Michael Manning - The Archmage unbound

“Why don’t we just walk through them? Our conversation earlier has gotten me thinking I can probably hide all three of us from their senses. We can just walk through them and scout the tunnels beyond. If we don’t find anything significant, or any means of escape we could simply leave them down here to rot,” he explained.

Walter was an easy man to overlook but his idea was the most reasonable thing I’d heard all day. I wondered if I had underestimated his intelligence. “I like the sound of that,” I replied.

Harold wasn’t so easily convinced. “You aren’t serious are you?” he asked.

Walter nodded and I spoke up, “It sounds worse than it is. There is another tunnel leading away on the far side of this cavern and it appears to be empty. They aren’t very tightly packed in there, so if Walter can do as he says we can just walk right past them and see what’s down there.”

Walter’s plan turned out to be more complicated than I had at first realized. We stood close together and joined hands while the older wizard cast his spell. In order to keep us from being visible to the shiggreth he made us invisible to both magic and visible sight, which had the unfortunate side effect of rendering us completely blind. There was no way we could navigate through a crowd like that.

“I don’t think I thought this through completely,” Walter amended. “Perhaps if we are just invisible to magic and you douse your light Mordecai.”

That turned out to be just as bad. Without my light the cavern was pitch black and we were just as blind as before. That’s when I had my epiphany. “I think I know why they don’t come out during the daytime very often,” I said.

“What?” asked Walter.

“The shiggreth,” I explained, “in the past they have almost always attacked or been encountered when it is dark. In fact, the only time that I know of them ever appearing during daylight hours was when they ambushed Dorian and Penny.”

Harold was more familiar with the shiggreth but he still didn’t understand. “I don’t see how that tells you anything specific.”

I held up my hand. “Let me finish,” I told him. “We know they don’t have an issue with daylight because they have come out during the day at least once. So why would they generally avoid moving about during the daytime?”

“Because they’re creatures of darkness?” said Harold, as if that were reason enough.

“No,” I admonished him, “because they don’t use light to see, they use magic. In fact their dead eyes are probably blind to light entirely. They don’t avoid daylight, they simply prefer the nighttime because they have an inherent advantage then, because they can see and most humans can’t.”

“You still haven’t made it clear how that helps us,” he insisted.

Walter understood though and he began nodding his head rapidly in agreement. “Of course! Keep your staff lit, I’ll hide us from magical sight but leave us visible to normal light.”

“Will the magic in my staff be a problem?” I asked.

“No,” Walter replied, “I can cloak the magic there as easily as that which emanates from our bodies. I just have to let the light pass unimpeded.”

Despite being fairly sure we were right those first few moments as we stepped into the open were nerve wracking. I walked in the front holding my staff up to light the way while Walter followed with his hand on my shoulder; Harold followed him in a similar fashion. The experience was surreal, especially since I had never walked invisibly through a room full of people before, much less a room full of undead life draining monsters. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe.

The floor was smooth and free of obstacles but it still took us almost ten minutes to cross the large cavern and reach the other side. Along the way I stared at the faces of the shiggreth, wondering what they thought, or even if they thought. They stood quietly for the most part, not walking or talking to each other, yet they whispered softly to themselves, filling the vaulted spaces with an endless susurration, a sound similar to wind through the leaves of a forest.

By the time we reached the tunnel on the opposite side I was thoroughly disturbed. I wanted to burn them, just to stop the noise. Surely we don’t need air to breathe that badly, right?

The tunnel we were in now appeared to have formed naturally, but much like the previous cavern it had been smoothed and cleared to some extent, making it much easier to walk without stumbling. That more than anything convinced me that there would be something worth finding at the end of it.

After traveling a hundred yards or so Walter spoke up, “I think it might be safe to remove the spell.”

“Wait,” I cautioned him. “I know it’s annoying not being able to sense anything but there may be more of them further ahead.”

“We’ve already demonstrated that we can sense them long before they sense us, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get as close to the cavern as we did,” Walter reasoned with me.

That made perfect sense, but I still had a feeling of trepidation. “Alright, take it down then. We’ll examine our surroundings and if we sense any of them close by we’ll put it back up,” I said in agreement. I was still worried though.

A moment later he had done so and it was as if I had had a blindfold removed. I had been using my magesight for so long now that not having it had left me feeling blind even though my normal eyes worked fine. I expanded my awareness slowly, feeling the tunnels behind us and making sure that nothing had followed us. I also explored ahead and quickly discovered that the tunnel we were in dead-ended in a fair sized chamber not far from where we were now, perhaps another seventy yards ahead.

As soon as my mind touched that room I knew we had made a mistake. There was a darkness there that lay heavily upon the air. It weighed upon me, and as I saw it I immediately felt it looking back, staring into me in a way that left me feeling vulnerable, as if it could see my innermost thoughts without effort or care.

Simultaneously I saw Walter’s face go pale and his eyes widened in shock, he could obviously feel it too. As the moment of recognition passed something drove inward, as whatever we had found sought to enter our minds. Pain shot through my body as I struggled to expel the invader and for a long minute I fought what felt like a losing battle. Walter fell to his knees and Harold looked questioningly at both of us, he was still unaware of the silent assault.

Gritting my teeth I focused and finally managed to speak, “Cherek Ingak!” An invisible shield formed around the three of us and suddenly the alien mind was gone. Walter gasped audibly and drew a long breath and I found myself breathing heavily as well.

“What the hell was that?!” exclaimed the older wizard. I could hear a note of panic in his voice but it didn’t surprise me since I felt much the same.

“What’s wrong?” asked Harold.

“I don’t know. There’s something down there, something bad,” I answered at last.

“That fills me with confidence,” Harold commented. If I hadn’t known better I might have suspected him of developing a sense of sarcasm, but I quickly dismissed the thought.

“There are three of them,” Walter added.

Again he had surprised me with the acuity of his senses. Holding the shield firmly I reexamined the cavern that held… whatever that horrible thing had been. Now that I could see it without being immediately overwhelmed I saw what he was referring to… there were two large four legged creatures near… whatever it was. The being that had almost overwhelmed us was physically small though it felt quite the opposite to my magesight. All three of the creatures absorbed magic and appeared ‘black’ to my arcane vision.