058

Erick tore into the prairie underneath his feet with [Stoneshape], riding the descending surge of stone and dirt into the ground like an escalator, quickly creating a space under the grassland surface for himself, Rats, Teressa, and Poi, to hide. Some dirt was simply pushed down and away, some was turned into solid stone, compacted and solidified into structural support. Erick didn’t go very deep; just far enough to not be seen on the surface and to have a roof overhead. When he got deep enough, he flashed the loose dirt outward, crushing it into solid stone, creating a solid five by five meter space under the surface with a dome roof and stone supports. He flashed a ring of wardlight into the dome overhead, colored to mimic the sun; illuminating the brown stone all around. One [Cleanse] into the space removed a pervasive, earthy smell, and also cleaned away the bad taste still inside Erick’s mouth.

Teressa followed down the stairs, saying, “Looks good.”

Poi followed right behind her, saying, “We got you, if you want to go back.”

Erick created four nice chairs with [Conjure Item] and promptly took one, Meditating for mana, as he asked Poi, “Is this normal warfare, Poi? I remember when Krakina tried to show me her [Nature’s Fury], but that got stopped before it really happened. I remember the green wind in the sky being very large, though. Super Large Size, actually.” Erick finally asked, “Where are the other archmages?”

Poi stepped next to one of the chairs, but did not sit, saying, “It all comes down to a matter of being able to either combine a spell correctly, or purchasing the Script version and having enough Stats to back up that spell. Most people don’t bother.”

Rats came down the stairs, simplifying Erick’s problem by saying, “The other archmages are in hiding.”

“That is a factor, yes.” Poi added, “The world is large, and there are many places to hide from people who would use someone who could combine a useful high-tier spell; or create one, in your case.”

Teressa stood next to the largest chair Erick had made, saying, “The world is large and full of terrors. Sometimes those terrors are archmages who separate from civilization and lose their empathy in the wilderness. Sometimes those terrors are the monsters, and a friendly archmage will swoop in to save an adventuring party from an untimely end.” She said, “I hope you decide to stay in Spur, sir. You’re a good guy, and we need more people like you.”

Erick felt a beat of emotion pulse through his chest.

Rats added, “But damn, sir. You’re gonna get a lot of propositions after today.”

Poi sighed, saying, “Unfortunately true.”

Rats said, “And yeah. Who can make a good spell? Not me. I tried and gave up years ago. That [Pure Force Beam Bolt]? That shit’s crazy.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah!” Rats said, “Never seen anything like it.”

Oh.

Erick realized the problem, and it was systemic. The most recent example Erick had seen of this problem was in his [Pure Force Beam Bolt] versus regular [Force Beam Bolt], and how the ‘pure’ version Erick had made was twice as good as the one in the Script. Another major example was that the [Scan] in the Script cost 5000 mana, as well as 6 points for the starter spells, more points for the intermediary spells, and then one more to purchase [Scan] itself. And [Scan], according to Zago, only [Scan]ned out to 10 kilometers.

And then there was all the trouble Jane had been having with making a good Handy Aura.

Erick’s Handy Aura looked like:

 

 

But the Handy Aura in the Script looked like the ones Jane had been able to make; absolutely awful:

 

 

Erick said, “These spells in the Script are not good at all. I— I knew this, but I didn’t really understand what it meant.” He added, “Not really.”

Rats looked to Poi, smiling, asking, “Got a bad spell to show him, Poi?”

Poi frowned, saying, “Remaking a tier 2 is one day of rest. Tier 3 is 10 days of downtime. Tier 4 is 100. Tier 5 is a thousand.” He brought out a blue box, but held it close, not letting it go. His frown deepened. “It gets worse from there. To become an archmage usually takes a useful tier 8 and accreditation from an accredited arcanaeum, which means hundreds of proper spell combinations, or spending fifty points to get one spell that, while good, isn’t great.” He shoved the blue box at Erick, saying, “That bubble popping from Opal is only tier 5. This is the failed version. It’s almost a thousand mana more expensive than the Script version.”

