Shadowcast

Entrance Exam: Part 9

After a short while, they came to what they could only assume was the exit portal they were sent to find. A two-story tall disk of crackling, sizzling lightning rested atop a wide stone platform. Two wizards stood beside it, one with a visor covering the top half of her face, the other with green skin and an absolutely shredded frame.

"Nice tracking skills, my man," Liza said to Alusius, raising her hand for a high-five. Predictably, he didn't even give her the time of day. The sun barely touched the rim of Serasink Gorge on her descent into the fluffy bed of darkness for a good night's sleep. Liza envied the sun. She always got at least eight hours a night.

A group of students clambered up the steps toward "Mask" and "Muscle," as Liza called the two wizards in her brain. The students carried an injured orcish student with them. Muscle dropped his fire spell and uncorked a glass flask of a bubbling magenta-colored potion.

As they approached the portal, Liza caught snippets of what the students were saying.

"Will she be okay?" asked one, a draconic-looking boy with shiny brass scales and a long toothy maw.

The masked teacher knelt down next to the orc and pressed her finger to the wound. It oozed a viscous black goo, like the blood that came out of the flesh-harpoon monster.

"Shadow Spawn got her," said Mask, wiping the blood off on the hem of her coat.

"They weren't part of the test," replied Muscle.

"Something's wrong." Mask looked back to Muscle. "Get the Brighthands, and get these students to safety. This incursion has to be dealt with."

Muscle seemed worried. "You've seen the things that come out of the Shadow! What if something happens to you?"

"I've devoted my life to studying and killing these things." Mask cracked her knuckles and pulled a blazing ethereal sword out of thin air. She glanced back at the students and her well-muscled friend. "I'll be fine."

Both wizards suddenly flinched and stepped back. An itchy burning pain nestled into Liza's back, between her shoulder blades. A cacophony of disturbed whispers and slurping sounds grew louder and louder behind her. Back at the edge of the forest, she watched the trees wither to black husks. A lanky, jet black figure emerged from the darkness. It towered no less than fifteen feet over the group. Twisting antler-like protrusions of pure black extended from its head. Six alien beads of sickly green light glared out of its grotesque approximation of a face. The grass about its feet withered and died, leaving only blackened dirt. A weightless haze of darkness hung in its wake, moving and shifting like ink in water.

"A nightwalker," the masked wizard said with a hint of surprise, "Huh. This might be too much for me." She conjured great pillars of fire from the sigils at her feet. They spiraled and curved, winding their way into the otherworldly creature's chest. Strangely, the fiend's darkness seemed to cancel out the bright blaze of the fire. "I'll buy the Brighthands some time! Get the students to safety!"

"Iren, be careful!" spat the other wizard, "We don't want another Ekaran incident!"

"Then send the Brighthands quickly!" the first wizard shot back, "Don't let me down." She hopped off the stone platform and blinked out of sight with a sharp bang.

The other wizard gritted his tusks and drew a magic circle in the air with his bladed staff. "I won't!" Massive spears of ice sliced through the abomination's form, meeting the resistance of flesh but leaving it seemingly unaffected, unwounded. The icicles fell to black crumbles at a wave of the thing's hand. "Everybody through the portal!" He cupped his hands and whispered a message into them.

Liza made sure the rest of her friends got into the portal before her. Just as she was about to pass through the misty disk, she heard a sound like several cracks of gunfire. One by one, figures in blue robes, breeches, and shining armor appeared around the creature. Immediately, two of them summoned large barriers of magical force that seemed to do little except slow the creature. Another pair traced circles on the ground around the terror, skin cracking and veins turning black from their mere proximity to it. The remaining wizards -with the addition of the masked one- rained down an unrelenting hail of arcane bolts and beams of light, drawing the ire of the creature. One was knocked out of the sky by a stray glance from the creature and started to disintegrate from the legs up. The screams of pain from the wizards, the harsh crashing and whooping of spells, and the bone-melting inhuman shrieks of the monster anchored Liza's feet to the ground.

The two Brighthands who had drawn the circle were now on the verge of completing their spell, but their bodies were falling apart as they drew the final sigils. With a final shout from their decaying lungs, a shaft of multicolored energy shot upward from the ground and pierced the clouds above. Liza covered her ears as the dark abomination let out one final howl so loud and shrill it felt like it would shake her soul from her body. The pillar of light consumed it, and when the blinding glow subsided, it was gone. Liza turned her head from the Brighthands. Her feet once again moved on her terms, and she stepped through the portal to find her friends waiting for her.

"What the hell was that?!" she screamed. Nobody answered her. Whether it was due to a lack of knowledge or a lack of will was beyond her. "What was that thing? What's a Shadow Spawn? Why's it here if it's not supposed to be here?"

The orcish wizard placed a hand atop Liza's head, and she felt a warm feeling wash over her, like honey pouring over her trembling mind. Suddenly, she was calm.

"I still have those questions," Liza said, "But thanks for that... spell or whatever."

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Author's Note:

So, this is the end of the first chapter. Hope you liked it! From here on out, I'll be releasing one part every Friday, maybe two if they're really short. 

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