Mad Scramble

Asyr wasn’t fast. She could remember the few times when she was very young and went into the nearby town to play with the other children. She was never very athletically inclined, but it only became more so as she grew up. Once she became an adventurer, after she left home, she was always the slowest one in her parties. It was never much of an issue because she could attack from a distance and always avoided close combat, but there was a time when she was being chased with one of her former parties.

The job request was to defend a caravan of merchants travelling from Izek’s Pass to Hero’s Halls. Everything was fine until a pack of hungry dire wolves surrounded the caravan. The pack was small, but dangerous, so it was the job of the adventurers to act as a diversion while the caravan made a break for it with their few personal guards. That was just the way adventuring was, so Asyr never questioned it.

The issue arose when the chase began. Asyr wasn’t as fast as the rest of her party, who were all trying to make their way to a nearby ridge where they would make their stand while the caravan escaped. It didn’t matter if they killed all the dire wolves, it only mattered that the pack was distracted. Asyr ended up being a perfect distraction.

By the time the rest of that party was on the ridge, Asyr was surrounded with no time to try and climb the ridge. The party’s archer took some shots at the wolves, but the plan was always to have Asyr take point on the attack with her magic. Without the time to climb the ridge, nor the time to search through her spellbook, Asyr was running out of options.

The pain was blinding. One moment, she could think about how she was out of options, the next, she could only feel the searing pain of a wolf’s jaws clamping onto her leg. The blood ran down her right calf as a wolf was hanging onto her. She couldn’t think about anything other than the pain. She had heard stories of people’s lives flashing before their eyes, but her mind was strangely focused on one thing: the blood on her leg.

She could never remember what happened immediately after that, but that was the one time she had tried to be a part of a combat job. She was kicked out of that party. When someone gets kicked out of a party, the entire rest of the party must agree and must provide a reason to the guild. Their reason: Asyr Moonriver becomes a liability in a chase because she is too slow.

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“Three!”

The group stepped over the line and hit a dead sprint as they rushed to reach the next hallway. Dorak was the fastest. He ran nearly half the length of the room before the Obsidian Pillar glowed with the light of a magic circle. Isha was somehow the second fastest, despite her plate armor and less athletic build. Hal was probably faster than Isha if he was in a dead sprint, but he matched his pace with Asyr’s, leaving the two at the rear of the pack. Hal held his shield aloft to defend Asyr, but the Obsidian Pillar wasn’t targeting Hal and Asyr.

As the magic circle glowed, the Obsidian Pillar landed on the ground with a heavy slam. The ground shook, causing everyone to stumble slightly. The magic circle glowed with a slight umbral light and an orb, black as the void, appeared in front of Dorak. As he was regaining his balance from the shaking ground, the pull of the orb caused Dorak to stumble again, this time falling entirely onto the ground. Dorak held onto one of the now-deactivated tiles, but his grip was slowly failing without having both arms to hold on.

“O, Lady of Storms! This act defies the natural order! I pray for thou to intercede!”

Just as Dorak’s grip failed, a bolt of lightning struck the Orb of Gravity and interfered with its magic, causing it to disappear. Dorak went to look at Isha, impressed, but she had a serious look on her face, so he kept running.

As Hal and Asyr crossed the halfway point of the room, there were three magic circles that glowed in the air above the two of them. These circles were different than the previous one that summoned the Orb of Gravity, but Hal didn’t know what they did, so he did the only thing he could think of: raise his shield.

Three long, thin spears of pure obsidian grew out of the magic circles. Hal pulled Asyr under the shield’s protection, then braced the shield with both arms. The first impact was preceded by a high-pitched whistling and followed with a small sonic boom. Hal could feel his shoulders strain under the impact, but that was only the first. After another high-pitched whistle, he could feel his left forearm snap and break under the force of the second impact. As the final impact approached, Hal shifted his right arm to take more of the weight of the shield. As the last obsidian spear shattered against Hal’s shield, the shifted weight proved a mistake. The impact, much like the earlier two, was followed by a sonic boom. This time, however, the sonic boom was followed by a choked off yelp of pain. Hal’s right shoulder was dislocated by the force of the impact, then the shield, which could no longer be carried by Hal’s broken arm, fell to his side, further fracturing his arm. If not for his vambraces, it would have been left bent at an awkward angle. As the shield fell to the ground, Asyr tried to heal Hal’s arms, but he simply called out, “MOVE!”

Another new magic circle began to glow, but this one expanded to fill the entire room. Dorak quickly made it out of the room, followed by Isha, but Hal’s pace stayed in time with Asyr’s. The two wouldn’t make it out of the room before the spell activated. Dorak turned to Isha, pleading, “Do something! Do that thing again!”

