Bloodfallen: Curse of The All Knowing

Everything and everyone was going about their business like the day before, those that were on guard duty were at their posts watching for any sign of the enemy and those who were not either went to sleep or practiced with their weapon of choice. But suddenly several red portals opened up throughout the fortifications of the fort as well as the courtyard and out came soldiers of the empire with their weapons raised and ready to kill.

The kingdom's soldiers and mercenaries were caught off guard by this sudden and tactical strike where they last expected it and did their best to fight off the invaders. Things were not completely lost for the kingdom’s forces, until the empire’s mages stepped in only this time they weren't wearing the blue robes they wore before. This time they wore black robes with red accents on the ends of the sleeves, underneath the stole, and along the hood that concealed their faces entirely from all those around.

The mages quickly started casting their powerful tier five spells at the unprepared soldiers and started decimating them in large numbers. Quickly they took the walls and the towers allowing them to rain down spells on the soldiers still trying to recover from the shock of the sudden attack. Those in the dormitories were shielded from this sudden attack but were quickly woken up by all the noise that was created mostly from the powerful spells.

Arthur was one of those that were awoken by the sounds of spells and fighting in the fort and instinctively jumped to his feet and looked around at the panicking soldiers and mercenaries around him. “Wait, what is happening?” Arthur shouted at those running by but received no answer as they were focused on the enemy rather than him.

Thankfully Calavia showed up running and out of breath. “Arthur! It's terrible! The empire is attacking, they managed to bypass the walls with magic somehow and are attacking everyone indiscriminately. We need to get out of here while we can.”

“Wait! You saw the magic that was used? What did it look like? Was it the same mages that we fought against last time?” Arthur quickly grabbed Calavia by the shoulders and began asking question after question. He needed to know if he was going to fight them.

“They were using all the magic they were using before, but we don’t have the benefit of defensive structures this time! That is why we need to get out of here while we still can and tell everyone we can about what happened!” Calavia said just as the ground started to shake from a massive blast above ground. “We need to leave, we can’t stay here or we will die.”

Arthur listened to Calavia plead for him to leave with her, but he couldn’t just turn his back on everyone and she could see in his eyes what he was going to say. “I’m sorry, but I can just leave. You go and spread the work of what happened here, I'll find you when this is all over.”

Calavia looked up at Arthur like she was about to cry, suddenly she grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled down into a quick kiss. Arthur’s mind blanked for a moment until Calavia shouted at him. “You better come back, or I will be mad at you.”

********

With the knowledge that Calavia would be leaving the fort safely Arthur followed his fellow mercenaries and the soldiers up and out of the dorms to the surface where they found the empire’s mages pelting fire spells at everyone they could see. The mages on the kingdom's side quickly created shields of their chosen evocation or alteration magic to block these powerful attacks and give everyone around them an opportunity to reach where the enemy mages were. Arthur didn’t follow them, instead he looked around for those that were keeping the red portals stable to allow the empire’s forces through.

At a few key points Arthur could see some of the mages in their black and red robes concentrating on spells but without any fireballs or other dangerous outcomes. Quickly running across the courtyard towards them Arthur was noticed by a few of the mages actively targeting and killing, they unleashed a few fire spells towards him with the intent of killing him. In an almost slow motion state Arthur could see the spells and their trajectory and moved just out of the way, thankfully none of those spells were explosive or he would have been killed in a fiery explosion.

At the base of the way where the distracted mage was, Arthur conjured up a ladder from earth and raced up towards the mage to kill him and close the portal he was keeping stable. As he climbed up and onto the wall the mage suddenly turned to him and spoke for the first time. Its face was covered by a red mask and its voice was inhuman and distorted like an echo, its robes hiding any piece of individuality that it might have once had. “There he is!” It whispered yet yelled at the same time at Arthur as it noticed him, like it was expecting him.

Arthur raised his hands and conjured up a wave of fire which he unleashed upon the dark mage with the intent of destroying it completely. The dark mage somewhat blocked the wave of fire but in the process lost control over the red portal and it collapsed, severing one of the empire's soldiers who was in the process of walking through and quickly killing him.

“You cannot escape the power of the master!” The dark mage shouted as it withstood the wave of fire almost like it was taunting him. Noticing that his attack wasn’t doing anything to the dark mage Arthur reached over to his hip and drew his longsword and stabbed forward. Like he suspected, the shield that the dark mage was using only blocked purely magical attacks and did nothing against physical one, a common mistake that was done to preserve one's mana reserves for longer. The dark mage faltered with this stab and its magic shield did as well, resulting in a face full of fire that Arthur used to engulf it entirely and kill it.

Looking at the corpse of the dark mage Arthur was confused by the fact that the robe only appeared to take a small amount of damage from the fire, the sword however left a big hole where it was stabbed. But Arthur didn’t have much time to look further as suddenly from behind he heard another distorted and echoing voice shout. “There he is!”

Spinning around, Arthur saw another of the dark mages just a few meters away and a massive fireball hurtling towards him. Arthur dived out of the way and over the edge of the wall into the courtyard, with a thud Arthur landed and fell onto his face without any significant injuries. Not wasting a moment Arthur took off running for cover while the second dark mage lobbed fireballs towards him.

