An Age of Mysterious Memories

Well, let’s get to it then. Aiming my holy halefire double-barreled wrist-mounted crossbow up the tunneled hallway, I fire off radiant bolts just to be annoying, knowing that they don’t do much damage to anything that isn’t undead. Annoying spellcasters is great though, because it takes away one of their biggest assets in battle. Spellcasting. At least, if you’re annoying enough. Glancing side to side, despite not being able to see anything in the flame, I have another giggle to myself as I admit that I can be plenty annoying, glad for the moment that my psionic aegis prevents anyone else from riding along in my brain to overhear my thoughts.

Honestly, all I need to do to make sure we don’t waste any resources, is keep these foes in Lil’s flames, making sure that they can’t cast any teleportation spells to flee. Other than a few abilities I’d granted Teuila, her powers, or at least her power doesn’t really have a resource cost. She’s just monstrously, magnificently strong, and intensely trained. I’ve barely had time to raise my arm to level my crossbow at the leathered and robed mages, and I can already hear Teuila creating craters in the floor and nearest wall, bashing and smashing the armored Spellknights.

One thing I forgot to even take into account, is how some of Lil’s and Teuila’s magic items provide fairly strong passive benefits. Like Lil’s Salamander gauntlets? They provide great forearm protection for him, which is awesome, since he can’t wear a lot of types of armors due to his draconic shape, but I didn’t even really know all of their effects. Apparently, one of them is to allow the user to shape flames into weapons. Specifically javelins, darts and scimitars. The limitation to most adventurers benefiting from them, would be how much fire they can collect and condense to make decent weapons out of. Hah. I recall identifying something along those lines about them, when we’d found them in our hoard, but this is just too perfect.

Lil, my best buddy, a digital dragon with an endlessly regenerating mana source for perpetual flames with links to sunlight or the sun itself, is over here filling the hallway with a perpetual roiling blaze that increases in brightness, intensity, heat, and color, as long as he can exhale. He’s got a breath boost from training his lungs as a skill as a Can’Z’aasian, and from joining the Shellcracker Otter family party.

There’s a reason why even Vylon and Vyela, two of the eldest Golds alive on the planet, were speechless while bearing witness to him filling a tunnel with flames for dozens of minutes at my request. Anyway, here he is now, doing almost the same thing, only adding in the occasional manifestation of solid flame in the form of a flying javelin, as he practices utilizing a magic item he’d never really got to put into use before.

Annoyingly, all four of these punks are warded against telekinetic grips, so my strongest passively infinitely usable ability is neutered. But I can still manifest the TK Squares in strategic positions, to help trip them up. The robed one though, I can’t seem to trip up her spellcasting, and she’s set up a series of buffs that I don’t recognize. While I can fairly easily disrupt the leathered caster, the robed one is planning something, and she might actually succeed. That’s daunting, because I very well know how powerful the magic of Rayileklia can be.

Hearing and sensing Teuila still hammering away on the Spellknights, and them surviving her blows as she ramps up, escalating her own attacks, is disconcerting as well. We wanted to be quick, efficient, and quiet enough to not alert the rest of the horde, but now we’re going to need to start relying on some extra tricks. I whistle and yell a single name, “Essie!”

Thankfully, Teuila understands what I mean, and whips out Requiem, the Silent Song Shellcracker, otherwise known as her sentient artifact weapon called Essie. She drives Essie into the nearest wall, and emplaces an aura of silence. This allows Teuila to stop holding back, and has the surprise benefit of screwing up the draconic humming mnemonic of the robed caster, finally interrupting her spellwork. Phooph. I loose a sigh of relief.

Repositioning myself to cut off any attempts from our foes to flee, I level Frostburn at the leathered mage, and find myself needing to parry attacks from telekinetically charged floating daggers. It seemed like he was fleeing to get out of the flames, but maybe he was gunning for me in the first place. Hm, no, his scales are cracking, beginning to peel off as the tissue beneath them blisters, boils, and bubbles. He’s making a mad attempt, using up anything he can think of, to try to flee Lil’s continuously intensifying flames. I can tell he tries to keep manipulating fire, and layering elemental resistances with short, subtle spellwork, but it can’t keep up with Lil’s output.

