Mad Toffad's Keep Read online

  Mad Toffad’s Keep

  Book 2 of Dire Prophecy

  By Zack Finley

  Copyright 2018 by Zack Finley. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Cover Page

  To my readers:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Glossary

  Author’s notes:

  About the Author

  To my readers:

  I tried to provide readers picking up “Mad Toffad’s Keep” with all the information they need to enjoy this book as a standalone adventure. That said, “Mad Toffad’s Keep” is the second book in a series which begins with “Dire Prophecy.” I urge you to start the series from the beginning.

  I’ve included a glossary at the end to assist readers with keeping names, places, and critters from blurring together.

  Chapter 1

  I was strolling through the Klee market, enjoying the happy sounds of a group of younglings on an outing. Despite their caregiver’s frantic efforts to keep them in a tight group, they were outpacing him; making a beeline for the sweet buns at a bakery stall.

  I chuckled when the exasperated caregiver gave up and sprinted to join his charges in line. I angled toward the bakery, thinking a sweet treat would taste mighty fine.

  I was focused on the upcoming treat and missed the first warning signs. Excitement and alarm spread through the market as all eyes turned to the northern sky.

  I reacted to the huge fireball streaking across the horizon. I raced through the crowd urging everyone to seek cover. I thought “It can’t be happening so soon, we aren’t ready.”

  The crowd just stared mesmerized at the sky. Even those I pushed refused to budge.

  Only after molten debris began crashing down on the city did anyone react and by then it was too late. The screams of the injured and dying overwhelmed me. I grabbed one of the stricken younglings, attempting to carry her to a safer place. She died in my arms even as we reached the relative shelter of a stone building. As I cradled her body to the floor…

  Something bit me on the chin and pain lanced through my right shoulder as I tried to push the biter away. The culprit bounded out of reach as the nightmare’s grip on my mind ebbed. I was back in our living room. On the floor. Allo was nowhere to be seen.

  Argon, my mate, calmed my mind soothing the last remnants of the dream away. She could do nothing about the pain in my shoulder or the blood dripping down my chin.

  “Allo was just trying to help,” Argon calmly communicated in my head. “She was trying to rouse you from your bad dream, but things got out of hand. She is very sorry she made you bleed. And jarred your shoulder. And caused you to fall out of the chair.”

  I looked around, now wide awake. I was alone on the floor of our living room. A jumble of books lay scattered around me, and the nearest chair on its side. Allo, our fla familiar, had left the scene of the crime. The last thing I remembered was nodding off in the chair with Allo asleep in my lap.

  “Steve, have you reinjured your chest?” Alba demanded. Alba was my healer and a good friend. She acquiesced and allowed me to leave the hospital only a few hours before. I should have suspected she was mentally monitoring me.

  “I just fell out of my chair,” I sent in mind speak to both Alba and Argon. I added, “I had a bad dream, and Allo thought the best way to wake me up was to bite me on the chin and knock me out of my chair.”

  Suspecting I only had a few moments before Alba or Argon, or both teleported to my side, I used my flesh magic to scan my tender chest and aching shoulder.

  “I’ve just scanned my wounds. Nothing seems to have shifted. Everything is better than this morning, so no harm was done,” I sent. “I’ll do another round of healing right away.”

  I suspected Alba and my mate were having a private chat because I didn’t get an immediate reply.

  My mate confirmed it when she messaged back a few moments later, “I agree with your assessment and assured Alba you have the situation well in hand. I still have a lot of things Tobron wants me to do, but I can ‘port home now and do them another day.”

  This was one of the complications of sharing mental links with others. Even beloved others. If this had happened on Earth, no one would have been the wiser. There were a lot of benefits to sharing mind space but keeping embarrassing moments secret was not one of them.

  “I’m fine, just feeling foolish. I was reading a book on flesh magic and zoned out. I had a dream that began pleasantly but ended with meteors falling from the sky. I dreamed Shala’s prophecy had started and no one was prepared.” I was now wide-awake as I considered the horror of my dream. “What happens if it comes before we have anything ready? What if it isn’t years in the future but starts today or tomorrow?” I asked.

  “We must trust in Goddess Shala. She would not have brought you from Earth to Jaloa too late to make a difference,” Argon answered. “All we can do is work hard to prepare. When the meteors start to fall, we will save who we can and fight beside our friends until we either triumph or are vanquished.”

  “You’re right,” I sent. “For all we know, the whole dire prophecy thing is bogus. There may never be an asteroid strike.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” sent Argon, who unlike me had lived with the prophecy looming for most of her life. “While some of the gods are attempting to mitigate the prophecy, we know others are pushing to take advantage.”