Slowly but surely Arthur put enough distance between the two where the spell did not have the range to reach him. Hiding behind the upper portion of the dorm, Arthur took a moment to catch his breath and looked at the fight between the kingdom’s and empire’s forces. The regrouped kingdom soldiers and mercenaries were slowly pushing back the empires even with the dark mages providing cover fire, the overall skill and teamwork was just better on the kingdom's side and their mages kept the spells from hurting them. With this teamwork the kingdom's forces managed to reach several of the fortifications where the dark mages were attacking from and started to storm them with their weapons at the ready.

But suddenly Arthur felt something, it was so intense that he found himself dizzy and on his knees from the sheer intensity of it. With great difficulty Arthur looked up towards where he felt this coming from in the middle of the courtyard and saw one of the red portals materializing, but instead of an army stepping through it was just one of the dark mages. But this one was different, his robes were decorated with what looked like teeth of a large animal along the shoulder portion of the stole and it wore no mask. Instead its face was simply not visible like a vail of a thick ink like substance was concealing it from all those who looked, the only thing that was still visible was two red circles that were likely to be its eyes.

This new dark mage didn’t even acknowledge Arthur's presence and just looked towards the mercenaries and soldiers that were slowly taking back the fortifications, with a few gestures and hand signs it called upon a rain of fire upon all those it deemed its enemies. Like the wrath of a god little sparks blanketed the fortifications and the kingdom's forces screamed out in pain as they faced the full might of this attack. Those that were inside were spared of the fire rain but quickly realized their situation and attempted to flee only to be either killed or captured by the empire's forces or mages.

Arthur just watched as this all happened, his danger sense acting very differently than it had been up until now. Before it acted like a cat whenever it saw a dog and would go into a frenzy to tell him of the threat, now it was like that very danger sense itself was trying to hide from the mysterious and powerful mage before him.

Deciding that it was satisfied with the situation at hand the darkest mage turned to look at Arthur giving him an opportunity to look at it directly. Its pure red eyes were almost sickening to look into and Arthur could swear that it was almost happy with what was happening. “Thank you for making my job far easier than what I initially assumed it would be, I had no idea that you would be so eager to fight the good fight and deliver yourself to my doorstep.” The darkest mage spoke for the first time and it was far far worse than Arthur could have ever expected. Instead of an echo its voice was more of a whisper from a demon, it was so terrible that Arthur couldn’t even muster the strength to move out of the way of the spell it casted that flung him like a doll and knocked him unconscious.

An unknown amount of time later Arthur awoke to find himself restrained with his arms behind his back and in the mess hall with a handful of other prisoners. He recognized Lyra, Citro, and several members of the flock, but the others aside from the Captain were unknown to him. They were all surrounded by the imperial soldiers who stood still like statues while the dark mages spoke amongst themselves. The darkest mage sat in the large throne that the Captain would sit in to eat and said nothing while he listened.

Suddenly one of the side doors opened revealing Caeso and two more dark mages who entered the room surprising everyone including Arthur. But soon everyone noticed that he didn’t look to be distressed or even restrained like everyone else, and instead of being seated with everyone else he was brought before Arthur and asked a question.

“Where is my sister Arthur?” Caeso looked at Arthur with a mixture of worry and anger.

“She is gone, I told her to run and tell anyone she could of the situation. But I don’t know where exactly she went, so you are on your own when it comes to finding her.” Arthur answered truthfully as he slowly came to understand why he was asked the question.

“Caeso! Why haven't you been restrained like the rest of us, and why are you allowed to ask about your sister!?” Lieutenant Pius asked with a raised voice when Caeso received his answer. But instead of answering, Caeso turned away and walked up to the darkest mage. “My sister isn’t here, I need to find her and make sure she is safe.” Caeso practically demanded of the darkest mage while everyone who hadn't figured out what happened figured it out.

“I do not answer to you, Caeso. Our agreement was that your sister would not be harmed in exchange for several access points into the fortress. As you can see your sister was left unharmed and we have honored our part of the bargain, now honor yours by leaving and disappearing or we will do so ourselves.” The darkest mage pointed his black gloved finger towards the doors to the outside and the two dark mages that escorted him to this room escorted him outside leaving the room silent in disbelief.

Just when things were looking the worst they could possibly be, suddenly the darkest mage stood from his new throne and slowly walked over to the group of prisoners and stopped right before Arthur. “Now that we have that small matter out of the way we can move onto the important part of this arranged meeting. Your demise.” Arthur half expected the darkest mage before him to chuckle and say it was a joke, but he said no such thing.

“You see your actions in the depths of Dom Badaher have shown the master that you are a danger and a threat to her vision of the world. Now I must admit that you fought against us bravely, but fortunately for us that wasn’t quite enough. Now feel free to tell your god that you failed him and he is welcome to send another to their demise as well.”

Before Arthur could say anything the darkest mage waved his hands and conjured up a thick red smoke that Arthur accidentally breathed in and immediately regretted. The red smoke was like poison in his veins that left him unable to breathe or do anything, everyone just watched as Arthur fell to the ground and convulsed before eventually he stopped breathing all together and remained still.

**********

As everything went dark and Arthur lost consciousness he felt himself in a big empty nothing, and it felt like he was falling through it. Looking what he thought was up he could see small flashes of light and fire like little stars in the distance.