Growling, I hate how amazingly well enchanted the more elite Spellknight armor sets are, because Teuila’s ferocious blows haven’t ended them yet. The armor’s enchanted to prevent others from tearing off the helmet, and nearly impervious to blunt or sharp impacts. With Teuila having to dance back and forth between two of them as they struggle to withstand Lil’s flames, and there not being enough height clearance for her to use her usual leaping spear divebombing style attacks, she’s hung up on them, and can’t finish them off.

I saw a flicker of lightning that didn’t seem to belong to the Spellknights, which means Te tried to use Mjolnir, to no effect. The Spellknights are of course immune to lightning, being in Stormheart Keep, it was probably the first enchantment their armor was blessed with, or might even be a natural product of the type of material within their armor.

Wait, the robed mage is—. Crap! She disappeared, and I sense mana trails heading closer to Lil. Suddenly the blaze engulfing the hallway, which has done serious damage to several of our foes, and a bit of damage to me as well, vanishes, poof, gone up in smoke in an instant. Teuila is standing in a stupor, while Lil looks equally dazed. Both share faint traces of enchantment auras about their minds. Even Essie’s silence aura dissipates. Frick!

Huff, okay, take it easy Reggie, figure this out. They’re all closing in on you, except the leathered mage is trying to circle around to flee from you. While I gather my thoughts to concoct a strategy, I quip, “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in surrendering yet, would you?”

When the Spellknight with the torn-rope iconography responds, “I’m afraid not,” I could almost swear—. Actually, with that image on their shield, maybe they do mean it the other way.

Curiosity getting the better of me, I ask, “Wait, did you say you’re a frayed knot, or you’re afraid not?”

Sighing, when the robed mage yells to the leathered mage, “Go!” I realize the time for talking’s over. Well, maybe I can say one more thing.

Trying not to smirk too maliciously, I use the cheesy lines, “Hey pal, I think you need to chill out,” and, “that fire was pretty rough on you, huh? Here, I can help you cool off,” as I lance the fleeing mage with two frosty rays.

My spells have the benefit of activating nearly all the clips in my runic bangle twice, blowing the legs off my fleeing foe gruesomely with necrotic, psychic, fire, and icy energy on top of the spell itself. Eugh. Then there’s the positive reinforcement benefits. Teuila and Lil are now freed of any mental magical effects, and coated in a tiny thin sheathe of mana that’ll absorb some of the impact of the next attack they suffer. Two SP down for the day, still around six hundred ninety available. That was definitely worth it, to see the look on the robed mage’s face as Lil starts moving before the spell was supposed to wear of.

My best buddy tears into the robed mage, clawing through sheathes of mana, and wreathes of, heh, flame, that spring to life between her body and his talons. Suddenly however, she vanishes, and I don’t get the sense she teleported anywhere nearby. Well, crap. She had a contingency spell that, what, teleported her to her room? Sent her to a pocket dimension? Err, I’d better show mercy to, and finish off, the leathered mage while I figure out how to track the robed one.

Between Lil’s flames, my sword-work, and my spells enhanced by the runic clips, this foe seems far more interested in scrabbling away with his life, than pu—. I spoke too soon. Tilting my head only barely to one side, I only just scantily manage to avoid a disintegrating ray aimed for my face. The problem with aiming for the head of someone whose reaction speed is enhanced by their own electrokinesis, and the jolting of a lightning spirit-swarm is, well, what just happened. My head’s a smaller target, all I had to do was lean it a fraction. Telekinetically maneuvering several daggers, and Frostburn, I have them finish off the downed mage like a magician’s stage act, plunging into him from several angles. He’d been trying to do similar to me earlier with his own levitating daggers after all.

Thankfully, Teuila has re-activated Essie’s silence aura, and she’s going ham on the Spellknights once more. With Lil at her side, they can’t put up much resistance, even if they are resilient as hell. The Dragon and the Valkyrie. It’s been a long time since I’ve referenced them as a duo, but they’re the main reason we survived our final encounter with Octorochi, and finished it off for good. In physical combat, they seem perfectly designed to synergize with each other. Both are monstrous powerhouses of absolute strength, capable of delivering strikes that’d shatter walls and buildings with ease.

