#94 - Wizards Encaged

Excerpt from the Cypher's Codex: The Scrawlings of a Warforged Scholar

Kard hurtled himself shield first into Lukar's magical bolt of energy. It exploded into a terrific 120-foot diameter blast of cold and mist, damaging all of us except Simel, who stood just outside its radius, and left us blinded for an instant. When the light and mist had faded, Kard was nowhere to be seen, Rungo lay inert at my feet, and the four righteous wizards were trapped within a translucent cage of force. Aleae quickly prepared a fireball to fling at the traitorous wizard of Thrane but he dispelled it with ease, much to her consternation.

Rungo was of no use to me in this epic battle to be, and having seen some of the most powerful magic I had ever encountered, I forewent the opportunity to reverse her damage and immediately prepared my glass-crafted Blast Rod. As quickly as possible, I infused it with potent metamagic matrices that would allow it to capture the potential energies of any spell or infusion cast upon it for an even more potent later discharge.

I had once heard the power of the Blast Rod infusion compared to the work of a Zil steamboat gathering fish in its nets as it trawled the pelagic waters of Lake Brey; once the nets were filled to capaicty, the fishermen would be able to yield a profit in gold. Personally I find the analogy egregiously incomplete. Perhaps if the fish in question were capable of independent incendiary combustion prior to their capture would they provide greater volatility in close proximity.

Regardless, the Blast Rod could thus discharge the gathered energies upon my command.  I stepped back several feet, hoping to strategically prevent Lukar from casting any ray spells. Nothing would help us if he decided to cast another wide area of effect spell.

But the Thrane wizard's attention was drawn to my creation of the Blast Rod and he cast a spell on me that I had difficulty fighting off—at least initially. Several seconds later I realized that I had run at full speed away from the battle. My senses returned to me just in time for me to see Clarion hurl the recently acquired Bead of Force at Lukar. It is a marvelous, if transient magical device; I had identified its magical properties before giving it to Clarion and he apparently had decided not to delay its use. The Bead, a small black sphere, causes severe physical trauma upon impact, but its tactical value truly lies in its subsequent effect. After detonation, the Bead expanded into a sphere of force 20 feet in diameter, trapping the Thrane wizard within it. For the next full minute he would be contained wholly within the sphere, protected from our attacks but rendered harmless to us as well. Not even teleportation magic could effect an escape. This allowed us to focus on the wizard's ally within the confines of this battle.

Lukar had a companion with him that was fighting Magnus, fueling his ongoing rage. The creature was extremely large and vaguely feline in form but seemed to be made of large steel scales. It was as agile as a great cat but its head resembled no beast I had ever seen. I would have suspected a familiar to be traveling with the wizard but by my assessment it was more akin to a construct than a flesh or spiritual beast. Perhaps it was a homunculus, but certainly tougher than any iron defender that I had ever known. Clarion and Simel both joined the attack, though most of their strikes and arrows glanced off its steely armor. The beast even disarmed Magnus of his mace after slashing him with its claws.

Magnus broke away from battle with the metal-scaled monster and pushed the force prison holding Lukar up to the higher level where most of the party was. Another feature of a Bead of Force is that it weigh but a single pound regardless of its contents—a powerful property reminiscent of extradimensional space.  Clarion deftly jumped up to the higher level too and thunderwaved the beast, hoping to throw it back over the edge into the abyss.  While a few scales were blasted free from its metal body, it was able to maintain its purchase.
Aleae used her Mage Hand spell to lift up Lukar's spherical prison 25 feet in the air. He responded with a scornful look at her and began to cast spells upon himself. I was able to determine only that it provided him magical contingency, but I could not determine the details. He must have had some means to communicate with the metal beast because it immediately began attacking Aleae. I rushed by and touched its metal scales, infusing them with strong magical heat. Over the next half a minute it got increasingly hotter, and increasingly more damaged as a result.

Aleae slowly maneuvered the sphere through the air and over the abyss around us, which we believed would be a long drop to the ground level outside of Elidac's obelisk. Her hope was to cause Lukar to plummet to his end once the Bead of Force's power ended. Lukar responded with a look of despair, but Aleae read through his countenance and realized that he had some plan making that a moot course of action. Instead, she returned him to where the bulk of us were, allowing the party to prepare for his return to the battle. A second direct hit from Aleae's fireball nearly melted the metallic feline creature; most of its metal scales had been fused together by the heat. The construct slumped to the ground like a quadrupedal-inspired pile of forge slag. It was beyond conceivable repair.

With Magnus ahead of me, I rushed to the magical World Sphere, as Elidac had called it—the floating orrery off to one side of the battefield. Simel had been attempting to communicate with one of the wizards trapped in their own cage of forge; sound did not pass through the transparent walls of their prison.

On my way to the Sphere I used used up the last of my most powerful infusions to augment my Blast Rod, hoping to eventually unleash a torrent of force upon Lukar when the time was right. Simel and Clarion were attempting frantically to communicate with the ensnared wizards, to gain strategic advice and possibly free them in order to help us battle Lukar once he was freed from his prison.

Simel called out that one of the wizards indicate the World Sphere may be important. When I got there I could feel the powerful magic without even touching it. It was great, and yet delicate. It was all I could do to not simply stand there and be mystified. I recognized immediately that this was not a device to be trifled with, that it would require great patience and time to analyze and understand. My companions were pressuring me to act, however, and Magnus seemed ready to grapple with it, so I willed myself to put aside all around me and focus on the orb before me.

With deference to its might, I imagined the Sphere releasing the trapped wizards. But I was too rushed. My mind was not up to the task in so hurried a pace! Instead of freeing potential allies against our common threat, I felt the world darkening. I tried again, forcing my companions and my enemies from my mind. Yet it did not yield. Time was running out, and I knew Lukar had only seconds more before he would be freed. I tried again. My concentration deflated as I felt myself slipping further from the world around me and the impending battle with the evil wizard clouded my thoughts; I attempted to make contact with the World Sphere with both hands, but my hands went right through it and I fumbled again in my attempts to understand and direct its energies.

I was so far from those around me now that color had begun to disappear from my sight and a gray fog was closing in. I rushed out towards Lukar, where everyone was waiting, weapons and spells at the ready, but immediately I realized something was very wrong. I couldn't interact physically with the world around me; unable to take steps on the ground, I found myself floating along in the direction I was trying to run. It was becoming clear to me that I had unwisely manipulated powerful magics without proper understanding and it had left me somewhere between Eberron and the Ethereal Plane. This was what I had termed the Border Ethereal—a place where the material world and the insubstantial void of the Deep Ethereal overlap.

I forged on toward my companions, hoping I would be able to figure out a way to help them.