Riloth 19th the 1300th

Bearskin ran up the stairs, dragging me behind. I snapped out of it as we got to the top and the trapped hall came into view.

Before I could shout a warning, Bearskin let go of Trish, relying on his Bond to hold her slung over his shoulder. He then jumped up, touching the ceiling with his hand, which then stuck, allowing him to swing over the trapped floor. And overhand he swung down the hall, safe from the trapped floor, and I ran after him, carefully making each step.

When I reached the room with the hole in the wall, I found Bearskin binding Trish’s leg with his magic and some scraps of wood.

I jumped to the pair, my still active Fly carrying me across the room. As soon as I reached them, I Teleported to the surface with Trish and then summoned Bearskin to our side with a second. Bearskin didn’t wait even a moment before lifting Trish and sprinting down the trail of the fleeing Kobolds.

“What time is it!” he bellowed between steps.

“I’ll check!” I yelled before pulling you out and flying upward to find the fastest route to the road.

As I traveled up, I pulled a sheet out of your pages, Willing it to twin to Levar’s current sheet.

Door is destroyed. Trish is hurt. Bearskin en route with her. What time is it? Others possibly dead.

I continued upward without checking for a response until I spotted the line of the road in the canopy. Once spotted, I flew back down to catch up to Bearskin.

“That way!” I shouted pointing a few degrees to his left.

With an innate sense of the location of his mountain, Bearskin could unerringly travel in a straight line, and he altered his course slightly.

I pulled the sheet out and saw Levar’s response.

9:12

The simple number, delivered without comment or follow-up question, communicated the depths of Levar’s worry.

“We have four hours!” I said over the rush of my win. I was keeping pace with Bearskin, but had to use Fly to propel me along. “Can you make it to the Kituh entrance near town?”

“Maybe,” was all he said, as he ran through the trees. His tattoos still glowed, and his breath still came evenly, giving me hope that this inhuman man could do it.

Other Kituh entrances lay closer, but I had little doubt in our inability to find them. It was hard enough finding a village from the air, and finding a hidden entrance to a cavern stood no chance.

So, we ran. We reached the road shortly after. Once there, Bearskin really broke loose.

I ran through our options.

Forty miles to the Kituh, and then thirty minutes to the Dahn from there. Go I go ahead and get a horse?

A look at Bearskin’s untiring legs leaping across the ground quickly told me that wouldn’t help. A horse could maybe outpace him for the short term, but not for what we need.

Could I fly with her? If I could cast a fourth-tier Fly? Maybe?

“I’ll catch up!” I yelled, canceling my spell and sitting in the dirt of the road.

I let my active Fly fade to nothing and appeared outside the Font of Wind. Immediately I dove in, bending the power into the distorted Vortex spell of dubbed Fly, but in reality was a combination of all my skill with Wind.

The spell formed, but I held on pulling more power into it. This was dangerous, I knew. The power could slip away and wreak havoc through my body if I passed some vague precipice. This was why sorcerers were not supposed to pull more power than they knew they could handle.

But, I knew the precipice intimately. No sorcerer I knew of had drawn on the Fonts to kill themselves hundreds of times. I had. Each time there was a point where the power broke free of my control, sealing my fate. It had only taken a dozen or so suicides to identify that sensation, and now I could stop just before reaching it.

I drew on the Font of Wind, and the spell grew, and grew. And as it grew in power, I felt the stability lessen. I pulled with everything I had, and just before the tipping point, I let the power out into the world.

The air around me exploded in movement, a tornado forming around me. I focused on the spell, and strained to rein it in but it was like trying to move a giant ball.

Bear with me, it's a good metaphor. It's like the power was a ball as tall as I was—light enough to lift, being hollow and full of air, but too difficult to maneuver, being huge.

The power was not beyond my ability to manage, but I couldn't control it. Slowly the tornado subsided and I rose to my feet. I directed the spell to blast down, giving me flight, and I immediately shot into the air out of control.

I was a hundred feet up before my senses returned to me enough to dismiss the spell and recast a normal third tier Fly. The uncontrollable one may have had fourth tier levels of power behind it, but to properly call it a fourth tier spell, it had to actually work.

My Wind magic saw me safely down to the road, and I flew down it at a moderate pace to catch up to Bearskin and Trish.

I reached them in under a minute, and quickly shared my bad news. With my first plan a failure, I positioned myself behind Bearskin, sending a constant gale of wind at his back, and countering it with triple that behind me to allow me to keep pace.

He speed picked up slightly, and we continued on.

Every five minutes, Levar would write the time down on the twinned sheet.

9:55

We ran against the literal clock, all the while Trish begging Bearskin to let her go and save himself between winces of pain.