  Argon shifted to a different tack, “Enough, you are just trying to get out of book studies. I assured Alba if you weren’t mended we would not join Tobron and Inoa tonight for dinner. So, heal now, and we’ll meet the future as it comes.”

  I found there was no way to get off the floor without tweaking my wounds, which were still quite raw and fragile. And painful. I knew Argon realized I hadn’t been exactly forthcoming about the new level of pain in my shoulder. When I arrived home this morning, it had been a dull background ache. Now it felt like a sharp twisting knife was dancing around in there. I considered calming my pain centers but decided pain was instructional.

  Four days ago, I was impaled by a magic spear. I watched it pierce my armor, enter the right side of my chest and shoulder, and plow through my chest until it emerged out my back. I replayed the scene in my mind and marveled I had somehow survived such an obviously fatal blow. If that spear had killed me, I would have died on Jaloa less than two weeks after I died on Earth. A sobering thought.

  I remained on the floor and pulsed healing magic into my assortment of wounds. I could detect no new injuries except the scratch Allo left on my chin. I expected the increased pain would ease with a few healing cycles.

  I set the healing sequence on autopilot.

  When was a dream just a nightmare; and when was it a reminder to keep your eye on the main mission?

  I reflected on the breathtaking pace of change in my life over the past 17 days, beginning with my death on Earth. There hadn’t been time to absorb all that happened to me.

&nb
sp; It all started when Goddess Shala made a karmic deal with the universe and transplanted my essence out of my doomed body on Earth into a new body on Jaloa. I don’t know if it really happened. I could be lying nearly brain dead in a veteran’s hospital on earth from the massive IED blast. But I liked my current gig and decided to go with it until something better came along.

  My Jaloan body was similar but different from my Earth body both inside and out. I had hairless leathery brown skin with an unruly shock of reddish fur on my head. Jaloans vary widely in height and body shape as well as in skin and fur coloring. I was tall and muscular.

  Hairy, pointed ears conveniently swiveled and tracked sounds. I had trouble adjusting to having only three fingers and one thumb. They were tipped with extendable cat-like claws. My feet were similar with four digits and some awesome retractable claws. Most Jaloan females painted their foot claws as a fashion statement. Most guys left them au naturel.

  My mate kept promising to teach me some awesome kick fighting moves before my next battle. She assured me once I mastered their use, I'd never mention shoes again.

  I was a warrior on Earth, and Goddess Shala needed a warrior champion on Jaloa. More importantly, she needed a strong battlemage. I was conveniently dying in an IED blast in an Iraqi village just when she needed a dying warrior. I have vague, unsubstantiated suspicions the “recruitment” was rigged. It wasn’t clear whether any dying person from Earth would have worked or if I was uniquely qualified.

  Jaloa is a planet of magic. I possessed all seven known varieties of magic plus an eighth no one has heard of. My mate, Argon, considers my magic “epic.” All while reminding me I still don’t know how to use even a fraction of it. I can cast some awesome spells, but when I must react without thinking, my body forgets it has magic. Only practice can overcome that problem. Muscle memory is why all warriors drill and drill.

  I hope I have enough imagination to overcome my second problem: how to kill or subdue a magical foe, without getting killed or badly injured in the process. In the past two weeks, while Argon and I defeated hundreds of monsters and non-magical foes, we only went up against about 20 mages. And nearly died several times.

  With surprise on our side, we captured or killed most of the mages we faced. While that is true, too many mages got away, and some nearly killed us both. The only mage I faced alone came within a whisker of killing me. With that magic spear.

  After I arrived on Jaloa, Shala gave me a generous three days to acclimate to a new body, a new planet, and a new life. Then Argon and I got our ultimate assignment.

  Shala charged us with gathering a top-notch team of mages, their families, and sufficient support staff into a fortress. We must survive a prophesied period of massive volcanoes, tsunamis, and earthquakes followed by an undetermined period of nuclear winter.

  Sometime during the forecasted endless winter, Shala expects a host of demons to invade Jaloa through its guardian gates. Our ultimate mission is to hold those gates and turn back the demon invasion.

  While thwarting the invasion, Shala hopes we save a lot of people, animals, and plants from extinction. She has made it clear preventing extinction is only a secondary objective.

  Shala doesn’t know when the mess will begin. She expects it to be “soon” and to impact this generation of Jaloans. Argon and I hope “soon” in god time might be 20 years for the rest of us.

  Argon and I fought demon scouts at one of Jaloa’s guardian gates already. That battle was touch and go, making the demon part of the mission more of a concern than I liked.

  No matter how farfetched this whole scenario seemed, recruiting an army of mages and mundanes to live in a keep capable of surviving such foretold devastation seemed a worthwhile lifetime goal. We shared the whole prophecy with our two partners Tobron and Inoa. To my surprise, they, like Argon, accepted the prophecy as real.

