Chap 5.4
I was a little put out to give up the staff before examining it but my claim on it was dubious from the start. The suspiciously blood-colored stains on its length was likewise a reason to divest myself of it. And so, with a silent sigh, I tossed the staff in his direction. I'd tossed it a little too fast, scant childhood experience with toss game not helping me in the slightest thanks to my transformation-granted strength. It clattered against the circular cage but thankfully didn't make much noise. I wasn't sure if the bars were made of wood or bone but either way I was glad the weren't metal. Even if the unfortunate-looking creatures around the campfires were, against all odds, friendly, being caught in the act of freeing their prisoner wouldn't lead to anything good.
Showing remarkable reflexes for such an old fellow he caught the staff as it rebounded off the cage. He paused a moment, inner glow now stronger than ever as it seemed to bleed into this physical form. He seemed less frail now, imposing and strong as he stretched to his full height. For all that he was dressed in ragged robes he seemed like a hidden king as an explosion of air burst the cage open at all its joints.
There were tears in his eyes for some reason as he strode forward. He spoke something in the language of his captors, unintelligible to me save for the anger in it and a vague sense of a swear. Deciding this was a good time to get gone I started carefully backing away.
'Morgana!' I cursed in my mind. I was unpleasantly surprised to see that he had exceptionally good hearing when he wasn't busy talking to flying insects. His eyes caught mine, darkness not the impenetrable veil I'd thought it was. Light flared like the sun from his staff, my skin burning fiercely. It was even worse for my spider half, legs twitching and smoking as I stumbled away. Despite my six extra legs I fell backwards, back thumping the stone painfully as I desperately tried to escape the burning light. It seemed to pierce my very soul like a patronus charm but far, far worse. I couldn't think of any spells to shield me from the pain, mind instead convinced that if I could just bite the thing burning me the torture would end.
Before I could either turn to ash or work up the strength to lunge for him the light faltered and was extinguished. The unnatural gloom of the ruins rolled back in, not quite a friend but far more welcome than the searing light. For a brief second my legs tensed to jump at him but then the fury on his face brought back my sanity.
I turned on a claw, a ten-limbed scramble taking me away from him. His magic display hadn't gone unnoticed, howls rising from the ruins soon joined by an ominous drumbeat. A wolf-thing came at me from the left but I kicked it away and kept running. I glanced back and half wished I hadn't. The canid recovered just in time for the wizard to break its back in one blow. His pace never faltered, as implacable and inexorable as one of those masked killers in the movies and just as homicidal.
I turned at my torso and drew my wand. "Stupe-" My ivy-engraved wand that had ushered me into the magical world exploded, my fingers barely more lucky as two of them snapped. I was truly afraid now, less adventurer in a foreign and uncivilized land and more hapless maiden fallen into the realm of faery. But I wasn't called the smartest witch in my grade for nothing. Lumos was all wonky but there was another easy spell that might be within my means to cast wandlessly and aligned more readily with my body's nature.
"Nox!" I shouted, thrusting at him with my good arm as the other clung to my chest. With the way my magic had changed I wasn't sure what would come of it but was pleasantly surprised when a black fog sprang into existence behind me.
I wasn't sure if it was echolocation, precognition, or just a hunch, but I dodged left. The movement came just in time as a rippling ball of flame burst through the fog. I cast the spell again and started zig-zagging around broken columns. Several clueless humanoids stepped out to block my bath but I barrelled through them, all thoughts of diplomacy gone.
The wizard (regardless of his species I couldn't deny the force of his magic) was drawing more of the warband than I but it wasn't slowing him very much. The small mercy did give me the idea to start casting illusion charms though. It was the only thing I was particularly good at without a wand and it was my best chance to get the lot of them to fight each other rather than me. Thankfully it was a lot easier to layer camouflage patches of grey and black on my caramel torso than it was to make a skirt stand up to human inspection. By the time I managed to randomly stumble my way onto the bridge I was virtually invisible by virtue of blending in with my environment.
Or so I thought. I was halfway across the bridge and nearly home free when one of my hind legs spun out beneath me with a painful crack. I didn't even have time to fall before another blast of light and force to my side had me coughing blood. The pain was set in about a second through my magic-propelled flight, cutting immediately through the adrenaline like it wasn't even there. It was a whole new magnitude beyond my broken fingers and I was strongly in favor of curling into a ball and crying for days.
