Chapter 50: Chapter 50 – Making My Escape

With a burst of divine power, I shattered the handcuffs around my wrists and took off running. As I skidded around corner after corner as fast as I could go, I almost fell over a couple of times. That’s just how fast I was going. In a matter of seconds, I found my way to the stairs that descended to the first floor. 

On either side of the stairs were several suits of armour that were in fact cleverly hidden golems. As soon as I found one, I put my hand on it and inserted a small strand of divine power so that it would recognise its master. Since all the golems were connected to each other and the defensive wards were set up around the estate, any command given to one of them was given to all of them.

As such, it was time for drastic measures. "Activate lockdown protocol, and designate Archmage Cromwell as a target that must be eliminated no matter the cost."

All at once, the golems nearby sprung to life and rushed off towards their target's last known location. Given that Hex was unable to see or interact with the portal leading to the demi-plane, it was unlikely that any of these golems would have been able to go in and fight Cromwell there, but they sure as hell could lie in wait for him.

While every single one of the golems within the estate set about doing that, I rushed out of the manor, making a break for it. However, instead of going out the front, I headed in the opposite direction, out the back entrance. Once I was outside, in the estate gardens, I could clearly see that the wards surrounding the estate were no longer invisible. Now there was a massive, glowing net of magical energy that would prove impossible for most people to get past. 

Of course, there were expectations for those who could get past it. As the estate's master, I could simply walk through it, but Cromwell could mostly force his way out. However, just like with the golems, this would buy time for me to make my escape.

It was time that I would desperately need, as it was as I made it to the back fence that a huge explosion rocked the estate. Whole chunks of the manor were blown away as I heard the bellowing roar of the Archmage inside. "ALEK! I WILL KILL YOU FOR THIS! YOU WILL DIE SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY!"

The man’s screams were interrupted by the sounds of fighting, and I sensibly chose not to stick around to watch how it went. Instead, I climbed over the fence and made a run for it. My legs carried me as fast as I could through the forested regions. Behind me, the sounds of battle were slowly dying out, and when they were all gone, there was a slight pause before a titanic explosion.

As the wards around the estate were shattered with surprising ease, the resulting force that bled over sent out a shockwave that sent me flying a dozen or so metres forward. The trees rooted in the ground around me didn’t fare much better. Some of them were ripped off all their leaves, while others were almost completely uprooted. If I thought what Iona had done to the academy’s training facility had been devastating, I imagined that what was left of the manor after that was truly abysmal.

After landing painfully on my shoulder after my fall, I wasted no time getting back up to my feet and running as fast as my legs could take me. As the tree line thinned out and the edge of the city’s floating landmass fast approached, the faint light of hope awoke in my heart.

That hope was challenged when I was only a few feet away from the edge. Another, much smaller explosion occurred a few metres behind me. It wasn’t enough to knock me off my feet, but I turned my head to see what had caused it. I laid eyes on Cromwell, and he wasn’t doing too well.

The most powerful arcanists were incredibly old and covered themselves in illusions to make themselves look like they were in the prime of their lives. However, Cromwell no longer considered maintaining his illusion important. It was either that or he didn’t have the mana to spare. That was entirely possible since he would have had to burn through his mana to deal with the trap in the demi-plane, destroy all the golems, and shatter the estate wards in such a short amount of time. It also appeared like he hadn’t put much effort into protecting himself either, as the blowback from the trap and wards looked quite severe.

Because of all that, he looked like an absolute mess. His wrinkled, shrivelled old body was dripping with blood from several minor lacerations all across his body. His suit was beyond saving at this point, but most concerning was his left arm, which was a gory mess missing his hand. I doubted that the golems or blowback for shattering the wards was powerful enough to have done that, so it must have been the trap inside the demi-plane. After all, my father’s illusion had said that it would void whatever was in there into oblivion when it was off. I had just hoped it would have done more damage to the fucker.

"It’s over, Alek! I will kill you, but before you die, tell me where the real Crown of Lust is." Cromwell growled as he raised his hand and made the gold crown encrusted with many amethysts appear from out of the dimensional storage ring he was wearing. "If you continue to play games, you are just going to make it harder on yourself. If you don’t tell me now, I conjured your dead soul and tortured it for the information I seek."

As if the demonstrate what he was going to do, Cromwell closed his hand into a fist while using magic to crush the clearly not magical crown. Once the man had tossed the useless hunk of junk to the side, I let out a laugh.

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"You're mistaken; that's the true Crown of Lust. You see, I-" Instead of continuing to reply to him, I quickly acted while the man wasn’t expecting me.

Further doing what wasn’t expected, I didn’t take a break to run away; instead, I just jumped off the edge of the city. Whatever Cromwell said or did in response was lost to me as I began to quickly plummet. Although the ground was very quickly approaching, the city flew high in the sky, and I had quite some time before I went splat.

From the moment I decided to send my loved ones off before me. This was how I intended to take my leave of the city. Part of the reason this plan was so risky was that I didn’t yet know how to fly. I knew it was possible for an arcanist that was on a similar level to me to fly with magic. Hell, Cromwell could have probably flown after me if he hadn’t expended so much of his mana. And after a quick question to Allure earlier in the day, I found out it was possible to fly using divine power as well. That just left me with figuring out how to, in the few minutes before I died. But hey, at least, my death wouldn’t have been painful if I failed.

To that end, I quickly conversed with the goddess inside my head, who explained how exactly one went about using divine power to fly. Luckily, I was fairly good at using divine power and, by Allure’s own admission, kind of a savant. 

After the fight with Iona, my reserves of energy were a little below half, and although I did recover a little bit during everything that happened afterwards, I still didn’t have much to attempt flying. However, fate and luck were really on my side because it was around the point when I had about a fifth of my reserves that I finally understood what I had to do. The next time I infused my divine power with the correct mental images and wove it in the correct mana, a pair of shining golden wings were conjured behind my back.

The wings didn’t keep me aloft by flapping like they would a bird; instead, they just gave me some control of my body movement in mid-air. Unfortunately, they were a massive energy sink, and I knew immediately that I wouldn’t be able to sustain them for the rest of the flight down.

As such, I had to freely plummet the rest of the way and only perform the miracle when I thought I was close enough to the ground to safely descend. Even then, I couldn’t completely change the momentum of my fall; I had to slow down over a period of time. Somehow, I managed to time this all at the right possible moment and I didn’t turn myself into a bloody smear. Still, though, I didn’t gently float down to the ground as I was first hoping. Instead, I hit the ground with a painful thud.

What was most important, though, was that I was safe and sound on the ground. My body was a bit sore and bruised, but none of my bones had been broken.

As I stood up and dusted myself off, a look around at my surroundings told me that, despite being aware of the terrible danger I was just in, things down here still weren’t going to be easy. The land around me was a barren landscape, filled with nothing but dust and earth.

For as far as the eye could see, there were no signs of life, not even some grass or trees. Worse of all was the fact that I had no idea in what direction I would have to go to find signs of civilisation. After a few moments of looking at this dead, dry scenery, I realised that finding my loved ones was going to be much harder than I first thought.

With a sigh, I chose a random direction and started walking.

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