18. Escape From Brumehold Prison, Part 3

Langstrom’s eyes darted back and forth as a magickal shroud filled the atrium, causing Rosalyn to quickly vanish in the expanding shadows. Soon, Langstrom himself was enveloped, and left stumbling in the dark. The only sound being his armour clanging against the floor. She’s making a run for the exit… Langstrom thought, gritting his teeth as he aimed his Cannonsword at the gate - or where he remembered it to be - and wildly fired cannonball after cannonball.

Rosalyn watched all of this, her vision piercing the umbral spell, from the corner of the atrium. Then, after outstretching her arms, something materialized in her hands: an ornate, violet longbow, made from pure magick.

Fountain Arrow

Spell Class: Inkantations (Advanced)

The caster conjures a spectral longbow decorated in the iconography of the Ink Wizards. From this weapon, the caster can summon and fire magick arrows resembling quills - where one of these hits, the caster can conjure a written message. The ink from the arrows, if it enters something’s bloodstream, is also quite poisonous. These arrows can also be psychically guided, and travel much further than non-magick projectiles, but conjuring one takes significant effort.

A spell based on Inkchanted Arrows, the Fountain Arrows are tools both for damage and utility, and one of the two main weapons in a travelling Wizard’s toolkit (along with an Inkchanted Blade). A skilled Wizard can fire a Fountain Arrow over entire fields or across a city, and conjure a message where it lands. But seeing as Ink Wizards are also beings of stealth, this particular weapon has been used many times to dispatch targets from long range.

Rosalyn pointed her ghostly bow at Langstrom’s head, trying to line up a shot into his eye without getting in the line of sight of his Cannonsword. With her current strength, she only had a minute before Cloud of Darkness wore off, and only one arrow. As she aimed, Langstrom began to spin around, firing cannonballs in every direction, barely missing her. “COME OUT WITCH!” he screamed, barely audible over the deafening blasts. No way she could get close to him now - range was the only way to take him down.

It’s just math Rosalyn. Make the shot.

THWIP.

At the exact right moment, when Langstrom was blindly facing Rosalyn with his cannon pointed out, Rosalyn let go of the magick string and released the quill-shaped arrow towards right eyehole in Langstrom’s metal helm. And then, as the darkness dissipated, she heard him scream. “AAAAHHHH!” Langstrom wept as he stumbled backwards, the inky tip of the arrow implanted in his retina. Blood, leaking onto his bronze shell.

Rosalyn’s spectral bow and quiver vanished into nothingness, but the arrow remained implanted in his eye. But rather than look on triumphantly as Langstrom writhed in pain, Rosalyn looked on in confusion. A shot like that should have pierced through his eye, lodged itself in his brain… how is he still standing?

Then, Langstrom gripped the feathery end of the arrow and yanked it from his skull with brutish fury. The tip was dripping with blood and ink - but Langstrom stood there smiling. “Ehehehe…” he laughed weakly, still panting like a dog but now with a triumphant grin. But it wasn’t until the helm on his head vanished that Rosalyn saw why.

His right eye was completely gouged out, allowing her to look into the man’s skull. But rather than see sinewy tissue or bundles of nerves behind his eye, she instead saw a metal plate.

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Fullmetal Jacket

Spell Class: Cannon Spell (Basic)

The caster covers their body in metal armour that resembles the cast-iron shell of a cannon. This armour can be instantly applied to the caster, or instantly disappeared, at any time. It can cover any exposed tissue - including tissue within open wounds, allowing the caster to reinforce any exposed organs or viscera. While the armour is powerful, it isn’t weightless. It requires immense strength to use efficiently, slowing and exhausting all but the strongest Cannon Knights.

In the early days of black powder magick, it was common for Knights to have their own weaponry turned against them, reducing many young recruits into chunks of charred meat. But the artificers behind the first artillery learned to harness not just the fire, but the metal of their creations, allowing Cannon Knights to armour themselves in the very iron and bronze that made their weapons. After all, if a cannon can withstand firing it’s shell, what better armour is there?

The instant the arrow pierced his eye, Langstrom was able to reinforce the inside of his skull in metal. Stopping the arrow in its tracks. Weakly, he pointed his Cannonsword at Rosalyn, who stood stunned and exhausted near the Brumehold Gate. “Found you.”

A Spidershot launched from his blade, wrapping Rosalyn in magick chains before she had the chance to move out of the way. She slammed to the floor, trapped in the net, with barely the strength left to struggle. “LET ME… LET ME GO!” Rosalyn shouted. “Please… please…” she continued, now starting to trail off.

“Do you want to know what I’m going to do once I kill you? It’s quite exciting.” Langstrom asked. “I’m going to kill the last of the Ghost Whales. And then, when the Mysticet fight back, I’ll finally have a reason to steamroll them. Finally, a city that can actually stand on its own, without being tied down by the weight of pagan whalefuckers.”

“Why? What’s the point of all this? Is it just about money? Do you want to rule this city?” Rosalyn spat as she continued to struggle.

“This isn’t about me, Rosalyn - it’s about a message to Blackwater. I was inspired by the first Cannon Knights, who constructed their own magick, and took arms against this miserable Ocean… to fight back.” Langstrom hissed, his blade pointed at Rosalyn as blood dripped down his face. “Fogport is going to be a city for people. For the constructions and inventions of mankind, not the pagan magick of the Ocean.”

Langstrom pressed the tip of his longsword to Rosalyn’s forehead. “Unfortunately, this means there’s no place for the Mysticet. Or, as a Wizard of the Ink, you.”

Rosalyn heard a slicing sound right as she shut her eyes. She heard blood spray onto the metal floor, and the sound of pained gasping… but it wasn’t her own. Carefully, she opened her eyes to see Langstrom, kneeling above her, with the tooth of a Ghost Whale implanted in his exposed throat. Gagging on his blood, before he fell to his knees.

Behind him, Deerin Azary was standing triumphantly, breathing heavily as he let go of the Whale Tooth. Rosalyn gasped excitedly, but as the tooth clattered to the floor, her excitement turned to horror.

Deerin was covered in blood - the chains on his hands and feet had erupted, just as he warned Rosalyn of, sending sharp ice crystals into his wrists and ankles. He was standing lopsided, with a sickly expression on his bloodless face. One of his feet had already fallen off, leaving a trail of blood, and the other was hanging on only by a few threads of tendon woven in with the icicles. His hands were the same story - one long gone, and the other close to it. He was breathing heavily, gasping for air as he stumbled backwards.

“Deerin?! Did you… did you warp here?” Rosalyn shouted as she tried to wrestle the chains off of her body.

Deerin didn’t answer. He was staring blankly into the distance, like he was already looking into the afterlife. Then, with one last moment of lucidity, he looked down at Langstrom’s body, smirked, and said two words:

“Worth it.”

And then, he fell to the ground. Dead.