Ten days after their separation in the Blackwood Forest, Artorius still tracked the wraiths in pursuit of Aia. But he feared the worst. Gnarled dark wood and thorns littered the landscape, which was itself surprisingly rocky for a forest.
His wounded leg hobbled and an ache lingered in his abdomen– both regions where the satyrs had injured him. Yet his will to persist was unbroken. Artorius leaned himself against a tree that seemed by nature to deny him comfort. He pulled the last of his rations from a sack and scarfed down a small roll of bread and some water.
After a respite he moved on towards a rough glade formed from an outcropping of rock. A fierce storm of black clouds obscured the stone, yet its silhouette insisted on its own presence.
The glade spanned several drakesfoots, and sprawled about was a number of slaughtered satyrs. Their corpses were covered in frost.
It did not take long after for a series of tremors to thrum the earth like a hammer. Blow after blow emanated from the ground and shook Artorius until his feet stumbled. Fissures tore through the earth and the dark veil which the black riders had used to conceal themselves became unstable. Trees and soil fell into the chasms that opened up below. Artorius felt his own footing slip as he too fell into the deep.
As he descended he witnessed in the blink of an eye as a wedge of sharp bronze passed beneath him, followed by the gore of innumerable dead satyrs whose midsections were cut in half. He glanced to see a large leonid demon battling the seven wraiths in a furious rancor. The giant bronze axe swung again and caused the hairs on Artorius' body to stand at attention. With an instinctive crouch he evaded another wild blow from the Beshír and a squall blew him off his feet and crashing into the cavern wall.
A rain of ice fell from above and struck towards the Beshír, who covered his face with and arm and swept aside the ice storm through the sheer wind pressure of his swing.
The Beshír's angry voice bellowed on as he said, "vile thieves! You're already dead, come here and let me give you a lasting rest!"
As the Beshír's foot stomped the ground the earth trembled again. Artorius felt the peppering of dust on his head and dashed away before a cluster of stones fell where he previously laid. Artorius' eyes darted about and chased any place that seemed farther from the clash.
He drifted through falling rubble and fleeing satyrs. When the clash of demons and wraiths had grown distant Artorius found himself at the far end of the caverns, trails of moonlight streaming through the cracks.
There he spied Aia, pursued by two satyrs. With a rush he pushed himself forward and struck down the first satyr swiftly. The next, however, evaded the following blow. The satyr planted itself on the rocks above and threw an ebony spear towards Artorius.
With a cleverly timed shift in weight and a quick pulse of the right foot, the young Drakkennide dodged the spear and summoned a small wave of ice from his saber to strike at the adversary.
The satyr's balance was uncanny though. It jumped from the rocks to the roots and climbed out of the cave in an instant before launching another spear at Artorius. Yet as the satyr's bare skin touched the moonlight it grew sluggish. Not wholly crippled, yet weakened significantly. The second spear was slower than the first. It clipped his ear and he quickly grabbed Aia and retreated to cover.
"Sir Artorius!"
"Miss Aia, it is a relief that you appear to be alright. Please bear with me a moment here."
He glanced at the reflections on the ice and spied the demon's dark shadow as it moved. From above the satyr flung yet a third crudely made spear and descended onto the both of them. Yet Artorius foresaw this and evaded the spear before it even left the satyr's hand. He drew forth Aeñazerite and arced it upwards with uncanny beauty.
Aia beheld the blade's arched path and felt as if she had gazed upon a crescent moon, for it was a perfect bend. Before the satyr could even process the attack, he was already dead. But there was something odd about the young Drakkennide's move. His hand twitched after the strike, as if spasming from an intense strain.
He grasped Aia's hand and said, "come, we must keep moving! Now is our chance when the enemies are occupied."
The two climbed up from the cracks of the earth and squeezed their way to the surface. Once there, they glanced back to see the visible pulsations of the ground. The trees shuddered and the rocks crumbled. The earth itself was struggling to contain the fury of the dark forces clashing. Several fissures and sink holes had already swallowed sections of the forest. It was an attraction that— although the young Drakkennide and priestess of Faelenshire didn't realise it, brought attention to the Blackwood Forest from as far as the Barony of Amar-lan.
