Portals of Infinity: Book Three: Of Temples and Trials

  Portals of Infinity

  Book Three

  Of Temples and Trials

  Published by John Van Stry

  Copyright 2014 John Van Stry

  Copyright John Van Stry 2014

  Cover Credits: eBook Launch (http://ebooklaunch.com/)

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form without expressed, written consent from the author.

  Any resemblance between characters in this story and people living or dead is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction created by the author and the author retains all rights to the material in this story.

  License Notes

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  P68389

  One

  (Riverhead – Hillshire)

  I crouched down low, turned, and signaled to Sergeant Chaucer who was following behind me. He then turned and signaled to the rest of his men further back. We were up in the hills about a two-day ride from Riverhead, some bandits had set up a camp here and from what I’d seen so far they weren’t just some small band. Duke Lias was of the belief that they were being funded by the Atolians to the south and had decided to mount a rather large expedition to wipe them out.

  As Aryanna still had not recruited a new Champion, Fel had loaned me to her for this little adventure. I wasn’t exactly crazy about it; I couldn’t go in my champion form, as it would lead to too many questions and cause too many problems. Though I suspect the Duke specifically ordering Captain Bersheres to make me a part of the forces and to follow any orders I gave probably already was doing some of that.

  Thankfully, only the Captain knew about that. Everyone here thought I was just along to help and I was more than happy to encourage that belief. But I’d still gotten some sidelong glances from Sergeant Chaucer, and as he was now my brother-in-law after finally marrying Darlene’s sister, dodging questions from him would be a lot more problematic. Especially after the Captain telling him to follow my orders, when we set off on this little reconnaissance-in-force.

  I motioned for Chaucer to join me as I readied my bow. He got his own out and I pointed to the two sentries. He nodded and we both nocked arrows, then I took the one on the right as he took the one on the left.

  “Show off,” I grumbled at him. He’d taken his sentry through the eye. I’d gone for the safer target of the heart.

  “Never seen a bandit camp with duel sentries before,” he whispered.

  “That’s because they’re really not bandits,” I whispered back.

  “That was what I meant Will,” he replied while smiling at me, “an’na suspect we’ll be seein’ a few more before we make the camp.”

  I nodded and we both continued on slower from this point, he signaled his men to stay here while we scouted ahead.

  “I notice the Captain seems to be rather interested in yer opinions a lot of late,” Sergeant Chaucer said softly as we slowly moved through the trees and the brush well off the trail.

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed,” I lied.

  “Course yer being here doing this, well that’s kinda out of the usual as well I’d say. Wouldn’t ye?”

  I stopped for a moment and checked our area, I didn’t see anybody, and then turned to look at Chaucer. What the hell did I tell him? That the King told the Duke to send me? I’m sure that would go over well. Yeah when we first met some three plus years ago, I’d just been a normal guy, well as normal as anyone who has the ability to travel the portals that link the all the different realities together can be.

  Of course, I’d already attracted the attention of the local Goddess, not that I’d known about that until almost a year later when I’d been hired by a God to lead his army and save his people. Not exactly willingly hired on of course, but the perks were nice so I wasn’t complaining.

  “The Duke wanted Aryanna’s Champion sent here to help with this. She is however unavailable. So they asked me if I’d help.”

  “You’re hardly a Champion Will, why would they be asking you?”

  I sighed, this really wasn’t the place for a conversation like this, but he was a good friend and I couldn’t afford to lose his trust right now.

  “You know I follow a different God than your Goddess, and that they’re allies, right?”

  He nodded to that.

  “Well when I first came here, I was looking to settle down and raise a family. Well my God had certain other ideas. I have certain skills now, which come from him, and all those times I’m not here? I’m off doing what he tells me to.

  “The Church doesn’t think these are bandits, the Duke doesn’t think these are bandits, hell I bet the King even knows about this and thinks the same thing. So I got loaned out.”

  I looked at him, it wasn’t exactly the truth, but it wasn’t really all that far from it.

  “Ye know Will; this is hardly the time and place to be telling of such tales.” Sergeant Chaucer said looking at me sideways.

  “You asked,” I grumbled at him. “Darlene’s already figured it out; I thought maybe you might have had a few suspicions yourself.”

  “If yer so important, why are you here?”

  “Because I love Darlene, so I spend what time I can here.” I motioned ahead, “I think they’re up just past that big oak.”

  He nodded a bit warily and we both moved forward again, without talking.

  Sure enough, there were another two sentries there; however these two weren’t paying as much attention as the first two. We took out both of them with our bows rather easily.

  We crawled up the last hundred yards and then looked over the small ridgeline into the camp. I figured there were about a hundred men in there; they seemed to be pretty well set up.