 

 

Erick read the box, and his face scrunched. “How is it that expensive!?”

Poi sighed. “[Dispel] multiplies costs significantly and for [Ward]s you have to be able to eat away at the entire amount of mana spent on that [Ward] in order to [Dispel] that [Ward]. This version is failed, yes, but it will still take down almost any [Ward], even 50,000 point [Absorption Ward]s.”

Erick was still waiting for mana. Poi obviously needed help, and Erick wasn’t ready to get back in the fight yet anyway, so he asked, “Have you tried to make any smaller spells with that harmonic suggestion I mentioned on the wyrm hunt?”

“Haven’t had the time to explore that possibility in depth.” Poi said, “But I did try it with [Force Crash] and Mana Altering for Fire. I got the standard [Fire Crash] you would find in the Script. I repeated this process with every Mana Altering I could, and all of the spells I created were almost exactly the version you’d find in the Script. So I think you’re doing something else that you’re not aware you’re doing. Have you considered formal mage training? Find out what it is you’re doing different? It’s not an arcanaeum, but there are classes at the Mage Guild in Spur.”

Erick asked, “Are you formally trained?”

“No, but I have completed all the training taught in Spur.” Poi added, “And studied under… An archmage.”

Rats smirked, adding, “The betting pool has seven names on it, but Opal is highest on the list.”

Poi frowned at Rats, then said to Erick, “Every great mage has their own method to magic because magic is nuanced and fickle; some would even call it alive.” Poi summed it up, saying, “Not everyone finds their calling, their way of magic that works for them. I’m still searching for mine.”

Erick sat back in his chair, considering… well. Everything.

And then Teressa brought him back to the moment, saying, “Because of their power and ability, many archmages turn to evil, become selfish, only caring about themselves or their work. Sometimes they get called ‘wizards’ and are hunted down for their actions. Sometimes they simply go into hiding. And sometimes, they go to Ar’Kendrithyst, and become a Shade. Almost every Shade can do something similar to what you did this morning.” Teressa added, “If the Shades ever decided to really attack Spur, we would have to defend against [Comet Swarm]s, [Psychic Terror]s, and [Grand Abomination]s, each of which is much worse than what you did to Odaali. We would fail. Spur would be a smoking ruin. History has proven this.”

Rats nodded. Poi stood still, his arms crossed.

Erick focused. He was in a war right now. He needed more mana. He needed more regeneration. He needed to leave the big questions out of his mind, for now.

And he had killed people who were not low level. He had gained power from those deaths, and though it sickened him to puking, he looked over those notifications. He saw the first one, and couldn’t bear to look at the rest; bile threatened at the back of his throat.

 

 

Erick looked at his Status, instead. He had gained six levels. He put those twelve points from those six levels evenly into Willpower and Focus.

 

 

Erick felt balanced, but expanded, like driving fast over a hill and feeling slightly weightless on the downhill side. He floated for a moment, letting the feeling wash through and past. When it was gone, he started summoning small Ophiels to go with the few he already had, dropping back down to low mana. Soon, he would be ready. As mana flowed in, restoring his pool, he sent out [Scry] orbs to find out where he should go first.

 

– – – –

 

A grey castle floated in front of an iced over Kingdom City, the white walls barely containing the icebergs. The rain had stopped, but the Queen Vine had not. She raised her tendrils from the ice, deflecting against invisible pulses of air that rocked out of the floating grey castle. But she did not stop them all. Something thick and vicious ripped into the ice of the city, and into the Queen Vine.

The Queen Vine recoiled from the attack, ducking under the ice, but the grey castle did not advance.