But this was a matter for later. Presently, the two ran as far as their legs could carry them away from the battle below. And this would lead them into the path of a certain cowled wizard who had long been tracing them from afar.
"Sir Artorius, ahead there is–"
"I see it."
The Drakkennide boy drew his saber and poised himself to strike.
The melee was now behind them. Whatever foe stood before them was not an ordinary combatant. More like a commander or leader of sorts. Although Artorius did not discount the possibility of an ambush.
"On the name of Drakkennide, I command thee do not block our way, cowled wanderer."
"Artorius, so it is the runt of Drakkennide that has fended off the seven lords? What a pantomime."
"I would know your name, and why you impede us?"
"My name? I have no name. I am Nohbody."
"Well then, Nohbody, I will strike you down if you insist on impeding us."
Artorius prepared to close in when a crow suddenly flew from out of the forest and attempted to scratch and claw at him. He attempted to cut it down, yet soon one crow became two, then two four, and four eight. Before long he was being assailed by eight crows each targeting him with precision and coordination.
Drawing a mercy blade from beside his chest he struck one of the crows deftly in the breast before it could scratch his head. Then he stabbed another in the wing as it tried to fly away.
The other six departed quickly to the cowled wanderer and perched on both his arms and shoulders. Artorius noticed the seventh crow with the injured wing attempting to crudely crawl its way over to the wanderer. He put it out of its misery with a firm stomp.
"So then, I take it you're a familiar user. A mage of some sort."
"Isn't that obvious," said the mage as he fed a small scrape of satyr flesh to the crow.
Although Nohbody was a powerful mage, the greatest sum of his attention was yet occupied in retaining the services of the seven wraiths. These ingenious servants were each bound familiars to the archwizards of Helios– of which the empire presently had seven. But these archwizards only provided the bare level of restraint.
They ensured the docile nature of the wraiths, but could not finely puppeteer them. For this, a senior mage of high potential was required, and so, Nohbody was chosen to manipulate the seven wraiths for the duration of the current mission. Although, soon after Artorius had slain two of his crows, Nohbody felt his finesse in handling the simple creatures grow.
But this did not please him. For he knew that it meant the Beshír had pulverized one of the seven wraiths. Such an act would not dispel the wraiths entirely, but left them unusable for a period of time roughly equal to one month. The time would get shorter with a greater expense of energy, but that would require communications and approval from the seven archwizards. All of which was beyond the scope of the current battle raging.
In short, as Nohbody got stronger, his position would become more disadvantageous. For each boost in his power represented a loss in the ranks of the seven wraiths. It was a sort of time limit, one could suppose.
But that rule applied both ways. For Artorius, the longer the bout went on, the more difficult it would become.
He rushed forward, expelling a wave of ice toward the cowled mage. In reply, there came two crows that dove towards Artorius. He evaded the first and cut the second, only to notice a strange seal etched into the bird's head. As he broke it, a thunderclap echoed in the forest and stunned him long enough for the other crow to circle around. It moved to strike Artorius' previously injured areas near the thigh and abdomen.
Artorius grabbed the second crow familiar by the scruff only for its head to burst and echo another thunderclap. Disoriented and unbalanced, the young Drakkennide stumbled and fell to the ground. Blood oozed from the wounds.
His eyes squeezed and his head ached. But he now understood what kind of mage he was facing. Between sorcerers who study Goetëa and wizards that study Mágëa, the adversary before him was likely a wizard.
A sorcerer ordinarily creates familiars by imbuing a part of their own spiritual vitality into a physical medium. Such familiars created this way are powerful, but often loathed to be lost. For the familiar's death would be a permanent loss in spiritual potency for the sorcerer. On the other hand, wizards can create and lose as many familiars as they like, but often are limited in other ways such as potency, sentience, range of effect, and mechanical complexity.
Eight was already a large number of familiars for one sorcerer. But using the familiars as thunderclap explosives made it sure. No wise sorcerer would imbue spells which treat their familiars as components, or else they would be consuming a large chunk of their power permanently.
Of course it was even less likely that the enemy was an irregular magician, such as a druid or shaman. Such primitives were usually not part of formal organizations and often indigenous to tribal areas like Kar'kasha or certain rural areas of Arcticus.