  This launched us into a whirlwind of action to rescue Augun’s King Rufix as a favor for Klee King Ruton. In exchange, King Ruton offered us an abandoned estate north of Klee known as Mad Toffad’s Keep. Tobron, our partner, thought this abandoned property would be perfect for the new base.

  During our combat operations, we uncovered a wild card, a hidden player already sowing seeds of total devastation within the established countries of Jaloa. Argon and I both believed this hidden force was destroying civilization now in anticipation of the prophecy.

  Argon and I are terrible mercenaries. We don’t know how to stop. Our assigned mission was bad enough, but we had to go so much further. Our mission was to snatch a seriously wounded King Rufix of Augun out of an armed castle filled with enemies. That was crazy enough. Instead, after dropping the king into Alba’s healing hands, Argon and I jumped back into the fray on his behalf. We took down the mages who blew up the Augun keep, severely injured King Rufix, murdered thousands of his countrymen including King Rufix’s son, and were systematically gutting his country.

  We captured or killed most of the mages we encountered, freed the Augun King’s Guard, emptied the prison, and nudged the country toward recovery.

  I do not think it was a coincidence Shala “recruited” me from Earth just after the Augun coup began. But I digress.

  After rescuing King Rufix, he asked us to save his young grandson, Marko. Marko was on an estate in Asme, the second largest town in the Kingdom of Augun. We couldn’t find any mage with the teleport coordinates for Asme. This meant we had to send a mage to Asme via ground transport. In Jaloa ground transport involves basas, a horse-like animal with sharp teeth and a definite personality.

  The city of Augun is the largest city in the Kingdom of Augun. Augun River is the main waterway in the kingdom flowing into the ocean at the city of Augun. According to our partner Tobron, most of the countries on the planet employed similar albeit boring naming conventions.

  We sent Lt. Brik, a Klee mage named Gera, and a hastily gathered squad of Augun King’s Guard to Asme via basas and carriage. Lt. Brik was one of only three officers to survive the coup. Argon and I released him from the prison during our rescue of his king. They traveled via the river road from Augun to Asme.

  Brik’s mission was to provide Argon and me with an Asme teleport site so we could take part in the rescue of King Rufix’s grandson and heir.

  Argon and I teleported to Asme as soon as the mage arrived there

  During Marko’s rescue, we learned groups of marauding slavers killed Asme’s garrison of Augun King’s Guard and were ravaging the villages around Asme at will. The mages orchestrating the Augun coup hired them to remove or destroy everything of value in Asme and the area around it. The only good thing we learned was the marauders didn’t know the main coup had collapsed.

  We feared when the rampaging slavers learned the Augun coup failed, they would kill all their captives and attempt to sneak out of the country. We couldn’t allow that.

  That day Argon and I fought without rest for nearly 24 hours straight but eliminated the raider threat in the Asme region. We had two squads of the Augun King’s Guard with us. One squad were Marko’s defenders, which included Olive, an Augun battlemage. The second squad was commanded by Lt. Brik.

  Lt. Brik and his hastily gathered squad rode hard and fought a series of battles to get Gera to Asme in time to rescue the king’s grandson in Asme. When he got there, Gera, provided Argon and me with an Asme teleport site so we could take part in the rescue.

  Once Marko and his mother were reunited with King Rufix, we regrouped to free Asme from the raider menace.

  We were forced to split our forces because we didn’t have enough basas, carriages, or other transport for everyone. This was not optimum, but it was the best shot we had.

  Our mobile force successfully baited three of the five groups of raiders to attack us at once. Argon and I easily wiped out that attack. The raiders learned the hard way the King’s Guard had mage backup.

  We gained enough transport from those raiders to provide mounts for our entire force. We also gathered intel on the a
pproximate locations of the remaining raiders and slave camps.

  Dealing with the slavers without risking the slaves was complicated by the immutable rule, you cannot teleport to an unknown location. Our two mages, Olive and Gera, did a masterful job. They alternated between backing up the King’s Guard and riding to the next slave camp via basas to provide Argon and me with a teleport site.

  The King’s Guard tackled the last two raider bands, while Argon and I freed the slave camps.

  The sun was finally up as the King’s Guard engaged the fifth raider group. While the King’s Guard was battling the last raiders close to Asme, Argon and I were sneaking up on the same group’s slave camp. It took us so long to locate the last camp, we feared the guards had killed the slaves and departed.

  When we finally located the camp, the guards were still only mildly concerned about the late return of their raiding party.

  Argon and I stunned or killed all the guards in the slave camp using techniques perfected in the prior four camps. Argon took the camp leader back to Klee for Inoa to question. I stayed behind to begin releasing the slaves. Everything seemed normal. Until it wasn’t.