Amates 31, 1277. A storm can get you moving better than a cup of coffee. This just wasn’t anything like a storm…

    The wild magic storm slapped the ancient floor with blue lightning like it deserved it. Everywhere a bolt touched, petrified floor planks shattered, cracked or blasted into pieces. Blackened chunks flew everywhere. What didn’t get scorched, was assaulted by wild magic, which led to far worse results.

    After all, no one expects lightning to leave lava behind in petrified wood.

    I pulled myself off the floor while I eyed the dark green storm clouds overhead. They boiled like some vile potion that wanted to eat the sandstone ceiling. Without warning, the room shuddered like it wanted to fall apart. It stopped almost as soon as it started, and I let out a small sigh.

    If we fell into that lake below us, it was so far down there wouldn’t even be paste left.

    “This,” I groused. “This is what I get for messing with magic.”

    I tried to ignore the obvious impending doom while I ran over to Ki. He groaned in pain as I dropped to my knees next to him. Before I could touch him, he opened his eyes wide with a gasp. I practically dove onto him with a tight hug.

    “Aile Shavat! You’re alive!”

    Ki squirmed a bit with a whimper as his right arm under me shuddered.

    “Tela? Healer tip. Don’t hug the patient right where they’re wounded.”

    I let go fast, then sat back to lift my goggles and wipe at one of my eyes.

    “Shut up! You’re not dead. That’s what matters.”

    Ki barked out a short laugh that turned into a dry cough while he struggled to sit up. Then he noticed the storm clouds along the ceiling. His blue skin turned a deathly pale.

    “Gods, is that a wild storm? Inside a building? What happened?”

    I pulled my goggles back down, then glanced over my shoulder at the storm. Blasts of blue lightning jumped like giddy demons between the green clouds. Everywhere the storm touched the ceiling or thin window frame supports, stonework seemed to crack and twist with a sharp pop.

    For a moment, I saw glowing yellow lines race out along the ceiling. The whole pattern looked like a spiderweb, then it was gone.

    I pointed at where the lines had appeared with my right hand. The same one wrapped in silver and gold magical threads, like a twisted set of glowing brass knuckles.

    “Did you see that?” I asked, as I glanced back at Ki.

    He didn’t notice. Instead, he stared at my hand in pure horror.

    “I, uh, had to improvise?” I tried to explain with a pained expression.

    Ki pushed up into a painful crouch, face drawn, eyes wide.

    “Hell and high tides, that… that is magic, Tela. A really twisted spell around your hand. What did you do? Do you know how…”

    I scowled at my best friend in the world, then shoved a finger from that same magic wrapped hand in front of his face.

    “Not. Now. Less talkie, more escaping! Run for the stairs! You can lecture me later,” I snapped, then stood up and looked for the others.

    Across the room, the last two Crimson Company archers had started to make a slow retreat from the storm. Mikasi and Nicodemus found their way to the Automatic Crystal and the wounded elven mercenary. The rest of the few Crimson Company down here was half-conscious near the stairs.

    Blue lightning shot out from storm clouds and shattered cabinets with a touch. More of that strange spiderweb glow raced over the ceiling. This time, cracks were left behind.

    “Mikasi!” I shouted over the wild magic blasts.

    The inventor spun around while I motioned frantically with both hands toward the stairs out of this death trap.

    “Get everyone out! Now!”

    I frowned at the battered room, including its gray, mottled stone stairs that were the only safe way out. Nothing made sense anymore. Especially the wild storm.

    "All I did was punch the baron,” I complained under my breath. “It isn’t like I punched the room.”

    Then I saw it.

    I almost squatted down on the floor and screamed in frustration.

    Each time the lightning struck the floors, walls, or ceiling, a spiderweb of power raced out above the storm. In the center of that spiderweb was a thin thread of light drawn from the ceiling to where I had found the Automatic Crystal. That thread sputtered and sparked where it met the door that had concealed the dark device.

