Apprentice

  We were fucked. I know I have said this before, but this time I just couldn’t see a way out. We were exhausted, surrounded by enemies, facing a new and obviously dangerous foe, and two out of three of my trump cards were useless. She let us stand in shock at her approach, smiling down on us and not advancing any further, but from the look in her eye I could see that she saw playthings to torment in front of her instead of either rivals or people she was considering sparing.

  “Alex, you have the portal, get away,” Anna said, taking steps away from the woman on the elk, raising her hands in a gesture that might have been a beginning of a spell or just instinctive defensive reflex.

  “It is impolite to talk about someone as if they weren’t here. The two of you. Introduce yourselves,” the woman said.

  Two of us. That was good. Clarence had disappeared and Wurm had been nearly invisible even during the day. But I was hesitating, I turned to her, my staves in front of me.

  “I am Alex Vorhal, head wizard of the Adventuring Guild of the town you seem hellbent on assaulting. Who are you?” I said. I didn’t have any plan. I was stalling just for the sake of it. Just in case anything changed at all.

  “And I won’t be doing anything you tell me to do, I think,” Anna said.

  The apprentice cast a quick spell, and both of us flinched, but it was only to conjure a werelight. It illuminated her face from inches away, and she spurred her mount to bring her nearer. When she was close enough for us to see her face, she rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. She was, it was impossible to miss, stunning. I mean, I’d seen pretty people in the Tower over the past few weeks, a couple supernaturally so. But damn.

  “I am Jea-Aviter, One Hundred and Eleventh Apprentice of Ygnarothrax Xem, and I was thrown in here by the same against my will. I am quite mad about it. I was about to graduate. So I will break his little toy Tower and get to a universe as far away from the senile bastard as I can. Starting with his dumb little Earthling heroes,” Jea said.

  “Can we talk about this?” I said.

  “You can throw away that spellrod, and I promise I’ll go for you first, instead of your pal here,” Jea said.

  “Fuck you. Deal,” I said and moved to throw my staff away.

  “Aw, cute. No, you don’t actually have to do that, I just wanted to see what you’d say,” Jea said. With a giggle.

  “Alex, I swear to god, that fucking hero complex of yours pisses me off,” Anna said.

  “Oh, I just love the two of you. Now, the part where I murder you,” she said, and made a swift cutting motion with her blade in the air.

  I just noticed what looked like a tear in reality form, but I wasn’t going to just stare at it dumbfounded while she did whatever she was planning to do. I dashed away from her diagonally, towards the clearing where monsters were still spewing out of the portal, and was glad to see Anna dash the opposite direction. I saw black dots appear in front of me, at first I thought she was doing something to my eyesight, but soon shards of black glass exploded out of them, darting towards me. This impact too was drawn to the spellrod, as I dropped and rolled in among dozens of monsters no more than twenty feet away from me.

  “Adjusted for extra-planar spellcasting techniques and conjurations? Why would he give you the good shit for free?” I heard Jea call from behind me in a childlike whine. Then I lost focus on her, as there were monsters bearing up on me. As I was on the ground, I cast the barrier from my staff (the final charge) and encased myself in an invisible coffin of a barrier. The monsters fell on me in a rush, which was neat, because the next step in my plan was to cover them in burning oil. They didn’t like that and for a moment the heat and screaming was the only thing I could focus on.

  After there were none of them left, I rolled out of the barrier through the hole I’d left on the right side for just that purpose and stood. My spell had taken out a respectable dozen. Anna had finished off the rest. Alright, I could-

  I was hit in the back by incredible force. My armor protected me from the direct impact, but there was enough kinetic energy that I was thrown and spun in the air, and I saw that the fucking elk had charged me with horns lowered in the back.

  A reminder about the difference between a deer and an elk: if you look at a creature and wonder ‘is that a deer or an elk’, it’s a deer. If you look at a creature and think ‘what the fuck is wrong with the size of that thing,’ that’s an elk. Jea was still sitting atop it just as straight as before, even after its charge, and made it approach me as I was rolling to my back and groaning. She smiled a truly psychotic smile as she slowly advanced the elk to trample me.

  “Beg for me, pretty please,” she said.

  I didn’t have the time to consider whether I would, in fact, beg for my life, as a fireball struck her in the back, flashbanging us both with an explosion of light from Anna’s spell. I focused my newly enhanced arcana to speak two syllables at once, casting only the grease part of the greasefire spell almost instantly, directly underneath where I remembered the elk standing, while scurrying away at the same time.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Anna’s spell was powerful, and probably had a larger area of effect than she’d intended, but I was only singed, not burned and it wasn’t powerful enough to ignite the oil on the ground. Xem’s apprentice had, apparently mostly shrugged off the initial burst of fire, but when her elk slipped and panicked in the slick oil suddenly underneath it, she did fall on her face, diagonally towards me and to the left. She landed with the goblet held high, like a frat-bro saving his beer while tripping and falling, and I saw that there was some black energy spilling from it. Her dress was, of course, magical, so it didn’t tear, but in the tumble it didn’t look very comfortable.

