The fireball from the explosion is aimed at the staircase and sweeps over the party. I close my eyes automatically as the immediate sensation of roiling heat from the fire rolls over my body. I don’t feel the fire at all, just the vacuum left in its absence and the memory of its heat.
Several members of the party scream and all of them scramble up the stairs to safety.
I step up and out, patting down my body. The burst of fire was brief, but my hands discover many tender spots across my face and chest.
The others in the party evacuate the cellar and each goes through their own process of body checking. Vong and Ralith seem to have taken the brunt of it, but the fireball seemed to have been well positioned and none are without injury. The odor of singed hair and eyebrows wafts through the air. Quite unpleasant.
Fortunately, I am immune to that particular concern. Though I once lamented my hairlessness, I find the idea of living with the burden of hair to be undesirable. Always growing, requiring brushing and styling and cutting, shaving or not shaving depending on the local aesthetic—it looks like such a bother.
For whatever reason, the goblins I spied in the brief moment of illumination before the fire engulfed me, do not storm out of the cellar and attack. Perhaps I mistook the shadows and shapes for something else?
“What was that?” Vong finally demands, ripping his wide-brimmed hat from his head and beating the fire out of it.
Did he not see? It was quite apparent.
“I don’t know!” shouts Rakatha, his face a portrait of pain. Blisters across his face, particularly along his eyes and lips, are already forming, and his skin looks red and taut.
Ralith, who was wearing a suit of plate armor, appears to have only minor injuries and moves to lay a healing touch on Rakatha, “Here, you’re quite hurt.”
Our luck could change at any moment, so I say, “There are goblins in the room below. With weapons.”
Twitch pulls a dagger and backs toward the front entrance of the tower clumsily. Strands of her long, wispy hair have blackened into impossibly tight spirals and her cheeks and lips are cracked and peeling from the heat of the flame.
It reminds me of the desperate castaways sometimes encountered on the slaving ships I worked on in my twenties. Initially happy to see us, if they were strong enough to stand, we put them in the galley with the other slaves.
Rakatha draws his sword, knocking Ralith over, and positions himself at the hatch should any goblins breach the opening. “Go!” he shouts.
Vong scrambles deftly over and through the rubble and slips through the doorway with no issue while Apul helps Ralith to his feet. Much less surefooted, the pair navigate the fallen stones and duck through. Twitch follows them.
Knowing Rakatha will need to remove all his equipment to fit through again, I consider if I have any magic that could aid the situation. I remember reading about a spell to either grow or shrink a living thing in a volume of Magic For Practical Adventuring but, alas, I didn’t take the time to learn it in the dwindling time I had remaining at Val Maxis’s tower. The spell’s utility had not been readily apparent so I skipped it. I did, however, take down a scroll for a spell that improves one’s ability to jump, tumble, and land without injury, and looking at the ruined structure gives me an idea.
“Rakatha,” I call, getting his attention, “Retreat up to the second level and leap out of the tower. I will augment you with magic.”
To his credit, he nods and starts backing toward the staircase. I back myself toward the exit.
The walls on the upper level no longer go all the way around so there are ample gaps he could jump from. Probably best to use the first one, since there is no telling whether the floor is sound.
I concentrate on gathering earth arcana—which is quite plentiful due to the abundance of stone in the tower—as I reach into the sleek, leather pouch where my loose papers are stored. Keeping close watch on Rakatha and the cellar opening, I feel for the sleeve where I store spells I’ve collected for one-time use and haven’t bothered to record in my spellbook due to the time, money, and effort involved in that process. Magic ink is expensive and my funds are not endless at this point.
Finding my quarry, I pull a stack of papers from a sleeve and quickly thumb through them to locate the acrobatics-augmenting spell. Cutting the stack to the spell and tucking the rest of the spell pages behind it, I chant the incantation that will shape the earth arcana I’ve gathered.
The swell of physical ability is immediately felt by Rakatha, who bounds up the stairs. I breathe out and slip through the doorway. Once on the other side, a thunk and clattering of equipment tells me he leapt off—hopefully with no injury. Well, no further injury.
Once all party members are accounted for, we flee into the forest to lick our wounds.
The Wordbearer Chronicles is a dark fantasy web series with new passages on Tuesdays.
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