The Immortal Game

A fresh wave of panic filled my chest as I racked my brains to think of a way to get back home without a portal.

A horse ride to the capital could take anywhere from a day to several months depending on where Priscilla had sent me. But even then, no amount of hurrying would bring me to her side in time to help her if she was in immediate danger.

As I stood there, exhausting one bad course of action after another, it slowly dawned on me that she had just pulled the prank of a lifetime.

I sat down on the sand, shaking my head, laughing like a madman.

We had all heard horror stories about portals malfunctioning and throwing its poor travelers into all sorts of odd locations throughout Nivandor. Once, a guild member recounted a tale of having to walk for three months before he could secure a carriage ride back to the capital. Another relished the tale of the time she stepped onto a mesa a mile high with no easy way off. Of course, Priscilla wouldn’t miss a chance to scare me like this on her first trip back to Nivandor.

“Very funny!” I shouted into the vast wasteland that surrounded me.

The wind answered back with a ghostly laugh.

Mildly embarrassed, I marched back into the chamber and waited by the pool the portal had dropped me into. I was certain the portal would reopen at any moment now.

But when a full minute passed and the cold began to seep through my damp clothes, doubt began to creep into my mind.

What if something really happened to her? I thought. No, that’s just what she wants you to think. You’ll never hear the end of it.

I looked at the half-carat quasar on my left ring finger. Because the quasar worked both ways, I figured Priscilla would have activated it by now if she was really in trouble. Quasars were notoriously expensive and very limited in quantity. They could only be used once before both halves had to be replaced. I really didn’t want to spend mine on something as silly as a false alarm.

So I waited.

But by the time five minutes had elapsed, I had enough. Something in my gut told me that there was no way she would wait this long, even for an elaborate prank.

I pressed my left palm over my right hand and activated the quasar on my ring.

A moment later, I was back on the Rosen Bridge. I looked down at the quasar. The blue gemstone had shattered completely, nothing left but precious dust. An unbroken quasar could easily have paid off the rest of the student loans I owed to the Dawn.

I found Priscilla sitting down on the bridge, her head resting against the wooden railing. She was conscious, but her eyes were drooping and her skin had grown incredibly pale. She remained abnormally still, almost as if she wasn’t breathing. There were no wounds or lacerations I could see on her body.

I had to give it to her for her commitment to this prank. She had pulled every stop, used every allowance her Seraph magic gave her to make this first prank something I would never forget.

“Alright,” I admitted. “You got me good. You can cut the act now.”

When she continued to remain still, I grit my teeth.

“Hey,” I said. “I was really worried about you.”

I noticed that thousands of black, tentacle-like strands, all twelve feet in length, protruded from the base of her right scapula. This was her wing, the aptly named Irukandji. Summoning her wing caused her immense amounts of pain because the wing tore off a section of her skin when it materialized. It was also the most powerful weapon she owned. It wasn’t something she would bring out unless it was an actual emergency.

I summoned my sword, the Mocles Saber. After channeling a bit of magic into the blade, a warm, blue light began to radiate from its hilt, illuminating a small area around us. It was then that I noticed the blood staining the ends of her wing.

I scanned the bridge for any signs of an assailant. She must have landed a good hit on him, for there was a lot of blood on her wing. Search as I might, I didn’t see anyone in our immediate proximity. The bridge had fallen eerily silent. Even the birds, which were cawing and cooing from the mountain minutes ago, had fallen silent. I created a kinetic barrier around the two of us just in case, one strong enough to deflect bullets. If the assailant was still here, he would have a hard time breaking through on his first strike. I thought about calling him out but immediately decided against it. If he had the tools to catch a Seraph by surprise, there was no telling if I would be able to defeat him even if I found him.

I knelt beside my friend and checked her wrist for a pulse. But the moment I touched her, her hand grabbed ahold of my mine and did not let go. I stifled a scream.

Her eyes fluttered open as if waking from a dream. In them, I saw fear like that of a child who had witnessed an unspeakable horror she did not understand.

“Nightmare,” was all she could manage to say.

“What happened?” I asked.

She moved her mouth to stay something, but no words came out. She held onto my wrist in a death grip, as if it was the only thing keeping her grounded in this world. She raised a trembling finger at me and beckoned me to come closer. I leaned in, uncertain of what she wanted me to do.

Stab!

Before I could react, several strands of her wing rose from the ground and pierced the back of my right shoulder, clean through the enchanted cloak I was wearing.

“What was that for?” I cried.

Priscilla breathed out a sigh of relief before collapsing into my arms as if she knew that everything was going to be okay. I checked her pulse to see if her heart was still beating. It was, for the moment.

As I sat there, puzzled by what had just happened, I reached over to pull the strands out of my shoulder. They left my body painlessly, but almost immediately, I began to feel woozy.

