The Jade Mage: The Becoming: Volume 1 (54 page)

Crouching down so he could better see, he waited with his three orbs of fire rotating around his hand. As the first man’s head came around the corner of the spiral staircase Tartum didn’t hesitate.

“Torroth!”
he hissed. One of his orbs flew at the man’s head; he had just enough time to register his life was over as the orb bored through his skull. Three more men came flying up the stairs; they were all clad in the chain link armor and red shirts he had seen from the window. The man in the back pointed at Tartum and bellowed an order; “There he is! Kill him, and we’ll be free! Kill him, and we’ll be rich! GO!”

Tartum assumed the talkative man was their leader; he decided to leave him for last.
“Torroth!” “Torroth!”
Tartum said, and the two men that hadn’t issued orders fell to the ground with smoking holes where their faces used to be.

The man with the big mouth wasn’t a coward like Tartum had thought. Jumping over the corpses of his allies, he drew his sword and attacked Tartum with expert skill. The man wasn’t as starved or desperate as the other men had looked. He attacked with precise blows and seemed to be testing Tartum’s defenses. Tartum didn’t want this battle to be prolonged any longer than necessary. Adjusting his grip on his staff, he felt the tug on his magic, closed his eyes, and yelled;
“LIGHT!”

As before, his staff burst into light, and the man screamed as his eyes were blinded by the sudden intensity. As he had done before, Tartum extinguished the light and finished the man off by bashing his skull in. Standing over the man’s corpse, Tartum smiled. That little trick had saved him quite a few times now. He allowed himself a moment to be proud of his enchantment. He also took a moment to gather up a small bit of wax and put it in his teeth like Rashlarr had shown him. The light trick was great, but he felt it was smart to have a backup. His leg still hurt when he thought about how the staff light trick hadn’t worked against Jeth.

Looking down the stairs, he could see that the sounds he heard were exactly what he had thought they were. The door was completely smashed in and laying on the floor. The men that he had killed must have been the only ones to come through. There was nowhere to hide inside, and he was positive there were men on the other side of the doorway ready to fire bolts into anything that came out. Tartum had planned for this and gathered up some more ash from his pouch. He made his way the rest of the way down the stairs and infused the ash with magic. Throwing it out the door as fast as he could, he said the words, “
Krekat-sijuwith!”
and ran into the darkness.

The spell worked for the most part, and Tartum ran through the void as bolts zipped past his head. He emerged from the darkness in the midst of a dozen men; all of them had their crossbows out. They froze as he came bursting forth, and Tartum granted them no time to recover. His staff moved as fast as lightning and was twice as deadly. With a swing, two men fell, both had their skulls crushed by the might of his blow. With a thrust, he pulverized a man’s ribs and with the counter thrust crushed the windpipe of another. Spinning around, he saw two men charging him with their crossbows held like swords, and Tartum dispatched them with ease, putting one of their own crossbows into their head. The final half dozen grouped up and drew their swords.

Tartum backed away as he saw the other red shirted men begin to take notice and run to join their allies. Seeing there were at least twenty men left, Tartum looked for an escape route. He thought about running back inside the tower, but he knew he would be just as trapped in there as he was out here. Taking stock of his surroundings, Tartum saw he was near the hay bales he had decimated with his fireball spell. About twenty yards from him was another stack to the north and west of where he was. The men were coming from the western side of the courtyard and so running to those bales was a bad idea. The man in blue was still in the center of the courtyard and seemed to be either unconscious or dead. Tartum couldn’t tell which but hoped it wasn’t the latter. He didn’t have much time to consider it, because there were now at least twenty-five men trying to surround him with their swords drawn. He didn’t have a choice any longer, he decided to make a break for the hay bales, but as he took his first few steps towards them he saw more red shirted men pop out from behind them and level their crossbows his direction. Tartum couldn’t believe how many of these men were here lying in wait!

His anger took him now, he could take his fight to the twenty-five or so men that were surrounding him and probably be killed, run for cover behind one of the un-fireballed hay bales and probably be killed, or wait for the men with crossbows to fire and probably be killed. The lack of options was infuriating! To come this far, only to be brought down by impossible odds!

“NO!”
he screamed. He thrust his hand into his pouch and pulled out a hand full of sulfur. His vision went red and the men that were advancing on him looked terrified. Tartum didn’t care why they were so scared; he saw their hesitation as an opportunity.

