Ultimatum (Ultimate Mage Book 3) Read online

  Ultimatum

  Ultimate Mage book 3

  Simon Archer

  Contents

  1. Eldred

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  11. Eldred

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  21. Eldred

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Author’s Note

  This book is dedicated to my fans and readers. I write these for you guys and gals!

  Let me especially shout out to Charles Thomas Adams, Josh Kurtz, Nishkanth Venkatesh, and Roy Benavides!

  1

  Eldred

  I paced back and forth on a ledge overlooking the mine, as I had every day for weeks on end, watching as my people were hard at work mining more ore for the orbs necessary to perform our magic. It was good not to be alone anymore. I had been alone for so, so long. So many centuries after the war that destroyed the rest of my people.

  But now… now they were reborn.

  Not all of them, to be sure. That insufferable young mage had seen to that. But enough, more than enough to destroy the kingdom and forest elves once and for all and to take their land for ourselves. Our people would expand beyond this initial rebirth and repopulate all of Eviorah. I rested my white, long-fingered hands on the side of a minecart in front of me, leaning on it to scan over the whole mine, relishing once more in this moment of triumph.

  “We have completed the tasks you have set before us, Eldred,” a low, silky voice not unlike mine said off to my left.

  “Have you?” I asked with pleasant surprise, turning to face my fellow mountain elf. She was tall, though not as tall as me, and wore long gray robes like mine, though hers were a slightly darker shade. Her hair was white as snow and stretched down to her midsection. Her eyes, like mine and all other mountain elves, were red as the blood of our enemies when we made it run cold. “Thank you, Aroa. I am most pleased.”

  “I am glad.” Aroa’s lips curled back in a smile, revealing her long, pointed white teeth, representative of all mountain elves. I imagined that, to many, our appearance instilled fear and even terror. But to me, the sight of her and the others was the most amazing thing I had seen in some time. I had been alone for centuries, after all, with only that insufferable kingdom elf Viktor knowing of my continued existence.

  “Friends!” I roared, my voice elevated and echoing throughout the mine. The working elves halted in their tracks and looked upward to watch me. “Our task here is finished. Our work is done. We have enough ore to create more orbs than we could ever possibly need. We must now turn our attention to crafting those orbs. We must shake off the rust of the great sleep from which you have all recently awoken and use our magic once again. Then, when we are confident that we can proceed, we will march against the kingdom and forest elves, and destroy them once and for all.”

  At these words, the crowd below erupted into a series of roars and applause, the elves below pumping their fists in the air. My lips curled back in a lethal smile of my own, and I turned back to Aroa.

  “Soon, we will have what has long been kept from us,” Aroa said.

  “Very soon,” I agreed. “Come, let us speak together down below.” I started down the winding pathway to the mine’s main floor, and Aroa followed close behind me. Once there, several more of my elves joined us.

  “I cannot wait to crush the skulls of those insufferable kingdom elves,” one particular sinister old friend of mine said, gnashing his long teeth together. “To take their little necks between my fangs…”

  “All in good time, Marinus, all in good time,” I assured him. “I believe you will find that these modern kingdom elves are even more pathetic than the ones you remember. They have been without their own magic for many centuries, after all.”

  “All the more ripe for the taking, then,” Marinus said, his blood-red eyes wild.

  “Very true.” My lips curled back in yet another grin. Together, I walked with my group throughout the mine, watching the rest of our people pack up their supplies and the ore in preparation for creating the orbs. “The only complication will be this boy they have found from another world, this… Leo Hayden. His power is great, there’s no denying that. He has accomplished much, destroying my most powerful servant and reversing his spell, returning the kingdom elves’ magic to them.”

  “He also managed to stop your spell in its tracks,” another female mountain elf off to my right hissed. “He revived the forest and prevented all of our brethren from returning from the dead.”

  “Yes, Ziska,” I said shortly, trying to keep the rage bubbling inside me from boiling over. “He did do that, though here you stand still, alive and ready as ever to destroy our enemies.” Ziska stood up straighter at that and curled her lips back, revealing her fangs, and with them, her desire to destroy Eviorah’s lesser races. “But his successes end here. Before, I was alone. I am powerful, yes, but not powerful enough to overcome all of Eviorah alone, not now that the kingdom and forest elves have banded together, pathetic as that is.”

  My companions hissed and shook their heads vigorously at this.

  “Pathetic, absolutely pathetic,” one of them echoed. “I always relished destroying the forest-dwellers, though. I must admit, Eldred, that I’m glad you didn’t manage to slaughter them all before we returned.” He pressed his fingers together, stopping them from tremoring as if he was itching already to tear the heads of the forest elves’ tiny bodies.

