Chapter 215 – Lessons in Necromancy

They stood atop the plateau. Mirian faced her father and gave him a salute with Eclipse.

“Don’t hold back,” her father called.

Mirian took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding in a way that had only been matched by her confrontation with Ibrahim. She had thought through her strategy for a confrontation with Atrah Xidi before she’d realized that was her father. Her usual strategy would be to cast total camouflage and levitation, using her near-invisibility and speed to first catch her opponent off-guard, then swap to prismatic shield if a spell might actually hit her. Meanwhile, she would use direct attack spells, coating them with soul energy to pierce spell resistance if needed.

She already knew that her father had techniques that could modify the energy type not just of his own spells, but those of his opponents. Mirian didn’t know if that was merely an enchantment or if it could be wielded as an active spell, but she had planned for both contingencies. From her observations two cycles prior, she also knew he was capable both of soul-drain and mana-drain style spells and possessed a powerful soul repository. That would act both as a defense and a way to empower him. Then there was the black shield he used. She wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, only that it was at a minimum equivalent in defensive capability to Luspire’s prismatic shield.

Her father had of course agreed not to endanger her soul. He had helped dispel the fragmented remains of Westerun’s curse like it was nothing, so she had no doubt his finesse was as potent as his raw power. Gaius had refused to discuss his spells until after the battle, not wanting to “spoil the surprise.”

Mirian still didn’t like surprises, but nevertheless could admit that practice against an opponent of unknown capabilities was useful.

Her plan assumed her father could easily pierce a prismatic shield. Instead, she’d rely on overwhelming his senses by using greater illusionary army. With high spell resistance from all three of her soulbound items, her soul would be harder to see amidst the illusions, especially at a distance. She would use beads of soul energy in several of the illusions to further complicate picking her out. Meanwhile, she’d be ripping up chunks of the plateau to hurl, avoiding the problem of spell resistance altogether.

If the battle came to attrition, she would try spells that detonated near the target, like Luspire’s cascading inferno, and if that failed, direct attacks with soul coating while using mana drain.

Mirian lowered her blade and began. She cast her illusion spell simultaneous with levitation, then had herself move in a criss-cross pattern with the illusions as she deployed the beads of soul energy so that he’d have trouble tracking her. As she lifted her first boulder to hurl, though, her spell was interrupted.

Her plan of using indirect attacks had been too obvious. He’d been ready for that specific spell. Then, while she was reformulating, he hit the entire region of air she and the illusions were in with a widened force blast—but one that targeted the air. Mirian was blown back, but she wasn’t ready to move the illusions the same way. As light constructs, they weren’t moved at all by the blast of air.

Mirian snapped up a prismatic shield just in time to deflect a disintegration ray. Needing to alleviate the pressure, she cast cascading inferno as planned—only to look on in horror as something sapped mana from the spells as they were airborne. Mirian cast detect life so that she could see what had just happened and repeated her attack. He’s using some sort of net defense that traps the spell in a binding then saps it, she realized. The net would take a great deal of soul energy, but that didn’t matter if he knew where the attack would come from.

Then, Mirian saw her prismatic shield was getting sapped as well. She cut with Eclipse, disrupting the spell, only for it to reform at the back of her shield where she couldn’t easily get at it.

Shit. She used force drills to break up the rock in front of herself, then manipulate stone to harden it into a temporary barrier and dismissed the shield.

The mass fireballs still might work, but they need to avoid his nets, she thought. Here, her work with Jei on four-dimensional paths would be critical. She could move the path of the cascading inferno beads first through four-dimensional space, then route them around to his back. Mirian flipped back and forth between her page of attack spells and her page of pathing glyphs. As she launched the spell, she predicted her father would be using some sort of spell to bombard her hiding position. She flipped back to her utility page and used blink, just in time; a spell severed the connection of the rock wall to the plateau, then sent it crashing into the spot where she’d just been. That was then followed by a fire beam.

Mirian saw that Gaius’s black shield spell was up now. She blinked again, nausea rising in her, just in time to dodge another fire beam. There was a brief moment of hesitation. Hah! I know a spell he doesn’t, she thought triumphantly.

