Ash. The Legends of the Nameless World. Progression Gamelit Story by Kirill Klevanski (essential reading .txt) 📗

“My... staff...” the mage breathed out.

“Yes, of course!”

Alice jumped up, frowned her thin brows, and said something. Her wind flew up like a swallow, and the spell holding the staff broke like a strained lute string. Ash stretched out his hand and in less than a moment felt a pleasant weight. His fingers gripped the warm wood. The Stumps stared with their mouths ajar as Ash underwent a metamorphosis. His eyes shone with a renewed light, and the circles under them seemed to disappear. The frostbitten blue was gone from his skin and replaced with a healthy shade of pink.

In less than a heartbeat, the mage was back on his feet, the usual mischievous smile back on his face. He grasped the staff tighter, flexed his fingers, cracked his neck, and bent over a couple of times to make sure that everything was working properly. Once he was done, he nodded with satisfaction.

“What... What was that?” Alice asked. She had never before seen something like that.

“A secret.” Ash smiled. He couldn’t let them know that a part of his soul was forever encased in the staff — the price of Firewood’s power.

While Alice was trying to persuade the mage to reveal his secret, Lari was digging through a pile of ice and snow. After a couple of moments of rummaging around, he pulled out a heart-shaped chunk of ice. It was so brilliantly red that it looked like a ruby.

“The fae’s heart!” Mary exclaimed, snatching the loot from her friend’s hands. “We’re gonna be rich!”

She wasn’t exaggerating. It was hard to even imagine how much such a thing could be sold for at an auction. Let alone how much any mage worth their salt would be willing to pay for such an artifact.

“The last hear went for almost thousand gold!” Her eyes shone with something between greed and pride.

“A thousand gold pieces!” Blackbeard exclaimed. “With all the taxes, one hundred and fifty gold per person.”

The Stumps fell silent. An experienced adventurer earned that much for two or three years of hard and very dangerous work.

Ash scratched the top of his head and looked around. He had expected the enchanted castle to shake and fall apart after the death of its owner, but it didn’t. The ice continued to glitter, and the shadows continued to dance. If you strained your ears, you could hear the screams of the fae’s slaves from somewhere deep within the ancient halls. Having lost their mistress, they were now prisoners of the wasteland.

The mage cleared his throat.

“What?” Mary asked.

“We can’t keep it.”

Silence.

“Are you out of your mind?!” Mary shouted.

“Don’t listen to him! He has lost his mind due to the torture!” Tul nodded.

“It costs a fortune!” Lari added.

“It’s too precious!” Alice joined in.

“He’s right,” Blackbeard said, combing his beloved beard. When everyone, including Ash, turned to look at him in bewilderment, he rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. “Look around. The place is still frozen. Whether we killed Anna’Bre or not won’t matter. When we return and report to Moron, do you know what he’ll hear? That we cowardly put an arrow in our enemy’s back!”

“What if we say that we just got lucky?” Lari suggested.

“Lucky and dishonorable.” Blackbeard grimaced. “Everyone will blow the story out of proportion and we’ll become known as cowards who won’t hesitate to stab their enemy in the back.”

“We don’t have to report anything,” Mary drawled thoughtfully.

“Do you really think that gold is more important than our reputation?!” Blackbeard exclaimed. He was getting rallied up. “How many squads can brag about having killed a fae? No one! Even guilds don’t have more than one or two demons mounted on their walls! We could!”

“But... But coin...” Tul mumbled, all sad.

“To hell with it!” Blackbeard snapped. “The king will give us three times more than that! Do you really think that we can carry this icy heart to the Fire Mountain? If it doesn’t melt there and curse us, then it’ll attract everyone and everything that can sense magic.”

Silence fell upon them and Ash could swear that he could hear the sound of cogs turning in everyone’s heads. Finally, Mary exhaled and unclenched her hand. The heart fell to the floor.

“You’re right,” she said. “If we tell them that we removed Graven’Dor’s curse, then it won’t matter that we stabbed Anna’Bre in the back.”

“As if no one ever played dirty in a fight,” Tul said.

Lari and Alice tried to seem cheerful despite tears that kept trying to swell up in their eyes.

“Esh.” Mary turned to the slightly shocked mage. He had never expected the Stumps to give up on so much coin. “Can you destroy it?”

“I’ll try.”

Having said that, he walked over to the heart and stood so that everyone could only see his back. Little did his companions know that his offer was less than noble. If a follower of magic absorbed something this powerful, like he did with Hu-Chin’s blue flame, then…

But before he could get down to destroying the heart, he had one more matter he needed to clear up.

“Why did you come back for me?”

“What do you mean why?” Lari grunted. “What else should you do when your friend is in trouble?”

The mage turned sharply. The Stumps smiled, warmly and sincerely. Even Mary. Even Lari.

“Hey, what’s on your face?” Alice asked quietly.

“Meltwater.”

Ash turned away and wiped a salty tear from his cheek. He then raised his staff and drove it into the heart. No one noticed the bottom flash with blue fire before the impact.

The Stumps covered their ears, trying to block the deafening ring that still managed to daze them even through their pressed palms. Icicles fell from the ceiling; the centuries-old ice cracked; and the zombies, finally at