The Silver Emperor

We ran downhill at a breakneck pace, and if you've ever done that in the woods at night, you know how the phrase got invented. There was no possibility of stealth, most of us needed light to travel, and there was no way we'd slow down. All of us had left friends behind to die before. Guilt sucks, but it's a hell of a motivator to try harder. Hannah ran up to the left of me, and I realized that maybe not everyone was feeling like I was. She looked more like she was having a comfortable jog, and she was wearing 50 pounds of steel plate on her body. Just as I was having that thought, a group of the ranger company dashed easily ahead of me, somehow keeping up with me changing directions on the go.

"Alex, do you have a plan?" Hannah said. "Sort of," I answered, breathing much more heavily than her, "I think I know how we can take on the witch. For the tactical details, I'll freeze time and think of it on the spot." "Better than nothing. You need to learn everybody's abilities. In the future," Hannah said. "I had that thought. Only I intended to learn just about the wizards," I said. "All the council should know about everyone. You and Artemis are the only ones with the stats to remember it," she said.

"Do you need to make us even more obvious by yapping?" Marcus ran up next to us and whispered harshly. "Can't be much more obvious than this. We'll just have to go in hard and fast, SWAT style," I said. "I know you don't know what you're talking about, SWAT style, my ass," he said. "Sure I do. Shock and awe, hit them before they know they're being hit," I said. "Fuck. It'll have to do," Marcus said.

"Incoming!" a scout ahead of us shouted and I instinctively threw up a wedge of invisible barriers to protect our vanguard as we came to a sudden halt.

I looked around, searching for any threat anywhere, but there was nothing I could see.

"What is it?" I shouted ahead. "I don't know, A-Dog, what were you shouting about?" one of the scouts said. "Wasn't me," A-Dog said. "What do you mean, I definitely heard it from your position," the original scout said. "Illusions!" I shouted so that everyone could hear.

"I'm right behind you," a cruel voice said inches from my neck. I froze time as quickly as I could. I learned then that my heart could still race viciously, even in frozen time. I couldn't move, of course. So I had to think. The first challenge had taught me over and over the value of a single moment. If there really was someone that close behind me, I had two options. I could turn around and cast a spell as quickly as I could, which would take only seconds, but that was more than I would likely have. Or I could run directly ahead. While my agility was only average and it would effectively leave me out of the fight for several seconds, I did have my Coward ability, that let me run twice as fast if there was something chasing me. I still didn't think that I could outrun whatever that was, but I had to start trusting my friends sooner or later.

I still had about half a minute to think. I scanned the edge of our vision among the trees and couldn't find anything else showing up on my HUD. It might have been because we were facing only one enemy, because all of the enemies were behind me, or because they had some sort of skill or ability that let them hide from my spell. I would assume the worst case scenario and turn around after ten or so steps to cast spells at any potential enemies behind us.

Time unfroze and I started sprinting, shouting Fus! and willing my spellbook to open to the page with the Dispel Magic spell on it. I wasn't immediately skewered by a spectral blade, so I kept running, and I heard Hannah draw her blade and felt a pulse of deathly cold emanate from her. The problem, predictably, came when I tried to turn around while running at what must have been 20 miles per hour. Which was a stupid thing to do. I had never been much of a runner in my old life, okay? I flew more than I fell, what felt like dozens of feet in the air as I was turning mid-flight. Hell, I had enough time to cast the dispelling spell at the shadowy figure facing Hannah. I had just enough time to think, wait, did that actually destroy it completely? Before I crashed into a tree with my shoulder, which went numb after a flash of intense pain, then turned and tumbled me into a graceless roll on the mossy ground, until I rolled into another tree, knocking the air out of my lungs.

The fancy new health bar displayed due to my HUD spell immediately went down to less than a quarter, and my left arm was completely immobile as I groaned and pushed myself up to sitting against the tree I'd crashed into.

"Spellcaster!" I shouted. Nothing else made sense. A creature wouldn't be destroyed in one casting of a dispel spell, not at the level we would be expected to face.

The Guild heard me, though many of them looked at me with a confused 'well what the fuck are we supposed to do about that' look. Hannah and most of my wizards, however, jumped right into action. Feeling was unfortunately coming back to my arm, and the pain was dizzying. But I'd fought through pain before. The arm was broken and useless, and would be until I could use my healing ability, so I came up with an idea.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I cast the Spectral Hand spell, and when the ghostly hand appeared, I overlaid it over my broken one. Finger to finger, palm to palm, I could move my left hand like a puppet. It would have to be good enough. When I pushed up against it I nearly passed out from pain. Why couldn't the willpower attribute actually reduce pain instead of simply making me strong enough to bear it? But it worked, and I pushed myself back up to standing. No time for anything fancy.