Teuila’s already ridiculous force, enhanced by Jarngripr is starting to dent and destroy the Spellknight’s seemingly nearly invincible plate armor now. She’s also just used her QCR to don her seasonal gi, with the metallic armbands. I chuckle as she activates them so that she’s got an extra pair of phantom fists with which to pummel her foe.

Lil pauses his own assault to boggle at Teuila’s extra limbs for the briefest of moments, so I use my TK grips to mess with the Spellknight he’d been attacking. I’m diverting a single greataxe slash by angling my TK Squares where the Spellknight’s cleave would be, resulting in him sliding just off-target from Lil’s face, and slamming his greataxe into the floor, cleaving a cleft, and temporarily trapping his weapon.

There’s a sickening crunch, and I’m pretty sure I see Teuila puffing out her cheeks as if she’s going to lose her lunch, as her fists finally make their way through her foes defenses. Eugh. Yeah, if anything could make Te queasy, that’d do it. She leaps towards Lil’s foe to get the Spellknight in several arm-locks, simultaneously. I’d chuckle if it weren’t kinda badass. My best buddy, Lil, just opens his maw over the helmeted head of the Spellknight, and roasts him like a can of spam up close and personal-like. That just leaves one.

Scratch that, that just leaves a half dozen or so. The robed mage reappears from whatever pocket dimension she’d been in, based on the aura trail that tears its way into being. But, along with her are newly summoned constructs that she must have spent time conjuring while she had a temporary respite. These things are like animate walls of indestructible force, just solidified mana into vaguely humanoid shapes, and they’re in a defensive perimeter around an incredibly adept mage whose analytical eyes are taking in the changed situation. Crap, not good. Te and Lil can’t get any attacks, or themselves, around the magic-elemental masses that are trading blow-for-blow with them.

Y’know what time it is Reggie? Huff, sighing, yeah, I guess I’d better use a resource. Drawing a deep breath, I perform an LBB TKSL directly into the path of an attacking mana construct, confusing it as I pull a QCR number one. Suddenly I’m not in the way of the now-hesitating attacker, and am instead three ravens on the far side of the foes, each of me pecking at the robed mage. Reforming into Reggie Shellcracker once more, with a Valkyrie dagger, and Frostburn, I lay into the robed mage, our final foe, hacking at her neck and torso as I try to bypass her enchanted wards that she’d renewed. I’m positive the mana constructs will disappear when she dies.

Gurgling her last breaths, the robed Draconiac mage asserts, “It matters not, you’ll never survive d’ rude room,” before collapsing, her spellwork dissipating with her death.

Did she say, “The rude room?” Almost as if in answer to my mental question, as the last of the mana constructs dissipates, one of them, echoing its master’s last spoken words in the throes of defeat, manages to croak out an ethereal utterance, "It matters not, you’ll never survive d’ rude room," and then it vanishes, its voice echoing and trailing off into silence.

Lil snorts, stomping all over his fallen foe, the Spellknight, as he quips, "What's it gonna do, hurl insults at us?" He wears a big goofy grin as he further sasses, "Pal, we tease each other for breakfast," then, licking his lips, giggling, he adds, “and lunch, and dinner, mm dinner.”

Chuckling, Te rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck side to side as she adds, "A room with a bad attitude? Please. Me ‘n’ Dragbutt've got thicker skins than those tin cans you call armor."

We share a moment of levity, the tension easing from our shoulders like mist in the morning sun. But as we check the bodies for useful magics, potions, trinkets and the like, my brain is veritably itching for some reason. Still, we return to making our advance through the labyrinthine corridors of Stormheart Keep. Yet I still can't shake the weirdness of the mana construct echoing the mage’s last words. The rude room. It nags at me, a splinter in my mind, right along with the Sister’s prophecy, and my vision of Teuila derezzing, and my lightning-leyline senses of Rayileklia. My brain’s buzzing to the point that it’s getting a little full with preoccupied thoughts. Not the best thing for the brain of an already distractable Reggie Shellcracker to be.