Rather than diverting to find Lisella, I hoped that Galbrecht would have some ability to restore Modessa and if not; I knew he’d want to know about what had happened to her.

  It was an odd sensation as I pushed my astral projection up through the floor. I didn’t feel anything at all, even though my mind told me that I should at least sense my passage through solid stone. By the time I had gone up several floors, I was no longer worried about that, but instead wondered what the two adventurers were doing here.

  I finally passed through to the final floor, which should have been Tolston’s office. I hesitated for a second before doing so. I was intangible, but I wasn’t willing to put it past a legendary caster to have some way of dealing with me—even in this form. It would have been foolish to underestimate these humans, something I’d been doing all too often lately.

  Even that thought felt strange, though. If it were food, I would have said that it left a bad taste in my mouth, but it was my own impression. This evolution was affecting me in more ways than one, and I was pretty sure I didn’t like it. Thinking better of humans might make them think I was enlightened, but I was comfortable with my biases and worldview.

  When I passed through the stone, I saw a large sphere of magic in the room. The desk, bookshelves, and even the furniture were gone. The sphere exerted a physical pull that I could identify, despite my inability to feel it. The walls, door, shutters… all were being pulled upon. But as of yet, their enchantments kept them from being sucked into whatever this was.

  Looking at the sphere, I watched as purple lightning danced across its surface. It was black and silver, but every so often, I caught a glimpse of another place inside the sphere. It was like it was a window into another dimension.

  That thought led to me identifying the strange magical energy. This was dimensional energy gone wild. I knew it was one of Serius’ specialties, but what could have caused this? And in Tolston’s office, of all places?

  Then I got a glimpse inside the sphere. The landscape was a barren, windswept, and rocky plain. I immediately recognized four figures out of a host of beings that seemed to be moving around. Tolston was on one side, facing off against Serius, Galbrecht, and Liam. The four were locked in battle.

  Curiosity raged through me. I wanted to see more of this. I needed to alert Galbrecht, but looking again at that dimensional aperture, I realized it was anything but stable. The magic itself seemed to be in flux. I couldn’t make myself go through it. That would have been foolishness, and I didn’t owe that much to Modessa. It wasn’t like I had asked her to leap in front of that dagger.

  Somehow, these thoughts left me unsettled as I watched the battle unfold.

  Interlude 5 - A Line Too Far

  Liam had always known that there were limits to his class. Every type of class has its purpose. In the lower levels, melee tended to be king—with pure casters suffering from limited mana, limited spell options, and a general squishiness. This wasn’t some great epiphany, but rather fairly common knowledge in the adventuring community all over Ileria.

  The catch was that people knew it, but still tried to buck the system. All adventurers had some magic, which was a boon. But for that, they would have ended up being simple town guards. There was nothing wrong with that, but Liam was glad to be something more.

  His build, though, was highly situational. In the right setting, he could be an ace. But in the wrong one, he longed just to be a town guard. Before recent events, he would have said he was the second highest offensive power on the team, edging out Modessa by a good margin—if only because he didn’t have to get as close as she did. She did have a few burst skills that exceeded his best, but he could both burst and keep a steady stream of arrows coming.

  He would have said that, given any reasonable amount of preparation, Serius was the best member of their team in terms of offense, defense, and versatility. But that was the catch, Serius required some lead time and preparation. He had to have the right spells ready, and he had to have the necessary items to buy himself time while he summoned his army.

  Today, though, Liam felt like dead weight. Galbrecht’s recent break-through to a legendary class gave him a leg up on the rest of the team. He could now call upon magic a Tier higher than any of theirs, and that would only grow as he gained additional levels—even if that took years.

  In many ways, he was now built to bust mages. He could heal, dispel magic, and deal decent damage—both physically and magically. Adding to that, the significant boost he gained in durability and he was quite tanky.

  Serius had clearly been planning for this day for a while. That explained a few things—like how he frequently didn’t have common utility spells prepared. It was because he had been planning for a confrontation with Tolston. That was the only explanation Liam could come up for why Serius had the spell, Eye of Azor memorized.

  It was a type of weaponized portal spell, one which would only be useful in limited situations. Yet, it was the first spell that Serius had cast as soon as Galbrecht’s over-powered ask his goddess for anything spell allowed them to crack through all of the layers of defense on the headmaster’s tower. Centuries of magic had been in place, layer upon layer, and yet the goddess peeled it open for them like a hunter field stripping his kill.

  Then, they had appeared inside the Archmage’s office. The man had been scrambling to gather an assortment of magical items, but Serius not only cast Eye of Azor, he’d had it pre-cast in a magical matrix and unleashed it.

  Liam had tamped down his fear when the spell went off. Only knowing what it was made that possible. The dark and ominous sphere had erupted in the center of the office and without any warning had sucked all four of the men through it, depositing them out on a barren plain.

