Chapter Eleven

Spirits of the Past

Marith & Wraith

Marith strode down the tunnel taking point for her party Carl was to her right and Sel’van to her left. Carl grabbed the back of her belt as a ray of liquid fire passed through the air where her head had been. Two figures stepped into the tunnel both garbed in black one of them had his face obscured by a red cloth and the other’s black skin was framed by glowing red hair revealing a manic smile.

Marith held her shield out and adjusted the grip on her hammer ready to dash the fifteen feet between them as soon as her party was ready. Carl gripped an ax in each hand and Sel’van steeped behind her for cover knocking two arrows to his bow. Behind her, she could hear Herbalt and Silla get into position.

“Give up the Codex Asternosis,” Herbalt demanded.

“Why would I do that?” the masked man asked, “It looks to me like I have the upper hand.”

“We have you outnumbered, five versus two; do those seem good odds to you?” Marith asked coldly.

The man studied her and Marith felt strangely uncomfortable as if the man knew about her in some way.

“I think you mean, five versus three,” he corrected her, and a shadow peeled itself off the wall and attacked Sel’van with footlong claws.

Sel’van screamed as the creature began to savage him. Marith charged forward sliding along the ground and avoiding a blast of fire from the red-haired woman. She brought her hammer up and caught the woman on the thigh spinning her around. She swung her hammer at the man, but he somersaulted over her, and she barely got her shield in the way of his black rapier.

“Tell me, hero,” the man inquired as if they were only sitting down for tea, “What is your name?”

“I am Marith, a cleric of Fesla,” Marith said positioning her back to the wall and making two attacks against him with her Warhammer which he idly parried and dodged with nimble grace. “What is yours?”

“I am Wraith Eminence,” the man replied amiably.

The familiar name made Marith grit her teeth in anger. “Did you happen to pass through the town of Tor recently?” she asked jabbing at his throat then going low for a knee.

“I did indeed,” he replied leaning backward and spinning to the side slashing at her shoulder and then her thigh. “I assume you have been tracking us?”

“No, but we have been following the trail of that book,” Marith answered stepping in closer and moving her grip on her war-hammers handle to deny him the use of his rapier. “Do you remember the girl you left behind in that town?”

“You mean the one I left with child? I do recall her yes,” Wraith said grabbing her war-hammer with surprising strength and spinning behind her and stepping back disarming her.

“You knew she was pregnant?” Marith asked furious and stunned at his ability to have detected this so soon after the child’s conception.

“My dear, the amount of things I know is without a doubt proportional to the things you don’t,” Wraith taunted her condescendingly his eyes twinkling with malignant humor behind his mask.

Marith snarled and swung her shield off her forearm and gripped the straps in both hands. She used it to block Wraith’s attacks and pressed forward and cracked him across the head with it by feint for his rapier and switching directions suddenly. He stumbled backward his mask slipping.

Marith stopped stunned as she stared into her husband’s face. “Darren?” she asked.

A blast of fire caught her from behind, and she stumbled forward her body on fire. Wraith stepped forward grabbing her shoulder spinning her around and thrusting forward with his rapier, but the blade didn’t strike her flesh and only passed through her armpit. Wraith lowered her to the ground and Marith could see a mixture of confused emotions on his face. He poured a potion into her mouth and made some gestures over her.

“sumno,” he whispered, and she felt her eyes, and she went unconscious.

Wraith looked down on Marith’s body, and emotions whirled about inside him. Names kept popping into his mind flashes of memory and faces of people he had no idea how he knew. He stood shakily and heard someone calling his name as if from a great distance. He turned and barely twisted to the side avoiding having his head cut off as the ax instead cut into his arm and through the bone. Wraith screamed and lashed out with a blast of wild magic that tossed the dwarf barbarian back into the wall where his head struck the stone wall, and he collapsed unconscious. Wraith felt Fear step up beside him and throw his remaining arm over her shoulder.

“We need to get out of here,” she hissed to him.

Wraith nodded, “We should move Plague’s core he won’t be safe here,” he said.

The two retreated from the party of heroes who were busy reviving their friends. A silhouette materialized by wraith with huge gashes in its black form. “These heroes are deadly,” Plague hissed. “There appearance is quite deceiving I would estimate they are at least rank fourteen heroes. It is fortunate you were able to kill that female.”

“Yes,” Wraith lied. “That should slow them down.

The three dungeons made it back to Plagues Core room and grabbed the dark purple gem. They wrapped it in silk sheet and tied it to Fear’s back.

“Where to now?” Fear asked Wraith.

“We can’t leave the way we came weakened as we are,” Wraith explained as he reached into his pack onehanded and removed a handkerchief-sized folded piece of cloth. Unfolding it several times he opened the portable hole and pulled free the portal and laid it on the ground. “This is a portal to my dungeon we will step through it and destroy its twin on the other side.”

The two dungeons nodded, and Wraith activated the portal with what was left of his mana from the burst of wild magic. The three stepped through the portal and into Wraith’s core room. Wraith turned to the disk of mithril and used his powers as a dungeon to corrode the runes and reduce the disk to melted slag on the ground. Wraith slumped down and looked at the stump of his right arm dripping black ichor. He poured a healing potion over the wound sealing it up but regenerating a limb was beyond the powers of his body.

Wraith reached into the surrounding plants an animals and ripped out their mana killing them and filling his reserves back up. He focused on the cooling pool of mithril and condensed the mithril down into a single band of metal that seemed to bend the light around it with its condensed space. Wraith engraved ancient dwarven runes into the metal. He began weaving mana patterns through the spell worked mithril. Wraith looked at his design and realized the arm was lacking something if he put it on how it would merely be a useless arm of metal without any articulation. It needed its own willpower if it were to do what he wanted.

Wraith took all the soul sparks he had collected in his core and used them to power the arm and hold thoughts and memories. He began adding his knowledge and experiences into the spells as well as his desires for power, order, and control. The spell work came alive as it worked and began to fix itself all on its own as the malevolent sentient magic began to work.

Wraith placed the arm on his stump and mithril began to flow down, forming an arm with a texture like human skin thin strands like hair and rippling muscle beneath it. The finger’s flexed and Wraith heard a voice speak in his mind rich and smooth.

“Greetings master my name is Ajax, ready to rule the world?”