A creeping fear spread throughout my body as I remembered that Irukandji’s strands were capable of producing deadly toxins, among the deadliest in the world. Yet the wing's venom was only produced when she meant to kill someone.

I stifled a gasp as I realized that she may have mistaken me for her assailant.

That's not good, I thought.

Then, as if on cue, footsteps began to approach us from the direction of the floating mountain. They were faint but unmistakable. A part of me hoped that they were the footsteps of a friend. But when I heard the unsheathing of a long blade, I knew that whoever had attacked Priscilla was still here. He must have been watching us, for he could not have picked a better time to strike. I scanned the bridge again, frantically trying to get a good look at the assailant, but there was no one to be seen.

I carefully set my lord down on the bridge and jumped up to my feet, only to feel my legs give out beneath me. When I tried to get up again, my entire body felt as if it was made of jelly. Worse, the kinetic barrier I had created began to sputter as I wasn’t able to focus my magic properly.

Her venom was working as intended.

Oh, this can’t get any worse, I thought. I have to get us out of here.

I looked over the side of the bridge. The abyss stared back. An idea struck me. With what little focus I had left, I punched a hole in the bridge’s railing with a hastily prepared kinetic blast. The railing gave away like cardboard in a hurricane.

At once, a dizzying pain filled my head. The entire world began to spin around me. I was fading fast. I began to prepare as powerful of a kinetic barrier as I could muster around Priscilla and myself.

The footsteps were louder now but still approaching at a leisurely pace. Our assailant was taking his time, confident that his venom was working. He was almost upon us, but I don't think he had caught onto what I was trying to do just yet.

The air hissed and hummed dangerously around me as the barrier neared completion. I tried desperately to remember the last few steps to creating a barrier that could save us from a high-impact fall. There were three strong points that were absolutely needed for the barrier to survive. Misplacing them would mean the barrier would collapse like a birthday cake upon impact with the ground. The bad news was, I could not remember which went where.

Why would you poison me? I thought as my entire face suddenly grew numb. It just didn't make sense how she mistook me as the enemy.

I shoved aside my thoughts of doom and placed the strong points where I believed they went. They didn't need to perfect for the barrier to survive, just close enough.

I dragged Priscilla over to the edge of the bridge where I had cleared the railing. I made the mistake of looking down into the abyss again. For a second, I completely froze. We really had no way to know if our chances of survival at the bottom of the pit were any better than staying up here on the bridge. Sure, we'd escape the assailant, but at the bottom of the pit, a furnace awaited our arrival if in indeed there was an end to the fall.

Priscilla would survive, I thought.

As a Seraph, her cells were that much stronger than that of an ordinary human being, enough to survive a fall at terminal velocity or even extreme temperatures. So long as I got her away from our assailant, who likely carried a Seraph-killing weapon, she would live.

Go, I thought. Make the jump!

But my body refused to move. I knew I was burning the few precious seconds we had before the assailant reached us, but something deep within me held me fast. It was then that I realized that my hesitation was not so much out of concern for Priscilla's survival, but for my own mortal frame.

The assailant's footsteps abruptly broke into a mad sprint. He must have heard the droning of the barrier I had prepared. A pale blade suddenly emerged from the darkness above my head. Out of pure reflex, I fired off the emergency time dilation magic embedded in the Mocles Saber just in time to stop the blade from plunging into my face. The blade crept to a snail’s pace mere inches from me, held in place for a moment by the bonds of time.

I stared at the blade. It was unusually long and slender and glistened like moonstone-a Seraph-Slaying weapon.

Had I been but half a second slower, I would have died instantly. What frightened me more was that I still could not see the assailant wielding the blade. Invisibility magic was quite common, but the Sanctuary was warded such that all but the strongest of illusions were immediately dispelled. Whoever was hunting us had at his disposal a veil that could not be dispelled, something only a hunter of the highest order would possess.

The blade slowly began to creep downward as the time dilation neared its end. I knew what I had to do.

I grit my teeth, secured my lord in my arms, and dragged us over the edge of the bridge.

Gravity took us and dragged us downward, faster and faster. Terror filled my mind even as it was shutting down. My limbs were completely numb. My mind was all but gone. Even breathing became a struggle of its own. The venom was working as intended. Utter darkness surrounded us, and soon, even the stars above vanished from sight.

I closed my eyes, ready to drift off into oblivion. Then I remembered I hadn’t actually activated the kinetic barrier meant to save me.

In a panic, I tried to ignite it, again and again, but nothing happened.

Eventually, I stopped trying.

Everything felt so heavy.

I tried to open my eyes to see Priscilla's face one last time, but even my eyelids refused to obey.

The wind roared past my ears as we rocketed toward terminal velocity, a vapid melody that lulled me into a still nothingness.

I guess I deserve this, I thought.

We were still gaining speed when I lost consciousness.