“Doctay-von-we!”
he bellowed at the men, and his sulfur burst into a large ball of green flame. Tartum watched as some of the men dropped their swords and ran. The men behind the hay bales loosed their shots, but Tartum’s magically enhanced senses allowed him to see them coming and he moved to put the fireball in between him and the bolts. The missiles flew into the fireball and came out the other side as bits of ash harmlessly falling to the ground. Tartum looked at the men that had fired the shots and shook his head. The men began to panic and flee, but before they could get far, Tartum gave the command.

“BEATH!”
and the fireball slammed into the center of their group. Most were incinerated in the initial blast; others ran a few more steps before becoming fully engulfed in bright green flames and falling down dead. Tartum looked at the men that still surrounded him, more had fled, but there were still a dozen that held their ground. Yet still none attacked; Tartum reached into his pouch and drew another handful of rose petals and cast his next spell.

“Moro-yet krat-tu-veyin doro-peth!”
he called out as ten small orbs of white flame burst from the falling rose petals. Tartum found his vision returning to normal as he vented his rage through his magic. His voice lost its intensity, and the men that still stood were emboldened by the fact.

“See boys? He weakens! CHARGE!” one of the men said. His words gave the rest of the men courage, and they attacked at once. Tartum even saw a few of the fleeing men stop and turn upon hearing the brave man’s words. Tartum smiled as he targeted one man after the next.

“TORROTH!”
he commanded, and each time he did another man fell with a fresh hole in his face or chest. The last two men reached Tartum just as he sent off his last orb. They attacked him as a team, and Tartum found himself defending against two reasonably skilled fighters. Their attacks were individually predictable, but countering both of them was proving to be a challenge. Still, he wasn’t worried; the men were fatiguing and would have been dead already if it hadn’t been for their teamwork. Tartum decided to use it against them. Ignoring the man behind him, Tartum threw himself at the man facing him. Such was his ferocity that the man was quickly overcome and Tartum crushed his throat and jaw with an upper thrust that would have made Isidor proud. His killing blow left him completely open to attack, and the dead man’s ally took full advantage slicing his sword across Tartum’s back. The dome spell did its job yet again, and the man was knocked to the ground by the same spongy effect that had once unbalanced Tartum. Knocking away the prone man’s sword, he looked up at Tartum with hate in his eyes.

“No fair!” he said, as Tartum crushed the life out of him.

“No...it’s not.” Tartum agreed as he reached into his pouch for his copper rods. The remaining men were clawing at the walls in a futile attempt to escape. The magic Rashlarr unleashed that had created this world was very precise, and any way out had been removed. Not wanting to take any chance of killing the blue man, Tartum held out one copper rod after another and picked the remaining red shirts off two or three at a time. In the end, the only person left standing was him, and he leaned heavily on his staff. Taking stock of the massacre, he looked towards where he thought Savall might be standing.

“Gods damn, I’m good!” He said, as he reached into his pouch to pick out another sapphire.

...

“Uush!” he commanded, and the roaring inferno in the corner of the courtyard went out. Tartum walked over to where the blue man was and saw that he was unconscious; Tartum guessed it was due to his panic overwhelming him, as he had no wounds, and the dome spell was still active. Tartum was about to grab the man and carry him out of the courtyard when he remembered how the man struggled and couldn’t seem to get away. Looking over the throne Tartum saw the cause. Thin strings were wrapped all over his arms and legs that tied him to the throne. A few of the strands seemed to run into something he was sitting on.

Unsheathing the knife Savall had given him Tartum slowly began cutting away the strings. As he cut away the last few strands that held his legs together the man sprung to life and kicked Tartum in the face. His dome spell stopped the brunt of it but the force still knocked him on the ground and the man bolted out of the throne and towards the door in the tower Tartum had come from. Recovering quickly Tartum reached for a spider leg and cast his entanglement spell as fast as he could.

“Swa-swa-swyth. La-lateedo!”
he said and the sticky webs of his spell chased after the blue man. He was fast and had almost made it to the doorway when the webs caught up to him and cocooned him in a sticky mass. Tartum could hear the man screaming, but the sound was muffled and pathetic. Walking over to the cocoon Tartum kicked it where he thought the man’s face would be and the screaming stopped. He picked the webbing off his foot and listened to make sure he hadn’t killed the man. After a moment, he saw more than heard the man breathing and sighed in relief. With that handled, Tartum busied himself with recasting his dome spell. Seeing the green hue return to his skin, he walked over to the throne to see what it was the man had been sitting on. It looked like some sort of pressure plate, and upon closer inspection, he saw that it had an inscription on it.