  “Okay, you go get the men, have them infiltrate up the hills with their bows like we all discussed. Remember that the Captain will bring the calvary in as soon as he hears fighting.” I told him softly.

  “And what will ye be doin’?” Sergeant Chaucer asked looking at me with a strange expression.

  “What I was told to. Now go, and be quick.”

  He looked at the camp, and then looked at me, “Yer wife will kill me if I bring you home dead.”

  “Then don’t. Now go,” and I used a cantrip to put a little force into my words.

  He went.

  As soon as he was out of sight I loosened the straps on the armor I was wearing and then shifted into my Champion form. It didn’t cover quite as much, now that I was almost a foot taller than before, but the gaps were the least of my worries.

  Moving around the camp slowly I looked for the command tent. I figured I had about fifteen minutes before Sergeant Chaucer made it up here with his men, and I wanted to do what I had to before they got here. The sun would be rising soon, things were already starting to get lighter outside, that wouldn’t be to my advantage either.

  It probably took me another five minutes to find the right tent, fortunately, there weren’t a lot of people about; most were still asleep so drawing my swords I just trotted down the hillside and into the camp.

  The moment I set foot across the small line of rocks laid carefully out around the command tent I felt it, the ground here had been sanctified by priests, and not Aryanna’s either. There were cleric’s here as both the King and the Duke had suspected.
Without a champion here to cancel that out that would have made this fight ten times more difficult. Whoever sent these people probably knew that Aryanna was without a champion right now and that Duke Lias didn’t have a thousand men to send.

  Someone inside the tent screamed suddenly, I guess I had tripped some sort of a ward, and everything slowed down for me as I cut an opening in the side of the tent with one of my swords and jumped inside.

  I attacked the two men nearest me immediately. One was a guard; the other was either a priest or a senior acolyte. Both were looking at the priestess by the altar who had screamed, apparently caught off guard by it, so neither one saw me as I ran them through with my swords.

  The priestess pointed at me and screamed ‘Attack him!’ and everyone else in the room did just that.

  I killed another two guards as they were drawing their swords, then I dodged left and started to slaughter the acolytes. There were at least a dozen of them, maybe more, and they just threw themselves at me, men and women both, trying to tie me up, or slow me down I guess, to make it easier for the guards to kill me. I’d never seen fanatics like this before and it bothered me that they would so easily throw their lives away.

  I felt something stab me in the side then and had to step back. Turning to face my new assailant I realized that one of the guards I had killed was back up on his feet, the priestess was chanting loudly, and I realized that I must not have killed him, so she was using a healing spell to get him back in the fight.

  That was going to make things a lot more difficult. At least no one here was moving at the enhanced speed that I was, so there weren’t any other champions here, just me. I paused briefly to use one of my own spells to heal the wound in my side as I looked down around my feet and saw that several of the acolytes were starting to move again.

  I swore under my breath, it was like a bad zombie movie from back home! I took off two of their heads before they could get up and reassessed my strategy. There were ten people in the room, between me and the priestess who was standing at some kind of an altar. I realized I needed to go for the priestess. I also got worried that there just might be a second or third priest around here as well.

  But at least the acolytes on the floor around me had all stopped twitching.

  Charging the line I took the heads off two of them almost immediately. I laid into them heavily then using my speed and strength advantages, severely wounded several more until I lost a sword in one who I had run through with it as they grabbed it and turned to the side tearing it from my grasp.

  Changing tactics again, I resorted to the claws on my right hand while hacking at the ones on my left with my remaining sword. I grabbed one by the head who got too close and threw him at the priestess who was taken completely by surprise as the body hit her. Several of the people I was fighting then collapsed as the spells keeping them alive stopped. I quickly ran around the altar and cleaved her head from her body, then grabbed the sword of the guard I had thrown there.

  There were about five remaining and they charged me then, so I kicked over the altar, sending lamps, candles, and braziers flying as I waded into them fast. Without the priestess’ spells keeping healthy and whole, they didn’t last long. As soon as I had killed them I started searching the tent, it had multiple rooms and I knew there had to be another cleric here somewhere.

  Sure enough, there was, and I saw him run out the back of the tent just as I entered the section he was in. Swearing I struck down the two guards who stopped to try and protect him, then chased after him and into complete chaos.

  The enemy’s forces were all awake, and they were all fighting. Most weren’t wearing much in the way of armor; a few however were wearing the full set. The Captain’s men had charged into camp on horseback at the sounds of the combat I had started, and were now laying into the enemy fighters with a vengeance. I could see Sergeant Chaucer’s men taking up stations in the hillsides with their bows and starting to look for targets.

  Swearing again, I shifted back and immediately tripped myself up as my now rather loose armor shifted and slid down around my legs. Even sped up as I was it took me a good minute or two to tighten the straps back down, especially as I still had to dodge quite a few blows as the enemy’s men started to realize I didn’t belong there.

