Chương 94: The Sleeping City

The sounds of the fighting faded behind us as we made our way towards the city. The ridge soon blocked our view of the Salt Plains, but judging by the massive firestorm and the heat we felt even down here, Cyrus was starting to dish out some damage. We moved fast, hugging the coastline as it curved toward Tidemark's eastern walls. We used the same route Kara and I had taken when we snuck into the city to find Cathe. I wouldn't have said those were simpler times, but the scale definitely magnified since then.

The wall came into view after five minutes of fast-paced jogging. I switched the Emberwood Longbow for the Threadweaver and scanned the wall's top. There were no torches, no movement. Whatever guards Darius had stationed here were probably either watching the western side, where the army was, or inside the city, dealing with other matters.

"Same plan as last time?" Kara asked, eyeing the wall.

"Same plan." I aimed the Threadweaver at the top of the battlements.

"Silk Shot." The silk-threaded arrow arced upward and anchored against the stone with a familiar thunk.

"Kara first," I said.

"Hold on." She wrapped her arms around me, and we started ascending. The silk retracted, hauling us both up the wall in mere seconds. We jumped the battlements and tumbled over, landing on the walkway in an elegant fashion. The walls were empty, and the city below was dark. It wasn't the pleasant dark of nightfall in a pictorial medieval city, with lanterns glowing at every corner and tavern light spilling into the streets. It was suffocating. The lanterns were out, the streets silent.

The entire eastern quarter looked like someone had simply switched it off.

"God," Kara whispered.

"Look at that." I looked, and I immediately understood what Aldwin had described, but seeing it was something else entirely. Below us, in the narrow street that ran along the base of the wall, a guard was lying on the cobblestones. His spear had fallen beside him, his shield resting against his leg. He was breathing; I could see his chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. But his eyes were closed, and his body was completely limp, as if he'd dropped mid-watch. And he wasn't alone.

I counted four more people in that single street: a woman slumped in a doorway, a basket of fresh-looking bread spilled at her feet. Two men collapsed against a wall, one with a half-eaten apple still in his hand. A child curled on the steps of a house, her dog lying beside her, also asleep. Silk Shot's cooldown ticked down.

"The whole city is like this?" Kara asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Almost the whole city," I said.

"It happened at night, though. Most people would have been in their homes, in bed. These are just the ones who were still outside." The thought wasn't all that comforting. There were thousands of people, asleep in their homes, oblivious to the fact that their city had been seized around them. Families who went to bed under the rule of Count Vizgrad and would wake up, whenever they woke up, under the rule of Darius. If they woke up at all. The cooldown expired.

I leaned over the battlement and fired Silk Shot downward. The arrow anchored near the base, and Athos grabbed the line. I braced myself and hauled. He was heavier than Kara, the armor adding bulk, but he climbed efficiently, using footholds in the old stone to assist. He rolled over the lip and crouched beside us, breathing hard.

"That's an experience," he muttered, glancing down at the sleeping city. His expression changed immediately.

"What the hell?"

"The sleep spell," I said.

"Welcome to Tidemark." We descended into the old quarter through the same stairs that Kara and I had used before. The narrow streets were a maze of leaning timber buildings and unlit alleys, and navigating them in near-total darkness would have been impossible without Lune. I summoned her quietly, and her Foxfire cast a soft glow that illuminated just enough to move by without turning us into beacons. She padded ahead of us, her eyes scanning corners before we turned them, ears rotating at every sound. Smart girl.

Tidemark had always been alive. Even at night, the city hummed with tavern noise, guard patrols, sailors arguing, dogs barking. Now there was nothing. The patrols were thin. Two-man teams, mostly, moving through the main roads on predictable routes. Darius clearly didn't have the manpower to cover a city this size, not when most of his forces were concentrated around the castle, the gates, and the temple district. The old quarter was essentially unguarded.

We moved uphill through the craftsman's quarter, passing the bodies of sleeping artisans and civilians alike. We saw a blacksmith slumped across his anvil, his hammer still in his grip. Two apprentices curled on the workshop floor beside a forge that had gone cold. Went past a tavern with its door open, a dozen patrons collapsed across tables and benches, mugs of ale sitting untouched. It was the tavern that got to me the most. One second, these people were happy and safe, I thought. And then…

It happened mid-conversation, mid-drink, mid-laugh. These people had been enjoying their evening. All that was gone now. Athos paused at the tavern door, his jaw tight.