Pick me successfully to advance, pick me unsuccessfully to die.
Is all it said.

“Cryptic guys...” Tartum mumbled. Resting his staff on the throne, Tartum retrieved his lock picks from the hidden compartments inside his sleeves and went about the task of disarming the trap.

It was a moderately difficult trap to disarm, but with Tartum’s skilled hands he had it neutralized in moments. As soon as he removed his tools from the trap the throne began to sink into the ground. Quickly putting his tools back in their compartment and picking up his staff, Tartum watched as the throne melted into the stone floor and a hole appeared with stairs going down into the darkness. Tartum tried to look deeper, but the same darkness that had plagued this challenge so far was the same that he saw now. Picking up the blue shirted man, Tartum wasn’t surprised to see the stairwell light up. Rolling his eyes, he descended and didn’t bother to look up when he heard the portal closing. He was beginning to become comfortable in this maze.

The stairs went down about a hundred yards before ending inside a sewer. Rashlarr had taken no shortcuts when detailing this portion of the mission, and the smells caused him to gag. Summoning his will, Tartum forced the smell and appearance of his current surroundings out of his head and set his focus on figuring out where to drop his captive off. There was only one direction to go in the sewer tunnel, and so he went, walking deeper into the sewer.

After what felt like a lifetime, Tartum saw what looked to be Jeth standing perfectly still with a stupid grin on his face and his hand up like he was waving. Walking towards him, Tartum realized that it wasn’t actually Jeth that but a two dimensional cut out of him. On the ground before the cut out was a blue “X” that he assumed meant this was where he was to put his captive. Dropping the man on the “X” Tartum heard him grunt and moan. Tartum was just about to laugh, when a volley of quills buried themselves into Jeth’s face.

Turning to find the owner of the quills, Tartum saw six stingers coming at him from the direction he had just come from. They were closing in fast and were salivating their acidic spit. The three stingers in front of the pack fired off another volley of quills, and using his staff Tartum deflected them away. He heard movement of stone on stone and saw that the blue man was gone as was the two dimensional cut out of Jeth. Where they went, Tartum had no idea as he was backed against a wall. The stingers were almost on him and panic began to rise up inside him. Digging into his pouches, Tartum went for a handful of sulfur but instead brought up sand. Cursing, Tartum batted away another volley of quills and infused the sand with his magic. Throwing the sand at the stingers Tartum cast his spell,
“Siieeze-del-Makanotho!”

The sand stopped the front three stingers in their tracks but did nothing to slow the three that were behind them. Throwing himself to the side, Tartum barely escaped the gnashing teeth of one as it lunged at him trying to rip his face off. Tartum brought his staff down on the beast’s head and crushed the life out of it. As his staff finished its arc, another stinger lunged forward, Tartum misread its intentions and attempted to move his body instead of his staff. The Stinger wrapped its teeth around his staff and ripped it out of Tartum’s grasp. It ran down the tunnel with the prize in its mouth. Tartum screamed his outrage, but before he could give pursuit, the final stinger jumped in front of him and fired off a volley of quills. Throwing himself on the ground, Tartum avoided the quills but left himself open to the Stinger’s charge. He looked up, just in time to avoid the creature’s jaws clamping down on his head and rolled to the side. The stinger’s tail came at him and knocked him against the wall. The impact knocked the wind out of him, and he saw the beast jump at him with its mouth open, seeking to rip his head off and finish its kill. With no time to cast another spell and with his staff stolen, Tartum reached for the only weapon he had left. Holding the knife in front of him, Tartum closed his eyes and turned his head, unwilling to look death in the eyes. The stringer crashed into him with enough force to jar Tartum’s entire body to its core. He felt the weight of the animal on top of him, but it wasn’t thrashing about or chewing on him or fighting at all. It was perfectly still and getting heavier. Pushing with all his might, Tartum shoved the beast off of him. Terrified, he scooted away from the beast before he realized it was dead. Turning the beast over on its back, Tartum saw that when it had jumped on him, it had impaled itself on the jade knife he had held out for protection. Yanking out his blade, Tartum wiped the blood off of it and sheathed it. Pulling out three rose petals, he killed off the paralyzed Stingers before the spell wore off and began to go after the one that stole his staff.