But formal mages always came in pairs: a mentor and a student. Yet which was he facing now, the mentor— or the student?
Artorius gazed in the direction of the wizard, Nohbody. He saw a crude golem made of mud and soil. It was partially frozen by his earlier attack. His legs shook as he pulled himself to his feet and pointed his saber in the direction of the golem. In the construct's shadow, he spied the wizard looming– unharmed.
Although his ears were shot, Artorius felt as another rupture formed in the earth and tremors spread through the forest. The so-called Great Të'lavak probably managed to deal another serious blow to the seven wraiths. The demon was once an ancient demigod king after all. Even decayed and stagnant as he had become, the Beshír remained a force of the ancient world. It was a foe no ordinary figure could defeat.
The last four crows flew towards Artorius, who summoned needles of frost at the edge of his saber, and flung them as a barrage in the direction of the crows. Several were stabbed and fell to the ground, but two dove high and avoided the attack. Just as Artorius prepared to evade the diving crows another thunderclap burst from one of the crows he had killed earlier.
It was the crow whose head he had crushed with a stomp near the beginning. Yet its sigil remained unbroken and was activated by Nohbody.
The disorienting effect caused Artorius to groan and then proceeded the two remaining crows to release a set of sharp, unnaturally formed bones from their breasts. This, of course, killed the crows and the bone darts shot towards the young Drakkennide rapidly, who in a haze and blurry-eyed, could but rely on his instinct and intuition to guess the pathways of the darts and dodge.
He was still struck by one. Sloppy muscles that were heavily strained and wounded already did not move as he wished. The bone dart wedged itself into his dominant arm, severely inhibiting his finesse with a blade. But the worst outcome, at least, was avoided.
By now Artorius knew of three spells which the wizard, Nohbody, employed. One was the construction spell for a familiar. That was used to create the golem and manipulate the crows. Although the former was rather crudely crafted, since it was made on the fly. Nohbody's second spell was a sonic type of magic. One that dealt damage through sound, but required the activation of a seal to cast. It likely had a small radius of effect as well. The last spell seemed to shape the internal skeleton of a small creature into a dart of dense bone that then shot out from the creature's internal body and struck at a targeted foe. Artorius surmised however that the bone dart was limited in size, thickness, and range when used.
Aia watched from the sidelines, hiding at the treeline just out of sight. Her hands clutched the dark bark and worried about the young knight, whose body was battered by the mage. The wizard had expended all eight of his crow familiars by now, and the crude mud golem was indisposed. Yet Artorius too was quite expended. His breath came heavily and with a pale fog of chill. His hands shivered and his legs trembled with exhaustion.
As he pushed himself forward again to close the gap, there came a sense as if the earth was moving. But Artorius mistook this for another tremor of the distant clash. In reality, a serpent appeared from the fresh cracks of the earth and aimed to swallow his head. He evaded and crudely slashed towards the reptile, yet it swerved from his strike using its long and flexible body. The creature slithered back into the embrace of its master.
This was no common serpent. By its size, the young Drakkennide guessed it was a juvenile Imoogi Serpent. Likely a native that happened to be nearby. This was advantageous to Artorius. It meant that Nohbody had only recently subjugated this creature and made it a familiar. Their bond was still fresh, and so the serpent would be slower than other familiars in responding to its master's will.
This meant that Nohbody would have to rely on prediction and anticipation to overcome Artorius' movements. The Drakkennide boy had also guessed that he may have some form of foresight, although he doubted that the wizard could see the future completely.
Pulling his shaking legs up once more, Artorius redoubled his charge.
Artorius' guess had been correct. Nohbody was an apprentice of a great wizard in the Grey Tower of Helion. In accordance with tradition, his master had etched their spells into Nohbody's soul, ensuring that each one he could learn over time through proper experience and spiritual understanding. Nohbody was on the verge of understanding all five spells, making him an adept on the verge of mastery, or essentially a quasi-master wizard.
The first spell he learned was his master's way of forming familiar bonds, this is what enabled him to control crows, golems, serpents, and even the seven wraiths as his servants. The second spell was the thunderclap spell, which was designed to disorient the foes and end the battle decisively in order to subvert longer bouts.