"Everyone with fire spells, get a fire going around us. Big old circle!" I shouted, even as I was mentally flipping the spellbook over to the greasefire spell of my own. As it turned out all three of the Birmingham wizards had fire spells, and a quarter of the forest surrounding us was in flames in an instant. I called grease and fire on the opposing quadrant that was nearest me, and soon enough, we were surrounded by a wall of flame in all directions. I swore, a memory of torturous burns from two days ago fresh in my mind, and returned to my tic of casting the flame resistance spell.

"Any break in the flames, fill it with all the attacks you have!" I called. That was a half of my plan. But there was another.

My ridiculous robe had two abilities, both of which worked together with fire. One let me boost my already pretty damn good stealth to what I assumed had to be near invisibility. The other boosted my social skills. All that was required for those effects was that there needed to be a flame between myself and the person I was hiding from or talking to.

The Guild was making a defensive circle formation near enough to the flames to not get burned but see any details of it, but since I didn't really feel the heat because of my resistance spell, I could get much closer than that. Then, surreptitiously, with the assumption that gamers don't look up, I started casting my most complex spell as I was slowly advancing around the firewall.

I cast the pseudoportal spell once.

"Your friends will betray you," a voice came from within the circle formation. Many of the Guild jumped and turned around, and at the same time, from above, the sound of screeching, monstrous voices came. But wait, hold on, I'd heard those voices somewhere before.

I looked through the portal and saw nothing but shadows. Wait, no, there was movement. Black robes at the very edge of my vision

And I remembered where I heard those screams before. The nazgul from the goddamned Jackson movies. The spellcaster was from Earth.

I cast the spell a second time, trying to intercept the fleeing adversary. I couldn't see him, but could hear an incantation, just a bit south of my position. Then one of the lower leveled fighters started screaming. "Fuck! Spiders! Get them off me!" he screamed, I looked over, and when I saw there were, in fact, no spiders, I kept triangulating.

I cast the pseudoportal spell three times, targeting areas on the other side of the firewall high up in the foliage. Then, finally I saw it. A humanoid figure, not very tall, standing near the fire, but clearly hesitant to approach it. He was waiting for another break in the flames to catch someone else in the line of sight of his spells. Well, he could have that chance.

Another reason I'd chosen the firewall method was that we already knew that the hag had powerful water magic, and would have likely revealed herself by dousing the flames. This definitely wasn't her. The proportions were much more normal and the clothes much more modern. I walked casually, stealthily towards where they were standing, flipped the spellbook over to my fastest attack spell- conjure icicle- and stepped through the flames.

Then I saw him. It was the Silver Emperor. The traitor. I couldn't take in any of his other features through the strange magic of the unique artifact, as it entirely subsumed his identity into the one constructed by the item. I only could recognize him as the Guild's traitor and the owner of the Silver Mask from House Alsarab. I took a deep breath and straightened myself out, and readied myself for one of my first wizarding duels.

The Silver Emperor raised his hand. Then he took a step back. Then his courage failed, and he jumped back away from me. He let out a squealing sound and yelped "Please, please no, I'm so sorry!" and then started running away from me. Which, as might be imagined, left me quite confused. I took an uncertain half-step to chase after him, but he cast a spell, which let him disappear from my HUD and into the darkness. Chum joined me.

"What the fuck was that about?" I said. Chum chortled. "Yeah, I figured that spell of mine would come in handy," he said. "What spell?" I said. To which Chum went back through the fire and reappeared a moment later, somehow dragging my pseudoportal with him. "Wait, those can do that?" I said. "I can do that, Boss. New ability for level nine. Congrats on your imminent spell upgrade, by the way. Now check it out," he said. He dragged the pseudoportal in front of me and through it I could see myself from the perspective of the other portal in the trees.

I stood there, covered in blood. My left hand was glowing with ghostly wisps of arcane power. In my right hand there was a staff of bloodied crystal. And around my head there was a hellfire halo with infernal runes glowing, painful to read. Hell, even my robe couldn't quite ruin the effect.

"What the hell did you cast on me?" I said. "Oh, it's just a cantrip. Looks pretty cool though, doesn't it?" Chum said. "Fuck it, if it works it works," I said, "You think he's still around?" "Probably. But if he's one of you and came at you with Illusory Assassins I wouldn't bet on him being able to do much. Not when you are all on the lookout," Chum said. "Let's get back to the group then," I said.

We walked through the fires of our creation back to the Guild and to the illusion of safety. When my friends saw me walk through the fire, I made sure to not look at their faces.

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