  So I took both my staves and swung at her face, while I was still prone. What the hell, right?

  It surprised even me that I actually hit her. It surprised even more when blood spurted up from her newly broken nose. I kind of even felt bad for a split second, which was long enough for her to grab my spellrod. She began an incantation that I was sure would rob me of my magical protection, so I activated the secondary ability of the spell, disintegrating the staff instantly and covering the nearby area in an anti-magic field.

  As an unforeseen consequence of this, everything went dark. The portal was gone. Huh, so I guess that had been an option that would have worked if not for Anna. I felt a drop of blood land on my face, then a hand fondling around in the darkness until she found me. I raised my hands up instinctively towards my face when she grabbed my collar, which was a good idea, as the knife hand followed the grasping one in a second, hitting my armored arms, and clinging off with a sound of metal hitting glass with concerning undertones of shattering.

  A fireworks-like blast hit the air above us, and the scene was lit in its orange light. It did not dissipate, leaving the area in a strange fire glow of a moment after an explosion. I saw Jea pinning me to the ground with her knee, and raising the knife to attack me again. Now that it was light again, she was holding her chalice in the other hand. So what hand had grabbed me?

  “Oh, I like you,” she said, and blood was dripping on my face from her broken nose as she came at me with the silvery blade again and again.

  Clarence tackled her from out of nowhere before she could finish me off. He didn’t hesitate a moment and slashed towards her with one of his obsidian blades. Only then did she use her chalice, splashing black liquid into his face. Clarence cried out in surprise and pain, long enough for her to knee him in the groin and get back up to standing.

  “What is the fun of doing a wizard duel in an anti-magic field, Alex dear?” she said.

  “Not dying is a strong motivator for me,” I said sitting back up. My spells should still work, right?

  “Aw, but you wouldn’t hurt a helpless little lady like me? Not after you’ve taken away all my powers. Are you going to tie me up? Take me prisoner?” she said. Anna hit her with another fireball from behind. It still didn’t seem to do much, “Okay, bitch, you want to do it like this, we’ll fucking do it like this,” Jea said as she turned to face Anna.

  I didn’t give her the chance casting six ice elementals in as many seconds. The sharp edges of the falling icicles didn’t as much as graze her, but when the elementals got up and start moving, she didn’t ignore them, instead jumping back, leaping higher than a human body should be able to, running back to her mount. The elk had managed to stop panicking and leap its way out of the grease, but when she tried to jump on it, Anna hit it with a bolt of flame, igniting the oil-drenched creature.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, play fair!” Jea cried out in petulant anger, but the elk itself seemed to hardly react at all to being entirely engulfed in flames. Clarence had used this time to circle around her, leaving Jea in the middle of a triangle between us three.

  At this she smiled, and looked directly at me.

  “I will see you later, Alex Vorhal,” and before any of us can do anything, she emptied the contents of her chalice on top of her head.

  There was steam and a sizzling sound and I saw her flesh melt and skull cave in, but before it got any more grotesque than that, the rest of her body, clothes and gear dissipated into a mist, that then began to come together into a dense cloud.

  “What in the blazes?” Clarence said, as the smoke came together into a form roughly resembling a human form in dimensions if nothing else. In the confusion, the flaming elk ran off into the forest, visible through the trees for minutes after, getting smaller and smaller.

  “She’s going to get away,” I said.

  “Is that an issue?” Clarence said. Even in the dim light it could be seen that he was bleeding from some strange wound on his face.

  “It might not be if we can get away from her,” I said.

  “The Guild then,” Clarence said.

  “The Guild,” I agreed.

  Anna joined us. The smoke cloud was now fully formed, and as soon as it was, it began moving away.

  “Couldn’t we try to, I don’t know, wind blast?” Anna said.

  “I could only think of breathing her in, but that’d probably kill both of us when she turned back if it even worked,” I said.

  “Gross,” Anna said.

  “We’re getting to Checkpoint,” Clarence said.

  “Fuck off,” Anna said, shoulders slumping. I knew exactly how she felt. I was exhausted even before the battle began, and now had what I was pretty sure some broken bones.

  “We have a few minutes of anti-magic here where I’m pretty sure she won’t be able to do anything,” I said.

  “So?” Anna said.

  “I guess at least I can get us a head start,” I said.

  I cast the wind blade evocation directly at the ruthless bitch, and was delighted to see the smoke cloud visibly try to keep together as it flew off into the darkness.

  And we ran limping into the woods.