“I can’t yet,” Isha explained, trying to think of a plan.

“What do you mean, you can’t?!” screamed Dorak.

“We clearly don’t have the time for me to explain, so you need to trust me,” responded Isha, trying to stay calm. “I need you to do whatever you can to destroy that Pillar right now. GO!”

Dorak ran. He would make it just in time to reach the Obsidian Pillar before its spell activated, but he would be caught in its center. After seeing the previous summonings that the Pillar had done, he could only assume what this next one might do. The first summoned a void-like orb of pure gravity. The second summoned spears of obsidian. He didn’t have time to think about what might happen next. He needed to destroy this pillar.

Meanwhile, Isha began to pray. “I pray for power to defeat my Lady’s foes. I pray that Dorak is granted your blessing. O, Lady of Storms, give unto us a mote of thy divine power!”

As Dorak reached the Pillar, his fist had gathered magical energy around it and it was a spear of stone. As Isha finished her prayer, Dorak was struck by a bolt of divine energy. He expected to feel pain from the lightning, but it was all absorbed by the spear of stone on his fist. He could see Asyr and Hal out of the corner of his eye, trying to run to safety. Hal, unable to lift or even carry his shield. Asyr, unable to run fast enough to escape the spell’s range. Dorak readied his fist, but he was a second too late.

The magic circle was completed with a pulse of the same umbral light. Dorak was suddenly weightless. He could feel himself rising into the air, nearly touching the 30-foot high ceilings. He could see Hal and Asyr, as well. They were in the air, too, but Dorak saw the second pulse of umbral light pass over and through the others before it passed through him.

The weightlessness was gone and replaced. Now, he felt his body grow incredibly heavy as he was pulled with extreme force towards the ground. As he held his single fist aloft with his magic and Isha’s divine blessing, he had one chance to end this fight. The timing was slim, but he knew when and where to strike. He was 20 feet above the top of the Pillar. As he began to quickly fall, he was 15 feet above. 10 feet above. 5 feet above. Now! He let the force of gravity act as his energy, simply holding his fist steady to shatter the Obsidian Pillar. As he made contact, the pointed spear of stones acted as a nail to direct all of the force into. When the nail made its first crack into the obsidian, the divine energy released, becoming a bolt of lightning with Dorak as its cloud. The lightning spread throughout the Pillar, creating more and more shattering webs throughout the glassy stone. As Dorak continued to fall from the heavy gravity, his weight drove the nail of his fist like a hammer, causing all of the webs of shattered glass to connect and destroy the Pillar from the inside out. Shards of black glass fell to the ground alongside Dorak as he felt the gravity return to normal and the magic circle disappeared. He had destroyed the Obsidian Pillar with its own spell. He quickly landed in a combat roll to avoid the damage of the fall.

Two thuds could be heard behind Dorak as Isha screamed, “ASYR!” Dorak turned to see an ugly sight. Hal was fortunate, all things considered. He had landed on his feet, then tried to do a roll to cushion the fall, but rolled onto his dislocated shoulder, only further damaging the cavity of his shoulder. Asyr was in a much worse position. She had landed on a very unstable single foot, leaving all of the impact to be taken by her ankle and left leg. Her ankle was sprained and her leg was left at a nasty angle with the bone poking out of the skin. The bigger issue was from the last thing to have landed.

At some point in the rise and fall, Hal’s glaive had come out of its sling. Hal normally kept the glaive in his hands, but he couldn’t do so while bracing the shield with both hands, so he had put the glaive in a sling on his back. The sling kept the glaive hanging parallel to the ground at an easy angle to draw for battle, but Hal must not have fully sheathed the glaive, so it came out easily with the quickly changing gravity. When the glaive fell, the heaviest part of it fell first: the blade.

As she lay on her back, rising out of Asyr’s left hip was the six-foot long polearm. The blade had entered at the point where the waist meets the thigh. It then sliced through bone, flesh, skin, and everything else, including the stone floor beneath it. Asyr wasn’t even feeling the pain at the moment, though, because her head was coated in the blood it was laying in. Her own blood. As the lights of the room returned to normal from the red glow of combat, Isha ran in to administer aid. Dorak, however, could do nothing but stare at the mangled bodies of his party members. Asyr had a sprained left ankle, a concussion, a glaive embedded in her left hip, a compound fracture in her left leg, and a cracked skull. Hal had a simple fracture in his left forearm, a splintered right shoulder cavity, a dislocated right shoulder, and a much milder concussion. Dorak knew that, no matter what happened, these injuries would be healed by the magic of The Tomb, but it didn’t make his guilt disappear. He had gone to attack the Pillar instead of help his party. And this was the consequence.