I was forced to put that plan off until later thanks to impending death by falling. As a part spider I could handle climbing trees but my fear of heights hadn't disappeared to the extent that falling into an abyss struck me as any sort of fun. My one good hand did nothing besides get scratched to hell and lose half a fingernail but my legs performed better. Once again proving that being part giant spider had some advantages over being pure human my spin towards the edge of the bridge slowed as seven claws scratched at the stone.
I came to a stop with three legs over the chasm, breathless as I coughed up more blood and tried not to hurl. There was something bone-shiveringly frightening about standing over a night-darkened height I couldn't see the bottom of even with my enhanced senses. A few heart-racing moments later and one false start from my broken leg I regained my balance and settled back onto firm ground. Then I remembered that the fall wasn't the only thing here that might kill me.
It was with a heavy heart that my gaze snapped back to my pursuer. For once it seemed that luck was on my side. My seemingly unstoppable assailant had been brought to a halt by the combined forces of the foul-featured warband. Arrows by the dozens flew at him but his shimmering shield held firm as he slowly retreated across the bridge. I retreated in turn, not eager to get any closer to such a powerful and unreasonably angry foe. I went backwards this time, alternating between watching where the edge of the railless bridge was and what the wizard was up to. If he sent another blast my way I wanted to see it coming - and hopefully not just so it could smack me in the face.
My ears twitched - 'Since when can my ears twitch?' - as the wizard switched languages and shouted something nasty at the large albino humanoid before him. The language was Elfish, I was sure of it. I was less of sure why I could understand even a word of it but my comprehension was getting better at a rapid pace. There was an odd sense of deja vu about it, like it was something I'd learned in a dream once and was only now remembering.
He raised his staff high, painful light pulsing from the gem at its top. The light was strong enough that my eyes watered but I stubbornly kept watching. His voice was loud and echoed with something otherworldly as he made his pronouncement in Elfish. "BY THE FLAME OF $%#$% YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"
His staff swung down, striking the bridge with an earth-wrenching jolt. A five-ton segment in front of him snapped and fell, the white creature and a half dozen of his sword-wielding brethren falling along with it. The wizard seemed tired but quite pleased with how he'd killed all those sapient creatures. I had a solid feeling now that they'd been right to lock up he-who-talks-to-moths. Given his power and temperament I was surprised they hadn't gone a step further.
The arrows halted as a giant eye of fire appeared, the pupil such a pristine and deep darkness that it took my breath away with its beauty. I didn't have the damndest as to why I found it so fetching but if I didn't have multiple limbs broken I'd be compelled to make a sketch to remember it by. Instead I watched in rapt attention as a black knight built from fire and shadow strode from the pupils depths. He raised his smoking metal-clad hand and sent waves of gravity-like force beating down on the wizard in waves of black. A sphere of light from the wizard's staff was his countermeasure but I could tell that the newcomer was the stronger of the two. The black knight's darkness kept the wizard's hateful light spell from harming me and sent the maniac to his knees.
A grumbling from the bridge in response to the magical onslaught reminded me that running was a better option than staying to watch the fight, no matter how much more exciting it was than the dueling club during second year.
'Huh?' My option to continue watching was abruptly taken away as the fight ended in a moment. Further proving his insanity the old wizard tossed himself off the bridge. 'That was anticlimactic.' It was hard to feel bad about his death when I was still nursing the pain of three broken bones - more if he'd managed to crack my ribs.
The burning eye swiveled, tracking something. Curious, I followed its line of sight. "Fils de pute," I hissed. The mad wizard was riding atop what looked like a giant eagle. Outside the unnatural gloom of the area the world was being overtaken by pre-dawn light which gave me an annoyingly good view of wizard's scrawny legs as he rode astride his deus ex machina. Or, given that he was a fairly powerful wizard, perhaps some sort of beast he'd transfigured from a bridge stone as he fell.
Another grumble from the bridge had me scrambling, not stopping until I was back in the black of the primeval woods. I felt safer once I was sheltered by the trees. Some of it, I suspected, came from the instincts of my spider half. The rest came from a genuine pattern of being assaulted by unfriendly humanoids every time I left the forest's embrace. Not that the woods were entirely safe. I was injured and without a wand - 'Damn him!' - and there were some freakishly large bugs in the area. I could really use some giant spiders around right now, even if they did call me grandma and have sacs of liquified animals lying around. Surprisingly tasty sacs. Damn, I was hungry again.