Chapter 6

Jack asked, "Hat, who was King Elric?"

I have no idea. He must have been from an era long before my creators were born.

Jack picked up the monster sword and asked for an identification.

That sword no longer has any magical properties. The magic vanished with the destruction of King Elric.

Jack grinned and said, "Easy come, easy go!" He dropped the sword and walked away. They explored the remainder of the cellar level and went down one more set of stairs. They had hardly stepped off the stairs when they were beset by a swarm of large bats. Sue went to work immediately blasting them out of the air with her exploding fire balls. Jack watched the battle and thought that there must be an easier way to do that job. A possible form of defense did occur to him, but he had sense enough not to bother Sue while she was actually engaged in a fight.

Jack was watching the progress of the fight when he suddenly felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck. He swatted the area and struck a large bat that was trying to take out a section of his neck. Jack was so strong that he killed the bat, and it fell at his feet with a mixture of his blood and its blood running from its mouth. Sue completed her fight shortly afterward and turned to face Jack.

When he came into her view, Sue screamed and immediately flung a healing spell at Jack. The spell took effect as he was about to topple over, but it cured him at once. Jack shook his head and asked what had happened. Sue said, "You were covered with a green aura. Didn't you see it?"

"No, the last thing I remember was a bat biting me on the back of my neck. Its bite must have been very poisonous to have gotten through the protective spell coming from your ring. Thank you for saving me."

"It was my pleasure," Sue said with a grin, immediately followed by a frown. "Those bats are a hell of a lot more dangerous than we realized. I've got to come up with a better way of fighting them."

Jack said, "I got an idea while I was watching you work. Can you create a fire wall that they can't get through? One that would go from floor to ceiling and wall to wall should block them."

"Yeah, and if I can get it to move toward them, it might drive them off and away from us. Let me talk it over with Hat. Maybe we can come up with something."

"OK, you better do that right now. I'll keep watch while you work."

Sue and Hat talked for what Jack thought was a very long time, but, in fact, it was only about 15-20 minutes. Sue turned to Jack and said, "I think that Hat and I have come up with a workable spell. Watch out as I give it a try. You won't be burned, but we may attract some unwelcome attention." She pointed her finger at a spot on the floor and commanded, "FIRE WALL!" An inferno sprang out of the floor and reached the ceiling. It stretched from wall to wall and remained in place. Sue pointed her finger at the wall of flame and commanded, "MOVE AWAY!" It started to move away from them at a slow walking speed. Anything combustible in its path was burned to a small pile of ashes. The fire burned for 90 seconds before it suddenly disappeared.

"SPECTACULAR!" cheered Jack, and Sue replied with nothing more than a simple "Thank you" and a proud grin. That fire wall should solve a lot of problems as long as they were in a confined space, though its usefulness might be limited in an open space. They both were anxious to see what the spell could do against more bats and Earth-bound creatures, such as skeletons and goat-men.

They continued their exploration of the cellar and found a portal location. They marked it in their memory and resumed their search for monsters. They looked in through a doorway and saw a large group of demons, but no overseer, and these demons were dressed in brown, instead of red. Neither one had time to speculate on the difference between this group of demons dressed in brown and the previous groups dressed in red. Whatever the difference might be, Sue barely had time to initiate her fire wall before the first demons reached them. Once the fire wall was established, she commanded it to move. There was a lot of yelling and screaming among the demons as they were consumed by the fire wall. Jack slew 3 of the demons who had been too close to them for the fire wall to destroy, but the spell was a roaring success. They picked up the gold that they found amid the ashes of the demons, and Jack congratulated Sue again on the success of her spell.

From then on, while they were on that particular level, Sue's fire wall spell was their main means of attack/defense. Its only drawback was that it destroyed absolutely everything that would burn. They were not able to recover potions or magical items after the fire wall had been used. After some discussion, they agreed that the spell was too good to monkey with; they would just live with the consequences.

The fire wall worked so well that it did not take very long for them to clear this level. They decided that they deserved a break, so they used the portal to jump back to the surface so that they could drop by the inn for a beer. By the time they got to the inn, the tavern section was full of late-afternoon customers, and they all wanted to hear of the couple's adventures below the church. Jack and Sue told their story and were treated to beer and supper by the grateful townsfolk. They spent some more time in the tavern socializing with the other customers before retiring to bed for a romp before sleeping. This adventure of clearing the cellars below the church had certainly become a lot of fun in a lot of different ways.

The next morning, they returned to the vestry and the portal. A jump to the cellar they had left the day before put them in position to continue their war against the undead and other monsters. They had no idea how much farther they had to go before they found the root of the trouble; none of the people they had talked to so far had any notion of how many levels there might be to the cellars.

This level was still clear of monsters, so they found the stairs and went down one more level. The nature of this level was more primitive in appearance than the previous one. The walls of the various rooms were made of unfinished stone blocks, and the floor and ceiling were of raw limestone, laid down as nature had dictated. The first batch of monsters they encountered was a gang of goat-men who were not afraid of the fire wall. The goat-men acted as if they were completely immune to the effects of fire or cold, so Sue had to resort to lightning balls. These did the job, but were harder to use than the exploding fire balls or the moving wall of fire.

Sue had to work quickly to get off enough lightning balls to make a significant difference, and most of the goat-men were actually destroyed by Jack's battle ax. Not only did Sue hurl lightning balls at the goat-men, but she also had to provide boosts to Jack's stamina. Swinging that battle ax non-stop was damned tiring!

Fortunately, the fire wall still worked against skeletons, zombies, bats, and demons. Sue was kept busy destroying rank upon rank of attacking monsters; where were they all coming from? The two heroes found the answer to that question on the next level. They had covered about half of this level when they came upon a room holding a group of evil wizards. The room had a large open doorway, reminiscent of a barn door, and skeletons, zombies, and demons poured through this doorway as fast as Sue's fire wall could kill them.

Jack noticed that there was a second, regular doorway at the other side of the room, and he could see a way to go around the outside of the wizard's room to reach it. He told Sue where he was going and slipped around to this door.

Jack stepped through the door and was greeted by an astounding sight. The wizards were making magical gestures and saying magical phrases, causing the skeletons, zombies, and demons to rise from the ground and charge at Sue. There were six wizards, and none of them were carrying conventional weapons, so Jack switched to a two-handed sword, a claymore, with augmented striking force and a magical ability to freeze anyone struck, but not killed, by the sword for about 10 seconds, giving time for a second blow.