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Isha was in a heightened state of pure panic. She had so many things to do if she was going to be able to heal both Hal and Asyr. She had already done a basic examination of both her fallen allies. She had learned the basics of medicine at the temple. Temples were one of the most reliable sources of medical aid. Temples provided that aid without prejudice against the poor, the sick, or the elderly. More specialized doctors could be expected to provide specialized care, but the common folk wouldn’t be able to pay the exorbitant fees for those doctors. Simply breaking a bone could accrue a fee of up to 10 gold, which was equivalent to the weekly income of the average day laborer. If there was a more dangerous situation, like a disease, a pregnancy, or an infection, that price would double, at the very least. The temples provided a level of care without the cost. The Emerald Heart, Amidra, would always receive many prayers that would outweigh the cost of the minor miracles needed to heal most injuries or cure most minor diseases.

Isha had learned medicine, though, because minor miracles weren’t needed to heal most injuries. With clean gauze, hot water, medicinal alcohol, and proper knowledge, most wounds would naturally heal over time. Deadly diseases were more dangerous because basic healing magic wouldn’t cure them. In order to cure a deadly disease, especially one that might cause an epidemic, powerful life magic would be needed. In those cases, it was easier to prevent the disease from spreading before that happened. Additionally, being able to treat the symptoms of an injury or a disease would make everything easier when it came time to cast any healing spells.

Because of her training, Isha knew what needed to be done before healing. She needed to set the broken bones, relocate Hal’s shoulder, remove the glaive from Asyr’s hip, and set Asyr into a position where her head was stable. Before any of that could happen, she needed to calm her mind and distract herself from the panic she was feeling.

“O, Horn of Plenty. O, Lady of Storms. I beseech thee to bring me to calmer waters. Grant my mind the peace it needs to face the tasks before me. In the name of Lady Salkhi, I pray. Unen.”

The words didn’t matter to Isha. It was simply a kind of ritual she had grown accustomed to after years of using it to calm herself on nights when she couldn’t forget the flooding of Sakaumi. Now, she used it again to steady her breathing as she began to work.

“Dorak, get over here. I need you to remove Hal’s pauldrons, boots, and all his upper clothing.” Isha said this while already getting to work on setting Asyr’s leg. She first needed to find something to splint the leg while she worked. She would have hoped for a plank of wood or two wooden rods, but all she could find was a large shard of obsidian. It was plenty long enough to brace the leg against, nearly two feet long, but it was sharp on the edges, so Isha needed to be careful while working.

Isha regularly carried gauze with her for emergencies like this, so she used that to tie Asyr’s leg to the shard. This wouldn’t have been a permanent solution, but with healing magic, all that was needed was getting the bone back into the right position. Healing magic worked by speeding up the body’s natural healing process, but bones would heal in the wrong way if not properly set.

The first step to set the bone was simply getting the bone that was poking out of the skin back into place. The work was messy and left Isha’s hands covered in blood, just the same as Asyr’s leg. Next, Isha went to realign the bones. The lower leg had two bones, so it was important to make sure both were matched properly and not twisted around each other. Lastly, it would be easier to heal if the bones were rotated to properly match each end of the break at the same angle, matching each end like two shards of a broken vase. This wouldn’t adversely affect the healing magic too much, but this could lead to the bone becoming brittle in some areas if not done properly.

Now that the leg bones were reset, Isha looked at Asyr’s condition and silently cursed herself. One thing she was taught by her mentor, Gavin Swiftstone, was to always treat head trauma first. Isha was still rattled by the gruesome sight, so she must not have been thinking clearly. She quickly removed Asyr’s pack from her back, trying not to move her around too much, and used it to prop up her head. Then, Isha reached into the pack to find one of the healing potions that the two had purchased earlier that day. The small vial was protected by multiple layers of cloth padding on all sides to prevent damage. This kept most of the vials from shattering, but a few were still broken from the fall.

Isha took the unbroken healing potion and poured the contents onto the back of Asyr’s head without moving her from her position. Healing potions were nowhere near as powerful as healing magic, but in a situation where healing was needed in a very specific area of the body, they were invaluable. Isha used this one to help close the wound on Asyr’s head. Healing potions could only do so much in that case, but preventing anymore blood loss in the head would prevent Asyr from dying. Isha then held open Asyr’s eyelids, one at a time, to check her pupils. Concussions couldn’t be healed with basic healing magic, so checking for symptoms would determine the level of healing needed. Sure enough, one of Asyr’s pupils was dilated more than the other. Uneven dilation was a fairly certain sign of a concussion. When it came time to heal Asyr, Isha would need to use a stronger spell, but there was one more thing to take care of first.

