Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) by E. William Brown

Author:E. William Brown [Brown, E. William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2015-11-07T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Tavrin’s crew were still casting spells when we came down, so I took the power stone with us. The storm was still blowing, but it was simple enough to throw a force dome over our party to keep the wind and snow off. I stepped into the darkness beyond the little glowlights that decorated the ship’s hold, and turned to Sefwin.

“Alright, you’re up. Which way to your partners?”

She closed her eyes in concentration, and raised her hands. A faint hint of green foxfire flickered between her palms, forming a ball with two wisps of smoky green energy trailing down and to one side.

“That way.”

“Alright. Tell me when we’re directly over them.” I set out into the snow, with Cerise at my side and everyone else trailing along behind me.

Tavrin frowned. “We aren’t going to use the entrance? I’ll grant that their defenses are bound to be formidable, but surely tunneling in will be worse? Their settlement will be solidly warded.”

I gave him a grim smile. “Yeah, that’s not going to do them any good. You guys just sit back and get ready for a fight. I’ll take care of getting us in.”

This was almost like those fantasy role-playing games I used to play back in college. Fight your way down through a vast underground maze of monsters and traps to find the lost treasure, or rescue the fair princess. I always thought it was stupid to play it straight with that kind of scenario. I used to drive Dungeon Masters nuts with my penchant for lateral solutions. Why fight the monsters when we could just scry the princess’s location and teleport in to get her? Or divert a river to drown the orc horde, or undermine the caldera of the volcano that overlooked the Evil Overlord’s tower, or… well, there was always something. Those games usually have so much magic available that it’s impossible to defend against every possibility.

I might not have a huge laundry list of poorly thought out spells to choose from here, but I had the options I really needed. When we finally reached a spot where Sefwin’s tracking spell pointed straight down, I backed off a little and conjured a big iron disk for us all to stand on. That got a levitation spell, and a force field tied to the power stone.

“Alright, everyone stand on the disk. We’re going to ride it down, so don’t be surprised when it starts moving.”

As the elves cautiously boarded the floating construct I conjured a long iron rod, and laid a hasty version of the wizard staff spell on it. Then I tapped it against the ground, and focused my earth sorcery.

In a thirty-foot circle around us the ground began to vanish, the earth and stone banished by my magic. I struggled to keep the effect even, giving my disk a relatively flat surface to hover over as we sank quickly into the hill. Twenty feet. Forty. Sixty. Eighty.

A hundred feet down we hit a ward that blocked my spell.

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