Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 90: Ark

The mood quickly dampened, dipping even lower than it was before.

How am I able to read these people's emotions so well? I wondered absently. It wasn't just gaining a sense of their body language, emotions and such. It was as if I could taste their thoughts in the air. The pervading sense of doom tingled against my senses.

"The undead can still swarm us, true," I spoke up, feeling the depression in the air as a physical force. Our meager band was unraveling at the seams before our escape even started. "But we've planned for this, yeah? Just keep your eyes on the prize. Only a little more to go."

My words seemed to reach some of the men and women around me, but not nearly enough. We moved in covert silence after that, shuffling out onto the waterfront. The sand crunched under my boots, the moisture inside a strange contrast to the last time I'd trekked through the sand. The desert zone had been dry and extremely hot, yet here it was slightly cool with the scent of freshwater in the air.

I looked up at the Empire State Building, standing tall in the center of the lake. The testament of steel was a menacing final goal. Alandra's little sentry spell did point toward that island colossus, yet said nothing of which floor we'd need to reach to actually exit. Would we have to scour all one hundred and two floors?

My attention was drawn from the scene as Hraedel stepped forward. A wand was clutched tightly in his hands, and I felt the mana react as he began to focus on his spellforms. Jared stepped forward text, gently brushing Alandra's hand from his shoulder. Jameson, the quiet shield who had always solemnly stood by Hraedel, was last to stand in position.

As one, the three mages raised their weapons: a wand, a large shield, and a simple staff. Together, the mana fluctuated at their call. Slowly, ice began to spread out from the still water, creating slight ripples in the mirror-like surface.

I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. I turned about, expecting now to be the time when the shoe dropped. We were exposed on the beach of the lake, forced to wait for these mages to complete their spells. There was no better time for us to be attacked.

Jana shifted nearby, the only other shield on standby. Sevren rested his hand on his dagger, feeling the same sense of wariness. Darrin watched the slowly growing ice floe with a stony expression, as if glaring at it would make it grow faster.

Yet the seconds ticked by without interruption. Small waves coursed out from the center of the block of vaguely oval-shaped frozen water as it displaced the lake, casting strange distorted reflections of all the discomforted mages by the edge.

I licked my lips, my hand feathering across Oath's hilt. Something had to happen now. Yet I had to be missing something. The undead wouldn't simply let us escape, would they?

As the ice raft slowly extended its bulk deeper into the water, Jared's touch on the construct slowly began to form. Thick metal sheets slowly slipped into place along the sides, reinforcing the edges from any potential assault. The metal spread like water flowing over the side of a bowl, slowly encompassing every side.

"Something is wrong about this," Sevren whispered at my side. It was too quiet for anybody else to hear but me. I suspected he knew that. "The Relictombs won't just let us go. We're missing something. Something crucial."

"We can't account for every flaw in a plan," I said quietly, parroting something Karsien had once said. Granted, the advice felt a little stale, considering what had gone wrong in our assault on the Joans' distillery. "We'll take it as it comes. React as we need to."

It was the only advice I had to give. Very rarely had my designs ever gone well in this new world. First, my plans to slowly grow in strength were disrupted by the Joans. Then the Rat had stolen me into his crew. After that, my assault on the distillery had gone horribly awry.