18) The ties that bind [ The Snap ]

  No time to think, to plan, I had to prioritize.

  First, I could not afford to lose any more Magic by letting the one eyed Rattling use that club to finish off my remaining Dire Roaches down in the drainage tunnel. So with a series of five poofs, the remaining Roaches vanished as I Resummoned all of them out in the hallway outside my library.

  Now I could take a moment, a very brief moment, to panic over what that club had done.

  Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!

  “Fell? What’s happening Fell!” Viola, standing half bend over beneath the shelf above, began rocking my Core back and forth with both of her hands.

  “Stick... From the Witch… Made Skeleton go away... Magic didn’t come back… Bad… Very bad…”

  If I could be out of breath, I would be.

  My Fairy nodded. “Yep. That’s something Magic weapons might do. Severing the connection between whatever they hit and any connection someone else has to them. Good thing we found that out. Oh, and hey, you probably can’t call Boneyparts up again either.”

  Eh? Oh, the Fairy was right.

  Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

  “Fell! Fell… Fell?” The Fairy began rocking my Core again.

  “That’s not helping Viola. I’m down two Summons, the Skeleton and the Undine. What the Pit am I supposed to do now?”

  The Fairy scratched at her head. “Turn the Beacon on and see if something too dangerous for Torb to want to be caught by shows up?”

  The Fairy was right.

  And this time, I held back my scream at that. “Blinky.” I addressed the little white circle that showed me that the System of the Gods was listening. “Turn on the Beacon.”

  Almost immediately, I felt a flow of raw background Chaos rushing against and into my Core as all the Magic around my Domain began getting slowly dragged toward the center of my Domain. The spot in which Nictob the Vile Arcanist Ritual had gone so wrong.

  Or had gone so right, as far as I was concerned. Nictob’s mishap had created me after all.

  The last time I had turned my Beacon on, it had attracted the Mother of Madness, a large blob like creature made out of manifested Madness by an overreaching cult beneath an insane asylum. A creature that had nearly killed all the intruders inside my Domain, as well as myself and Viola.

  But I couldn't get that lucky again.

  At least the flow of Chaos in the air meant that my Magic pool was refilling a little faster.

  And the bloody faced Goblin down below, who had been warily ordering his remaining Ratling to once again work their way up the shaft, this time under their own control, paused in his orders to stare into the air around him, before he cursed. “Pit.”

  My eminent invasion was set on pause as the Tamer began looking around wildly and ordering his Ratling minions to gather around him defensively, while others were called upon to go off and check for anything dangerous heading his way. “You, you, you, and you. Two of you go Scout, and the other two watch them to see what kills them.”

  Hrmmm… so that bought me a moment. But I couldn’t really call the Tamer paranoid, after all… I was out to get him.

  I asked my Fairy, “Any other ideas Viola?” The Fairy shrugged. “Hide?”

  ...not a terrible plan. But the Tamer had a lot of people, for some definition of people, to look for us, while I was limited to staying inside my Domain if I wanted to stay conscious.

  In the outer corridor, I noticed the Air Fish had turned halfway around, with the four knives circling in the air around it, so that it could both keep an eye on the four elite Ratlings at one end of the corridor and the two Lizards guarding the top of the shaft on the other end.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The four elites had begun trying to pry open the small door high up in the wall that led to the ruins below the asylum, while the Lizards seemed content to just hold their ground.

  Hrmmm… I could use Hover Aloft and Earth Shape at a distance, and I would be just as happy if the four elites left so I didn’t have to worry about them anymore.

  It took all the time I had gained while the Tamer was distracted with checking the area around him to free up that door.

  The four elites began to cautiously back away from the door after they realized that an unseen force was slowly pulling at the door while the stone rim holding it closed was cracking away. But as soon as the door was yanked off the wall and began to slowly drift through the air down the corridor toward the Lizards, the four elite seemed to wordlessly come to the decision to flee, crawling, down the short tunnel.

  Good riddance.

  The two Lizards seemed unsure about what to do about the wooden door floating towards them, and they had something more to be concerned about in the form of the four knives floating in the air to either side as the Fish, who was directing the weapons along either side of the door I was carrying along while suspended in the air.

  “Viola? Decision time. Do we try to take out the Lizards before the Ratling with the club gets up here, or do we let them come and hope to take out the… Never mind.”

  The one eyed Ratling was already climbing up the shaft, club in hand, and I needed to keep him back until I could at least get the Undine back into play.

  As the two Lizards backed away from the knives, the Air Fish was slowly moving toward them, point first. I flipped the top of the door forward and pressed it down flat over the top of the shaft.

  And held it down with all the force I could, even as my Magic pool was slowly, but steadily, being drained by maintaining the spell. It seemed like once Air Float was active, you could keep something moving, or hanging in place. But holding the target in one spot while a fairly burly Ratling was trying to push it free cost you.

