Consumption

The wicked plan of the Toi-Migg assassins begins.

16.

Consumption

 

“Slow down, child!”   Queen Aurei commanded her grandson as he stood wide-eyed in excitement at the door of their bedchamber.

“Nolen, come in here and close the door,”   King Eleazar told the young man and Nolen complied.

“Now slow down and tell us what is wrong.”   

Immediately the prince launched into the happenings of that evening.     Nolen told the story as quickly as he could, stressing the need to contact his parents and King Aedric as well.     Aurei did not wait for him to finish but had her crystal ball in her lap, chanting the magic words that would bring her in contact with her son in King’s Reach.    But the crystal ball remained dark.

“Don’t worry, child, they are probably just asleep,”   Aurei told her grandson after seeing his look of terror when contact was not made.

“Grandmother, we’ve got to do something!”   He pleaded, though from his desperate tone, he knew there was little they could do.

Aurei yelled for a servant, who came running into the room immediately from where she had been eavesdropping.

“I need all the court wizards to assemble in the audience chamber immediately, and have them bring any teleportation or scrying devices that they have.”

“Yes, Your Majesty… is it an emergency?”   The servant timidly asked.

“It is indeed, so hurry!”   Aurei instructed, and the girl ran from the room.

“Nolen,”  Eleazar said, gesturing for the boy to be seated on the edge of the bed, “You said that Prince Lee and… um… Captain Maelneth… were with you?”

“Yes, sir, they heard the whole tale.”

“Well, I realize that Prince Lee is probably trying to contact his parents, but what I am wondering is - where is Maelneth?”

Nolen blinked a few times as if suddenly realizing something.

“Wait… Grandfather, she said that she was coming here to tell you!    But she hasn’t been here, has she?”

“No, son, you were the first one to come here.   You say that she was coming here to tell us?”

“Yes, that is what she said!   She ran off immediately, so she should have been here by now.”

“Could you have misunderstood her, Nolen?   Could she have said that she was going to try to contact Aedric and Snoe in Tarmard?”

“Tarmard?   Why would she do that?   Her duty is to warn the both of you first.   Why would she think of Aedric and Snoe?”

Eleazar glanced at his wife and the Queen very subtly shook her head.    Nolen, still fuelled by the excitement of the news, missed it.

“Never mind, Nolen,”   The King said with a troubled expression on his face, “We need to remember that Arianelle will be a target as well.”

“Isn’t she with Carn and Amala?   Contact them.”   The young prince suggested.

“She’s not with them, Nolen.”   Aurei admitted, but before her grandson could ask any further questions, a servant came into the room shouting.

“Your Majesties, the Church of Yesh is on fire!”

“The church?!   Do you mean the cathedral or the old village church?”   Eleazar asked the excited servant boy.

“The old church, sire!    The night watch reported seeing a flash of light inside and before they could investigate, the whole building just burst into flames!”

“Yesh preserve me!”  Aurei cried out suddenly, leaping to her feet, “The church is the destination path for the teleportation spells in our children’s autocaster rings!”

The two men understood her meaning immediately - if Gamel and Valmiai had been successful targets of the assassins, their autocaster rings would deliver them to their family’s rendezvous spot; the sanctuary of the old Church of Yesh in Westmark.   

They had used the church as the spell destination point, for it was a sacred, holy place where an injured person would feel safe.

Now it was on fire.

“The assassin may have known about the autocaster rings!”   Nolen called as he raced from the room.

“Nolen, it is too dangerous for you to go there,”   Eleazar yelled as he ran after his grandson.   Aurei was right behind them, calling out orders to the royal servants as she followed them.

The young prince did not respond, too focused on his parents to hear anything.

***

Arianelle was in Hell.   All around her was intense fire and smoke, the heat was unbearable and her plate armor was heating up as quickly as a pot on a cooking stove.

The roar of the flames concealed her screams, but the light from the inferno gave her plenty of light to see her nightmare surroundings.

It was the old church of Yesh in Westmark - the designated teleportation spot for all of the royal family of Westmark and their closest friends.     It had been selected many years ago, probably by Great Aunt Zeatt, as a safe place for an injured person to return to when the autocaster ring activated.

Now it wasn’t safe at all.

The church was engulfed in fire - every wooden surface was blazing with flame and Arianelle knew that no mundane act of arson could have done this.    It was the Toi-Migg wizards who had set the church on fire, and she knew why.

Somewhere in the burning church, Gamel and Valmiai were struggling to get out just as she was, after being sent here when their autocasters activated.

The assassins were determined to activate the curse.  

 

A large beam from above fell in front of her with an explosion of sparks, prompting the girl to move.   Her lungs burned from the heated air as she stumbled down the processional aisle toward where she knew the front doors would be located.