  By the time I’d gotten back up and into the fight I could see where the other cleric was holed up. He had a ring of twenty or thirty men around him and was keeping them healed as they fought. But at least he wasn’t on sanctified ground anymore, so his power wasn’t limitless.

  Wading into the fray I attacked as hard as I could. The sooner he ran dry, the sooner we could end this thing and the less people on our side would die.

  It took a while, longer than I would have expected, but eventually we wore them down. A man who lost a limb couldn’t fight as well, even if healed. A man who lost his head couldn’t fight at all. Then the cleric faltered, obviously getting tired, and when he faltered a second time and his concentration was distracted, an arrow suddenly took him in the back of the head, followed quickly by two more.

  Five minutes after he went down, the fight ended.

  Finding a place to sit down I healed a few of my worst wounds and then looked around as they brought up the two clerics we’d brought with us and they started to heal our people. I could see there were quite a few dead of our own forces. This hadn’t been as easy as I’d hoped.

  Then again, I wasn’t Aryanna’s champion, so I couldn’t use my abilities to inspire our forces or demoralize theirs while we fought.

  “Will! What in the name of the Goddess were you thinking!” Sergeant Chaucer yelled as he stopped in front of me.

  “Nice shooting there Jon,” I said using his first name and motioning to the dead priest on the ground.

  “Don’t ye be trying to change the subject on me! You daft or something?”

  I sighed and looked up at him, “I’m tired, and I hurt. Save it for later, okay?”

  He grumbled at me and I stood up slowly. I still had more than a few good cuts and minor wounds, outside of my champion form my healing was very limited and I had used up all of what I had already.

  “Let me get you to a healer,” he said looking me up and down.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said wincing a little as I took a step. “Go tell the clerics that when the worst of them are healed to have one meet me over there at that burning tent.” I motioned towards the former command tent.

  “Why?”

  “They were building a temple here. We need to fix that.”

  Sergeant Chaucer gave me a surprised look, but went over to talk to the clerics as I hobbled over to the tent. There had been an oil lamp and a few candles on the altar, and I guess when I kicked the altar over one of them had started the fire.

  I stood there and watched for a while until the senior cleric came over to me.

  “Ach, that nae be good.” He said looking at the tent which was now burning rather merrily.

  “So what do we do about it?” I asked.

  “Was the altar made out of stone, or wood?” he asked.

  I thought about it a moment. “Wood.”

  “Not much to worry about then. As soon as it’s destroyed by the fire the sanctification will start to fade. They weren’t here long enough for anything permanent to be set up.”

  He reached over and touched me then, and the worst of my wounds healed, leaving me with only a few cuts and scratches.

  “You didn’t need to waste that on me,” I told him.

  “People will be asking less questions now that they’ve seen me heal ye. I know what ye are William. I must admit that I am impressed by my Goddesses’ allies.”

  I nodded and went to find my horse. Hopefully someone had brought it up. I really didn’t feel like walking anymore.

  “So Will, are ye going to tell me just what in the devil’s own name you were doing up there?”

  I leaned back in my chair. We were sitting around a table sharing a fe
w beers in the back of the White Swan.

  My Inn.

  When I’d left my home back in New York to come here, I’d figured I’d become a trader, make some gold, then spend the rest of my life in comfort as I explored this new realm I’d discovered. I’d bought the inn because I was worried about the mother of my child and I thought it would make a nice place to come home to.

  Just another of the many strange things that had happened to me in the last few years.

  “A priest on sanctified ground has unlimited power, they can channel all of the spells that their god has taught them rather easily. Anyone trying to go in there and kill them probably would have died; Priests have some very nasty spells they can use on people, not to mention they can heal wounds about as fast as you can cause them.”

  “And yer immune to this?”

  “I told you Jon, I have certain skills and powers that my God granted to me. It wasn’t easy, but I was able to sneak in there and kill one of them and drive the other one out.”

  “I’m finding this all sort of hard to believe.”

  I sighed, “Go ask the head priest down at the temple tomorrow. Or go now if you’re all that worried about it.”

  “So what do ye’ think they were doing?”

  I shrugged, “I’m not really up on the local politics, I’m not even sure who they are or what country they were from.”

  “Oh they were Atolian’s all right, recognized the armor and the crest on the tabard that their priest was wearin’.”

  “Think they’re planning a war?” I asked concerned, I didn’t want to have to worry about my wife Darlene’s safety, nor the safety of my children here.

  “Not so sure they were doing the will of the Atolian King up there William. Thinking more they might just be trying to spread their religion here.”

  “Oh?” I said surprised.

  “While Hillshire only worships Aryanna, I’ve heard it said that there is more than one faith in Atolian lands.”