"This isn't right," he said quietly.

"No," I agreed.

"It isn't." We kept moving. As we climbed toward the upper tiers, the patrols grew denser. We heard voices around a corner and pressed into an alley, and I recalled Lune as well. Two soldiers walked past, their armor bearing the black avian sigil I'd seen on the banners from the ridge. One of them was talking.

"—can't keep this up forever. The mages are burning through whatever they're using to maintain the sleep. If it drops before the Count surrenders—""Then we kill the ones in the Church," the other said flatly.

"Those are the orders."

"Father Aldric? Elindra? Half the Count's Guard? You really think Darius wants to execute the most important people in the county?"

"What Darius wants doesn't matter. It's the robed ones calling the shots now. You've seen them. Whatever deal he made with those things…" The soldier's voice dropped.

"This isn't what I signed up for."

"Keep your voice down. If they hear you talking like that—" Their footsteps faded around the next corner. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I looked at Kara. She looked at Athos. Nobody spoke, but the same thought passed between all three of us: Aldwin had been right. Not all of Darius's soldiers were loyal. Some of them were scared. Good. That meant the Count's plan to minimize bloodshed wasn't just idealism.

The Temple district opened before us soon after. The Church Square was the largest open space in Tidemark's upper tiers, a broad plaza of white stone bordered by the Temple of Ravenloft on the north side and administrative buildings on the other three. On a normal day, it would have been a place of worship, commerce, and civic activity. Tonight, it was a prison.

We observed from the shadow of a building on the square's southern edge, hidden behind a stack of merchant crates that a merchant must have abandoned when the spell hit. Dark mages patrolled the perimeter of the square in pairs. I counted eight of them on the ground. Their faces were hidden, and their staves glowed with a faint purple light that left traces in the air behind them. Guards were posted at the temple entrance. Six soldiers, heavily armored, standing at attention before the massive doors.

The doors themselves were sealed by a spell of sorts that looked like dark vines spreading across the wooden surface. And in the center of the square, on a stone pedestal that looked like it had been placed there specifically for this purpose, sat the Dark Crystal. It was smaller than I'd expected; the size of a large cup, dark purple, almost black, sitting on a simple stone column about waist height. Now, I wasn't sure why it wasn't placed in a building or at least behind something, but I wasn't about to complain.

The crystal pulsed, like a twisted heart. I checked my combat interface. Sure enough, the continuous debuff was affecting me. Null field - all damage, except for Dark, is reduced by 100% We were inside a four-hundred-meter radius.

"There it is," I whispered.

"The crystal."

"It's tiny," Athos said, disbelief in his voice.

"Orion, that thing is… you're going to shoot that from four hundred meters?"

"Give or take," I said.

"I need a high enough vantage point, hopefully close to the four hundred meter mark."

"I know you're good, but—""No buts," Kara said with a serious expression.

"He'll do it." Athos froze for a moment, then nodded.

"I know." I was grateful for their encouragement. Kara studied the square, her eyes tracking the patrol patterns.

"The guards rotate every three minutes," she said.

"Six at the door at all times, the rest cycle in pairs around the perimeter. When the crystal shatters, the closest mages should be on the far side of the square. That could give Athos and me maybe ten seconds before they reach us."

"Plus eight seconds of disorientation from Abstract World Symphony," Athos added.

"There will be some overlap, so maybe fifteen seconds total. More than enough." Kara's voice was steady, but I could see her fingers tightening on the Lute of Abstraction's neck.

"We'll position ourselves in the alley east of the temple. Closest approach with the worst line of sight from the patrols."

"When the crystal breaks, you'll hear it," I said.

"That's your signal." Athos met my eyes.

"Don't miss."

"I won't." It was not a promise, nor bravado. Just the cold, hard truth. I watched Kara and Athos slip away into the darkness, moving low and quiet toward the eastern streets. Kara glanced back once, caught my eye, and smiled. Then they were gone. I needed elevation, sufficient distance, and clear line of sight. Tidemark had plenty of high towers to choose from, but only one met all of my requirements. The Mage Tower.

Elindra's tower rose from the eastern wing of the Count's palace like a needle against the sky, and it was the tallest structure in Tidemark after the Knight's Tower itself. Its peak overlooked the entire upper tier, including the Church Square. More importantly, it was south of the temple district, with no buildings obstructing the view. If I climbed high enough, I could position myself outside the nullification zone while maintaining a direct sightline to the crystal.