  The one eyed Rat man had frozen in place just below the top of the shaft as the door flopped down above his head. But then the elder Ratling had shaken his head and braced himself in place before pressing his hands against the door as he yelled to the Ratling below him. “Two of you get up here, and help me get this thing out of the way. And someone tell our oh so wise Master to get those two Lizards to go after whoever is pressing down on this… door, or whatever the Pit it is.”

  Oh, that’s right. The old gray muzzled Ratling was a leader of some sort. And… right this moment, his blind side was to the slots carved into the wall.

  With his face right next to the one the Earth Snake was hiding behind.

  Hrmmm… Hrmmm… If I wanted this to end, now, I needed to take my chance, now, or risk losing it all.

  My Summons slithered out of its hidey hole with enough of its body out to coil up, before crushing the glass bottle between its jaws, and letting the fluid inside the broken glass coat the inside of its mouth.

  Mainly, it’s fangs, since it was being careful not to swallow. Bad things happened when you swallowed that stuff that had been inside the bottle.

  With a lunge, it sprang forward, right into the one eyed Ratling grasp as his hand snapped up to grab the Earth Snake’s body right below it head.

  How did… Oh. The bottle breaking made a noise, didn’t it?

  As the one eyed Rat man turned his head to take a look at the squirming body in his hand, one of the other Ratlings below him, one that the older Ratling had been using to brace his knee to help keep his position in the shaft… That Ratling flinched away from the now dangling, trashing tail of the Earth Snake.

  Bodies shifted, the older Ratling fell against a wall, and lost his grip on my Summon’s, giving it just enough slack.

  Fangs snapped out, and the elder Ratling grunted, more in annoyance than pain. Pulling the Snake away from his face, the Ratling began pressing his club up against my Snake, slowly crushing it by twisting and grinding it against the wall.

  Hrmmm… Let not loose the Snake to the club. My Summons vanished in a poof of Magic as I called it away.

  The remains of the fluid that had been coating the Snake’s jaws fell away.

  And after a moment in which the one eyed Ratling seemed to be lost in thought, he began to climb down the shaft.

  “Master… we need to talk.”

  Walking along between the other Ratlings, their elder made his way steadily down the walkway toward the Tamer.

  Who saw something in his Minion’s one eye that made the Goblin look… concerned. “Leader? What is it?” Wernip Tord gripped the armrest of his living chair nervously. “Stop and report Leader. Stop there!”

  The Tamer’s eyes went green for a moment, as did those of several of the Ratling between him and the still advancing elder Ratling, before a fresh gout of blood shot out of the Goblin’s nose and the green light in all of their eyes flickered out.

  Standing before his Master, the older Ratling reached with his club to poke the Tamer in the chest.

  “Overdid things, didn’t you… You incompetent, conniving, little twerp.”

  The Tamer’s head rocked back in shock, as I heard Viola gasping as she leaned against my Core, using her Gaze for both of us to watch all of this more closely since the Tamer was still just beyond the outer edge of my Domain.

  “Viola? What's happening.” My Fairy giggled. “I got no clue Fella, but I want to see how it plays out.”

  Down below, the one eyed Ratling used his club to poke the Tamer again. “You have been throwing our lives away like trash... Master.” The elder Rat man’s face screwed up in disgust. “But, somehow, that bite broke my binding.” The Rat man pawed at the bite mark on his face. “Somehow.”

  With a snap of his wrist, the club came down on Wernip Torb's head, sending the Goblin flipping over the armrest of his chair and falling to the floor. Leaning over, the one eye Ratling dragged his former master to the edge of the walkway and thrust the struggling Tamer’s face down into the water.

  The eyes of the living chair, the Ratling, and even the two Lizards up above all flashed green, briefly, as the Goblin struggled in the Ratling's grip, until his body went still.

  Standing above the body, the older Ratling brought back his foot as if to kick the body into the flowing water of the drain, before pausing to take a deep breath, and turning to one of the other Ratlings.

  “Strip the body.”

  Turning, the elder Rat man walked back to the bottom of the shaft and knelt to regard the remaining droplets of the fluid from the bottle, which had fallen to the floor.

  Standing again, the elder narrowed his one eye up to the door sill covering the top of the shaft.

  “My name is Malico. Both I and all of my people are now free. But we still need a Master to keep from developing Cores and being treated as beasts for the slaughter. Going back to…” The Ralting glanced over to Torb’s body. “His family would get us taken in as long as I bring you to them.”

  The elder clutched his Witch wrought club in his hand. “Or do you have another option for us?”

  Good question.

  I can only hope I can come up with a good answer, and quickly.