The blow caught me directly in the solar plexus. I did not know how far I was thrown, but from the pain, I must have opened at least a few cracks in the stone wall. Something warm came to my mouth—blood. The blow was strong, strong enough to draw blood despite all my magical protections. It was to be expected. It had to be, coming from something immune to magic.
Crossing half the mountain had been simple. You moved the stone aside and compressed it, giving solidity to the walls. A little of the rock I returned to its place so that returning through there would be easy. My field told me which way to advance. Supposedly, bringing my beloved through these parts to meet the greatest mage of the Blood Elves was my original mission. Judging by the pictures, he seemed a bit older than the rest. Judging by the fact that the youngest was two hundred years old, it would not surprise me if he reached a millennium of life. The preparations were made, but the night before I left, I saw them implant more things into her. One of them left her unconscious. So in a coffin, I had to transport her. I think they thought I was an idiot, but years ago, I had learned to read advanced Elvish. The runes had destructive purposes—they protected and would release what my beloved contained inside. She had died, but upon reaching the continent, something would awaken.
My duty was to protect her. I had to transport her to the refuge. But when I saw this, I used my journey to carve runes of my own invention. The base was elven, but where the energy was stored was human. This script was gibberish to everyone, but for me, it worked. Just upon arrival, they activated. The entity was powerful, so I kept the magical field always recharging them, thus preventing the runes that would give her orders from activating—something horrible, from what I deciphered. Taking advantage of traveling alone, I hoped to ask the high mage to help me stop this madness. Being a wise man, he must know the risks of invoking something as dangerous as what traveled in the coffin.
Upon reaching the cavern that supposedly housed the magical installations of the being I sought, everything began to go wrong. First, the air—it smelled of poison, a terrible aroma, like sweet with putrid fish. Immediately, I began filtering the air, as when I was in the earth. It was an aura much used by my race. Humans learned to do it when pollution threatened their health from coal combustion in their cities. Ionized charges within my field attracted inside and repelled outside, so oxygen remained present while the field left a trail of all contained toxins. There were many. I had to increase the intensity of the effect until finally, at the field's extremes, a phosphorescent green substance began to drip. That was worrying. Whatever this environment held was more toxic than everything produced by an active city with very poor contingency plans.
As I advanced, I had to turn on a lux—a column of light that illuminated outward, making it harder for anyone to target me. But the mist was very intense. I could not see a radius of more than one or two meters of stone floor, cracked by the passage of time. It was necessary to clear the entire place—at least twenty meters in diameter. I could not work in this environment, nor would I see any threats at this rate. I began to expand my field—one meter, two, four. The place resisted more than expected, almost as if mocking my attempts. Yet I continued. I was forced to stop at ten meters. The amount of liquid dripping from the air purification told me this area was deadly to the point of no one being left alive to explain what happened here. With my field expanded, I saw several shelves full of rotted magical specimens. This was not good. Specimens of magical literature were preserved by quite respectable spells. It was easier to tear apart armor than to eliminate a high-ranking book. Something quite twisted had occurred here.
I continued for an hour or two. I knew there were places to the right and left to explore, but I was more concerned with finding the mage... Had something happened to him? Had the powers he worked with driven him mad? It was a possibility. Better to draw my weapon. The crafted metal blade gleamed from an enchantment that kept it sharp. Still, I made sure every night to prevent its edge from dulling. In the hilt, the battery gem—called that for its ability to retain magic and release it at its user's will—except I never released it. That gem was always charged to the maximum, with the purpose of charging the runes the sword bore on its flat side. Runes of primary power. I chose them to avoid the cumbersome laws of magic. They were powers that would not create bridges, portals, prisons, or anything of the sort. They were the five known magical elements, engraved with my magic. Nothing easy considering the effort, but seeing the results, I could only feel happy.
When my count reached five kilometers of travel, I found a group of eggs. They must be the male offspring of the civilization created by the elves. These nagas needed males to diversify their species, or they would replicate among themselves without changing knowledge or experience. Was it a late experiment to achieve immortality in elves? I doubted it. Most would not consent to anyone—absolutely anyone—changing their perfect genes. I prepared to collect them, but a noise made me turn without hesitation. The sword's spin was added to the wind rune. My weapon was a blur when it reached the impact point and became slow, heavy as if it were nothing more than metal. At the same time, a green mass emerged from the mist at a healthy fraction of a meteor's speed. The impact threw me. Neither my field nor my magic had warned me it was there. What in the hells?
I concentrated and cast a fairly harmless spell that would give me an idea of what I was facing. Ray was a disk of coherent light—they said it was a laser, but I doubted it had that destructive potential. As it was only a minuscule amount, it burned a little of what it touched and gave me locations like a crude radar, while signaling that I was not at the mercy of any bastard who saw me as easy prey. Yet I detected only bookshelves and in some places nothing, just hallways... Wait! Damn it! Another blow, this time from behind. But I was prepared. I prepared a dampening on the sword, which would reflect the damage back and add movement reduction through freezing. Yet the blow hit me fully. I barely managed to turn backward and turned my fall into a displacement of almost ten meters. Whatever was striking was very strong and seemed to disable all my magic. For the moment, I could not count on anything I had to attack them beyond my physical strength and my weapon, which was forged in mithril. It would have to be struck by a meteor to damage it. Yet I, with less, would be disarmed. I had to see my attackers!
The amount of energy I needed to heal was not much. I felt my stomach close and stop bleeding. I did the same with my ruptured spleen. I had no bone or nerve damage thanks to my armor, but the impact was deep. I breathed and, with disgust, noticed that my field filtered everything it could, yet the smell of death persisted. Not wanting to exhaust myself, I chose to create two fields. One would expel everything and continue filtering but would be limited to my body. The other would only throw out the heavy toxins that impeded my vision. That way, I could see my enemies. My visibility reduced as I contracted the first field, but it did not matter. Now I knew I could not trust magic, but I could trust my training. This body—struck by all the soldiers, warriors, and even heroes of the isle—knew how to sense a threat. I had relied too much on magic. It would not happen again. I pushed visibility beyond the first twenty, thirty, fifty meters. When I reached a hundred, my heart shrank. In the distance, without needing vision enhancements, I saw the sage. He still held a black book. His face had worn the same expression for years. In the center, hundreds of dwarven bones. And running toward me, at least six golems two meters tall, made from the stone of my sword—immune to magic, nullifying spells, and determined to kill me.