Protruding from Asyr’s hip was a familiar glaive with the design of a snake reaching from the shaft to the blade. In order to heal Asyr, it would need to be removed. She went to touch the polearm, but instinctively stopped. She could feel an evil aura around it. How Hal had been handling it for as long as he was without any effects was beyond her comprehension. She wanted more than anything to examine the glaive in-depth or even cleanse it with a holy ritual, but now was not the time. She simply grabbed the weapon and removed it.

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“Who might you be, priessstessssss?” hissed a slow, raspy voice.

Isha was in total darkness. She could still feel the glaive in her hand, but she couldn’t let go.

“I sssee that you have come to me. I am Extoltriusss, devourer of hope. Ssshall you offer me the hope of happinessssss? Or ssshall you offer me the hope of trussst?”

Before her, Isha saw two sudden red lights appear. No, not lights. Eyes. Red snake-like eyes. As the eyes illuminated the darkness, becoming the only form of light in this dark place, Isha felt a gravity within those eyes. She could feel herself drawn to this devourer.

She could feel that same evil and malice coming from this snake, so she raised the glaive toward the snake.

“The hope of happinessssss, it isss.”

With that, Isha went to attack the snake.

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As the darkness faded and the world around her returned to normal, Isha could see herself in the same position she was in when the snake had spoken to her, but instead of a snake before her, that glaive was instead pointed in the direction of a young woman who was laying on the floor before her. If not for something stopping her, she would have impaled the unconscious Asyr. Grabbing the blade, she could see a pale green hand that was bleeding from the effort to stop Isha’s attack.

On the ground in front of Asyr, Hal had crawled over to stop Isha from hurting their fellow party member. When Isha saw this, she fully returned to her senses and dropped the glaive. Hal used that opportunity to speak.

“It’s best that I handle my glaive in the future. Extoltrius can’t do anything to me.”

Isha could see that Hal was still in much of the same state he had been in when he fell. His clothes and armor were still on and his arms were still battered, but he was conscious. When he let go of the glaive with his fractured left arm, it fell to the ground, as well. Isha looked around to find Dorak, who was told to prepare Hal for treatment, but he was simply standing there, not having moved from where he had landed after destroying the Obsidian Pillar.

Isha had too many thoughts running through her mind. What had she done to Asyr with the glaive? Why hadn’t Dorak moved from where he was? Did Hal still need treatment? Could he be healed with magic by now? What was that snake? Could this group keep going today? Should they turn back?

“Isha, tell me what to do.”

Hal’s voice cut through her mind like the glaive had cut through his hand. It wasn’t smooth or clean. It was rough, tearing her thoughts and fears apart. It left her with fragments of negative thoughts, but only one way to move forward.

“I’m not sure what is happening. I was in darkness with a massive snake. I-”

“That’s not important now. You need to heal people. Tell me what I need to do to help you.”

“I almost hurt Asyr. I promised her. I said-”

“I need you to tell me what I need to do.” This time, Hal said it more forcefully, snapping Isha back to attention. Isha met his gaze. Fierce and burning with determination to keep moving. Hal was the only one in that room who didn’t want to stop going on. Dorak had literally stopped moving, Isha was stopping herself from doing anything, and Asyr was unable to go on in the state she was in. Hal, meanwhile, was crawling on the ground with blood-covered hands, desperate to keeping moving forward.

“I need you to take off your armor and remove your coat and shirt. I’ll help.”

As Hal began to follow Isha’s commands, removing his pauldrons with some difficulty, she started to remove his boots. Hal didn’t have full plate armor like Isha did, so his armor could be removed much quicker than hers. After removing his boots, she finished removing his pauldrons so he could remove his cloak. After removing his vambraces, his scarf, she unbuttoned his blue vest and red shirt. Finally, she could see his shoulder area and his arms. His left arm was relatively fine, having stayed in a somewhat safe position from the support of the vambrace. His shoulder was a different matter.

“How’s it look, doc?” Isha gave him a confused look before he sheepishly mumbled, “It was a line from the tragedy of Altah of the First Age. I always wanted to say it…”

Isha looked back at his arm before raising Hal into a sitting position. As she saw Hal’s back, she could see that his shoulder was badly bruised and was hanging lower than his left arm, but aside from that was in fairly decent shape.

