Chapter 2: Shade, The Warlock – 2
(Shade's POV)
Donned in my armor with my sword in my back, I think about how I'll get out of here. Umm… of course, I could just slaughter my way out, but that would take some time, and I don't want surviving bandits. They're scum, after all.
If they were decent, I wouldn't be in a cell, and there would be no slaves, like the ones that I saw on the way here. Firstly, I need help, like summoning something. I open my Book of Shadows, modified with homebred spells. my Book of Shadows works like a wizard's book, allowing me to learn spells outside my class.
Of course, there is a disadvantage, firstly, I have to read the spell from the book, secondly, I must have it open in my left hand, and thirdly, my right hand free to cast the spell. I can move while casting, but it's still inconvenient, although it's extremely useful. And, as expected from a few years campaign, I have a lot of homebrew spells.
And one of them is part of my favorites. I open the correct page of the Book of Shadows and take a finger sized tooth. A fang from a pit fiend. This spell that I'm going to mutter, a seventh level spell, allows me to summon any being I want, as long I have a piece related to that beings species.
So if I use a pit fiend's fang, I can summon a pit fiend, and the item used isn't consumed upon use. Of course, the summoned creature doesn't come under my control, but that isn't that much of a problem, I have magic for that as well. After reading for a few seconds, I say the magic's name.
- Conjure Creature: Pit Fiend. – A red pentagram appears in the center of the room, and from it, a strong red glow emanates. And within the red light, a hulking figure starts to rise. Immediately, I start reading another magic, this one to control Devils, specifically. After all, on our campaign, I used a lot of Devils to do my bidding.
Well, they're the only ones that I can outright enslave. For other races such as fey and shadow Devils, I only have command spells. the only enslavement spell that I managed to get my hands on is the Devil enslavement spell. As soon as the pit fiends finishes being summoned and turns to me with blood in his eyes, I calmly point my hand at him, finishing the spell.
- Enslave Devil. – The Pit fiend stops moving, his eyes turning blank, an instant feeling of connection between us. – Well, that was easy. – I say, closing my book and hanging my book on my belt. – You know how to differentiate bandits from slaves, right? – I ask the Devil.
The pit fiend scratches its chin, saying:
- Is there a difference? – One of my eyes twitches.
- There is, and you know it. – I retort, making the Devil flinch, since our connection makes him fear me by instinct. – Look, this is a bandit fortress, kill all the bandits and gather the slaves, and I want the slaves to be alive and unharmed. – I frowned at him with my next words. – If you hurt any of the slaves, you'll spend the next millennia stuck inside a gem and thrown into the sea.
The devil flinched, nodding to my orders. I pointed to the door, saying:
- Now go do your job before I lose my patience.
The enormous Pit Fiend, a red devil with a horrendous face and red scales, as well a thick, scaly tail, runs off scared, very unbefitting of his figure. I pick a chair and sit on the room of the mage that I just killed, waving my hand in front of my helmet, it disappearing is black smoke, a special characteristic from my set.
I take my bag of holding, the contents immediately filling my head. Let me see, a ton of gold, silver and platinum, a lot of magic casting materials, tools for alchemy and other stuff, including forging tools for basic maintenance.
Some legendary stuff, epic artifacts, etc. Umm, everything seems to be here, even some stuff that I don't remember. I tie the bag on my belt again and pull out Bloodriver. She shivers in happiness, and I smile, although I tell her mentally that I won't be killing anything so soon. She pouts, but doesn't do anything.
I concentrate, changing her shape to that of a bow. Good, I can still manipulate my weapon's form. Bloodriver, full name Empyrean Bloodriver, is a mystical weapon forged of an unknown material, supposedly created by the Goddess of Death herself.
She can freely change her shape, and be enhanced depending on the wielder, because of that, she is only powerful in the right hands. In exchange for such power, she has a hard time acquiring sentience beyond basic emotions, having a personality but not being able to have complex communications.
In my hands, she is the perfect warlock weapon, she can change her shape freely to that of other weapons, channel magic, has several powerful enchantments, and is extremely useful. I turn her back to her sword form and sheath her, she sending me a pouty feeling. I promise to her that we will have a fight eventually, and she happily settles.
I close my eyes and focus on my powers, feeling all the epic stuff Shade learned in our campaign. It lasted for almost eight years, with the same characters going through planar adventures, defeating gods left and right by the end, and facing eldritch horrors in space with magic and metal.
Our leveling was a bit different, my level two hundred is that of several level 20 warlocks, each with a different pact. No, a better way to explain it would be that when I reached level twenty, I made an extra contract and from there leveled my power with that contract to 20, giving me even more power.
Eventually I managed to make a curve around the contract thing, by capturing, subordinating or seducing the ones that I had my contracts, making them give me their power willingly. Even if I'm more powerful than some of my contractors, their unique powers are extremely useful, and I can't mimic them.
My epic feats… well, they'll be useful later. I look down to my armor, an epic armor forged by a god, made of enchanted adamantine and decorated with electrum. On my back, a Cloak of Shrouding is hanging, I can use it to not only turn invisible, but also to hide inside shadows and do Shadow Leap, teleport from shadow to shadow, as well having some magical reflection.
I may look overpowered, and indeed I am in this situation, but our group of similarly powerful players struggled in our campaign, barely managing to survive through the adversities. I was the porter, surprisingly enough, of our team. I didn't carry everyone else's stuff, but I was responsible for cooking and setting up camp, so I have some nice magic for that as well some amazing items.
For example, a portable fortress that we used to camp in the fire plane several times and an artifact to fix it, something that we call portable hellfire that is used to stir fry dragon meat and cook other stuff, an entire forge inside the portable fortress for repairing equipment, etc.
Our front line was our paladin, Jackal, as his character's name was, sworn to the goddess of death, his real name was John. And Ms. Sleigh, our wizard. She was our main firepower, also whom I got most of my spells in my book, making me our spare magician. I look at the door, hearing faintly the sound of the pit fiend doing his work.
I should check on him. This can get out of hang quickly if I'm not careful, this fucker can summon other devils to do his work as well. I adjust my equipment and set out from the door. I'm having a good feeling about this day, for some reason.
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