I circled through the back streets, avoiding two more patrols, until I reached the palace grounds. The castle was locked down, guards at every entrance, but Elindra's tower had its own exterior, a cylindrical structure of grey stone connected to the palace by an enclosed bridge at the third floor. The tower's surface was smooth compared to the walls outside. No convenient vines, no moss-covered handholds. But I had more than enough ways to get to where I wanted to go.

I studied the tower from the ground, plotting my route the way a rock climber reads a wall, and then I switched to the Threadweaver.

"Silk Shot." The arrow anchored above the first window, and I started flying. I wedged my feet into the window frame, pressed flat against the stone, and looked up. There was a decorative ledge within jumping distance if I had the right tools. I swapped to my Chausses of Dusk.

"Catapult Legs." The skill launched me upward, stone blurring past as I rocketed ten meters straight up. I caught the ledge with both hands, fingers scraping against the stonework, and hauled myself onto the narrow shelf. The wind was stronger here, tugging at my cloak, trying to pull me off the tower. I pressed my back against the wall and looked up. Six meters to an open window.

"Leap Attack." I fired the skill upward, launching myself at an angle along the tower's face, the shot releasing harmlessly into the sky. The jump carried me to my destination, where I grabbed the frame and swung my legs inside. The room was dark, filled with alchemical equipment and the smell of various reagents. One of Elindra's laboratories, maybe? From the window, I could see the balcony above me at an awkward angle. Maybe twenty meters.

It was too far to jump, there were no handholds, and it would have been hard to make with either Silk Shot or Catapult Legs. But through the balcony window, I could see the staircase inside the tower spiraling upward, and at the top of the visible section, I glanced at a patch of deep, dark shadow where the stairs turned a corner.

"Shadow Travel." The world blinked. One moment I was in the laboratory, the next I was standing on the upper staircase, a ghostly afterimage shimmering where I'd been. The six-minute cooldown started ticking, but it didn't matter. I was inside the tower now, with a clear path to the top. I took the remaining stairs two at a time, passing through floors of books, scrolls, and magical apparatus I couldn't begin to identify. The tower was empty. Elindra was in the temple with the rest of the prisoners.

The stairs ended at a trapdoor that opened onto an observation platform. I pushed it open, and the wind hit me immediately, cold and sharp, carrying the distant sounds of battle from the southern fields. I stepped out and looked south. The Salt Plains were visible from up here, lit by the glow of Abyssal rifts and the flash of skills.

I could see the battle still raging, though from this height it looked like a distant light show: flashes of fire, streaks of ice, the occasional eruption of dark energy from a collapsing rift. Even as I watched, another portal flickered and died. They were winning. I opened the party chat. Orion: We're inside. Kara and Athos are in position near the temple. I'm at Elindra's tower. Lothras's reply came seconds later. Lothras: Understood. Most portals are down. Signal when ready, and we'll start storming the gates.

I closed the chat and turned north. The Church Square was laid out before me like a map. The Temple of Ravenloft's spires. The dark mages circling the perimeter. The guards at the sealed doors. It was dark, but I could see them all. That Night Vision rune would come in handy now, though. And the crystal. A tiny dark point on its pedestal, pulsing with sickly purple light. I was roughly 450 meters away from it. The debuff was gone from my interface. I was outside the field.

I switched to the Emberwood Longbow, not because power was something I needed in this situation, but the cinder veins gave me a bit of a light source. The bow felt warm in my hands. Orion: Shooting in sixty seconds. Both Lothras and Kara sent a "Like" emoji through the party chat. I nocked an arrow and raised it toward the crystal, feeling the wind, judging the angle, the elevation, and a thousand other tiny variables that separated a miss from a hit. In the alley below the temple, Kara and Athos were waiting.

On the plains to the south, a thousand players fought under a darkening sky. In the temple, hundreds of prisoners sat behind sealed doors, waiting for a rescue that hinged entirely on what happened in the next few seconds. I drew a slow breath and let it settle. Let the world narrow to a single point of dark crystal against gray stone. I opened the party chat one last time. Orion: Firing in ten. I drew. The same motion I had made millions of times.

But this time, the distance was immeasurable, and the weight of me succeeding pressed onto me like the sky weighed down on Atlas in the old stories.

"Dead Calm."