The Queen’s retreat was a feint. Vines and tendrils, green and purple, ripped up from the ground outside of the white walls of the Kingdom City, racing into the air around the grey castle, grabbing hold of the invisible sphere that supported the floating structure. She wrapped around the castle—

An Ophiel popped into the air above Odaali and immediately loosed [Domain of the Withering Slime]. A white sphere surrounded the dozen-winged [Familiar], as thick, crashing air spilled down into the hollows in the iced city and out across the land under the grey castle, wrapping around the Queen Vine from all directions.

A great keening filled the sky and rumbled through the land. The Queen Vine shuddered, twitching in great spasms. Green tendrils and purple leaves shriveled and died, a hundred thousand rivulets of dark water springing forth from cracks and breaks in the thick flesh of the monstrous daydropper vine.

The grey castle tore loose from the vines ensnaring it; flying higher. Billowing grey clouds rocketed out of the castle’s bottom, striking the land where the Queen Vine had dared to reach skyward, drilling into the dirt, burrowing, doing somethi—

A flare ripped through the grey cloud, into the land, dancing out from under the dirt like auroras bursting from a rib cage, spewing boulders and stone and plant matter into the sky.

Ophiel had been watching for a counter attack, but it came too quick to avoid; a vine reached up from below and carved the [Familiar] in half.

– – – –

 

Erick came back to himself in the underground stone room.

A grey stone man stood by the staircase. Cylindrical legs, thick arms, he was a man carved from grey marble, wearing nothing at all. Erick only guessed it was a ‘he’ because of the general male humanness of the creature.

Teressa was standing between Erick and the stone man, while Rats and Poi flanked the creature.

After taking a single second to understand he was seeing, Erick yelled, “What the fuc—!”

The stone man interrupted Erick, speaking like a rich gentleman, saying, “Archmagister Tenebrae of the Wyrmridge Enclave sends his greetings. He desires for you to forgo attacking the Queen Vine. He is perfectly capable of killing it and likely would have killed it, had it maintained its grip on his Estate.”

Erick stood up from his chair, demanding, “How did you find me?”

Rats spoke up, “My fault. I made the mistake of accepting a telepathic connection.”

Poi deeply frowned at the stone man, saying, “Tenebrae faked a connection from Killzone.”

“You can fake a telepathic connection?” Erick asked, not sure if he was focusing on the correct problem or not.

The stone man spoke fast, and rough, “My Master says this: ‘I can, idiot; you’re lucky you’re able to put your own shoes on in the morning’. My Master also wishes me to inform you that, ‘You are out of your league, planar man. Go home and entertain your Shades.’ End quote.”

Everything was happening very fast. As Erick was trying to come up with a response to that—

The stone man switched to eloquence, saying, “Please accept this advice with the care it is being delivered, as we are in the middle of a battle, and not, perhaps, the subterfuge or apparent threat such a delivery might instill within your group.” He lamented, “My Master simply has no patience for people of any kind; but if he were to become your enemy, he would be very thorough in letting you know this fact, before he struck at you. It is the hope of us, his Stone Men, that he has not garnered undue hatred from his actions today, as he so often does.”

Erick asked, “You’re going to help with the second Queen Vine, too, then?”

The stone man paused, then said, “My Master wishes me to inform you that, ‘Fuck you. All I need is this one Queen, and I won’t allow its corpse to be desiccated.’ End quote.”

Erick stood straighter, saying, “No deal. I’ll desiccate that thing to woodchips if you don’t help with both. And do you have a plan to deal with the rad bombs in there? Or should I toss more [Wintry Sea]s down?”

The stone man lamented, saying, “Master Tenebrae says, ‘Keep your cold magic away, idiot! I’ve already disabled the bombs. I’ll kill the second Queen, too. Now stop bothering me, and go away.’ End quote.” The stone man bowed, then rose, saying, “Thank you for acquiescing to my Master’s requests.”

The stone man vanished in a grey blip.

After a second, Erick shouted, “What the fuck!”

Rats joked, “I thought archmage Opal was just mad at him! But nah? He actually is a pushy asshole?”