“This is going to hurt, so bite down on your scarf.” As Hal complied, Isha pushed Hal’s arm back into socket, scraping bone against the splintered bone of the shoulder cavity. Hal grunted into the heavy scarf, but by the time the pain subsided, Isha was already moved on to the next thing. She had a small orb of light floating by her fingers as she held Hal’s eyelids open, examining his pupils.

“Well, you don’t seem to have a major concussion. Anything wrong should be healed by my spell. Can you hold anything with either arm?”

Hal tried to reach for the glaive, but Isha kicked it away. “I’m not familiar with your situation, but I don’t trust that weapon. Take my buckler.”

As she handed him her buckler, Hal was able to raise his right arm and able to hold the shield in that hand, but when he tried to grab it with his left hand, he couldn’t close the hand around the grip. His adrenaline had passed and the pain was starting to catch up to him. He grunted into the scarf again, but still couldn’t move his left hand. Isha took that as a sign to take the shield from him.

“Stop that before you further injure yourself. I will cast the healing spell now.” Isha held her mace, which began to glow with golden light as she spoke, “The Oblivion Hood has his sights upon these ones before me. This is not their time. I pray that life be restored to these, O Lady of Storms. I pray that they not be claimed early by death, O Horn of Plenty. Heal them with thy power!”

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Asyr awoke with a start. The last thing she could remember was falling, then snapping pain. She went to touch her legs, but they were completely healed. She could hear voices in front of her as Isha and Hal were talking. Dorak stood off away from the rest, closer to the center of the room, alone.

“The reason I did all that treatment was to make sure that nothing heals improperly. In a pinch, healing magic is enough, but it’s always better to be thorough.”

That was Isha’s voice. Asyr was still groggy and felt like her mind was swimming through mud, but she could recognize Isha’s voice. She tried to stand, but Hal went to stop her. Hal had removed his cloak and armor for some reason, so he was wearing his more casual outfit he had worn the morning before they left to The Tomb.

That was right. They were still in The Tomb. Asyr could see that they were in the room where the Obsidian Pillar had been, but it was empty now, except for the four of them. As Hal’s hand sat on her shoulder, she could see Isha also standing beside Hal, but she couldn’t meet her gaze, for some reason.

“How long was I out for?” Asyr asked this, just trying to get the awkward atmosphere to fade away, but when Isha didn’t immediately respond, Hal broke the silence, answering, “We’ve been in the tomb for a half-hour, so far. You were probably out for ten minutes or so.”

Asyr tapped Hal’s hand on her shoulder, so he let go, allowing her to stand. As she stood, she went to Isha and held her healer’s arm, saying, “I’m glad you didn’t get hurt by the Pillar, too. Because you were okay, you healed me, just like you said you would. Thank you.”

Isha refused to meet her eyes.

“You also healed Hal’s arms, too. He was able to protect me from some dangerous spells, but got hurt doing that. I’m glad you healed him, too. Thank you.”

Isha still refused to meet her eyes, even as Asyr tried to stand in front of her.

“I know that with you here, we can keep going and make it even further down into The Tomb. For being here, thank you.”

Isha closed her eyes so that she, after Asyr had grabbed Isha’s face to force her to look at her, was still unable to meet Asyr’s gaze.

With that, Hal put his hand on Asyr’s shoulder again. She looked back, confused and pleading for answers, but Hal simply said, “I know that Isha cares about you, so when she’s ready, she’ll tell you what happened.” That statement was more directed at Isha than Asyr and it caused Isha to lash out.

“I nearly stabbed you to death, Asyr. There. I told you what happened, so can you leave me alone? I don’t want to be around you right now.”

The way that Isha normally spoke was refined. Not quite like nobility, but more like a scholar. She had a careful approach to communication that meant that her words were very clear and meaningful. The way she just told off Asyr was nothing like that. It was the same way a child snapped back after being scolded, but Asyr hadn’t said anything like that. Asyr was so confused by everything that had happened since she woke up, but she didn’t know what to do, so she looked between the group. Isha was turned away, head down, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes, but also refusing to simply leave or act out in anger. Hal was looking between Isha and Asyr, trying his best to understand what to do to solve the problem, but not realizing that it wasn’t a problem to be solved like that. Dorak was over in the center of the room, still having not moved from his position. Asyr decided to take action, so she picked up her pack and started to head down to the next floor.

Dorak finally turned to the group. His eyes were hollow. He stared at the rest with a look of despair and acceptance. He took a few steps toward the rest, slowly and somberly. He spoke a simple, but chilling phrase: “I think we should give up on The Tomb.”