B4 – Chapter 15: Starsworn

Tristan immediately poured essence into his armor, activating Scales of Our Foe, Armor of Ice, Near Miss, and Lucky Instinct. He did the same for his weapon, activating Dragon’s Doom and Elemental Imbuement – Multi, which he willed to be ice and lightning. The spells took effect quickly, and he used his left hand to grab, uncork, and drink one of the supreme essence elixirs from his bandolier. Reverse spinning his crucible to suck down the tingling that filled his stomach, he noted that his crucible was at three-quarters of its maximum capacity, but was slowly draining from fueling the spells at his disposal.

Eloise shrank back further into the cell, and looked back at the hole. “I need my gear,” she muttered.

Tristan reached down to his amulet belt, grabbed the Amethyst Amulet holding Otherrealm Retreat, and tossed it to her. “Go. Get back to the Citadel. I’ll replace mine with yours.”

She caught the object and nodded, “Don’t do anything stupid!”

Tristan heard another ear-splitting roar that echoed down the hallway. It was louder, and sounded angrier. Otherworldly, as it seemed to shake the air and cause the space around him to warble and ripple. “Go. Now.” He moved down the hall and glanced back for a brief moment as Eloise shone with a bright, red light before vanishing with a distinct pop noise.

Felicity flew behind Tristan, flapping in tight circles in her small fairy dragon form. “Well, now we have to find her gear to let you escape.”

Tristan moved down the hallway toward where Eloise’s gear should be stored according to the Locate spell. He moved silently, minus the slight shuffle of metal from his armor, the very minute scrapes barely noticed over the continuing, overlapping, and multi-pitched roars. The corridor was huge, easily twenty-five feet tall and just as wide, with an arched roof. No lighting fixtures were present, which made perfect sense to Tristan, as Demonkin and Demons did not need light to see in the dark. Within a minute, they had reached the door he had seen in the vision from Logos, and Felicity quickly picked the lock. Entering the space, Tristan pointed to the small chest, “There.”

Felicity flew over and picked the lock, opened the chest, and stored all of Eloise’s gear into her storage dimension, except for the amethyst amulet that matched Tristan’s. She flew back over to Tristan, and he socketed it into his amulet belt before pulling the covering back over. “Now what?” she asked with barely-held-back anticipation.

Tristan poked his head out of the armory, “We could retreat with our artificed items…but I agree with your earlier idea. We need to investigate what’s going on here. Best case scenario, we solve a problem that the Parslile are dealing with, and they are indebted to us and join our cause. But, the second things go south, we run with our amulets. Okay?”

“Got it! Let’s go and see what horrible fate befell this Demon House.” Felicity kept a safe distance behind Tristan as he turned into the corridor and kept going toward the noises. The temperature began to rise, and Tristan could only tell thanks to his ice-coated blade starting to steam from the increase. Felicity was panting, and muttered, “It’s too hot.” Tristan glanced back at her and could see that she had shifted into a facsimile of a fire dragon, but the red-hued scales of that form were not doing anything to help her with the temperature.

“If you get close, I can cool you,” Tristan said. “But if its getting that hot where you might pass out…you should retreat. Use the amulet.”

Felicity frowned, “I don’t want to leave you here. I can just wriggle into your armor-”

She was silenced as the tunnel suddenly lit up. They were already close to the end of the corridor, and an open archway led to stairs that split off to go up on the left and down on the right. A deep, cherry red glow lit up the stairs going deeper into the mountain fortress, and another wave of heat surged over the two. Tristan barely felt the heat, but he heard Felicity gasp in shock. “Okay,” she wheezed. “This sucks.”

I can deal with the heat, but she needs to go back, Tristan thought. He turned around and spoke with as much sincerity as he could muster in the moment. “You should go back down the tunnel. I can’t focus on protecting me if I’m also worried about you.”

Felicity’s face, cherry-red from the red dragon form and the amplified heat of the area, shook her head. “No. I’m with you-”

Tristan frowned, “I don’t want you being collateral damage. I can survive a blast of fire that would burn you to a crisp. Just trust me.”

Felicity’s eyes slightly teared up, only to be instantly turned to vapor. “No! I want to be helpful. I can’t just leave you!”

Tristan sighed internally, I can’t protect her if she can’t even take the heat. He pointed upstairs, “How about you go up? Fifteen minutes, we meet back right here.” He used his sword and cut a groove into the ground in the shape of a large X. “If we don’t meet up in fifteen minutes, use your amulet, and get back to the Citadel.”

Felicity sounded defeated, but accepted Tristan’s direction. “All right. I’ll go upstairs and see what I can find out and steal.” She turned invisible and unheard by all without Elf blood, and flew up the stairs.

This book’s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Tristan moved at a jog, going down the stairs and descending. The staircase doubled back on itself and went down to another layer which looked to be another tunnel with dungeons going even further. But the light came from below, and more roars echoed out along with screams of pain and the sounds of something heavy hitting the ground. He descended, down, a hundred feet, as the heat grew more and more intense; sweltering. Even with his fire dragon blood consumption, he began to sweat a little bit.