Mercy's Reward

I landed in a burning stairwell, on my feet this time.

I believed it was the stairwell Priscilla and I were trying to enter before I was slain by the living armor. But thanks to the heavy smoke that encircled me, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

I held my breath as I dropped as low as I could to the ground. I tried to create a simple kinetic barrier around my entire body. Thankfully, the transparent barrier flickered into existence. I had just enough magic to do so. But the barrier was shaky, having trouble keeping its form. My grasp on magic felt weaker than even an hour ago, and I could already feel the manaburn clawing at my skin like hot oil from a burning pan. Keeping the barrier up felt like hanging on a ledge long after lactic acid had kicked in.

Stupid curse, I thought. Why do I have to get three of them?

I stood up again carefully, raising the barrier with me. That created a pocket of air around me untainted by the smoke. I took a big gulp of air before realizing that the air inside still had some smoke in it. I coughed violently for some time as I tried to catch my breath.

Once the episode ended, I marched impatiently up the stairs. I don’t know how much had passed since I bought the farm, but judging by the gentle crackling of the flames and an eerie howling just loud enough to be audible, I feared that the fighting had already ended.

I had only taken a couple of steps before the temperature around me flared up to unbearable levels. The smoke cleared just enough for me to be able to make out a wall of fire blocking my passage. I paced the width of the staircase to see if there was any gap in the inferno, but I could find none.

I grit my teeth.

My barrier would keep me safe from the flames’ direct touch, but it would not save me from the heat. I would have to burn a precious time dilation to pass through safely.

I raised my hand to summon Kairos when the temperature around me suddenly dropped as if someone had thrown me into a bath of ice water. The shift was so sudden, I wondered if I was being magically attacked. My breath became visible, and my barrier began to fog over like a car windshield on a cold day. While my coat protected me from the worst of the cold, my hands and my face soon grew numb.

But as I rubbed my hands together to bring feeling back into them, the temperature soon receded to comfortable levels.

As I tried to figure out what had caused the sudden shift in temperature, I noticed that the air inside my kinetic barrier was now filled with thousands of snowflakes swirling around me like small blizzard.

That's odd, I thought.

I held out my hand to catch some of the snowflakes. They did not melt when they came in contact with my skin. The snowflakes cool and refreshing and lacked the usual bite of real snow.

The snowflakes had to be magical in origin.

The coat, I thought.

I looked down at my coat and saw that the garment was glowing with a faint blue light. It was likely the aura of some kind of ice enchantment to shield its wearer from extreme temperatures. I remembered Gordon bragging about how good the coat was, but crafting a stable ice enchantment was no joke and often took months to apply properly. In fact, an ice enchantment of this caliber could only be created in the northern city of Wyrmwood, the frozen home of the Dragon Hunter guild.

In that brief moment, I was glad I had not let my hatred of Night Hunters stop me from wearing one of their coats. Otherwise, I would have been down a time dilation.

Thanks, Gordon.

Speaking of Gordon, I realized that I was no longer carrying the pocket dimension on me. Priscilla must have taken the backpack with her, but I couldn’t be sure.

She must think I’m dead, I thought. I hope she hasn't done something reckless.

I hurried up the stairs and plunged headfirst into the fire.

For a few moments, my barrier was completely engulfed in flames. I could see nothing but wildfire licking the surface of my barrier, threatening to consume me should I lower it for even a moment. The fog on my barrier melted away instantly, but my cape of snowflakes persisted, shielding me from the inferno outside.

Every step I took felt like it would be my last, so I moved up as quickly as I could through the chaos.

The ground began to creak dangerously as I neared the top of the stairs. When the creaking grew louder, I began to run. I was nearly at the top when one of the steps suddenly gave way underneath underfoot. Not wanting to fall to my death, I catapulted myself forward as far as I could with a little bit of help from my kinetic magic.

My barrier flickered wildly, as if it was made of gelatin, but it held firm.

I managed to land on the very top of the staircase, but I was still in the midst of the flames.

As I stepped forward, a thunderous crash filled the air. I scampered forward, not trusting that I was completely clear of danger. The crashing continued behind for a good ten seconds before falling completely silent. I imagined the debris was now freefalling straight toward Charybdis's open maw.

I hurried forward through the whirling flames as fast as I could, uncertain of how long my barrier or the building would hold. I could see bits and pieces of the checkered floor now that the flames were more spread out, but the fire was still licking the edges of my barrier.

When I finally reached a section near the middle of the hallway that wasn't engulfed in flames, my barrier abruptly collapsed. My arms were mildly burning from the small amount of magic I had burned, and I felt incredibly nauseous. I dropped onto my knees to stop myself from hurling. I gagged for a few moments but managed to hold it down.

"Good grief," I muttered, staring at my hands. "My magic's toast."

The snowflakes were gone now that I was free of the flames, but rain began to fall on the crown of my head.