  “I know you do, Avram, I know you do.” I placed a long, spider-like hand on his shoulder. “And I promise you, you will have ample opportunities to do so in the near future. It’s my understanding that many of the forest elves have fled the forest and congregated with the kingdom elves. We’ll have no excuse to let any of them survive this time. Before, only the kingdom elves were our sworn enemies, and the forest elves merely got caught in the crossfire. But now, they are all our enemies, working together with this Leo Hayden creature to destroy us.” I grinned. “He may be almost as powerful as I am, but he is not as powerful as all of us combined, and his companions are no match for us.”

  Together, my comrades and I cackled at the prospect of destroying our enemies, flashing our fangs for all to see. The mountain elves who were still working around us all caught on and began to join in the fun. Our chance would come soon enough. Very soon.

  2

  “It’s back,” Freyja cried and, in one motion, jumped down off my miniature horse, Bill. She rushed forward to dart into the forest, where she hugged a nearby tree and twirled around excitedly. My other forest elf companion, a young woman named Ishida with an otter-like face in contrast to Freyja’s fox-like one, followed close behind her, jumping down off my friend Bernsten’s horse and running after her into the trees. I grinned and exchanged a look with Bernsten.

  “You did it, Leo Hayden, my friend,” Bernsten said, reaching out and clapping me forcefully on the shoulder, smiling from ear to pointed ear, his green eyes characteristic of his race twinkling. His jet black hair had grown even longer since we left on our last quest to thwart Eldred, our mountain e
lf enemy’s latest spell to resurrect his long-dead people.

  “I did, didn’t I?” I turned to face the forest once more, where Freyja and Ishida were now jumping up and down and clinging to each other in excitement, basking in the glow from the newly revived green trees. My kingdom elf companions and I approached them on our horses, and once I was fully enveloped in the forest’s vibrance once more, the muscles in my face hurt from all of the smiling.

  The last time we had been in the forest, it had been black and dead down to every last leaf, destroyed by Eldred’s most vicious spell yet, one that stole the forest’s energy and used it to resurrect his own people. We had stopped him, mostly, and had hoped that the forest would be revived when we reached it again.

  Clearly, it was as I could see bright shades of green everywhere I looked, and the sounds of animals bustling about and birds singing filled the air. I breathed in deeply, letting the fresh air fill my lungs.

  “Oh, thank you, Leo,” Freyja said, jumping back up on Bill briefly to plant a kiss on my cheek.

  “Yes, we’re forever in your debt, Leo Hayden,” Ishida gushed. “You’ve saved our home not once, but twice now. I don’t know how to thank you for everything you’ve done for us.”

  “Oh, no problem,” I said, running a hand through my dark brown hair and feeling heat rush to my cheeks. As much as I loved all the attention and praise I got in Eviroah, I didn’t think I would ever quite get used to it. Even so, I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.

  “You can return the gesture by joining us in our fight against the mountain elves and convincing your brethren to do the same,” Bernsten’s sister, Nadeine, put in.

  I glanced over at her. Her hair was getting longer, too, reaching almost to her shoulders, though it was still far shorter than her brother’s. Her own green eyes were sharp as always, matching her long, forest green mage’s robes.

  “Oh, I don’t think they’ll need much convincing,” Freyja assured her. “Our peoples are bonded together now.”

  “Indeed, they are,” Marinka, the princess of the kingdom elves and heir to the kingdom’s throne, said as she dismounted her own horse, her curly dark hair flowing down past her shoulders. “I look forward to a great future of cooperation between us.”

  “As do we all,” Godfried, her teenage cousin with similar dark curls, the youngest member of our party, agreed. He hopped off his unusual horse with a golden mane to match his flowing yellow mage’s robes and pressed his feet down into the grass. He turned around several times, staring up at the treetops.

  “Oh, I had forgotten, Godfried,” I dismounted Bill and walked over to my young friend. Or sort of young. Godfried was actually quite a bit older than me, years-wise, but Eviorah’s elves had much longer lifespans than humans. “You’ve never really seen the forest before. Not like this.”

  It was true. Godfried hadn’t been with us on our first quest to find and destroy Viktor, the rogue kingdom elf who had banded together with Eldred and taken the kingdom elves’ magic from them, as he had been too young at the time. He had only ever seen the forest in the dead, blackened state that Eldred had left it before I came along.

  “Indeed, I have not,” Godfried said, his voice filled with wonder as he echoed the kingdom elves’ peculiar speech patterns. “A sight to behold it is.”

  I followed the young elf’s gaze upwards, where the trees’ many branches intertwined together, forming an elaborate canopy of bark and leaves and wildlife.

  “Yeah, it is,” I breathed, watching as two birds jumped across one of the branches together, chirping all the way. Viktor’s old fortress, repurposed and revitalized by the forest elves after his death, sat off to our left. Its slick, long wooden walls blended in nicely with the surrounding trees.