“We need to move,” Poi said. “I’m not willing to accept that wasn’t a threat.”

“Shit.” Erick asked, “How many ways are there to track people down like he did?”

Poi frowned. “None that are that easy; now that we’re officially on [Telepathic] lockdown and all communication is going through me. You might get some more communications, sir, but I’m capturing them first to quarantine and verify the connection and their senders.”

“Again!” Rats said, “Sorry!”

Poi looked to Erick, saying, “Please allow this to happen, sir.”

Erick began, “Allow wha—”

Something shifted in Erick’s perception of the world as a vague sense of Poi being nearby magnified and then faded into the background, but he was still there. If Erick focused he could feel Poi’s mental presence inside his mind.

“That,” Poi said.

“That’s… weird,” Erick said, mentally poking at the perception of Poi stuck in his head. “Was that necessary? What spell was that?”

Poi said, “[Telepathic Interception]. And apparently, it is necessary.” Poi winced. “If you poke at it hard enough it will go away, but it really hurts every time you do. Sir.”

Erick stopped mentally poking at Poi, then turned to Rats, saying, “Don’t worry about it, Rats.”

Teressa frowned, saying, “He should worry about it, sir.”

Rats seemed to crumble slightly, mumbling, “Sorry.”

Five minutes later they were in a new location a hundred kilometers away, almost the same as the first. Erick needed the time to recover his mana, anyway.

He summoned several more Ophiels; the squad wasn’t up to full, not yet.

 

– – – –

 

A single Ophiel hovered into the sky above where the White Palace had been. Rubble and fire had replaced the surrounding stone towers and grasslands. Vast swaths of stone had been raised as haphazard walls across the hilly area, while some people held low to the ground, behind walls or behind rubble.

Other people had more active ideas of how to win a war. Men and women fought across the varied space, swords flashing against swords, magic blossoming against walls and battle lines. Some wore white armor, but most wore varied robes or plate or chainmail of every color. Chaos reigned.

Erick had no idea what the fuck he was looking at.

He watched for a while; Ophiel automatically dodging minor spells that tried to hit him, [Blink]ing left or right, but otherwise doing nothing.

Then he saw someone trying to [Grow] a daydropper.

[Domain of the Withering Slime].

A white sphere flashed around Ophiel, spilling thick air onto the battlefield far, far in every direction, causing countless locations to burst with a [Cleanse] from the deaths of daydroppers Erick had not actually seen. A cascade of retaliatory spells tried to shoot Ophiel out of the air, but Ophiel dodged with [Blink]s and [Swift Movement] and [Airshape]. A few tracking [Force Bolt]s managed to clip him, but they did almost no damage.

Other fliers were not so fortunate as to have eyes all around their body. Erick watched as other people tried to fly, tried to hover into better positions to aim their spells, or to gain the high ground. Almost all of those unfortunate people were shot out of the air as soon as they became an easy target.

People were still trying to shoot at Ophiel, but they were having little to no luck. Erick took notice of the people shooting. With [Ultrasight], he could see their skin was purple or magenta or pale violet, while everyone else, who was not shooting at Ophiel, was tan or brown. There were no horns on the incani, either through their helmets or on those with exposed heads; they must have shaved them off, or something, Erick wasn’t sure.

There was a glut of soldiers in white on one side; those were humans. There was a glut of soldiers in darker greens and greys on the other, those were incani. But the rest of the people were wearing so many different colors that telling one side from the other was not simple. Red and blues and greens and oranges. People wore black and grey, or cyan or teal. Whoever the colorful people were, they were not all trained soldiers of Odaali-in-Exile; they were irregulars, and too many of them were of the Halls of the Dead for Erick to feel comfortable blasting any part of the battle down below. He couldn’t just… Kill people? Could he? No. He couldn’t. Not yet.

But not all of the people down there were still people.

