that’s going to make this harder. Here.”
I conjured a short baton of stone, and stuck a small flame to the end.
Dimmer than a normal torch, so hopefully the light wouldn’t carry too far.
There was a good chance no one would be standing watch anyway in this
storm.
I handed the makeshift light to Avilla. “That should be enough to find
our way. But stay close to me, it’ll go out if you get too far away.”
“How far is too far?” She asked nervously.
“Not sure. Maybe twenty or thirty paces?” I deactivated my weapon
and started slowly down the street, peering cautiously through the falling snow.
It was coming down pretty heavily, but my shield kept it from actually touching
me.
“Oh. That’s not so bad, then.”
I’d made Avilla a warmth cloak, and her borrowed dress was heavy
wool. But I couldn’t fight if I was carrying her, and letting her walk beside me
put her outside my shield. Would a lurking ungol notice that the snow was
touching her, and decide that was a good opportunity to attack? Or would they
see that I was still holding my weapon, and decide I was trying to lure them
into an ambush?
Great. Now I was playing mind games with demons.
I pulled Avilla into the lee of a building, and spent a few precious
moments throwing a shield around her. Yet another thing drawing on my mana
supply, and one solid blow would break the spell. But it made her look as
protected as I was.
She accepted the protection with a grateful smile. “Ah, thank you. The
way my cloak melts the snow I was starting to get wet there.”
“No problem. Now, let’s think about how to do this. There are guards
at the temple. They’re probably all indoors now, which means the doors and
windows will all be closed and barred.”
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Avilla frowned thoughtfully as we crept down the street. “They know
what I look like, so I can’t just go first and distract them. I’m still bursting with
that power you gave me, so I can work bit of direct magic. But the only sleep
spell I know is foiled by cold iron, and they’ll be wearing armor.”
“Hmm. Guess it’s up to me, then.”
I pressed on in silence for a few minutes, wracking my brain for
ideas. How would I tackle this if it were a quest in an RPG? One with no save
points or resurrections, and a killer GM. Oh, and there was no rulebook to
consult.
Something conservative, then. But still, something a bunch of feudal
quasi-Vikings wouldn’t think to prepare for.
By the time the temple came into view I had a few ideas, but the
layout ruled out some of them. It was a big stone building, a bit like a medieval
church only not as tall. Stone steps at the front led up to a pair of heavy
wooden doors carved with images I couldn’t quite make out in the darkness.
Along the sides were rows of high, narrow shutters that I assumed must cover
windows. I could see faint traces of magic clinging to the building, and
considerably more radiating from the ground it stood on.
Holy ground?
That could make this more complicated, depending on what it did.
Best to delay contact for as long as possible.
“Can you find her?” I asked Avilla.
“Yes, we have more than enough of a bond for that. But I’ll need a
minute, and depending on what wards the priest has they might react.”
“We can work with that.” I took Avilla’s shield down, and picked her
up.
“Hold on, and try to stay quiet,” I told her. “We’re going airborne.”
She gulped, and closed her eyes. “O-okay.”
I jumped.
I was getting better with force-boosted leaps. My first jump took us to
the roof of one of the three-story tenements facing the little plaza that held the
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temple. I didn’t linger on the windswept roof, not knowing if the wooden
shingles would hold our weight for any length of time.
My second jump took us across the plaza. The wind immediately
grabbed us and pushed, throwing me off course. I pushed back, squinting
through the blowing snow at the looming shape of our destination. Up, up,
rising above the steeply-sloped roof. There was no steeple, but a taller
structure that was probably a bell tower rose from the far end.
A hard push in that direction, and Avilla squeaked fearfully in my
arms. No doors or roof hatches that I could see, even as we closed the
distance. But the roof looked like slate, so it ought to hold our weight.
I landed us as gently as I could manage in the gusting wind, on a
sloped expanse of roof tiles just upslope of the bell tower. My shield expanded
at the last moment to cushion our landing, and nearly pitched us right off into
space. I held us in place with one last, frantic force push, and my feet settled to
touch the steep surface.
I dropped to my knees, and set Avilla down.
She opened her eyes, and plastered herself against the tiles.
“Eep! Where are we, Daniel?”
“The roof of the temple. Would they use the main chamber for this
kind of ritual?”
She visibly gathered her wits, and shook her head.
“No, he’ll have a ritual chamber. Behind the alter, or maybe in a
cellar. Probably a cellar, actually. I’ve never seen a temple to the Aesir
before, but Cerise told me they like to do their dark deeds underground.”
“Alright. One thing at a time, then.”
I reached into the roof tiles with my magic, and confirmed that they
still counted as Earth to my sorcery. Good. It took only a few seconds to shape
a section of tiles together into a solid mass, with handholds rising from the
outer surface for us both to hang onto.
That would keep us from getting blown off or falling through while I
did the rest.
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Raising a force dome over us to block out the snow and wind took a
little more effort, since I wanted to be sure it would last a good while after I
took my attention off of it. The roar of the wind faded as the barrier of magic
absorbed most of its force, and the snow no longer reached our patch of roof.
“I’m putting out your torch now,” I warned Avilla.
“What are we doing up here?” She asked.
“Attacking from an unexpected direction. Stay quiet, I’m going to cut a
hole in the roof and take a look at what we’re up against.”
I had to carefully brush away the snow that clung to the roof first,
since a puff of falling flakes might well draw attention. But after that it was
trivial to cut through the heavy tile and the wood beneath with a force blade,
and lift out a small section of the roof.
Below us a single long room ran most of the length of the building. A
few torches in brackets on the walls provided dim illumination, just enough to
pick out the major features of the room.
There were no pews, just a wide open space with a wooden floor. A
large statue stood at the end opposite the doors, depicting a bearded man with
an eyepatch holding a spear in one hand, with ravens sitting on his shoulders.
That would be Odin, I suppose.
At the statue’s feet stood an alter that was considerably less
ceremonial than the ones in Catholic churches. It was a slab of weathered stone
a bit longer than a man’s height, with a mass of runes and vaguely Celtic-
looking knotwork carved into its sides. But what grabbed my attention were the
gleaming manacles sitting atop neatly coiled lengths of chain at each corner.
Lovely. There really weren’t any good gods in this world, were