The Pagemasters Vol 2 Chapter 17
[previous_page]
[next_page]
Author: Literataku
Chapter 17:
Darkness Is Born
I wish I knew what the plan was. Not that I was in much capability of planning with a pair of breasts pressed to my chest and only my shirt and vest separating me from touching them. I stood feeling extremely awkward and barely registering what she had said for a few more moments. It was her curious look that finally kicked me out of my stupor.
“Maitre? Is something wrong?”
“Huh? Uh… No, no no no. Nothing is wrong. I was just distracted with your…ummm… High familiarity with me.”
We both looked down to where her bared flesh was pressed into my shirt, knocking each other in the forehead as she squealed and jumped back, giving me a view I would treasure for years to come. She quickly pulled her cape around herself and began blushing furiously. Dammit, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.
“Maitre, I am extremely sorry. I’ve been alone… and the castle in the summertime, it is very… facile d’être nu. Especially when no one comes to visit.”
Rubbing my forehead I tried to smile through wincing pain of the near crack in my skull. Damn, Dark Fairy Queens have some really strong heads.
“It’s fine. I was just caught off guard. And to answer. Well am I not a nigh Immortal Warlock, why should I age even if I am human?”
Though, note to self; find out if we do age or not in these bodies. If the flash-forward memories I’d been getting were accurate I certainly wasn’t completely immortal. Not with how many times I’ve seen Violet and myself die.
She smiled softly and seemed to take that answer fairly well, keeping herself tightly wrapped inside her cloak. Though she was not making any other moves as she stood close to the stairs looking as though she wasn’t sure exactly what she planned to do about her current clothing situation. Her expression changed slightly as she turned to look away from me, looking a bit forlorn as she spoke.
“Maitre, I’m not sure I could sentence an innocent child to death. She doesn’t have anything to do with my grudge against her mother and father, aside from being born.”
I nodded my head slightly, making my way to the opposite side of the stairs and leaning against the bannister while we continued to avoid eye contact with each other by trading glances. I chewed lightly on my cheek in concentration, trying to recall what Master had told me about the story.
“Well, taking away his child doesn’t mean that you have to kill her. There are other ways to take her away. Ways that could still create much sorrow for him.”
She looked out toward the door and made a motion with her hand, closing it. I had completely forgotten it had just been standing open all this time. She looked quite pensive as she processed what I had told her and then let a smile slowly spread across her face.
“Could I give her happiness, Maitre? Make it so that she gets to be happy even when I destroy her parent’s hearts?”
“As you said, she is innocent. What are you thinking of?”
“A curse to make her sleep until her love comes to save her. That will make sure her parents will be dead long before she awakens to her happy ending.”
I forced myself to chuckle and nod my head. It was pretty clever, though now I’m curious how this innocent girl was supposed to be such an evil fairy. She was way too precious to really be the monster that everyone else seemed to think she was. Of course, maybe I’m just getting to see this side of her because of the rewrite, or perhaps there was some other kind of problem.
My thoughts floated back to Master’s words from our first time venturing out of the white space and into this fantasy world. “We can freely travel between time and locations.” Oh… Crap. I felt my throat constrict for a moment as the realization hit me hard. Coughing and turning my head away with a groan.
I knew this was going way too easy, and the whole trick to it all was that I had set myself up to do this. Or rather I was going to set this up in the future, or rather the future me in the past. I will had set myself to do this afterward so that I had now the power to… Screw it, I know what I’m saying and I am starting to dislike time travel without even doing it yet.
She was standing back behind me, not making any moves. “Maitre?”
“Sorry… I just had a moment of something. Just give me a second.”
Clearing my throat I took the moment to see if I could glance forward to see if I had ever done this before. Trying to see if I could do as I had in the prison cell a few hours ago. My vision lurched and I felt my spirit getting jerked to the side.
***************
I was standing in an open field, looking out across to the approaching riders coming closer. An army was surrounding me as we all focused on the pass before us, our enemy was fast approaching. The invasion of the kingdom was underway, but they weren’t expecting Heroes, much less Pagemasters, to be there to stop them
Thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands. To my left a man in military vestments, the Commander of the Royal Army, cursed under his breath and looked at me, his hand offering a spyglass with his right hand. His face seemed pale and his voice trembled.
“That cursed Baron is leading them. The man is a monster, he cuts down ten men with each swing of his gigantic sword. We don’t have anyone capable of dealing with him. And then the rest of his army is famous for not losing any battles with the kingdoms to the north.”
I peered through the spyglass, it didn’t take much effort to find the Baron the Commander was talking about. The man was nearly two and a half meters tall and riding the largest horse I’d ever seen. Even for as big as the horse was, his speed surpassing the other horses even with the size of the guy riding atop him and the equally large sword attached to his back.
I passed the glass to Violet who was standing to my right to let her see as well. She looked for a moment and then handed the glass back to me with a quiet smirk. “He looks tough but it shouldn’t be anything new for us.”
I nodded while handing the commander back his instrument. Calling forth my sword I chuckled softly and looked out toward the battlefield. “We’ll take care of him and give you guys a better chance for dealing with the rest of his army. I doubt he’ll see us coming.”
I could feel tugs of story magic wrapping around the battlefield, but that only made me smile a little more. Dead MCs were easier to seal away in books, and I wasn’t about to let him ruin all our hard work getting Sleeping Beauty’s story rolling. Violet looked at me with a soft smile, calling forth her scythe, her robes were still stained from the blood of the Dark Queen after she had decapitated her, I had told her to do it despite her reluctance, she had and now she was eager to keep going.