All across the war torn fields, but mostly around the incani sides, people were fighting for their lives, but some of those people were already dead. Undead fortified the incani forces, forming the bulk of the attackers, now that Erick took a minute to understand the battlefield. The undead moved like a coordinated tide into the human lines, while well-hidden casters hung out behind the undead; fortifying the undead with a magic of some sort, but Erick had no idea what.

Suddenly, some great tide of mana burst forth from inside the incani battle lines, so great a power that the flex of the manasphere was visible to the naked eye. The withered grey husks of undead people suddenly bulked up, and raced across the battlefield in hail-mary attacks against the humans. Some humans hunkered down in fox holes, casting spells into the horde, blasting apart bodies, but the undead were stronger now; spells struck them and bounced off, doing little damage, halting none of the undead advance. The humans that hunkered down paid for that decision with their lives as they were physically torn apart by empowered undead.

Those who ran fared little better. Shimmering beams of white light shot out from the advancing horde, cutting through fleeing soldiers, ricocheting off of hastily erected [Force Walls], clipping through the human defenses.

Not one minute had passed since Ophiel had entered the sky above.

Erick was overwhelmed. People were dying to those already dead, but there were still living people in the middle of the horde. He couldn’t fire at a battlefield like this, could he? He decided that yes, he could kill the necromancers, for sure, But aiming where he knew people on the human side were going to die? Ophiel dodged while Erick tried to find an opening. Erick looked over his spells, and decided, as he saw one young woman torn to shreds, that he would have to do something.

 

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

 

Erick layered [Shimmer]s into the undead lines. Sculpting the spell to maximize coverage, aiming where [Ultrasight] showed that everyone was already dead. The spell wasn’t perfect; many undead escaped coverage, but many living humans escaped coverage, too. Several necromancers did not escape the fire.

Bright specks of light flowed up through the undead, turning dried flesh into burning meat, then to ash. Fires already burned on the hills, but [Shimmer] kicked up burning debris into globular spheres of fire that held the line, brightening to an inferno. The undead inside were burned to a crisp; they could not get through.

And then they could.

Bursts of what had to be [Temperature Ward] filled the [Shimmer] from the inside out, ripping the spell apart, scattering dying motes of flame into the air. Undead that had not fully burned began to stitch together, magical force transforming into withered flesh; shambling, burned bodies, restored to fighting strength.

They must have figured out Erick was using Particle magic based on the attack on Odaali.

Erick had Ophiel layer more [Shimmer]s into the enemy line, into different locations. The Halls could burst the spell apart with a proper [Temperature Ward], but they still had to spend mana and time to break the spell, and that time cost them everything. While they were distracted by flaming air, the human line reorganized. Spells unaffected by [Temperature Ward] ripped into the distracted Halls of the Dead, cutting down undead and incani alike. The Halls were routed; they just didn’t know it yet. Without their undead swarm, the human lines advanced against the Halls.

Erick looked away. This section of the battle was won. Odaali’s forces summarily broke the Halls of the Dead and then began to move inward, to advance against the other battle lines all across the rest of the hilly land.

Ophiel flew high, higher still.

From high above, Erick witnessed the true scope of the battle.

Odaali-in-Exile and the Halls of the Dead clashed over a dozen kilometers in every direction. Bright explosions and flashing swords. Blood and mud. Death and undeath.

All Erick had done was save one squad, and killed a few hundred undead. He was lost; he had no idea where to go next. He wasn’t a commander; he hated war movies and everything about this situation. He liked the romantic comedies and the dramas. He had no idea what to do, so he sent a telepathic link to someone who would know: Yetta.

293 damage and a major headache poked out from the inside of his skull. Erick briefly came back to himself, sitting in the stone room, clutching his head as the pain began to ebb away.

“Fuck.” Erick said, “That hurts.”

“Sir?” Poi asked.

Erick sat back in his chair. “Tried to contact Yetta to find out what she wants, but she’s not accepting connections.”