Maribor, Triss and Ruins (Part 10)

"Triss! It will never end! All necrophages here are using some source of power deeper within the ruins and it seems to be a living creature." - Alan ran up to her and stood with witchers, unsheathing his new silver sword.

"You got yourself a nice sword there, kiddo." - noted Coen, while cutting a limb from a ghoul.

"I figured as much, Alan." - answered Triss with a somewhat pale face, smeared with traces of exhaustion. Still, as the one who survived battle of Sodden Hill she is not even close to be going down. Right now she considered her own circumstances as typical for a war mage. Constant thirst for mana and slight lightheaded condition due to tiredness were just regular occasions. - "It is there, right behind the door. And it is scary."

"Do you know what it is?" - Alan went to her side and turned to the ghouls that were attacking the witchers, who stood the ground.

This huge room was divided into two by a collapsed wall and ceiling, having only a narrow passage between the parts of the hall. Coen and Lambert, already wounded but still relentless, acted like a water shed in front of waves of ghouls and never let them come in.

Draugar was wrecking havoc behind the lines, however with great cooperation among knights it was confined for now. Not like they are able to kill it anyway.

Triss shook her head as a form of answer and misstepped, she was really very tired. Alan caught her by the hand and sorceress nearly went limp for some reason opening her eyes wide with red face.

'My god! He is something else! This feeling is on completely different level to even Eskell, let alone Geralt.'

Witchers have that unique trait in them... their touch is very pleasant to female mages, some kind of resonance with mutations and their innate power to use signs even without magic source. Each physical contact with a witcher will create pleasant tingling feeling and slight warmth.

Generally it is very... arousing.

And Triss was always a bit weak for it even with Geralt, who is not the strongest witcher in terms of magic potential.

Let alone Alan.

His aura already brought slight positive changes with calmness and soothing ambiance, but the touch nearly made Triss loose it for a moment.

She hurriedly broke their connection and stepped away under incredulous gaze of the boy, who seems to not understands what is going on with the sorceress in front of him. Moment later both threw what happened to the back of their minds.

"I'm pretty sure it is some artifact..." - she said with uncertainty clearly going against her words within her mind.

"And I'm pretty sure it is an entity we shan't disturb, Triss!" - retorted Alan.

They glared at each other and finally sorceress looked around, sighing with tiredness.

"You win. I don't think we can even try to control what is inside there, but I can see that it expenditure of mana is tremendous. It is feeding all these necrophages and regenerates them every second. Perhaps this is a reason why Vincent wrote not to kill them, but only wound."

"Think we can weaken it?"

"We can, just catch that giant and cut it in pieces repeatedly. Whatever is sealed inside doesn't seem to be in control of how this place uses it's mana." - said Triss.

Alan suddenly turned around and made a cutting motion with his hand. His face went pale as paper, but the spell, easy the most destructive single target variations in his arsenal, did it's job.

It went like a soundless space ripple as fast as a flash of turquoise light that was birthed through it's nature. Traversing the room and breaking the air above the heads of knights, it cut through the draugar like it was just another volume of air, severing it's legs by the waist and going further, leaving a deep gash on the wall, nearly causing another landslide.

"Kick it's legs away!" - after brief astonishment due to sudden help old knight resumed his orders. - "Pin it down, chop its limbs off, don't kill!"

Durstack knew full well that they can't end it for good, but never understood why. However it was not his turn to stick his head out and implant it into muddy sorceress business. Is he an idiot to offer his neck for a chopping blade of magic and intrigue?

Well, he was an old noble with enough brain to be level headed and knew when to take initiative and when to turn around and raise his behind to be owned silently.

Obviously he opted to do the later when it comes to Triss Merigold and all that magic mayhem going on.

Still, their swords were to undeserving of the task and just stuck in iron like flesh of the magically reinforced monster. Thick dark mist, swirling inside it's wounds didn't give them much of a choice to wound it.

Alan seeing this, sped forward like an agile cat, maneuvering between the lines and, in whirlwind motion, performed a vertical chop with Dearg Aeann. A silver blade, reinforced with runes and his magic power, went down, severing huge arm of roaring creature.

He sent it flying with space ram spell and shifted back on the wake of turquoise light and lightning, making Triss at the back, who was observing him open her eyes wide with shock. That was not a spell or conventional magic, it seems he directly used his body to pierce space and traverse distance instantaneously.

'He acts like one of the origin witchers of ancient times, who were battle mages with special bloodlines to train their bodies and close combat expertise.'