    It looked like a frayed tripwire made of light. The wild storm poured out from where that thread touched the ceiling.

    “Lady Deep and her Nine Misbegotten Children!” I yelled at the world while I rubbed my eyes underneath my goggles. “Why didn’t I see this?”

    Ki was on his feet but hadn’t run for the stairs like I told him to.

    “What?” he asked, out of breath.

    “Why are you still here? Run, you stubborn mule!” I snapped at him, then waved a hand at the frayed glowing thread. “There’s a tripwire!” I let out a ragged sigh. “I think I set it off when I cast this made up spell.”

    A thousand questions played across Ki’s face. He looked at where I pointed, puzzled. But instead of ask, he limped fast for the stairs out. Not far away, Mikasi had already shepherded the rest to the exit.

    I glanced at the thread of light, then at Ki. He couldn’t see it.

    “Mikasi! Do you see that?” I yelled over the storm and pointed at the thin, glowing thread.

    The inventor looked at where I pointed, shook his head and shrugged. Then he followed the others up the stairs.

    “They can’t see it,” I said, stunned. “By the Lady Deep, it’s my stupid eyes again. That has to be why I’m the only one who sees it.” A frustrated sigh ran out of me. “At least there aren’t poison darts, too.”

    Suddenly, the room shuddered hard enough that parts of the ceiling fell down with a hard thud. I flinched from the impact.

    Overhead and all around, the storm tore at the room. Ancient, polished stone from the ceiling melted like soft wax or crumbled to dust in patches. It was chaos. But now that I had an idea of what to look for, I saw a pattern to it all.

    Normal wild storms were a massive wave of wild magic mixed with a hurricane or other storm. Often they erased towns or even cities that didn’t get their Schutz field active in time.

    But this wasn’t a normal wild storm. Somehow, the Ancient Order had found a way to contain a wild storm. To stuff it into something, then use it as part of a trap.

    “That webbing. The wild storm is following the webbing,” I murmured as I broke into a run.

    Almost everyone had left this room and run upstairs, save for two. One of those I sort of felt responsible for. The other one could go to hell.

    “I can work with this!” I shouted to myself. “Follow the webbing! Stay in the gaps!”

    After a quick stop to snatch up a certain silver pendant, I raced off across the room toward Vargas. He was right where I last saw him. The man was still transformed from his curse into a furry, spider-like scorpion thing with anger issues. He was beat up, tore up, and bloody on his knees next to a ruined cabinet.

    I didn’t see the baron anywhere. That bothered me. But this was more important. That lunatic would have to wait his turn.

    Now that I knew what to look for to avoid the storms, I raced across the room as fast as my bruised body would allow. The instant the clouds flashed with power, the webbing appeared, and I stood in the gap between the lines.

    Wild magic and raw power slammed down around me in thick sheets. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. But, step by step, I made it through.

    Vargas climbed to his feet as I approached, then charged at me with a mad roar.

    “Damn it! We don’t have time for this!” I yelled at him while I avoided one of Vargas’ black claws.

    Vargas swiped first at my throat, then my face. I ducked down, twisted behind him, and swallowed a gasp of pain from my side. When he spun around to lash at me once more, I lunged forward and punched that amulet into his chest. His arms snapped down to claw my back through my shirt.

    Magic came to life when the amulet touched him. The result was immediate and disgusting.

    Vargas sagged like a overheated candle. Spidery arms melted down behind him into a gray goop that soaked into his back. The rest of him probably did the same. I didn’t want to look. So, I stared at the floor.

    Two seconds flew by then Vargas grabbed my arms with his own normal, boring, human hands. I glanced up from the floor to meet his eyes. He was still beat up, bloody and cut. But now he was confused, and human once more.

    “Tela?” he croaked at me. “What?”

    I shook my head. “Not now. Keep the amulet on this time. We’re getting out of here.”