  “So, what are we to do now?” Bernsten asked as he dropped his arms loosely at his sides, his naturally loud, booming voice echoing throughout the clearing. My friend looked more comfortable than he had been in weeks, as he more than anyone else feared the mountain elves and their realm, through which we had been traveling for some time. We had worried that, after we escaped Eldred and partially thwarted his resurrection spell, those mountain elves that he did manage to bring back to life would come after us. They seemed to have other plans, though, which left our path back to the forest unobstructed.

  “Well, how are we doing on food?” I asked Bernsten, whose job it had been to keep track of our food supplies and intake.

  “Some,” the knight mused, thinking carefully. “A fair amount, really, but we could always use some more. Our journey through the mountains was longer than even I could have guessed.”

  We’d been there for weeks, traveling through nearly the entire realm which was the largest of the three in Eviorah. What’s more, none of us had ever been there before, whereas most of our party was very comfortable in both the kingdom and the forest by then.

  “Then let’s work on finding some more,” I said. “Shouldn’t be hard, considering the forest is revived, and there are plenty of plants and animals everywhere.”

  “Good!” Freyja rubbed her hands together. “I’ve been itching to get back on the prowl.”

  So, we tied up our horses near the fortress and headed off together in search of a fresh meal. We’d been subsisting mostly on preserved meat from the kingdom. While it, just like all of the kingdom’s food, was usually delicious, it would still be nice to have something fresh for a change.

  “What do you imagine our enemy will do next?” Marinka asked Nadeine and me as we walked past the forest’s main beaten path. Most of the forest’s wildlife and edible plants were tucked off out of sight, so we’d have to duck into the underbrush to find them.

  “Well, he’s bound to attack us at some point,” I reasoned. We hadn’t spoken much about Eldred since we’d escaped him. There had been a silent agreement not to discuss the mountain elves until we got away from their homeland for fear of coaxing them out of hiding.

  “Indeed.” Nadeine nodded gravely, one hand instinctively moving to the hilt of her sword hanging at her side. “We must prepare for war.”

  She and the other kingdom elves still wore their old weapons out of habit, though they mostly used their magic in battle after it was returned to them when we defeated Viktor. God, that felt like a lifetime ago.

  “I think it’ll be a little while, at least.” I thought back to everything that had happened in the cave where we had found Eldred working on his horrific spell. “We destroyed most of the mountain elves’ orbs. Add that to the ones we destroyed when we fought Viktor, and I doubt they have very many left. How will they attack us without their magic? They’ll have to make more. Plus, the other mountain elves have been dead for centuries. Eldred will have to catch them up.”

  “Yes,” Nadeine said, relaxing a bit, though she still held her sword hilt with one hand, “but even so, we must prepare and quickly.”

  “Agreed,” I said, then smiled at her reassuringly, “but we’ll be ready for them. You guys are doing way better.”

  It was true. While the kingdom elves were not nearly as accomplished magi as I was, they had gotten a lot better over the duration of our last quest, especially Nadeine and Godfried, who I expected to ‘level up’ to advanced mage status any day now. They had all but mastered most of the beginning spells, after all. While Nadeine showed the patience I expected from her, Godfried was frustrated that he hadn’t advanced yet.

  “I hope you are right, Leo,” Marinka said, but she didn’t seem so sure. “Eldred alone was a formidable enemy, and without you, we would never have overcome him. Now there are so many of them. I worry for our people. You cannot be everywhere at once to protect them.”

  “It’ll be alright,” I assured her, placing a hand on her shoulder, though honestly? I feared that she might be right. Still, I had to keep up a strong front for my friends. “We have time to prepare, and it’s not like the rest of the kingdom has been sitting around doing nothing while we’ve been on this quest. They’ll have been work
ing on their defenses all this time, just in case a war happens.”

  “You’re right, of course, Leo.” The scholarly princess breathed a small sigh of relief, though she remained rather tense. “As per usual, I am worrying too much. Thus far, everything has worked out well since you arrived in our land. I have great faith in you, and I must not forget that.”

  We were in a pretty densely populated area of the forest now, and I could hear rabbits and other wildlife rustling in the surrounding underbrush. It was such a wonderful change from the Blighted forest as it had been, ashen and lifeless. Freyja and Ishida had since left us, running off to find berries and other edible plants. Bernsten and Godfried had departed in the direction of a lake, presumably to find some fish.

  “Okay, I think this is a good place,” I announced before drawing a faint mage’s circle beneath my feet by running my foot over the tall grass, pressing some of it down against the earth. Marinka and Nadeine followed my lead and created mage’s circles of their own. “Remember the spell?” I looked between them, and they both nodded. “Okay, on my signal.”

  It didn’t take long for my cello to appear, a giant golden instrument, light to the touch but rich in sound. I sat down in the invisible chair that appeared beneath me and set my bow to my strings. I looked over at Marinka and Nadeine in turn, making sure they were at the ready. They were, and I breathed in deeply and nodded, signifying that it was time to begin. Together, we played the spell, Marinka’s high soprano voice, Nadeine’s low alto, and the warm tones of my cello blending together nicely to play the short song.