Unconquered Tower

TWENTY-FOUR

“We’ve failed, Elder Thomas.” Old Bao stretched out across the rusted ironworks above the sect members, hidden in shadows as he listened to the interlopers. He turned to the side and let the stiff metal support his back better. With his mana channels refrozen he couldn’t heal himself as well as he liked and had to settle for more rustic methods.

“Reminds me of the time before the towers. Who suffers from arthritis now?” Bao let the thought idly pass by his mind before he leaned over the side of the I-beam and looked down at the leader of the sect hunting party.

Elder Thomas was roughly middle-aged with the same stench of the fourth tower as the rest of his team. The portable enchantment circle that Bao had stretched out in the rafters could stall a tower master from finding him, let alone these amateurs. Listening to them prattle on about how they couldn’t find him was amusing though.

“The boy would have found this funny.” Bao wondered how Roan was doing inside of the tower. He was still alive, the remnants of his dragon spirit would alert him if its vessel had been destroyed.

“And the activity around the tower?” Elder Thomas had a smooth, baritone voice. While incompetent he didn’t waver at all as he spoke, exuding an air of confidence. Black hair was slicked backwards and his Mediterranean features were paler than they should have been, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in years.

A common trait for those who dealt with shadow mana or had cores attuned to it. The way the shadows around the man moved, out of tune with the light sources, was another clue. A spy and assassin more than an illusionist. That or it was a more skillful illusion than Bao suspected.

“Increasing. Members of the Great Lakes College have started to arrive as well. A pair of Professors and their undergraduate students. Both Professors are tower conquerors,” the hidden subordinate said. She stood in a blanket of shadows and her own skills activated to keep herself hidden, along with an enchanted mask to make her anonymous, but Bao had his own tricks and items.

“Which tower?”

“Still investigating. Both are cloaked and skilled, we haven’t been able to approach either of them,” the subordinate said. Bao added the two professors to his list of people to investigate. More and more were trickling into his desert and he wanted to know who they were.

“Repairs to the hotel?” Elder Thomas asked. The man was working with a thin brush and a pot of ink, dipping it gently before laying out long brush strokes against the vellum. Illusions warped his desk so badly that even Bao struggled to see what was really happening.

“Six layers of visual illusion along with four auditory and two that warp smell. All to hide that he’s using a laptop.” Bao made a note to steal the laptop later and see what the Elder was working on.

Bao froze as he felt mana brush against him. Not a skill from one of the spies below him, but localized mana. Something that was generally absent from the desert as the tower absorbed every iota of it. It was a welcome, if foreign feeling. There was a difficulty in suppressing his desire to draw on the ambient mana, even if it was thin.

A moment later he watched as the others finally felt the mana circulating through the air. Heads snapped to look toward the tower, ignoring the walls that blocked their views. Elder Thomas froze for a second, illusionary brush hovering over the illusionary vellum.

“What is that?” Elder Thomas mumbled, his words too soft for his disciples to hear.

Stolen story; please report.

GREATER REGION QUEST GENERATED

HUNT THE MANA TWISTED

ABOMINATIONS HAVE BEGUN TO REPRODUCE AS MANA SICKNESS SPREADS ACROSS THE PLANET. KILL THE ABOMINATIONS.

REWARD: LIMITED MARKET ACCESS

Bao pursed his lips as he read over the quest. He’d been doing this already as he knew from having taken part of the Fourth Tower’s archives what the mana twisted were. Below him all four of the disciples moved in the depths of their master’s cloaking shadows. And the fifth disciple, hidden from the others on the far side of the room as well. That one was a bit more hidden than the others, but he still moved enough to cause a minor warp of the illusionary array.

“GO!” Elder Thomas barked, and the four primary disciples all raced away. Thomas was a hint slower, activating a series of wards around his table before he followed after them, leaving the abandoned building in a blur of shadows. The final disciple stayed hidden overlooking Thomas’ desk. In perfect position to launch an ambush if someone decided to peek at the hidden laptop.

Elder Thomas’ shadow clone technique was nearly flawless. The clone appearing right as he hit the doorway while a cloaking technique wrapped around the actual man. Thomas’ clone flew out the doorway and disappeared out of sight, even a few moments later he felt the mana signature.

“Not a complete amateur at least. He’s not much of an enchanter or warder. Those second and third layers of wards aren’t very potent, but that fourth layer of alarm wards are crafty. Hidden inside of the shadows of other wards. Break any of the layers and they’ll trigger.” Bao observed the ambush being formed before him, Elder Thomas and the hidden disciple forming a pincer, just waiting for him to emerge. They didn’t know he was in the building, but they knew he was in the city somewhere and had set a trap assuming he’d show up to satiate his curiosity.

“Break the wards without them seeing you then activate the enchantments outside of the building. Four minutes worth of mana core dust,” Bao ordered the dragon spirit with his mind. It lifted itself from his body where it had been resting and shot across the distance in a heartbeat, its long claws slicing apart the guarding wards before it disappeared beyond his senses.

“Ambushes only work if your prey doesn’t know they’re being ambushed,” Bao whispered as he swung his legs over the side of the I-beam and fell to the floor below. He landed without incident or noise, his enchanted boots doing their jobs. With the wards broken there would be no alarm until the hidden disciple triggered their personal alarm.

Bao didn’t bother with one of the disguise rings he wore. There would be no witnesses. Not when he felt the others all converging toward the towers. His time in the desert had enhanced his senses far beyond what he once had, to the point he doubted that anything on the planet could rival his sensitivity.

The tower was sending a beacon to all the mana twisted. The creatures craved, hungered, for mana. To eat and consume the source of all life. And the tower was releasing it in waves that was like ringing a dinner bell. In a few hours the entire region would be filled with the twisted monstrosities which would eat anything that had even a hint of mana in it. Including the citizens of the city.

Bao had time though and he was curious about the laptop.

Without giving away his knowledge of the ambush, he walked right into it. Illusions parted as he stood before the desk, the papers morphing several times. First the words changed, then the shape of them, then they morphed into a book, and finally into the plain black laptop.

“This is who has been eluding us? A fat, old man?” Elder Thomas yelled as he walked out of the shadows.

“Pretentious. My shielding enchantments are active now. No reinforcements for you, Elder Thomas.”

“Age is just a number,” Bao said, ignoring the Elder and the building power behind him. The disciple was charging something up but relied too much on the enchantments to hide himself rather than his own cloaking ability. It was sloppy work.

“An old phrase from an old man,” Thomas said, the man kept his hands folded behind his back as he walked toward him. The voluminous sleeves of his dark green robes kept Bao from seeing what he was doing, but he had no doubt it was something sneaky.

“A phrase from a simpler time. Now, shall we begin?” Bao asked as he activated one of spatial rings and absorbed the laptop, loose papers, and the entire desk with a swipe of his hand.

“So eager to die?” Thomas asked.

“Maybe I am getting too old, but these meetings no longer amuse me the way they once did,” Bao muttered to himself as a sword sprang into his hand.

“Let’s go you two. I have hunting to do.”