Sadie Kane Finds a Bigger, Blacker Pyramid... Among Other Things

[Madotsuki]

This hallway was even longer than the first one, so I'll just skip over that. When I arrived at the end of it, I froze up in surprise. I wasn't sure what I was expecting to find here, but I decided that I wasn't expecting this. This room was larger than an actual house, and in the center, a podium stood. Flanked by two columns that rose up to the top of the pyramid was a man, probably the guy that came here last. He was enveloped in red lightning, his skin just as red and peeling. His black hair waved about in the electric field as he shouted. I could tell he was giving it his all due to the intensity of his movements, but it was a lost cause; not even I could hear him over the incessant wailing that I learned was quite literally coming from the Eye of Sauron.

Okay, literally might be a stretch, but this thing had quite a few things in common with Sauron: they were both giant, floating eyes made out of energy... and I don't need to come up with any more similarities between these two. Sauron 2.0 was also the source of the lightning that was now starting to arc across the room towards me. I held my staff out and was about to cast a spell, but when I took a moment to figure out what spell I needed for this situation, I suddenly realized that I couldn't remember how to cast most of them. But I knew a lot of them before I was summoned! Seeing that the thunderous tendrils were twisting towards me, I just picked a random spell that I knew and casted it.

"A'max!" I shouted, and before I knew it, a pillar of flames burst up out of the onyx in front of me. Wait, fire? But that was Zia's thing! It turned out that I could use it just fine here, though, since it managed to deflect the bolts away. I rolled to the side as the lightning returned and struck where I had been standing a moment ago. Pulling up another wall of fire, I glanced over at the man trapped below the eye. Obviously it hadn't killed him yet, but if it didn't want to kill him, what did it want with him? Was it using his energy? That did explain his sorry condition; running closer, I saw that tear streaks ran down his blistered face.

When I reached out to pull him free, the lightning coursed through my arm and I got blasted back, destroying my shield in the process. If I didn't have my shield on, I'd probably be dead. I was about to cast it back on me again, but I realized that there was someone else who needed it more. I pointed at the man and shouted "n'dah!" He was encased in golden light for a moment before it and the electric barrier blew up in unison. He started rolling down the steps, probably not even aware of what was happening, and the eye seemed just as confused. This was my chance. I leveled my staff at the bootleg Sauron and said a word that almost got me killed:

"Ha'dhi!"