Ghost Rage, Episode 23a – Vote Now!

You leap at Korthion, and are on him before he can bring a spell to bear upon you.

He might have warded himself against steel, but he failed to ward himself against flesh and bone, and you’ve practiced fighting with your hands for a long time now.

You drive a fist into his gut, staggering him, and the palm of your hand smashes into his face, breaking his nose. Your leg sweeps behind his knees, and Korthion falls hard to the floor, eyes wide with pain and surprise. You raise your foot, intending to crush his windpipe between your heel and the hard marble floor.

Korthion howls and thrusts his hand, and a blast of invisible forces seizes you and slams you into the wall. You try to kick away, but his will holds you fast, pinned in place. He staggers back to his feet, blood pouring from his broken nose, and grimaces as he makes a fist.

You gasp in pain as the invisible pressure holding you against the wall doubles, and then doubles again. You can feel your ribs start to creak and groan against the pressure. He’s going to crush you like a bug.

Then Lucan steps behind Korthion, holding one of the heavy wooden legs from the destroyed couch. He swings, and the leg connects with Kortion’s temple with a loud crunch.

Evidently Korthion neglected to ward himself against wood, as well.

The magus drops unconscious to the floor. The pressure holding you vanishes, and you slide off the wall, breathing hard. The green flames on Korthion’s bone wand wink out, and his undead go inert without the presence of his will to drive them.

To judge from the amount of blood and hair sticking to the couch leg, Korthion is not getting up any time soon. Maybe not at all.

“You know,” murmurs Lucan, helping you to regain your balance, “I believe I owe Father an apology. I always told him that furniture made from oak was an extravagance. Plainly I failed to consider its possibilities as a blunt weapon.”

You cough out a laugh. “Plainly.”

“The wand!”  You look up, see Rhazion kneeling at the edge of the steps, blood dripping from a half-dozen cuts on his face and arms. “The wand! Quickly, quickly, before the mavrokh breaks loose!”

You seize the ivory wand, dash up the stairs, Lucan at your heels, and thrust the wand into Rhazion’s shaking hand. Rhazion takes it, points it at the warding sigil and the boiling storm cloud of the mavrokh, and shouts another incantation.

Again you feel a roiling surge of arcane power, and the wand blazes with blue light. The mavrokh screams in fury, the sound making the mansion tremble. And then it simply vanishes, like water pouring down a drain, and the light in the warding sigil and the wand flickers out.

The echoes from the mavrokh’s enraged howl fade away a few moments later.

Rhazion slumps against the wall, shaking, and Amania hurries to his side.

“It’s over,” he says, his voice a rasp. “The mavrokh…it’s been banished.”

“Father, are you all right?” says Amania.

He manages to laugh a little. “I’ll be fine. I’m just…a little exhausted, that’s all.”

Exhausted…and defenseless.

He summoned a mavrokh. His mistakes killed Julian Trimogena and Chrysana’s maid, and might have killed more people, had Korthion not gotten you involved in this. He might do something worse in the future.

Unless you stop him.

Amania stares at you, her face gone white, as if she has realized what you are thinking. The magi murdered your father in front of you, years ago. Do you want to do the same thing to Amania?

Does Septimus Rhazion deserve to die for what he has done?
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