Confused, I looked up.

A huge section of the ceiling was gone, about half the building's worth.

Before I could fully process what I saw, a strong gust of wind nearly knocked me flat onto the ground. When the wind died down, I climbed up to my feet in alarm and looked to the sides of the building, hoping they were still there. They were, but there were huge craters dotting both walls as if someone had shot giant cannonballs through them.

“Priscilla?” I called out.

No response.

I stepped deeper into the hallway. The building continued to creak like an old rocking chair about to break. Smoke still obscured my vision. I used what little magic I had left to create a small cyclone to clear as much of the smoke as I could. but even that little effort left my arms burning in pain as if they had been dipped in hot oil.

Okay, no more magic! I gasped.

Thankfully, the cyclone did the trick. When most of the smoke cleared, I saw through the lingering haze that the rest of the building wasn't looking much better than the walls.

Every window I could see had been shattered from top to bottom. Every chandelier had been knocked down from its lofty perch above the marbled ground. The crystals that once adorned the chandeliers littered the ground like fallen stars. Glass, glass, and more glass covered the entire length of the hallway.

And in the center of the destruction was a giant, gaping crater the size of a large swimming pool cutting through all four levels of the observatory.

"That can't be good," I said.

I approached the edge of the crater to see what lay inside, but before I could get a proper look, the taste of metal suddenly filled my mouth.

Blood.

That, or I was about to be struck by lightning.

Moments later, the entire air in front of me lit up bright as the sun, shortly followed by the merciless roaring of thunder up close. I threw up a barrier in alarm despite the pain as I jumped away from the crater, but by then, the lightning had finished striking.

As my vision returned, I realized that it was highly unlikely for lightning to strike an object deep in the crater and not the building instead.

My eyes only saw the lightning strike a couple of times, but if I was not mistaken, the lightning had actually struck thirty times in the span of a second.

And there was only one person I knew was capable of doing performing such a high-power precision strike in the middle of a storm.

“Priscilla!”

Lightning Strikes Thirty Times, as she called the attack, was one her killshots meant to finish off a troublesome opponent. That meant she had either just reduced Apollo to atoms or was now in grave danger herself because she had expended the last of her magic.

I ran back to the edge of the crater and looked down. Instead of leading straight down to the whirlpool where Charybdis was waiting for us, the crater seemed to extend into a completely different dimension. It was a dark chasm not too different from the one Priscilla and I was falling to our deaths in the outside world.

I strained my ears for sounds of fighting down in the crater, but I could only hear the roaring of the vortex underneath the observatory. With my magic at full power, I could have just jumped down and absorbed the impact with my barrier no problem. But now, I had to find another way down, quickly, too.

I scanned the crater for ledges to climb down, but even as I searched, I knew that without my magic there was no way I was going to reach the bottom of the crater in time.

I'll be right there, I thought. I promise!

As panic filled my chest, I heard a small voice calling out to me above the din of the storm.

“Queen’s Lover! Down here! Please, somebody, anybody, save me! I don't want to die!”

I looked down and saw Eleanor's pocket dimension among the debris surrounding the walls of the crater. By pure luck, one of the pocket dimension's straps had snagged on the very tip of a loose wooden plank.

Cowering inside of it was Gordon, flailing his paws pitifully to catch my attention. Were it not for the upward angle of the wooden plank, the pocket dimension would have slipped off its edge and plummeted into the abyss, taking it and my only lead as to what had happened to Priscilla into oblivion.

“Hang in there, Gordon!” I called out. “I’ll be right there!”

"Have mercy on this feline's soul, Forgotten King!" he sobbed. "I will pay alms again, I swear! I'll even give you some of my spices, maybe not the saffron, but anything else is yours! Just don't let me fall to my death!"

"Just stay still!" I cried. "You'll be fine!"

After scanning the nearby debris for a moment, I mapped out a tentative path down to the pocket dimension with enough handholds to carry me safely down. The path was steep, but I could always use my magic to push back against the crater's jagged walls if need be. If any of the debris completely detached from the wall, however, I could be in trouble.

No choice, I thought.

"Heeeeelp!"

"Shut up, you scaredy-cat!"

Gordon continued to wail nonetheless. I had not forgotten that he was a Night Hunter, a ruthless murderer who tracked down mages for bounties. I still hadn't decided what I would do about him once we were safe in the city.

If we make it to the city, I thought bitterly.

Once I was confident that I could make it safely to Gordon, I took a deep breath and carefully lowered myself into the uppermost ring of debris. I made sure not to look down further than I needed to.

Iris, I said. You can catch me, right?

Only if I must, she replied. There are-consequences-for a Host entering Hades's domain without permission.

I froze, not quite certain I had heard her correctly.

Hades? As in the underworld?

Yes, she replied. That is what we call the outer realms of the nightmare.