  Liam scrambled to his feet only to see that Galbrecht was up and moving. The paladin was already marching towards Tolston. He had correctly determined that this wasn’t a time for half-measures. A golden glow covered him as he cast his buffs while crossing the distance.

  The transportation had been anything but gentle, and both Tolston and Serius were still on the ground when Liam had stood. Not wanting to let their enemy get up, Liam had an arrow to his bow and fired within a single breath of reaching his feet.

  The arrow crossed the distance easily, but Liam cursed as it shattered against a mage shield. It had been too much to hope for, that Tolston wouldn’t have a mage shield active, but he had needed to try.

  Tolston beat Serius to his feet by a few seconds and laughed. “You didn’t think that I wouldn’t have contingencies upon contingencies?”

  The Archmage looked around uneasily as Liam kept peppering him with arrows. The point wasn’t to actually break through his mage shield, although that happened more often than arrogant wizards liked to admit. No, Liam was just buying time for Galbrecht to do his thing and for Serius to summon the monsters which were the pinnacle of his power.

  “I don’t know where you brought us to, Serius, but I’m going to show you why evocation is the most feared of all magics.”

  Waves of ice blasted out from the Archmage, heading straight for them. Galbrecht, who was in the front, would catch the worst of it. Even assuming Tolston was empowering the spell and aiming for a quick win, Liam had to believe that the paladin could handle tanking the spell. It was how much of that broad wave got past his golden shield that worried Liam.

  A summoner was weakest while they were calling upon their minions, and that was exactly the point in the battle Serius was at. Liam ran through their options, but knew he really didn’t have any spells that could stop that wave of ice.

  Except it turned out that he didn’t need to. The wave only made it about fifteen feet and then turned to nothing but water. Even that quickly disappeared.

  Tolston laughed. “You think that bringing me to a plane based on fire will keep me from attacking you? You may be able to stop my ice spells from working, but this will only serve to empower my fire magic.”

  The Archmage’s eyes gleamed as a brilliant red ball of flame condensed in front of him. That smile twisted his lips as he launched the ball directly at Galbrecht. Once again, before the fire managed to reach the paladin, it broke apart and dissipated into the air.

  Liam’s mind was racing. What kind of realm had Serius brought them to? Where were they that could break down both fire and ice-based attacks?

  Tolston must have been wondering the same thing because he screamed, “What have you done? Do you have any idea what you’re doing by attacking me?”

  Serius completed his first summoning at that moment. The ground began to bubble and then black scaled creatures erupted from the rock of the plain. There were six of them. Each had an insectoid body with six legs, each leg being broken down into two segments. They all had upper bodies similar to a humanoid, though still covered in black scales with four arms. The creatures chittered as they moved along the ground.

  Serius yelled, “Galbrecht, let my summons soften him up first.”

  “Soften me up?” Tolston hissed. “Do you think I’m some newly minted level twenty with no idea how to use my powers? You must be so proud of yourself, coming after me like this. This realm may give you the advantage, but that will only make this interesting for me.”

  The creatures scurried forward, and then Liam felt a flash of magic. It felt like he’d only blinked his eyes, but when he opened them again, four of the summoned monsters had been destroyed. Their bodies had been ripped apart by something.

  Tolston was holding out a golden rod with a head on the tip about the size of a man’s fist against the chest of another of the creatures. A green light erupted from the rod and the summons lit it up from the inside as all ten of its limbs were blasted apart.

  The last of the creatures managed to close with Tolston. Its clawed hands all descended on him like it was trying to hug him. The Archmage only laughed as his magical shield sprang into existence. Blue electricity danced up the creature's arms, cooking it from the inside. It sizzled and popped until its scales burst off.

  “That’s two shields down and his Time Stop,” Serius muttered to himself.

  “Put pressure on him while I summon the next batch,” he called out to his companions.

  Galbrecht charged forward, but Liam’s arrows were even faster. They lanced through the air. The first catching the last remnant of the electrical backlash from Tolston’s mage shield, but he was too far away for the lightning that arced out to hit him. The next arrow caught the Archmage in his shoulder and spun his body around, but Liam’s third and fourth arrows bounced off another shield.

  Serius mumbled between lines in his spell. “That’s his third shield down.”

  A series of silver, sparkling spheres sprang into life around Tolston just as Galbrecht was about to collide with him. A golden hammer descended from the sky and hit Tolston first—or it would have, if one of the nine spheres hadn’t flown up and intercept the hammer. To the naked eye, it looked like the hammer was swallowed by the sphere, but Liam suspected there was more to it than that. This had all the markings of being another legendary spell.