We passed no caravans leaving Crossroads on our journey back a sit grew dark, all the refugees having long since departed in the morning so the roads were clear, but we did overtake a few.

With my experiment and multiple recastings of Fly, I ran out of Will before we reached town and I had to take a second potion of clarity, but soon after that the illuminated tower of the Parlor became visible through the trees.

We ran on, through the tent city, through the gate, down the road, through the square, past Levar’s and out the gate and refugee camp once more, all in a flash. The guards at the gate stood at attention to stop our approach, but broke at Bearskin’s charge. The injured woman carried in his arms instead of a weapon likely gave them the excuse they wanted to not face down the charging giant potential invader. The pack rats had clearly done a number on the town, many buildings were missing, burned piles of rubble occupying the lots they’d once inhabited.

Outside the town once more, I took the lead as we ran towards the Kituh, when we got close enough, I Teleported Trish down with me, and then summoned Bearskin to appear besides us. Quickly, I ripped two plates off the wall, and we took off down the tunnels.

I pulled out my page with the countdown and watched as Levar’s numbers appeared, illuminated by the light of the Kituh

2:35

We aren’t going to make it.

It took over thirty minutes to reach the Dahn from here.

I cast Gale as a third tier spell, blowing us along.

2:40

What can I do? Think of something. Teleport is five hundred feet, and I can cast it four more times. That’s not even a mile.

2:45

I hadn’t told the others the time, not wanted to crush their hopes if there was nothing to be done. I’d been pouring as much Will into the runed sled as my Willsight told me it could bear, pulling back slightly when I saw the power begin to leak beyond the lines of the runes.

We aren't going to make it.

I took out a third clarity potion and downed it, restoring my Will and going back into the Arcane Realm. Just as I’d cast an overpowered, nearly fourth Tier Fly, I did the same with Gale. The wind howled and whipping at our closed violently, but having no noticeable impact on our speed.

2:50

I looked back at Bearskin, whose cart was following mine in some sort of cargo mode Dagmar had taught them. He was sleeping—somehow—a normal sleep judging by his breathing, and not one of his magical hibernations.

Trish silently sat, her back to mine, watching Bearskin as she clutched her splinted ankle.

2:55 Are you almost here?

I need to tell them.

3:00 13 minutes!

Trish finally turned to look at me as I checked the time once more. She ripped the page from my hand just as the next line appeared.

3:05

“We aren’t going to make it,” she said sullenly, her eyes shining a little with welling tears in the white lights of the tunnel.

I looked away, controlling our plate to come to a quick stop.

“Hold on to me,” I said, not explaining.

Bearskin woke up at our sudden stop, and grasped my shoulder as Trish held my arm.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and I sent myself to the Arcane Realm to the Font of Space.

I didn’t wait, but plunged my spectral hand into the power and began pulling out the power and shaping it into a Teleport. Once I’d done it, I drew more, pushing myself to the tipping point, but slowly drawing less as I grew closer. With the skill born of a hundred deaths, I pushed the magic into the spell. I reached the tipping point, and through the component that let me peer through space to my visualized destination, I could feel the range I could travel expanded far beyond the five hundred feet before, But, it was not enough. Not nearly enough.

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, I pulled further, inch by inch.

Distantly, I heard Trish yell, “3:10!”

The spell began to grow unstable, but still, it wasn’t enough.

“3:11!”

I pulled more power in and turned the spell over in my mind looking for something—anything—that would let me go further.

“3:12!”

There was no more time. I pushed the spell over the edge, and unleashed it with no destination in mind.

And, we disappeared, into some void. An in-between space, but recognizably a Space. In some ways, it felt like the void my soul experienced between resets, but I was very aware of my body and the presence of Trish and Bearskin nearby, though I couldn’t feel them. They were connected to me by the spell in someway presence

The spell!

I could still feel the spell. The Teleport was still active, looking for a place to deposit me, but not knowing where. I tried to visualize a location through the familiar methods of before, but while I could picture locations in my mind, I couldn’t connect them to the spell. They were too far away. All of them, even the Kituh from where we’d vanished.

I grasped at the connections of Trish and Bearskin, maybe to comfort them in the last moment, but then I felt something else.

You.

You were also here in this place, but you were also present somewhere else. I grabbed onto your presence and followed the myriad threads that linked out from you into some place. A few led somewhere nearby, but many, many, many more led somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away,

The pages!

I latched onto the connection and Willed the spell to complete.

Without fanfare or applause, we appeared on a table in front of Levar, our combined weight collapsing the table.

Well, Bearskin and my combined weight. Trish surely contributed little to the collapse.

“We made it,” I wheezed, before the effects of the third potion hit me and I threw up on Levar’s chest.