David Wells - Linkershim

Jataan didn’t cry out or even complain, but it was plain to Alexander that his life hung in the balance. With a thought, the door opened, and Alexander dragged Jataan into his Wizard’s Den.

Lita’s face went white. “What happened?” she cried.

“The centipede,” Alexander said.

Lita fell to her knees at Jataan’s side. She was distraught, tears welling up as she took his hand. “Oh, Dear Maker, you can’t die.”

“Lita!” Alexander snapped. “Put your feelings aside and save him.”

She looked up, dashing her tears away, leaving a streak of fresh blood across her cheek. Then she nodded firmly before turning back to Jataan, casting her spell to assess his injuries. “Bring me my bag, quickly,” she said, a tremor of fear running through her voice.

Alexander set the bag open next to her. “What can I do?”

She handed him two clean towels. “Apply pressure here and here.”

Alexander did as he was told, holding back the blood spilling from Jataan’s wounds as best he could, watching Lita go to work with a kind of detachment that most people simply couldn’t muster. She worked for almost an hour, sewing, cauterizing, closing off the bleeding before his life spilled out onto the floor. By the time she’d finished bandaging his wounds, Jataan’s normally swarthy face was a white mask, pale and deathly. He lay in bed next to Jack and Anja, both still unconscious from Lita’s healing spell.

Alexander swallowed hard at the sight of Jataan’s faltering colors. He’d been hurt badly, more seriously than Alexander would have thought possible. Surely, no swordsman could have ever done such harm to the battle mage.

“Will he make it?” Alexander asked quietly. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear the answer. Jataan had just rejoined him. In spite of their history, Alexander felt safer with him by his side than any other. The battle mage had proven his loyalty and his prowess time and again … and now he lay on the cusp of death for his unflinching willingness to put himself between Alexander and danger.

“I don’t know,” Lita whispered with a renewed tremor in her voice.

Alexander took a deep breath and let it out slowly, looking at his injured friends, all placed in harm’s way because they chose to accompany him into danger. It took an act of will to set aside his feelings and focus on the task at hand. As much as he wanted to sit with them, to be there when they awoke, he had work to do and the enemy was closing in.

He opened the door, taking Luminessence with him when he stepped back out into the underdark.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Lita asked.

“What I came here to do.”

“You can’t go by yourself. It’s too dangerous.” She stood, collecting her bag.

“No, Lita. They need you more than I do right now.”

“Jataan would be very upset with me if he knew I let you go out there alone.”

“Not half as upset as you’ll be with yourself if he dies and you’re not by his side doing everything in your power to save him. Stay here. Look after them. I’ll be fine.”

He didn’t wait for her answer as he closed the door and headed for the bridge. It felt solid underfoot, even though the stone was only an inch thick.

A shout from across the chasm caught his attention. A platoon of soldiers had spotted him and they were moving toward another bridge that would bring them to the giant pillar that was the hub for this part of the bridge network.

Alexander started running, the heels of his boots striking the stone rhythmically. Another party emerged on a balcony jutting from the other side of the chasm but several levels higher than the bridge he was crossing. His all around sight told him it was Titus Grant with twenty of his men.

The underdark was getting crowded.

A flash of warning exploded in his mind with such urgency that he threw himself to the ground a fraction of a moment before a light-lance burned through the space he’d just been occupying. Yet another Acuna wizard. He was starting to suspect that the Acuna had deployed every one of their members to pursue him.

Alexander was up and running again, his breathing heavy, sweat starting to bead on his brow. A string of force shards, red and deadly, leapt from the wizard’s outstretched hand. Alexander ducked again, the shards smashing into the railing of stone tulips, shattering them into gravel that pelted him painfully, but without injury.

The soldiers had reached the bridge abutment and were running as quickly as their heavy armor would allow, while the wizard, flanked by two overseers, held at the balcony, casting spells at Alexander.

Grant pointed at him, then he and his people vanished into the underdark.

Alexander reached the pillar. It was ringed with a series of platforms, each joined to those above and below by stairs that wrapped around the pillar, and each anchoring several bridges that arced away in different directions.

Alexander traced his route across the bridges, using the pillar for cover against the Acuna wizard’s spells. His route firmly in mind, he started up the stairs to the level above, rounding the corner cautiously. As the wizard started casting another spell, Alexander ran, reaching the platform above and turning onto a bridge railed with stone rose bushes, thorns and all.

He listened to his mind while he ran, waiting for the next assault to come, and he wasn’t disappointed. A force sphere streaked toward him. Without breaking stride, he opened the door to his Wizard’s Den right in front of himself and raced inside, closing the door just a moment before the spell detonated. It could have easily blown him off the bridge into the dark.

The Acuna seemed to have lost interest in capturing him alive.

“What’s happening?” Lita asked.

“Battle,” Alexander said, opening the door and racing out into the underdark again.

The wizard had left his perch on the other side of the chasm and was now following his men, a happy fact that gave Alexander time to reach another platform wrapped around the last ten feet of a giant stalactite. Two bridges leapt away on the opposite side, one going higher, the other lower. Alexander took the high road.

Grant and his people emerged ahead of him along the far wall of the chasm and started tying off ropes so they could lower themselves to a balcony below. A bridge arced gracefully from that balcony to the next pillar in Alexander’s path. He picked up the pace, his breathing becoming labored from exertion.

The soldiers had reached the central pillar behind him and were ascending the stairs to reach the bridge he’d taken. Ahead of him, the chasm was narrowing and the network of bridges was beginning to converge on a single platform perched atop a giant stalagmite. Several bridges joined to this platform, but only one spanned the distance from it to the guardian chamber.

He would have to face some of Grant’s men before he could reach the last platform. Several were racing across the bridge to intercept him at the next pillar, while still more slid down ropes from the level above to join the fight. Grant watched.

Alexander slowed as he approached the next pillar. Three of Grant’s men were there, spread out across the bridge abutment, weapons at the ready. The first fired a crossbow bolt. Alexander turned sideways, allowing the bolt to pass within inches of his chest. The other two loosed crossbow bolts as well. He spun right, avoiding them with relative ease. All three drew shortswords and advanced.

Another crossbow bolt sailed past him from a quickly approaching cluster of five more men, racing toward the pillar from Grant’s position. Alexander ignored it. His danger sense hadn’t alerted him to it, so it wasn’t a threat. The first three men waited for him at the abutment, twenty feet … ten feet.