Gathering my powers I closed my eyes and spread my senses out toward the oncoming army. Feeling Violet doing the same the two of us didn’t need to say anything as we waited a few moments. We could hear the screams and shrieks of pain and surprise as we struck with our combined magic.
Opening my eyes we could see the troops of the other side in mild disarray. Spires of ice and black gemstones jutted out from the ground in a wide field of carnage. Several pairs of horse and rider were impaled, some only the horse had been injured and others the rider had been thrown and trampled by the others.
“Charge!”
The call to action was given to the troops surrounding us. Thirty thousand infantry ran forward to begin the assault on what we planned to be the first and only major battle of this war. The plan was simple enough, kill the Baron, drive away his troops. Win get.
The other side barely had time to create any formation to receive our charge. The troops clashed together and our side immediately began to push them back. This army was ill-prepared for such a large scale assault of magic. And that made things easier to handle for Violet and me, charging through the troops like a gale force of wind followed by a swift shadow of death.
My blade was swift and cutting down anyone who got in our way, leaving Violet to clean up anyone who might try to come behind us. I had my eyes set on one person, using the power of story magic to keep track of him. We were getting closer and I could hear the noises of someone bashing a sword against the ice trying to cut it away.
“Get down!”
I ducked the moment Violet called out, watching shards of rock and ice blast away over the top of our heads. That probably would have hurt if she hadn’t seen it coming. Quickly getting up I feel a chill run up my spine as the Baron steps over the ruined pieces of the spires. He smiled at me and took a glance behind, licking his lips at the sight of Violet standing defiant in front of him.
“I don’t like hurting women, but that doesn’t mean I will go easy. You two just killed a lot of my soldiers, and I’m really excited to see how much a fight you can give me.”
“Lord Ran, please be careful!” A small armored girl called out from behind him. I motioned Violet to hang back and keep an eye on her. I would take care of the Baron myself.
He stepped forward and swung his giant sword at me. Raising my own up to parry I grunted and turned my body as the strength of his blow crashed into my blade and blew me away from him. Shit, this guy is a lot stronger than I thought he would be. That still didn’t matter much, he was mortal and he will die.
Charging forward I ducked under his next swing, feeling the rush of air cause my robes to billow slightly, aiming to stab up into his chest and- huh? He was using the flat of his blade to block me, how was he this fast? He noticed the surprise on my face and laughed.
“Fuhuhuhu. This much should be easy for any man to do.”
Umm. No. No, it should not be easy. What the hell is this guy? I jumped back and started gathering my magic together. He wasn’t about to give me any time to cast spells at him, moving forward swiftly and slashing his blade at me. I was about to duck again when crisis perceptions starting sounding like an alarm in my head. I jumped back, using the wind to give me a longer leap landing as I watched his sword smash down into the ground I would have been standing. He would have split me in half with that swing!
I swallowed, starting to think I may be out of my league with this one. But I wasn’t about to run or give up. I would never do that. If I failed, I could just use ***** and try again when I was strong enough to deal with him then.
I gave half a glance toward Violet, she was also looking quite unnerved at how strong this guy actually was. I didn’t think killing ten guys with one swing was an exaggeration but now I’m starting to think that is only because that is all his blade can reach when he swings. I needed more advantages right now.
As I was thinking this he leaped forward and began to attack again. Violet jumping forward to deflect his blow, calling forth gems from the earth to batter at him, launching them with the speed of arrows. I used the distraction to pull out one of my spell cards and activate it.
“|{Speed}| Release and enhance!”
My body tensing with power as I boosted my natural speed up tenfold. Looking up I saw the Baron deflecting the last of Violets gems with a casual smirk on his face. He was completely unphased and still unhurt, what does this guy have super kinetic vision too? How overpowered did his crazy author make this guy?
He started to swing again and attack her, I shot forward and swung my blade at his. A loud clanging noise rang out across the field as I hit his sword with the speed of sub-mach speed. His sword was blown back and I managed to see the sign of surprise on his face while I charged forward to give the killing blow before he could react. Moving at speeds normal eyes could never catch as I stabbed through aiming for his heart.
“LORD RAN!”
A cold feeling crawled up my back as I looked on with a dumbfounded surprise. My blade was piercing into his chest but was stuck only a few inches into him. I couldn’t move my blade any deeper, nor pull it back. He was keeping it trapped just by flexing his muscles and holding my sword in place. This is total bullshit!
His fist swung up from my blind spot and sent me flying, I lost my grip on my sword, causing it to vanish, leaving the gaping stab wound on his chest bleeding. Another swing with the flat of his sword and I was slammed down into the ground. I am pretty sure I heard bones cracking as my skull exploded with pain.
I heard Violet rushing forward, scythe in hand to attack and give me a chance to recover. But the blur of the Baron’s companion intercepted her, the two furiously swinging at each other, looking for a way to break through the others’ defenses. Neither seeming to be able to gain an advantage over the other
Of course, I didn’t have time to watch for long as I looked up and saw the Baron standing above me with a quiet smirk. HIs eyes glinting with enjoyment. “Shame we have to end it like this. I’ll be sure to comfort your woman tonight while she mourns over your death.”
And then all I saw was his blade swinging down onto my head and I knew nothing else but the blackness and laughter of the Silence that greeted me each time I failed.
[previous_page]
[next_page]
Comment (0)