    Vargas sputtered in a daze, while I pulled him to his feet. Then I guided him across the room, being mindful of the glowing spiderweb pattern. Our window of escape had narrowed quick. The storm had started to swallow the room whole and break it apart.

    Run, then stop, then run again. It was painfully slow.

    “We’ll never make it,” Vargas growled. The confusion had worn off, so his usual sour disposition returned. “Another one of your great big plans?”

    “I swear by the Lady Deep and the High Tides, I will punch your teeth in,” I snarled back while we limped toward the stairs and safety. “In case you overlooked it, this is a rescue, you pompous ass.”

    “Fine. We get out and life goes back to normal,” he growled in my ear.

    “Vargas, you and I haven’t seen, smelled, or tasted normal in years. Shut up and limp faster. I’m trying to save us both.”

    We made our three-legged foot limp across the storm-cracked room in record time. But we didn’t arrive alone.

    Vargas and I had just climbed onto the stone stairs when the baron lunged out of the shadows. The lich banged my head against the stone and latched onto my throat.

    I punched at his hands with my magic threads, but it didn’t do any good. The baron was a mess of tattered clothes and ruined body. His skin was a mottled mess caught in a constant, painful cycle of healing, then rotting back to putrid undead flesh. His eyes burned like bloody orbs of mystical hate that bored into mine. I could still see my ghosts while they ripped into him from behind. It seemed to make the baron more wild and unstable.

    “The Dark Device is mine!” Baron Marius hissed in my face like a fiend. “You are mine!”

    I flailed against him as the air squeezed out of me.

    “Let! Her! Go!” Vargas punctuated each word with a kick to the side of the baron’s head.

    The baron’s hands came free of my throat on the last kick. His head rolled to the left.

    I slapped his hands away with everything I had, then slammed the mess of magical threads around my knuckles into that lich’s throat. Every thought, my full intent and desire, shot through my mind. I wanted to end this evil creature right here and now.

    The magical threads snapped apart, then speared into the baron’s head through his jaw. I watched a bright flash burst to life in his eyes as the spell vanished from my hand.

    I heard whispers in my mind, and somehow I knew what I had hit the baron with.

    It was a mind storm. I had caused a mind storm like Ki had warned me about. Why? Intent. Dire warnings aside, I wanted to.

    With my free hand, I grabbed his ragged collar, then hissed in his undead ear.

    “The Crystal is not your toy,” I rasped at him, my throat raw. “I am not your toy!”

    The baron let out a soul-tearing shriek of pain.

    I screamed in rage, braced myself against the stone stairs, then kicked him with both feet in the chest.

    Baron Marius Apollinare slipped off the stone stairs and fell backwards into the teeth of the wild storm. Power lashed and twisted him like soft bread. All around us, the storm filled the room at last, then slammed down on the petrified wood like a hammer. The entire room, except the stone stairs, shattered into an avalanche of death aimed at the void below.

    Just then, a crack tried to split the stone stairs up the middle. Off balance, I slipped over the edge toward the waterfall of falling debris and nothingness. A hand shot out and grabbed my shoulder at the last moment. I grabbed back and tried not to scream.

    Vargas and I have disliked each other for some time. So much so, that we’ve tried to kill each other more than once. But right then, we clung desperately to each other while the last of the ancient room and the wild storm fell away to the dark void. We stared, wide-eyed, as it took with it a creature of twisted, real evil to the depths of Awldor.

    I scrambled back onto the last safe stone step with some help from Vargas. The moment I settled onto it, I shuddered. All the events of the past days, and even weeks, crashed in on me like a tidal wave.

    Slowly, I pulled my knees to my bruised chest, then softly cried.

    “It’s over,” I whispered between exhausted sobs.

    “Yes, it really is,” Vargas said with a soul-wrenched sigh. “You saved us. Even me.”

    I nodded and sobbed.

    Now, we could go home.

    All of us could finally go home.