargoyles, they didn't even get a chance
to move before Kathinja snarled, "Don't even start. Just open the
damn door and let me through - *again*.", causing them to open the door
in no small hurry. Just past the door, she took a deep breath and
bolted down the corridor dodging the gauntlet of traps yet again, snarling
a stream of curses all the way. She easily made the last jump this
time - *finally* - and managed to dart across the skeleton's chamber before
the doors on the opposite side could shut. New suits of armor connected
to face her, then fell back apart after briefly facing the rather enraged
half-basilisk. (This confirmed rumors among students that Kathinja
could even scare automatons when angry.) The double doors were blown
off their hinges by a rather excessive explosive spell.
She didn't even wait for the flames and smoke
to clear, stalking into the room through a veil of flames and smoke, eyes
glowing enough to pierce the smoke easily, which all four of the assembled
students took as a cue to hide behind whatever large objects presented
themselves. The summoning circle was ablaze with sorcerous white
flames tracing the lines and runes on the ground, as the smoke from the
candles coiled about to form a wall of thin smoke around the circle, the
thick smell of the dragon's blood incense filling the room. The crystal
array on the pedestal in front of Mephianse was ablaze with black energy.
He turned to face his fellow professor.
"You're too late, Kathinja! The summoning
is complete, and the demon will be arriving any moment now!"
An aura of reddish power was forming around her, a circle of
flames on the ground around her feet. "I. Don't. CARE!
Nunuzac's going to be taking over your classes for some time after this
one, Mephianse..." A collection of small fireballs appeared in the
air around her, then shot toward Mephianse in a barrage that obscured the
taller sorceror in a conflagaration of flames and smoke. When it
cleared, he still stood, unaffected, an impossibly strong breeze looping
around him and coiling obediently around his hand. Kathinja side-stepped
a few paces away from the door, around the chamber, but still careful to
not get the circle between herself and Mephianse – a stray spell in an
active summoning circle was a recipe for disaster; not only could it call
something you didn't mean to summon, it guaranteed that whatever came would
be completely out of your control. Mephianse cast the serpent of
wind at his rival; despite her attempt to call a shield of flames, it blasted
her back into the wall.
As she stood up, the circle blazed brighter,
the white flames leaping almost to the cieling then dimming down to near-nothing
– mere thin lines on the ground. The smoke and flames from the candles
and braziers swirled in a maelstrom around the circle, and at its center
a black tornado was forming; as it grew larger, the storm of flames and
smoke thickened to hide it, as the crystal array on the pedestal sent a
beam straight up through the rock, creating a small pillar of black energy
that shot up to the sky on the outskirts of Geo, which flared then died
away as the Stygian cyclone began to calm. The students peered out
from their hiding places to watch the new spectacle.
"The demon has come!"
The smoke cleared away, revealing possibly
the last thing either of them had ever expected.
If it truly was a demon, he was taking a human
form, or else no kind of demon they'd ever heard of; he seemed depressingly...human.
Not even the occasionally outlandish humans of Fa'Diel, either, but flat
normal. He was as tall as Kathinja, with shoulder-length purple hair
and straight-cut bangs, dressed in a dark, nearly black purple cloack with
blue lining, a yellow turtleneck, and loose black breeches. In one
hand he loosely carried a plain wooden staff, its only adornment a rather
large red crystal clutched in the crooks of the two branches at the top.
The man didn't look any older than late twenties. He was looking
around the room as if appraising it – or at least, seemed to be, since
his eyes were closed.
After the strange person had scanned the room
fully, he turned to face Kathinja and Mephianse, who were standing side
by side in stunned silence at the edge of the circle.
"Ah, you must be the one who summoned me!"
He seemed to be looking at Mephianse, more utterly cheerful than anything
else either of them had ever seen. "You actually managed to surprise
me with that one – this is quite a bit farther than even I'd normally roam!"
He seemed far too amused to be annoyed in the slightest.
Kathinja gave Mephainse a bewildered glance.
"That's your demon?" Mephianse shrugged, in an equal amount of shock
and confusion.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I haven't introduced myself,
have I? How impolite of me. I am Xelloss, the Trickster Priest."
