Return to Jorgaldur Volume IV: Reunion

Destruction and purification

The specter watched attentively as the skeletons were being pulverized one by one. They had been his companions in hell for millennia, his hated prison companions. Although, without them, he would have been more lonely. The occasional skirmishes were one of the few diversions they had.

At some point, he had known who they had been when they were alive, but it was something he had already forgotten. The memories from the past were too painful, so he always got rid of them.

Sometimes, some would show up, which put him in a terrible mood. They were memories of something he had lost, and that he could never get back.

After the last skeleton appeared, the specter waited for them to recover, and set up their traps again. He was trying to suppress his urge to attack them.

"Isn't anything else coming?" Gjaki was surprised.

"My sister hasn't seen any. Maybe, it was the last one," Goldmi reported.

"What about the specter?" Eldi wondered out loud "Oh... Pay attention! He's coming! And very fast!"

The specter executed Spectral Path to rush towards them. Well, not exactly at them. He feared that he wouldn't be able to control himself, so he had cast that spell. It gave him great speed in exchange for being unable to alter the trajectory.

To everyone's surprise, he crashed to the bottom of the hole. It didn't raise dust, because he was incorporeal after all. Nonetheless, the traps did trigger, while the Icicles simply passed through him.

"Aaaaargh!! Die!" he tried to attack them from the hole.

However, he couldn't get out of it. A net that was in reality one of the walls of a Light Prison held him. He then released an Afterlife Beam, a beam-shaped mana attack with the power of death.

Eldi, whom it was aimed at, simply dodged it, after the attack had pierced the Light Prison. The specter tried to come out through the gap to attack them, but he found himself face to face with a Lightball. It pushed him to the bottom again. Unlike the arrows, which passed through him, the essence of the specter and that spell collided.

He regained his balance in the air, while blocking the spell and trying to repel it, but another Lightball joined in. At the same time, he felt Numbed by the vampiress' curse. She had discovered that this one in particular worked with the specters, and was useful to weaken them.

Likewise, she continually sent Clones to explode on him, and was hitting him with a light whip made by Goldmi.

Eldi then cast Ignite. He had been accumulating the power of the sun all day, for when he needed it. Otherwise, he would have thrown it on the pile of undead.

Powerful fire magic flooded the hole, melting even its walls.

"How hot..." Gjaki complained.

Goldmi, for her part, re-created the Light Prison to prevent his escape. They had verified that light and fire magic didn't interact, so they could cast one on top the other.

"Is he alive?" the elf wondered out loud, while her sister had moved in front of her, to protect her from whatever might happen.

A fluctuation in the Prison bars answered her question, and another, and another. The specter slammed his mana body against the light wall that trapped him, not caring about the damage it caused. Perhaps, he was precisely doing it because of the damage.

Goldmi summoned another Prison just before the first one gave way. At the same time, the fire magic began to dissipate, and the figure of their enemy appeared. He looked a little more transparent, but he was still powerful.

The elf created a Light Golem to confront him, which was more effective than she expected. The specter, who was out of control, was attacking anything that moved. He didn't stop until the Golem was consumed completely, which made him a little weaker.

Therefore, soon the hole was filled with Light Golems and Burning ones. The power of destruction and purification generated was much greater than that they had unleashed against any of the other undead, but it was still insufficient.

The high human and the elf retired to rest, at which point the vampiress took over. She tried Dark Golems and Blood Hounds. None of them were as effective as the spells of her companions, as darkness magic isn't a great threat to the undead. However, in the same way, the magic of the undead wasn't able to harm those creations easily.

She managed to keep him at bay, although he was regenerating little by little. It was when she thought to try Marabunta that the situation improved. The hundreds of small mana beings attacked the specter incessantly. They weren't doing much damage individually, but the sum was enough to counteract his regeneration.

At the speed that he finished off those little beings and Gjaki recovered her mana, they could have been facing each other for hours, locked in an endless battle.

However, Gjaki wasn't worried, she was just buying time. When her companions recovered their mana, the avalanche of Burning Golems and Light ones filled the hole again, overwhelming their enemy.

The specter was weakened by the previous battle, so he put up less resistance as he was being destroyed and purified. When they noticed that he was already very weak, Eldi unsummoned his Burning Golems, thus leaving Goldmi to finish purifying the specter.

Too weak to fight, he had regained control of himself. He smiled, although on his ethereal lips it was rather eerie.

"Thank you... Finally, I can rest..." they heard his words before he disappeared forever.

With him, his aura also vanished, and the undead gathered at the entrance began to advance.

The three looked at each other and nodded. They could leave, but they decided to stay and kill as many as they could.

Goldmi again cast Light Pillars one after another, while Eldi limited himself to Loan Mana, just like the elf's sisters. Gjaki kept them at bay with a Dark Prison at the entrance of the cave when the elf was resting, which was very effective in containing them.

When they left at nightfall, there were still undead in the valley, but they were much more spread out. There were no longer any higher beings to gather them, and a large number had been purified.