Even the regal rugs that lined the aisle were on fire, but she had no choice except to run through the flames.

The wooden pews were popping and cracking as they burned, but she could just barely see anything in the smoke and orange light.    It was as if the worst nightmare she could have conjured had been manifested here.

Something burning fell into her hair and she frantically brushed it off, patting her head to make sure all the sparks were out.

Through the roar of the flames, she thought she heard voices ahead of her.    The smoke was too thick for her to risk breath calling out, so she just ducked her head and pushed forward, stumbling over debris.

There was a pounding sound as if someone was trying to open a locked door.     Something from above began to fall, sizzling and scorching her.     It was heated water - perhaps it was raining outside and the rain turned almost to steam as it reacted to the fire.

All of the metal that she wore was getting extremely hot and she could barely breathe at all now.   She was wondering how close she was to the front doors when there came a loud boom and immediately afterwards an explosion.

She was thrown backwards from the force of the blast, which actually snuffed out some of the fires nearest the floor of the church.

But it also sent timbers from the collapsing beams tumbling all about her.    She covered her face, closed her eyes and waited for the end to come, losing consciousness as the first piece of wood fell on her legs.

 

***

The clerics’ rain spell had done little to control the fire engulfing the church.    When Nolen and his grandparents had arrived, they found a frantic crowd of people throwing buckets of water on the burning building.

The prince had ignored them and raced to the front doors, yelling to those as he passed that there were people trapped in there.

To their credit, the crowd immediately went into rescue mode, swarming around him as he tried to open the double doors.

They would not budge and he knew without a doubt that they had been Wizard Locked.

Through the chaos around him, he thought he heard the voices of his parents from inside, yelling for help.

It was more than he could take.     Eleazar’s hand on his shoulder drew his attention and he turned to his Grandfather with a wild look. “They’re in there!   I can hear them!  The door is Wizard Locked!”

“We can break it down together!”   The king told him, knowing that both of them wore gauntlets of strength that would, together, overcome even arcane locking.

“On three… One… Two… Three!”  Together, Eleazar and Nolen charged into the large wooden doors, putting their shoulders against the wood.

Their impact crashed through, but as soon as the doors popped open there was a loud explosion.

It had been booby-trapped with a counter spell.

Had the assassins focused the trap on the outside of the door, they would have managed to kill the king of Marksylvania and his two heirs, but those who planned the trap had not thought of someone busting into the church.   Instead, they had planned to kill someone trying to break out from inside.

So the doors shielded Nolen and Eleazar from much of the explosion and spared their lives.     But Gamel and Valmiai, who had been attacked in their bedchamber while sleeping in King’s Reach and teleported to the church minutes before Arianelle, did not have a chance.

The explosion killed them instantly, since their autocaster rings had used their charges minutes before, so they had no magic to protect them.

 

A wizard standing in the crowd was the one that brilliantly thought of a Dispel Magic spell cast upon the burning church, which neutralized the flames within a minute’s time, just after the explosion.

Amazingly, it was Nolen, numb with shock as the crowd pulled the bodies of his parents from the church, which found Arianelle under the rubble.

With a cry of anguish, he ripped the smoldering debris away from her and scooped her up, putting his ear to her mouth to see if she too had been killed.

Faint breath told him that she still clung to life.    He ran out of the church and down the stairs, laying her at the bottom and screaming out for healers.      Weeping as the realization of the death of his parents broke through his shock, he Laid Hands upon her and healing energy flowed into the injured girl, stabilizing her.

Suddenly the magic ring that had changed Arianelle’s appearance, which had been seriously damaged by the fire, lost its incantation.     Before Nolen’s horrified eyes, Maelneth’s form began to change.     Her skin grew ghostlike and he gasped, not realizing what was happening.   He thought for a long moment that she was turning into a ghost in front of his eyes.

But then he noticed the blood red lips and suddenly he recognized her.

“My God!  She’s-“ He started to say before his grief-stricken grandmother distracted him by crying out and running to Arianelle.

Aurei Laid Hands on the unconscious girl as several healers began chanting spells over her.    Nolen knelt down by his grandmother, putting his arm around her as she stroked Arianelle’s hair.

The queen’s tears fell onto her granddaughter’s face as she mourned for Gamel, “Oh, my son… my son…my dear son.”

The healers’ spells ended and Arianelle stirred, her red eyes opening wide upon seeing her grandmother and her cousin over her. 

“Are they…?”  She whispered to them, but both of their tears confirmed it.    The Sylvan princess sat up and tightly hugged both of them.   The three of them rocked back and forth in their anguish, joined from a distance away by the people of Westmark.

 

After securing the bodies of his son and daughter-in-law, King Eleazar found them, grieving as deeply as he did, but rejoicing that at least his granddaughter had been spared.