The Chronicles of a Scalebound Sage: Wandmaker Vol.2

WM [110] A few Words

The monsters above were tearing their way down the jagged walls of the former blood maya lake, now a vast, hollowed cavern of chaos. There were six of them, each were abominations far beyond Bjorns current capabilities. Worst still, they seemed to be learning from one another during their brawl. Spells were becoming sharper and less chaotic.

Monsters of their level had some of the purest mana of monster kind. It felt more and more as if there were mages throwing spells than the monstrous beasts Bjorn saw.

There was no time to climb down carefully so he dropped. He was confident in his new levels of vitality, health regeneration and constitution. A hundred feet blurred past in a rush of cold air, and then he hit the cavern floor with a resounding thump! The stone cracked beneath him, buckling slightly, but just as he suspected there was barely any pain at all.

He had landed on the wrong side of the cavern. Almost completely opposite of the tunnel he had come through. Between him and freedom was a rapidly solidifying sphere of maya. It hovered ominously as if suspended in the air like a cocoon spun from pure death. At least that was what his instincts were screaming at him. He just froze and looked at the phenomenon as if it too were a monster readying itself to strike.

"Bjorn. Isin!" Failsafe screamed. "What are your two doing? One of you move!"

Bjorn shook his heads and noticed that the monsters above were far closer than they had been mere moments ago. He would later find out that it wasn't mere moments. He had stood there looking at the maya sphere for nearly five minutes.

Before he made it a few steps one of the monsters had landed. It was a grotesque mass of shredded wings and writhing tentacles, each appendage covered in bleeding, watchful eyes. The blood oozed from them like acid, but instead of pooling on the floor the streams of gore became projectiles that crackled with energy. Every shot was faster than a bullet. They sliced through the stone and rock like scalpels through flesh. Most of its attack was launched upward at the other rapidly approaching monsters but some were shot haphazardly and whizzed by Bjorn as he attempted to flee.

Now more than ever he was happy he had his Shadow Concealment. To say that he would have been monster food months ago without it was an understatement. Now it was the only thing keeping him alive.

A roar like a mountain dying split the cavern. The ground trembled so violently that Bjorn was tossed into the air. Debris and stones fell like rain in a storm. The entire chamber groaned like it might collapse under the magical bombardment.

The monsters didn't heed the obvious sign that they needed to get the fuck out of there and stop destabilizing the earthen prison they could very well create. Their monster minds could possibly comprehend that they were, in fact, soon to crush everything in thousands of tons of rock. If anything, the quake only drove them into a deeper frenzy. They hurled their spells like petulant, but powerful children.

The mana saturation hit a tipping point. Lightning-like arcs cracked along the ceiling, and a small mana storm began swirling at the mouth of the cavern.

That's when things got worse.

The solidifying maya sphere drank in the loose maya around it, then started on matter. Stone beneath it liquified, spinning upward in molten spirals before vanishing into the abyss at its core. It honestly looked kind of beautiful, if not for the fact that Bjorn, Failsafe and Isin were absolutely horrified and screaming.

The tentacle and wing covered monster seemed to notice too late. The gravitational pull yanked off a tentacle that wandered too close like paper in a tornado. In a heartbeat the rest of the monster followed, flesh, blood, bone, and mana were shredded and sucked into the void like a feast.