She raised another prismatic shield a moment later, not knowing how else to defend herself. Immediately, the claws of some spell were digging into it. She couldn’t tell how the siphon worked, just that she had to pour mana into the spell to keep it from falling apart.

He wins by attrition, she realized. Her aura was vast, but she’d been draining it the whole time. Meanwhile, his auric mana was probably untouched. Mirian attempted her own mana siphon spell, but whatever the black shield was, her spell dissolved against it. She tried to counter his siphon spells, but he started recasting the spell every few seconds with a different pathing, so by the time she’d enacted her counterspell, he’d already moved it so that her spell landed on nothing. In a burst of inspiration, she tried siphoning mana from the spells he was attacking her with, but got no result.

Then, she saw tendrils of soul energy burrowing into her shield.

Mirian only had a moment to react. She blinked away again, but this time, her father was ready for her. The tendrils appeared again where she’d moved and cracked open her shield. Then she was hit by a series of spells she didn’t recognize. Glancing at her soul, they appeared to be curses—at least four of them. She fell to the plateau, paralyzed, and her connection to her catalyst fizzled entirely.

Her father approached her, face beaming. “Wonderfully done!” he said. “You lasted a full fifteen seconds longer than the Archmage Tellicus, and I daresay he had a few decades of experience on you. The repathed fireball barrage was a nice trick, but unfortunately, you’re not the first to try it. Now the short range teleportation spell—that’s new.” He raised his hand and the curses around Mirian dissolved.

She gasped for breath, then dismissed her rapier and spellbook.

He reached down to help her up off the ground.

Mirian took his hand. “It’s not true teleportation. It’s a jaunt that pushes me through the fourth dimension briefly.”

He was still smiling, but there was a sorrow in it now. “Your mother would have been proud. You weren’t just my little soul mage, you were her little mathematician.”

The pain of her death was still fresh. She wanted to embrace it. She wanted to feel the waters of grief wrap around her until the torrents boiled, and then she could become a creature of rage and scour the Praetorians and Deeps for what they’d done to her.

No. There’s work to be done. “Your mana siphon spell doesn’t work the way mine does. And there’s versatile versions that can attack the mana fueling the spell.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Yes, I was meaning to ask about that. Who taught you to siphon?”

“I deduced it. Soul siphoning is only a short step away from capturing a myvite soul in a repository, but since mana is soul energy at a lower frequency, I figured out how to force the step-down process.”

“Really! Well then you’re brilliant. But yes, necromancy has seen a great deal of refinements. Though I’m not surprised you haven’t encountered any of the last cults hiding about—they’ve learned to stay very well hidden.”

He put a thin finger to his lips. “Some advice. First, without knowing the spells that can counter siphoning, you can still refine your casting technique to avoid it. All of your pathing glyphs for your shield are completely standard, which is what I’m relying on to sap them. It’s the most efficient path for the arcane force to take, but a less efficient path would mean I couldn’t predict where to sap. Siphoning an active spell is an exercise in targeting the place where the arcane force is still going through the transformation process. You’ve wisely shrouded your catalyst and book in adamantium, not just enchantments, so I can’t sap mana prior to the transformation. But arcane energy knows no ownership, just as the sun’s rays know no ownership. Catch it, and it’s yours.”

Mirian nodded. “So you’re using nets to capture energy, then energy transformations. But you can turn arcane force back into mana?”

“No. Theoretically, the alchemists are convinced it’s possible to ‘unbake’ bread, but in practice its never been done. In our analogy, it’s more like I’m taking the baked bread and crumbling it up, then using it as a poor substitute for flour.”

Her mind spun. “So you’re using someone else’s arcane force for your own spells? But that would mean… but it’s already left the shaping glyphs.”

“Yes, so I’m just casting a simple energy transformation spell at the coordinates where the arcane force is. Hence why you using standard pathing is a vulnerability. By transforming your arcane force into bursts of kinetic energy prior to the resolution point of the spell, it weakens the construction of the shield while also attacking the shield at the same time.”

“I see,” said Mirian, furrowing her brow. Gods, I’ll have to redo all my combat spells. And figure out a way to modify Luspire’s prismatic shield. That won’t be easy. “That was how you countered the shield, though. What about that net that was trapping my spells?”