Chapter 50

Wil could feel a power pulsating from within the portal as he slowly walked around it, studying its magic from every angle. He had never seen anything like it before. Unlike teleportation, this was a connection to another plane of existence, a universe outside their own.

The thought should fill him with awe and terror, but it seemed so…commonplace, when studying it like this. To think that someday, he would have the power to construct a similar portal made the whole thing lose some of its mystique.

It was similar to how he had learned his first spell when he was a child. His tutor had summoned a small flame that hovered above his hand, conjuring it from nothing. He had been enraptured by it, and he couldn’t comprehend how it had been done.

Now, years later, it was such an insignificant accomplishment that it didn’t enter his mind at all when he pulled objects out of nothingness, using his magic. Likely, a portal will be the same to him someday, a daily occurrence to think nothing of.

He should be terrified of what lay beyond this thin veil of magic. The horrors that waited to cross over. But after Aachen, he found that terror was becoming a distant thing to him. He had seen terrible, haunting things, images burned into his memories that would never leave.

What could a portal hold that could compare to Aachen. Eventually, you just become accustomed to the terrors in the night, and you moved on.

Shaking his head out of his musings, he looked around the room at the preparations. They had divided into three groups, each assigned to a level of the chamber and an area of responsibility.

The room was circular and made of roughly hewn stone, as if chiseled out of the surrounding rock by unskilled labor. He didn’t know what the original purpose of the chamber was, it was likely that it was simply built by the Guild for this exact reason, to house the test.

Bare stone floor, unremarkable walls, and a high ceiling. Aside from the portal, nothing of interest was present here. On the walls, three stairways ran the length of the room, reaching the higher levels. Each set of stairs led to a single level, allowing the creatures emerging from Hell direct access to the defenders on each floor.

From what he had been told, the ‘Dretch’ could climb walls anyway, rendering any defense on the stairs a moot point anyway. They had been described to him as an unending tide of simple-minded monsters, all teeth and claws and constant hunger.

The group had decided on a bombardment of the portal by magic to hold off the tide for as long as possible, followed by each group falling back to defend their chosen area once the attack became unsustainable.

The Dretch were weak individually, little more than a nuisance to people of their high ranks, but when dealing with thousands, they were a threat.

They didn’t even need to harm the defenders, they simply needed to interrupt their lowering of the wards to accomplish their goal. The portal would close, but so would the exit seal.

Looking around at the others, Wil saw that the preparations were complete. The shimmering of enchantments covered the defenders, flickers of sparkling specks of mana floated overhead and the air reeked of magic.

They were as ready as they would ever be.

Wil ascended to the first level. To prove his trustworthiness to the dwarves, he had volunteered to stand with them. Their leader, the disagreeable fellow whose name meant ‘Stonebreaker’ had been chosen to place his hand on the palm print. It would be up to him to channel his mana into lowering the wards.

With a final look around at the preparations, Wil nodded his head at his dwarven companions. The short warrior, with a feral grin on his black bearded face, stepped forward and yelled.

“Alright you beardless, smooth skinned, milk drinkers! These bastards won’t kill themselves!” He roared, and Wil had to place a hand over his right ear to keep his eardrum from rupturing. They may be small, but these Dwarves had a set of lungs on them.

On the three levels of the chamber, the wards flared to life as three set of hands were placed in their midst. The chosen members of each team channeled all their mana into the runes, leaving themselves defenseless as they struggled to lower the seal on the exit gate and the tokens contained within.

Immediately, the portal in the center of the room phased back into reality and glowed a crimson red. In the back of his mind, Wil heard a terrible, grating voice whispering. It promised pain and madness, a gouging of eyes and breaking of bones.

Ignoring the profane speech that came from the portal, Wil focused on his mana, pulling it around him to form a spell matrix on the chamber floor below. The spell construct stretched the length of the chamber, glowing green lines, and swirls against the portal’s crimson.

Wil pushed his mana into the spell, as the entire chamber was lit by its light. The dwarves around him looked at each other nervously as the spell continued to grow in intensity. Ignoring the looks he was receiving, he pushed to complete the magic.

