Part 9
"We need to pull her out of there!"
"We can't pull her out right now! Eirika would get suspicious!"
"But we can't—"
"No! She will tell Eirika when she is ready, until then we will not get involved. Send Quescent, Eirika will want, and need, his training for the coming battle."
"Are you sure you are Okay?" Thundabolt asked, as he bandaged Eirika's scraped knee. It had been an hour since her little "adventure" outside the Inn and they were now all inside one of the many rooms the Inn held.
Everyone was scattered about the room. Tearie was in one of the corners, with Ashalind was leaning against the wall opposite her. Gwynneth was looking over Thundabolts should to make sure he was doing it right, Kechara was sitting in the chair beside the wardrobe, and Fluffy was rubbing against Eirika who was siting on the bed, with Thundabolt bandaging her knee.
"Yes, I'm fine. My memories rushing back all at once was just a little, overwhelming." Eirika replied to Tundabolt. Then, tilting her head to the side in an inquisitive way, she added "you were there, weren't you?"
"Yes, yes I was. I helped you in the last rescue attempt for the Gnomes who were still left in Gnomeregon after the Troggs invaded. Then, when we were about halfway to the central chamber, we all got separated. I was one of the first to find my way out. I tried to go back in and find you, but, when I got back to the place we got separated, I found the charred remains of a small gnome. So I thought you were, well, dead."
That's when Tearie interjected into Thundabolt's explanation, "Okay! Okay, I cant stand this guilt any longer! Ever since that stupid locket popped open I haven't been able to forget this! If I don't tell someone I'll go insane!"
At that point everyone in the room, even Fluffy, turned and starred at Tearie, wide-eyed, and waiting impatiently for her to continue.
"It all started when I hit the peek of my training as a warlock, I knew every spell, trained my demons to as much as I could, I thought I was invincible, I never thought my recklessness would cause the death of someone." As Tearie said this, tears began to well up in her eyes.
"I had heard of the ultimate summon from my trainer, only one warlock could achieve this summon. Thus far, everyone had failed, and had never been heard from again. But I thought I could do it, I thought I could tame the demon "
"So I got a priest to come help me, he had just reached the pinnacle of his training as well. I told him we were heading to Gnomeregan, because that was the closest place to hell I could think of. There were rumors, that the gnomes had tamed the fires of hell to do their bidding and fuel their city. I figured it was worth at least a look over."
"After we snuck in through the vents we found a shaft that went down, as we followed that shaft we delved as far as we could down into the depths of Gnomeregan, all I had in my mind was how I was going to summon this demon, by the time we got to the lowest chamber, the generator room, I knew what I was going to do.
"I marked a summon circle in the center of the room, with the help of my imp. And I summoned every demon I had mastered thus far in my training and placed them in equal places around the perimeter of the circle. After that, I placed a soulstone, a healthstone, and a regular soulshard, equal distances apart around an inner circle. Then, I began my chanting."
"I chanted the words that just came flowing into my head, as I chanted a rip, in matter itself appeared, right over the inner circle of my summoning circle."
As I continued to chant the rip got bigger, then it stopped when it was big enough for a human to walk through. As I turned beaming with pride to see the look on Denebs face, I saw pure fear. I turned back to the rift, and saw a tentacle, as blue as the sky, grouping around the floor, from right in the middle of the rip."
"Once it felt the soulshard it absorbed it, then threw the tentacle as quick as lightning, it flung toward Deneb, it ripped through his rib cage, right below his heart. Snapping his spinal column clearly in half. As his limp body slumped to the floor I couldn.t look at it any longer, I turned back to the rift, I was so horrified I couldn't move."
"As I stood there watching the tentacle in horror as it slipped back into the rip. I heard a low, raspy voice speak in a tongue so ancient I couldn't understand it. "Ossir palan nai kiril irolas kal".
"After the voice finished speaking I watched the rift for what seemed like hours, tears of fear and sorrow rolling down my cheeks. Finally, a small trogg crept slowly out of the rip, looked around, sniffed the air, looked at all my pets I had summoned, one by one. First, it looked at the imp to my right, then it looked at my voidwalker to the right of my imp, and as it moved around the circle looking at each summon in turn, Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter, Felsteed, Elemental, DoomguardDreadsteed, it seemed as if it were sizing them up. Then tilted its head to one side in a quizzical manner, as if it had just noticed me standing there, It starred at me for a while, then let out the highest pitched squeal I had ever heard, as it rushed back into the safety of whatever accursed world it had come from."
"Then the most horrible thing happened" said Tearie, in a very shaky voice. As she looked around the room just then remembering she was speaking to the people in the room. Everyone in the room was listening with transfixed gazes on her, it made her very uncomfortable. But she started back into her story "After the small trogg went back through the rift." Just as Tearie was picking her story back up, the ground started to shake, lightly at first, but then it got more and more violent very quickly. Soon, hangings and decorations were falling off the walls. Not knowing what to do, they all ran outside, they ran as far away from any buildings as they could get, which was the center of town, right nest to the great fountain.
All 9 of them, and the cat, looked wildly at the buildings around them, not sure what to make of this odd shacking, they just thought to be sure nothing would fall on them.
Then, as suddenly as it all had started, it stopped. The shacking all stopped. They were all very relieved, even the cat seemed relieved that it was over.
As they starred around at the buildings they noticed, odd cracks in the sides that weren't there before the shacking began. The buildings were also leaning at an odd angle. Then, one-by-one they fell, in a domino effect, it started with the blacksmith, then the town hall, then the inn, then they noticed an odd crack in the ground that was traveling in a course to each building.
It reached the house across the way from the Inn and leveled it, it proceeded to all the buildings in the city of Darkshire, before finishing the circle it had made around the travelers and the fountain.
To Be Continued…