  Whatever it was, Liam fired off another arrow. Surprisingly, none of the spells intercepted his arrow, though it did bounce off of yet another shield which sprang up around the Archmage. Liam had seen spells like this. They only reacted when the threat was great enough. A trio of the spheres engaged Galbrecht. He’d make his way through, but those spheres were buying too much time for Tolston.

  Liam got a bit more serious and activated one ability right after another. The first turned his next arrow into a powerful lightning bolt. The second turned the arrow after it into a hailstorm of arrows.

  The ranger would have cursed at Serius, but it suddenly dawned on him where his friend had portaled them to. The lightning bolt never made it all the way to Tolston and failed to drain even one of his protective spheres. Instead, the energy broke up and dissipated in the air about halfway to its target.

  In contrast, the volley of arrows that fell upon him drained two of his defensive spheres. That was all the confirmation that Liam needed. He didn’t have a name for this place, but it had to be a demi-plane of negative energy—that was to say it was a little pocket of reality in which raw magical energy was rapidly drained. That was why any of the magical attacks which traveled any distance were immediately sucked up, while the kinetic energy of an arrow lasted long enough to reach its target.

  Given Tolston’s specialization as an evocation specialist, this was one of the worst places for him to fight. Still, he wasn’t doing that bad holding them at bay. Then Serius ended his next spell, and another summons ripped its way through the dimensional barrier and crawled out.

  This one was also insectoid. There must be a reason for that theme, but Liam was still just trying to figure out the best ways to adapt to the negative energy here. If they stayed long enough, it would begin to drain both their life force and the potential energy inside of them. If they stayed too long, they’d end up stuck, unable to move as they withered away. Serius, of course, would have planned a way out, but it would have been nice if he’d discussed this strategy with them ahead of time.

  The summoned creature was part praying mantis and part spider with the head of wolf. To say it looked bizarre was an understatement. It seemed to resonate with this pocket dimension, although Liam would have been the first to admit that his magical senses were not the keenest. Either way, the creature was fifteen feet high and thirty feet long. When it charged at Tolston, it let out a scream of rage.

  The sound was so unnatural. It cut through the dense air of the demi-plane and echoed across the barren land, making Liam's skin crawl. Tolston himself seemed taken aback, his confident expression faltering for a moment. It was only a moment's hesitation, but it was enough.

  Galbrecht, managing to finally get past the last of the silver spheres, capitalized on the Archmage’s hesitation. He drove forward, his shield clashing against the barrier around the Archmage with a thunderous crack. The paladin's sword slashed through the air, carving glowing golden arcs that battered the unseen barrier. Tolston grunted, stepping back, his attention torn between the relentless paladin and the massive, summoned creature bearing down on him.

  It was Liam's turn to contribute, and he didn’t want to miss out. He quickly chanted the incantation for a spell, his hands moving in precise patterns. An arrow of pure magical force formed on his bow. It was a simple spell, but one he had honed to near perfection. The arrow lacked the raw destructive power of an evocation spell, but its true power was its precision. He only had to trust that the denser nature of this energy construct could survive this hostile environment.

  In a split second, he released the spell arrow. It flew straight and true, aimed not at Tolston but at the magical rod he still held in one hand. There was a brilliant flash of light as the arrow hit its target and did its work. It took a lot of effort to destroy a magical item, but in this place everything was in a constant state of decay. Now, the previously powerful weapon crackled with energy as it threatened to explode in Tolston’s hand. He cursed vehemently as he threw the rod away.

  It might have been smarter of him to launch it like a grenade at the summoned monstrosity which was bearing down upon it, but even an Archmage can have a moment of panic as his plans unravel around him. Instead, he simply hurled it as far from himself as he could. He might look like a weak, squishy caster, but any adventurer of his level would be physically powerful. A split second later, the rod exploded in the air like a series of festival fireworks.

  Then, in a whirlwind of action, Serius' summoned creature was upon Tolston. Its wolf-like head snapped, jaws crashing down to shatter what remained of his mage shield. The backlash from so much magic breaking apart hit Tolston hard. With a gut-wrenching howl, the Archmage staggered back, his face a mask of shock.

  "Was that your last shield or second to last?" Serius roared, rising from where he'd been completing his latest summoning.

  His eyes burned with a strange, alien light, his hands crackled with raw, magical energy. Up to this point, his friend had avoided taunting Tolston. Liam was well aware of the rivalry between these two, but this was a matter of life and death.

  As Tolston scrambled to regain his footing, the loss of his rod sending ripples through his defensive spells, Galbrecht surged forward. His sword, glowing brighter than ever, slashed through the dissipating barrier. Tolston barely managed to dodge the first slash, but Galbrecht was relentless, his movements imbued with divine might.

  Tolston managed to quick cast a makeshift barrier, proving why he was a legendary caster, but the paladin's sword crashed into it, splintering it with another flash of golden light. The Archmage was thrown backwards, skidding across the barren ground.