“Come forth, Black Tentacles!” Wil roared, as the spell reached a crescendo of mana and erupted in an explosion of green light, before fading back to darkness.

On the floor, all around the portal, black shadows grew on the stone, before slowly rising into the air. A mass of black tentacles, spiked and wicked looking, rose to surround the portal. They swayed rhythmically as they grew, and Wil relaxed as the spell took hold and they were sustained by the ambient mana in the air, rather than his own reserves.

“Rock and Stone, Laddie. What did you summon?” The dwarf next to him murmured, his eyes wide at the hundreds of tentacles growing from the stone below. It occurred to Wil then, that dwarves were distrustful of magic, and he had just used a spell that would likely shock them to see.

“There’s nothing to worry about, just something from the Abyss to welcome our new friends.” Wil answered, although he couldn’t help but be reminded of Aachen, and the massive creature with a single eye, floating in the sky above.

‘Was this spell somehow inspired or connected to it in some way?’ Wil wondered to himself quietly. He had received the spell from the Compendium, but aside from the incantation, spell matrix and description, its origin was unknown.

Pushing that unsettling thought out of his mind, Wil looked below as the portal reacted. Like a heartbeat, the portal’s light brightened and dimmed, and the whispers in the back of his mind grew louder.

As the portal grew stronger, so did Wil’s spell, as if the two were feeding of each other. The portal would brighten, and the black tentacles would become agitated, their gentle motions quickening as they shuddered, before calming again as the light dimmed.

“Here they come.” Wil whispered, and his mana surged in response, forming a barrier around him.

The portal cracked, a single, black line of nothingness the slowly widened. From the nothingness came a clawed hand, grasping at the air as it forced its way through. With a crack, like splintering ice on a frozen lake, the portal opened wide, and a tide of evil rushed forth.

The Dretch were small and scaled, walking upright on two legs, with clawed hands dragging on the ground like apes. Their small bodies were all muscled and sinew, their faces twisted in anger and rage.

The lead Dretch stepped through the portal and paused for a moment, sniffing the air, before opening its mouth wide and letting out a scream, its mouth full of sharp teeth.

Wil saw the moment it realized where the humans were. Dozens of eyes focused on him and his companions, before the Dretch bounded forward, intent on wreaking havoc on this plane.

From the mages above him came an avalanche of fire, a cascading wave of flames that swept down from above. Wil had seen mages combined their spells to devastating effect in Aachen, and he recognized the spells used. Fireballs and scorching rays, barely restrained, as they let loose their magics against the Dretch.

The black tentacles, stirred into a frenzy by the presence of the Dretch, slammed down amongst them, hurling fiendish bodies and limbs in all directions, while the smaller tentacles wrapped themselves around multiple opponents, holding them still as the flames fell amongst them.

Wil wasn’t concerned for the tentacles in the fire, it would take more than flames to destroy the magic he had unleashed. Seeing the Dretch unable to escape the magics let loose amongst them, Wil cast another summon to join the chaos below.

“Summon Shadow Spawn.” He whispered, focusing on the instinctive fear that the fiends created inside him. He may have become inured to its presence, but that fear was always within him. Drawing it out, he funneled those feelings of terror into his shadow.

From amongst the fires, the tentacles and burnt Dretch screaming in agony, Wil’s shadow took form, the terror taking shape.

The Shadow Spawn of Fear, unlike terror or despair, was an indistinct mist, fading in and out of existence as it slowly congealed. A Shapeless mass, the only part that Wil could make out for certain was its hands, tipped with a single, sharp claw on each hand.

In a blink, it was gone, moving amongst the Dretch as it flowed around them, a blur, barely seen. But everywhere it passed, its enemies fell, a single, long gash on the dead the only sign of its presence.

But the Dretch were unending, and hundreds more came out of the portal. The flames, tentacles and shadow could only slow them down, and in minutes the defenders would be face to face with the enemy.

With a grin that he shared with the Dwarves, Wil drew his sword, his heart pounding in exhilaration.