He bowed, that same cheerful smile still written all over his face.
Silence.
"I'd love to stick around and find out why
you called me here, but I'm afraid I have a large amount of unfinished
business to take care of, and I'll have to be going! Bye bye!"
He waved cheerfully and vanished, the light on the circle dying down to
nothing, the candles and flames in the braziers going out in an instant.
The chamber could've been called a still life
for a full fifteen minutes after the circle died, as not even a breeze
stirred in the room; the only sign that the students and two professors
were alive was the occasional blink. The stillness was finally broken
as Kathinja slumped forward.
"Why do I even bother? It seems like
the more trouble I go through to keep you from finishing some apparently
hideously destructive experiment, the more harmless it is!"
"....right. Students, back to the classroom.
I want a two page report on what you learned by Gnome Day." There
was a chorus of groans and whines from the three children, who griped all
the way out the side passage. "Shall we head back up ourselves?"
He waved toward the door, offering Kathinja to go ahead.
"Ah Hell. Why not." She started
out the door, complaining as she walked. "You're hopeless, you know
that? I wound up racing across half of Fa'Diel twice, getting banished
to the Underworld, lost, interrogated, swindled, singed, stabbed at, half-drowned,
and generally annoyed, for nothing."
"Well, then I accomplished something at least
– you managed to see a great deal of the land, correct?"
She glared back at him, prompting Mephianse
to suddenly find a very interesting crack in the wall. He doubted
Kathinja would turn him to stone or anything at this point, but didn't
care to take any chances. Besides, she had been known to slip in
the past, especially when she was upset.
"Humph. Do you know that Shadoles in
the Underworld are twice as obnoxious as Shadoles when they're on the surface?"
"It makes sense. They always struck
me as arrogant little bastards."
"If one more person calls me "Newly-Dead",
I'll stone them." She glared back at him again, clearly driving home
the point that he was the one responsible for it all.
"You had quite an adventure."
She saw through the weak attempt at changing
the subject. "I'll get you for this. Some day, some how, I
will get you for this."
"You said that last time."
"And I'll get you for that one too.
One of these days, you're gonna have Hell to pay, at the rate you're racking
up bad karma on my scale."
"Whatever you wish." He added sarcastically,
"I await that day with bated breath."
"Humph."
*Noon, Gnome Day*
Two days later, Kathinja was sitting in a
chair at the open-air tavern/cafe in the fruit market. Several students
meandered around the area aimlessly. It was a school day, of course,
but the students had decided to boycott school after a week of Thesenis
and Nunuzac teaching *EVERY* class; the three students who had been spared
that fate were boycotting on account of Mephianse's two page report assignment.
Mephianse was in his office at a loss, Nunuzac was grumpily warming a bench
in the library (as much as a floating noncorporeal magic circle could),
Thesenis was the last person they wanted trying to get the students to
come back, and Kathinja just didn't care at this point. After spending
the entire weekend skulking about Geo studiously avoiding her would-be
paramour, she had finally given in to frustration and gone to the open
air market, taking up a table with a tall mug of coffee; it was somewhat
uncharacteristically mixed with a few shots of creme alcohol. Barely
three feet away was Gilbert, who had been overjoyed to see her come slumping
into the market that morning, uttterly blind to all the little signals
that she just wanted to be left alone. She had spent the morning
half-heartedly trying to make him understand that she just wanted him to
go as far away as possible and never come within ten miles of her again.
He wasn't getting the message, and she was feeling so burned out that she
didn't really have the energy to protest more strongly, or do something
drastic. (Although at this rate, it was only a matter of time before
the citizens of Geo found a new centaur statue adorning the streets.)
So, there she sat, sipping on stronger coffee than
usual in more ways than one, watching her truant students wander about
the market on a school day, being hit on by a lovestruck equine bard who
was spouting platitudes while coming as close to kneeling beside her as
a centaur could.
"The love I feel when I gaze into your eyes
is like nothing I've ever felt before..."
She didn't even look up from her coffee.
"That's not love, that's preiliminary petrification. I'm half-basilisk."
*Goddess give me the patience and sanity to survive this ordeal without
going on a destructive rampage...*