It was her conjecture that let her believe that she is witnessing a birth of the legend of old. While she was marveling the theoretical part of his gifts, Triss saw another arm flew far away being flung with the force of the same origin as his movements.

'Turquoise magic energy spectrum... it is really a spectrum of space. Amazing.'

A torrent of dark mana engulfed draugar, giving him power to regenerate and the visible rate, but knights, albeit mostly useless against the foe, still were able to keep it from healing.

"This is my first time seeing a battle with such a strong enemy becoming something similar to woodcutter laborious job." - commented Lambert from the distance.

"Then who are you? A butcher?" - snorted Coen, who gradually becoming tired. One can think that the situation has stabilized or even went to their favor but the truth is... they are standing at their deaths door. The moment people start to fall from exhaustion is the moment all of them will die one by one.

"We need to solve the root." - said Alan to Triss, who nodded grimly.

"Alan, I have no idea what to do. Creature inside seemed to be sentient but confined with a special draining spell. And origin of it's power is death itself..." - Tris said with a sigh, but deep within she was ready to fight to the end. Her previous self, weak and open to outside influence, died on Sodden Hill.

Triss now is a true warrior in skirt... well, pants... looking very tight and sexy on her at that.

Alan furrowed his brows and went overdrive with his memory of all things he had ever acquired or known that might be of help. And suddenly he had an idea.

"Triss, you said it is sentient?"

"Obviously, it tried to coerce me to release it." - she nodded.

"And you said it's an artifact..." - gave Alan his five orens with a reproaching glance, which made Triss shift her eyes to the side and sigh.

"That... I shouldn't have done." - she said quickly, admitting her mistake.

"Whatever. We might have a chance, but I need to get close to it. - he said.

"Kid, no chance!" - screamed Coen while pushing a ghoul away. - "Unless you let us let lose."

"Yeah. We can give you a way through, if we do it lethal way." - added Lambert clearly very unearthed with the fact that he was able to find ghouls who are like a goddamn saviors of the world and very, very needed to be alive. That really made him look at the world from another perspective.

If even ghouls and draugars are needed, what the hell about others?

"So you have only one chance... It is a fucking gamble, ya know, right?" - screamed old knight from the back. - "Perhaps it is better for all of us to die here?"

"Oh, please, spare me with this sacrificial shit, cretin. I say we fight it out. We are witchers and destroying all this grave wankers is our job." - cursed Lambert back.

"Lambert, Coen, make way. If it is sentient I'm fairly certain we can make it shut it and be docile." - finally said Alan.

"It is sentient, I vouch for it." - firmly said Triss, readying a spell. - "Get down. Finally I can let lose. They smell bad, they ruined my blouse and ruffled my hair. Now they got to know what it means to step on the wrong side of a woman."

With that long speech that went in sync with fast movements of her hands, she created a huge fireball above her head. It was scorching hot, sending around waves of incinerating flames and revolving around its axis with breakneck speed.

Alan looked at miniature sun, that trembled with tremendous amounts of energy, covering the whole ceiling with slight dread. What boy with his pathetic fiend fire barely enough to only lit a cigarette? What Dumbledore and his little fire storm to roast some half cooked barbecue?

Now this portable fusion reactor in skirt is the real deal.

And then she did it.

A huge fireball traversed space in a blink of an eye, leaving only ashes and vacuum behind. Vacuum that collapsed in a huge thunderous shockwaves that sent everything near, that is not burned to ashes, crash into walls. Like unstoppable force of destruction, spell went further, melting and evaporating everything up to the very corner of huge space. No stone walls, no doors or turns of corridors were of any mind to this miniature sun.

It went straight like a spear, leaving none and nothing on its way, only tunnel of melting stone and ashes, smoldering with high temperature, while basking ambiance into all shades of red.

Old knight looked at that and tried several times to holster his sword, missing the sheath with dumb look on his face.

"Lambert..." - Coen said slowly. - "I don't know about other things, but man you got balls of steel to piss her off."

Lambert picked up his chin and looked at Triss, who by chance directed her gaze at the duo witchers at the front. She straightened herself and gave them a smug smile, under which they shivered.

But that little merry time ended as soon as it started with the wave of magic they never thought possible to exist. Wave that went at them like a storm, but it was just an appetizer to what went out of the darkness and made it's way at them with cracking noise of tempest like mana accompanying it.

"Oh... god..." - Triss went pale with fear immediately, as she recognized with no mistake what That is.