Arcane Duels, Hidden Powers
Twenty-Fifth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC
Ever since he had been a boy just tall enough to take his father's copy of
Fourteen Flames off the shelf, yet not truly old enough to understand all the words in it, Zherys had been fascinated by Valyria. Home to a people mighty enough to raise the Black Walls and tame dragons to their will, who could whisper secrets across a thousand miles and craft works of artifice to endure a thousand years. As a young man he had climbed the highest mast of a ship crossing through the summer sees for just a glimpse of fire on the horizon. He had even dared the wilds east of Mantarys and almost left his bones in some nameless ravine, ambushed by twisted beasts.
What an irony it was that when he should finally have the chance to look upon the tomb of the Freehold, it would be with that child's interest turned to bitter ashes by the knowledge of Valyria's great folly. Yet the maegi knew well that like power, knowledge also had its cost, and painful as the price had been in this, it was still better to know and be prepared than perish in blissful ignorance.
The world was stranger than any book could tell. That much the company to which he had been assigned could tell at a glance, a mage-lord risen from age-old sleep, a shadow binder wafting like smoke upon the wind, a warrior born of fire's eternal heart... and a Braavosi orphan who could not yet count twenty namedays, arguably the most skilled sorcerer of them all. Like ignorance, bitterness was a thing best fed into the fires of one's ambition rather than left to fester, but that was more easily said than done as he watched the girl separate the flying ships and wind the crew upon one's deck in the same breath.
Still, the Volantine mage was not without his own skills gained through years of hunting for the last dying embers of magic through dark and secret places. As they entered the ship by a tear the red priestess' magic opened, he drew a handful of bone ash in his left hand and whispered into it a spell of finding. Without the glare of the ship's wards to blind the enchantment, he should be able to find either the archmage or at least his quarters. They were sure to be filled with some of the most potent magics on the ship, and no sorcerer worth the name would allow his sanctum to be invaded for long.
"This way," he motioned down a corridor even as the ship lurched alarmingly from the sudden firing of its main weapon. The ships of the earth born must have arrived but that was not their concern now.
The shadowbinder slipped into the bulkheads from whence she could watch and reach out to strike enemies unaware while the hammer-bearing azer charged ahead, leaving Zherys, Wisdoms Malrys, and Lya about three steps behind.
To their credit it did not take the crew long to find them, but they threw themselves into the fight as ones with barely anything left to live for. Rushing to have their flesh boiled in vitriol by Zherys or their bones crushed by the adamantine hammer, as the red priestess and the young Braavosi mage saved their magic for the Efreeti champions. Not the skill of millennia of war, nor the fury of fire unleashed could save them once they had been marked for death, but in the narrow passages their advance slowed, then stopped altogether as the door to the mess hall burst open to reveal dozens more foes, eight of them officers skilled in either sorcery, swordsmanship or both. When Wisdom Lya cast a wall of power to bar the door and give themselves breathing room, three of the mage's within cast a spell of sundering as one, doing together what one of them alone could not.
Just as Zherys was preparing to clear the room with an exhalation of poisonous Miasma, the red priestess stepped forth from the protection of the bulkhead and raised her ruby pendant high and proclaimed in a booming distant voice like the herald of some far off army, "By R'hllor that is the heart of all fire, I bind thee! Flee!"
For a moment all was
red, as though the world entire had been set afire or drenched in blood. When Zherys could see again, the slave crew was either dead, their collars smoking as they punished flight with death, or fleeing for those fortunate enough to have the priestess' command shatter their collars that they may obey the priestess' command. The Efreeti were reconsidering the wisdom of battle without any magic to compel them, Zherys noticed with amusement. One of them did not get to decide, as Wisdom Malarys flayed the flesh from his bones.
"If you would steal my slaves, then I will steal yours..." the voice came from everywhere and nowhere as an unbinding ripped through the air to strike Yrten. Lady Lya had motioned to stop it, but it continued regardless. Not one spell but
two, Zherys realized, the first had been countered the second not.
Thankfully, the Braavosi mage was able to counter the spell of domination that followed a moment before, but that left them no closer to finding where the spell had been cast
from. Their foe was not hiding behind any common illusion, that much was clear.
There, Zherys caught sight of of a skull with faint embers glowing in its empty eye sockets. Without even pausing for breath, he flung a
sphere of incandescent light at it. The thing did not shatter as it should have, but rose in the air as it was enveloped in flames, and in a voice of ashes woven taunted them: "Do you think yourselves the hunters, mortals? You are the
hunted."
Before it could speak again, Malarys motioned through the air and uttered a single word of command: "
Shatter."
"How many of those damn things were there?" the warrior spat.
"Six, now five," Zherys replied. "Come, the sanctum awaits, best to draw them out of hiding."
With that the five moved further into the dangerously lurching ship.
OOC: Here we are our first Zherys combat interlude. Hopefully I got him across properly. Not yet beta-ed.