For after all, controlling multiple familiars is taxing on the mind and would, over a gradual period of time, wear down any mage's cognitive performance. Thus, Nohbody's master trained him to deceive his enemies and disorient them before battle— disable any spellcasters and cripple melee warriors as quickly as possible.
While this was an effective strategy for apprentice wizards, it lacked teeth against more complicated battles. For instance, a long-ranged archer– that is to say, a sniper, could easily dispatch Nohbody from afar. And so, Intuition was the third spell he learned, granting him the power of vague foresight. It was because of this that he could track Trenewynn and Aia during their journey to Anor, and because of this that Aia and Artorius could not outpace or escape the wraith's pursuit.
The fourth and final spell that he had mastered was the bone dart spell. Designed as a last resort against melee foes that were not completely disabled by the thunderclap. If all four of these spells had failed to dispatch Artorius, then Nohbody was forced to relieve all judgements and assessments of the noble's danger for another time. In the midst of battle, Nohbody treated Artorius as the highest possible threat the moment he saw that his thunderclaps failed to incapacitate the boy.
Now, as he saw Artorius close the distance between the two of them, Nohbody felt— he did not know, but felt as if something was wrong. His intuition was warning him, and as the infantile Imoogi familiar lashed out to devour Artorius, a mercy blade impaled its lower jaw and proceeded through the upper jaw too. Nohbody had forgotten about the little dagger, and that concerned him.
But it was no matter in the grand scheme of things. The Imoogi familiar was a nice but ultimately, crude tool. Nohbody may not be able to read minds, yet he could feel the young Drakkennide's intent clearly. He felt that Artorius would aim to restrain his movements, so as to prevent Nohbody from running away. And so, the wizard targeted Artorius' weapon. He delved into the splintered earth and pulled on the roots of the trees through his familiar spell.
Enslaving those tree roots, they darted upwards to grasp the saber and lock its place. He then confidently assumed to step back and create a safe distance from the disarmed foe. Yet it was then that he felt a new sense of sudden alarm.
A black horse and rider flung across the forest and stumbled into the clearing where Artorius and Nohbody battled. Then, another howl rang out from the night. Two more of the wraiths had been killed. Only three remained. Yet the distraction had also given Artorius the time he needed to get free. As he thrice again charged at Nohbody, the wizard prepared to use the bones in his left hand as a last-resort bone dart.
But that precaution was for naught. The mercy blade which he had forgotten about slipped from Artorius' left hand deftly, and flew truly to the wizard's eye. He was struck– and killed.
Naturally, the wraiths, having lost their controller, were commanded to flee and return to the archwizard that mastered them. Yet this too meant that the Beshír was free to pursue them now.
Artorius slumped. Aia rushed to him and pulled him wearily to his feet.
"We must flee, sir Artorius! We cannot stay here any longer."
They stumbled and trembled. Although the thrum of battle had ended, there was still the sound of the Handsome Beast's stomping as he made his way to find the rats that escaped their cages. The satyrs too began to rally now that the wraiths had passed and their master's rage abated.
Dragging the young Drakkennide boy through the woods, Aia moved aimlessly in fear and doubt. Yet then, for the third time, she spied the same moth fly past her from the corner of her eye. It moved with a sense of purpose, and so, she followed after it.
Behind her, the laughter of and malice of the satyrs pursuing could be felt in her bones. But she pressed on. She carried the limping Artorius as far as her weak little self could. The land had been changed by the battle between the wraiths and the Beshír. The forest was overly cold and Aia felt her breath fog in front of her. Soon, a mist was covering all over like a veil. She moved on in that veil. Chasing the moth until it breached the white fog and parted to reveal the edge of the treeline.
Aia had managed to somehow carry Artorius all the way to the end of the forest, but behind her the satyrs remained. It seemed that hope was lost for a breath, but Aia's eyes peered through the fog and trees and spied over the next ridge, a white stallion— Isthilias. And then there came a force of armed men– the soldiers of Amar-lan.
The brave horse had gone ahead of them and reached the barony before them. Then, upon seeing this at the break of day and the dispersal of the dark clouds which had been conjured by Nohbody, the satyrs fled back into the forest, and abandoned their prey in fear. Aia then fell to the ground in both exhaustion and joy– such joy that she cried. For she had been saved.