Right before Kevin, ten elves were hung to the dirt wall by chains tied at their wrists which had long since turned red with blood from struggling.. In the land of Armensia, combat elves and magical elves were separate races and regarded each other independent even though they looked alike. They were mostly different when it came to physique. Combat mages had more toned bodies because of their intense training while magical mages were less fit and generally looked like ordinary humans with pointed ears and less skin blemishes.
Among the ten elves at the wall were five mages and five combat elves. Three female witches and the rest all male. The team of mages that had been sent to seal the breach together with the rescue team that had been sent to find them. Kevin quickly got to work freeing them. He quickly found the keys that were placed in a magical barring cage that was probably meant to stop the mages from pulling them using magic. I got the keys from the cage and set about removing the chains binding them.
"Thank you," said one of them who was awake. Using magic this one mage awoke his fellow mages who all stood in a circle.
"How are you guys all able to move?" I asked them quite surprised they had that much energy.
"Elves can hibernate to save energy, but they need another elf to wake them," the one I had found awake spoke, "my name is Gryffin. My comrades entrusted me with the job of waking me when the time was right." Gryffin explained and his weakness in comparison to the others showed. The others were starting to heal up just as they stood up.
"You need to rest Gryffin," I started but was stopped almost immediately.
"No. I can manage," he insisted.
I turned my attention to the breach that had been the purpose of this cave's existence. "You guys can close that, right?" I asked looking at the spatial anomaly at the centre of the cave. They turned to the almost circular tear in the space of Armensia that was set in the centre of the cave. It looked similar to a portal, but less controlled and wilder. Portals were uniform and differed in colour and appearance depending on their purpose or caster. This breach was multi-coloured and wild. Magic came off it in uneven ripples. The breach belonged to no one and obeyed no one's rules.
"Just watch," a witch told me with a smirk on her face. I stepped back and watched as the five mages surrounded the breach and began chanting. One by one, a beam of white light came crushing down on them and their eyes glowed simultaneously. The breach began to ripple even faster. Its appearance becoming an even more disorganised mix of colours. The five mages shot magic straight into its centre. I could tell it was draining their magic. One by one they began to drop to their knees. I walked to the witch that had shown off about this and lay my hand upon her shoulder. She looked at me, her face clearly showing strain.
"Use my magic," I asked. She almost refused, but I stopped her. "That breach goes to my world. This affects me more than I care to admit. Draw upon my magic." She nodded and closed her eyes. I felt her make the connection to my hand. Magic started draining out of my body almost immediately and into the five mages. They all stood up and the beams of light that were striking the breach intensified.
The breach began shrinking at an exponential rate until it was nothing. The five mages collapsed on the ground breathing heavily. I was almost not fazed by this endeavour which didn't surprise me. The magic of a Siege was supposed to be that much, though something told me this breach had required more magic than needed to be closed.
"You all have to leave. We are not sure if Texan will be back here," I suggested and they nodded. They then began teleporting one by one until only one was left. It was the witch that had siphoned magic from me to the rest.
"Your magic," she began, "It's tremendous."
"I'm the Siege. Of course it is," I said but she denied it shaking her head. She was still tired from the spell they had just cast that moment.
"Even for the Siege. I can't explain it. It's different," she said. I approached and helped her up. She seemed even more drained than her comrades.
"Need help teleporting?" I asked though she refused.
"So you're Kevin Johnson, the Siege of this generation," she said as she finally caught her breath. I nodded. "My name is Kalifa, and I believe we shall meet again. I'm looking forward to our next meeting, Kevin Johnson," she said as she vanished. I walked out of the cave and took a deep breath of the forest air. I took one look at the part of the forest that had been covered in frost during our fight with Texan before I focused on the Artarak and allowed the dizzying forces of teleportation to take over. 'I hate teleporting.'
….............…
The Artarak wasn't exactly in the humble state that I had expected to find it in. The artras kept teleporting in and out to cross a location off the large map. Ciara had specified places that Ciara had marked out for them. They were moving so fast that he couldn't even get their attention.
"Master Kevin, we have a guest," Jeremy's voice sounded. I walked to the front door and opened it to see the most unexpected face at the moment. Jovenor, the man who had also accused Kevin of making up his story of seeing Texan. I immediately lost interest in the visitor.
"Oh, it's you. What do you want?" I asked sounding bored and leaning against the threshold glaring at him.
"No need to be rude, Siege. Besides, you don't really have experience being a leader," Jovenor said regarding his attitude.
"Whatever. What brings you here?" I asked again.
"The artras are being sighted all over Armensia. Popping up everywhere without offering much of an explanation. What is going on?" he asked.
"We are looking for Texan. He managed to escape before Jacob could kill him," I summarised.
"KILL HIM! ARE YOU CRAZY" the man screamed at me.
"Yeah, we said the same thing," I said massaging my ears. 'This old man has pipes.' "Just out of curiosity, what do we do with the Dark Seven when we clearly can't even contain them?" I asked him.
"That is a very advanced spell. The first artras are the only who almost pulled it off. It requires so much power that only the artras can pull it off. The Grand Spell of Ultimate Purification. It was fabricated for the sole purpose of separating the Dark Seven from the Great creatures they enslaved," he explained. "This is a matter that should be discussed with the Alpha herself."
"The alpha is not around right now. So I'm all you get to deal with," I said to him faking a smile. I then summoned the book that Mr. Bergstrom had given me and handed it to Jovenor. The mage began flipping through the contents of the book until he landed on a chant that occupied two whole pages of the book.
"The purification spell. It was designed by the first Siege himself. Also the main reason why the artras must be united. It is a spell so powerful that it can only be cast by all the artras at once. But they must all be united as one entity and cast the spell at once," he said. Something about the way he said all of this bothered me. The tone that he was using made everything sound very hard.
"Why do you make it sound very hard?" I asked.
The mage took a deep breath before answering my question, "Because it has never been done before," this revelation was so unsettling it caused my blood to go cold. "anyway tell your alpha that this is the last time the artras are pulling a stunt like this one." he concluded and with that he vanished right in front of me. I slowly dragged myself back to the lobby and patiently waited for the others to finish their scouting missions.
One by one, the artras came into the lobby and dropped onto the sofas completely exhausted. Ciara took the least time to recover and to be honest I didn't understand why they had to go through all that. If the dark mages could easily be sighted like that wouldn't someone report it or something. I was sure Ciara would have thought of that. Perhaps she was just trying to leave no stone unturned. Now here lay the rest of the artras, exhausted and all collapsed in sofas yet she only needed about ten minutes to catch her breath. If I didn't know any better, I would say they had been from a training drill. I used the time they spent to go through some pages of the spellbook or grimoire or whatever Bergstrom had given me.
It was mesmerising how diverse the magic in Armensia was. And for the exact same reason it had been bound by rules that protected it from evil. I came to learn that the beasts that the Seven Dark mages had absorbed were among the major keystones in Armensia's magic which made them impossible to defeat. Among the rules that protected Armensia from ruin was the rule of no murder with magic. This rule forbade the use of magic in any way to kill someone. Consequences involved the loss of memory, magic, sanity, paralysis or even death. Those weren't the worst punishments though. The worst was Eternal Damnation in the pit of punishment. The worst part about this was that it didn't allow the criminal to die. It was mostly scary because it was capable of putting someone through pain that would kill someone immediately and take them through it without letting them die. Like being stabbed through the heart or having your neck severed and staying alive to live through the pain.