Virgil sank to his knees in the corner of the room while the rest of his party fought the Warden. He was nestled between an iron maiden and a rack of thumbscrews. Not a comfortable place to be, but how long had it been since he had known comfort?
The truth was, Virgil’s first memory was of waking up in the prison cell, begging James for water. Before that… who was he? What had he done? How had he ended up in such a godsforsaken place?
Your turn!
Virgil hugged his knees to his chest. He’d watched Inara and Desiree fail to land a blow, and he’d seen James manage to make the first hit with an axe that looked, to Virgil’s eyes, to be shrouded in a black cloud of infernal energy.
Even they were struggling, and they were far more adept at fighting than he was. Even with his health fully restored, Virgil was thin, his muscles weakened by his imprisonment, however long that had been. His class, too, was no good for fighting.
Virgil pulled up his status sheet.
Name: Virgil
Race: Human
Class: Scholar
Level: 65
HP: 375/375
MP: 1,140/1,200
EXP: 427,391/739,000
Stat Points Available: 0
STR: 120
AGI: 95
INT: 65
WIS: 25
CON: 20
Skill Points Available: 2
Skills: Silence 5, Lexigraph 2, Recall 3, Quiet Study 4, Dissertation 1, Scriptbind 2, Cite Source 2, Counter-Theory 1, Field Notes 1, Thesis: Forgotten Magic 2, Whispers of Malphas, Black Script, Hellflame Bolt, Seal of the First Sin, Summon & Bind: Infernal Pact
Infernal Affinity: 35
He was a scholar. That was the part he tried to focus on. Not an infernal scholar, no matter what his affinity was or what those last few skills might say about him. He was a scholar. He wasn’t a bad person. He didn’t deserve to be locked up. He wasn’t… whatever the Warden had been trying to say he was.
Enemy turn!
The Warden broke free of his System-induced paralysis and took a swing at James, easily catching him with an uppercut and sending him sprawling. Without the weight of that infernal axe, the Hero may have gone further. As it was, he narrowly missed the edge of a bandsaw.
The Warden roared. The infernal stripe across his body flared brightly, and his health creeped back up to full, wiping out what small amount of damage James had been able to inflict.
Virgil watched it all, helpless. The only skills he had which were worthwhile in a fight were the infernal ones. Those skills frightened him. It felt as if they belonged to another man, someone who turned away from scholarship and allowed himself to become something else.
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Not him. It wasn’t him, it was someone else. They were someone else’s skills.
Inara didn’t repeat her normal scythe attack. She’d learned from James’s partial success and realized that the only way to harm the Warden was with his own weapons. And she hadn’t been idle. During everyone else’s turn she had been planning her next move, scanning the room for what she could use to deal the most damage.
Inara ran away from the Warden. She raced to the wall and slid her blade across a rope that stretched from floor to ceiling. The Warden’s office was so packed full of torture equipment that the twisted man had run out of space. He’d had to get creative, and he had put together additional storage on the ceiling. Racks of weapons lined the ceiling, and when Inara cut that rope, one such rack spilled open, sending swords and axes raining down atop the Warden.
Not all of them landed, but each one that did rained a heavy blow. The successive attacks added up, altogether knocking out a sizable chunk of his health.
I could have done that, Virgil thought. He squashed the thought immediately — or, he tried. It stubbornly prevailed. Cutting a rope on the wall wasn’t combat, not really. The important thing was to cut the right rope. It didn’t even have to be cut, really, Inara had overlooked the little lever at the bottom which would open it naturally.
Really, it was a poor design. As far as Virgil could tell, there wasn’t a safe way to get those weapons down at all. And was that— was that a tube of molten lava, with another such lever just waiting to be pulled? What kind of madman was this warden? Was he more obsessed with having an insane collection of deadly instruments than about functionality?
Perhaps it made sense, then, that most of the devices in the room were in various states of disrepair. The Warden probably considered himself a craftsman. Why throw the machine away, when it could be fixed? With that in mind, the office did take on the look of a workshop, albeit a mad one.
Virgil tucked further into his corner. Yes, he could have been the one to slice the rope. That was well within his capabilities. But look, Inara had figured it out on her own. They hardly needed him.
Desiree took a swing at the Warden.
Virgil shut his eyes. Okay, the girl hadn’t figured it out. And they weren’t able to talk to each other because of his damned Silence spell, which would last another two minutes.
Was Inara’s suspicion justified? He doubted himself, not for the first time since the group had rescued him from his cell. He hadn’t even known he was in a dungeon until he’d heard Desiree say so. It had been a simple white lie that he was exploring the dungeon— or no, not a lie, merely an educated guess. What else would a scholar be doing in such a place? It made sense.
James scrambled to his feet. He tried to lift the axe— failed. Tried again— failed. A third time— success, although he was dragging it by the handle more than carrying it. By the time he reached the Warden, his turn was over.
Shoot. That meant the last one to attack was Desiree, which would make the little girl the target.
Was Virgil really weaker than a child? Could he live with himself if he allowed her to stand between him and a fate which, for all he could remember, might rightfully be his?
Your turn!
He swallowed hard. He knew, deeper than he knew anything else, that the use of infernal magic would change him. It would open a path between him and the realm, and in doing so tie them together.
The alternative was to watch Desiree die. Oh, maybe not immediately. She might last another turn or two, but James and Inara were not dealing enough damage to end things quickly. It was only a matter of time.
Virgil’s own time to act was running out. He shakily rose to his feet. He pointed at the Warden. “Hellfire B—”
Enemy turn!
