Magesty Ch2
Magesty
Ch.2: Discovery
By Cameron Carpenter
As the rest of the occupants of what I’d dubbed “Fort Survivor” stirred and began to ready themselves for the days work and chores, I still sat in the chair I’d sat in for over five hours. When Steven reemerged with Amanda in tow, I finally looked up from my tea, which had long since gone cold and slightly stale. I’d decided that I’d set out before noon to make for my own family. I got up and wandered back into the living room that had been my bedroom the previous night. I walked around the couch a few times looking for my pouch. After my third or fourth circuit around the couch I decided to see if anyone moved it. I ended up finding it next to the front door, packed full of supplies. I looked and asked around, but no one would own up to giving me such a generous gift. So I decided to make it up to everyone.
I walked down into the middle of the fields and raised my hands. I focused hard, pouring all my concentration into gathering and shaping the ambient mana in the area, saving what was inside me for emergencies. Soon, my hands began to glow; my right, an earthy green, the left, an aqueous blue. I bent my knees and slammed my right hand into the dirt, seeing/sensing the mana shoot through the soil in a spreading wave. With my left, I held it out to the air, a fine mist started to collect around my hand and coalesced into a swirling ball, with a flick of the wrist the ball of mist flashed out over the fields. As I turned to walk back into the house to grab my staff and pouch, I noticed Steven watching my little display with a combination of amusement, awe and gratitude on his face.
“It was my way of thanking y’all for the hospitality, and for whoever packed my pouch for me. The soil will begin to draw nutrients from deep in the earth, and the mist will pull moisture into the plants.” I said, attempting to sound serene and aloof like the arch-mages at the academy.
Steven simply looked at the field and then to me.
“I guess that means we can skip watering the plants for a while” He finally replied.
“Only for a while, the enchantments I put on the field won’t last too long, I’d say a week maybe more, but don’t neglect them at all, you can skip watering, but don’t skip tending and weeding, because the weed’s’ll be shooting up double quick too. An unfortunate side effect that can’t be avoided.” I mused soberly.
I noticed a Phendralis creeper vine crawling up over the wall. With a split second of focus and a flick of the wrist, a fireball shot out from my fingertips. It struck the vine, burning off a swath and causing the remainder to lurch back over the wall. The sentient plant wasn’t a threat to much of anything, but I know that they’re a nuisance. Mostly because they can grow to cover acres of land if local wild life didn’t love to eat them and the fact that they’re smart enough to avoid areas where it gets attacked. Steven had disappeared in that wonderful fashion he had. I’d swear up and down that that boy was a ninja or some kind of shadow-folk. Like that girl from last night. I went back to the house to get my pouch and staff so I could set out. I saw Steven and Amanda gearing up, strapping on armor and swords. I figured that they’d probably be going out to patrol the surrounding ruinous area or something like that.
“You two going out for a little search and destroy of monsters?” I inquired.
“That and we wanna make sure that our little mage doesn’t get skewered by a lone gobbo” Amanda replied and Steven tried to stifle a laugh.
“But really, you’re probably gonna go part of the same way we are, we’ll keep you safe for a bit” Steven chimed in, synching up his leather cuirass and checking his gauntlets.
“Thanks guys, it’ll also be nice to have conversation while I walk.” I said beaming with nothing but joy and gratitude in my eyes.
We took off from the fort a little after nine thirty by their clock, walking through the gate, I was hit with a fresh wave of pressure and nausea, but I did my best to suppress it as we walked. We walked down the ruined road where once cars traveled, but now it was so broken and full of potholes it was even dangerous as a foot path to all but the most surefooted. There was grass growing out of the potholes that grew up to, and over our heads. Steven pulled out his katana and occasionally sliced some of the taller patches down to about waist height. Eventually the road deteriorated into a dirt path that branched every two hundred feet or so. And there seemed to be a clearing every quarter mile or so, almost like markers.
As we neared where Steven and Amanda and I would part ways, we slowed our pace. We stopped at one of the clearings with a stream running through it. I sat down on the ground, taking in the surroundings, and the mana with it. I reached into my pouch, which really more than anything was just a messenger bag with runes inscribed into it. Without looking I slowly dig my way through the food and my few personal belongings to clench a silk bag. I pulled it out and beckoned Steven and Amanda over to where I was sitting.
“I have something for both of you,” I said with a mischievous look on my face, “something arcane and slightly illegal.”
“Ooo, what is it?” Amanda asked with childlike curiosity in her eyes.
“What the hell man? The bag is glowing! That stuff better not be radioactive!” Steven shouted seeing that the bag was indeed glowing a blue that was shrouded mostly by the bag.
“Naw man, it’s not nuclear, just magic,” I said as I reached into the bag and pulled out three glowing ice blue shards, “These are heartstones, they’ll let us find each other where ever we are if we need to, Just hold it and think about the person you need to find, and as long as they have a heartstone with them, you’ll feel drawn in their direction, and the stone will glow brighter as you get closer.”
“Sounds useful, wait why are they illegal?” Steven said with no small amount of skepticism about accepting the bright shard.
“First of all, it’s blood magic, which is all but forbidden to civilians, second of all, they used to be military equipment, and then organized crime rings started to use them to keep a handle on members. The ones that the military and crime rings used were more powerful versions called mindstones, which allowed people to communicate in a way similar to telepathy.”
“So why are these illegal too?”
“Because blood magic in general is considered grounds for execution, and any artifacts created through blood magic are illicit. I’m sure that if criminals hadn’t been using them like walkie-talkies to pull their shit, I wouldn’t’ve had to sneak around when I was making them.”
“WAIT A MINUTE! You MADE these?”
“Yeah, I had to give up some of my blood to make them, I want to be able to know that you guy’s’re still alive, so here” I thrusted the two stones, which I’d fashioned into necklaces towards them with an imploring look.
“So wait, those have blood on them?” Amanda asked looking like I’d lost her a while back.
“Yeah, not on them, but in them, it’s the blood that connect them so we’d be able to sense each other.” I explained
“So, then why aren’t they red or something?”
“That, I truly don’t know…” I had to admit shamefully, “They’re made by enchanting the crystal using blood as a locus for the mana. When the blood is poured on the crystal, it gets absorbed into it like water on a sponge. Then the crystal turns into a buncha smaller ones and then viola, heartstones.”
After I finally convinced them that the stones were harmless, if not beneficial to them, they took the two necklaces and put them on. Steven tucked his into his armor while Amanda let hers swing free. I’d set them both on mithril chains to hopefully prevent them from getting lost. I was pleased that I was able to give them the heartstones, so at least the pint of blood wasn’t wasted.
As I got up and was about to bid my friends farewell the sounds of battle rushed to our ears. It was mostly the screams of goblins dying, and the occasional yelp of pain from a human. My mind was immediately kicked into overdrive, and I tore off running after the sounds, scooping up my pouch as I ran. I pulled my staff off it the hook like holster and started to pool mana into the staff. As I neared the battlefield I saw that the goblins had already pulled their trademark bullshit, setting fires. In the shadows cast by the fires I saw a lithe figure cutting down goblins left and right. I stopped at the edge of the battlefield and harnessed all the mana in my staff. I had to duck as Steven and Amanda jumped clean over me, charging into the melee. I had to use complex aquamancy, that I wasn’t totally confident in, to pull off the spell I wanted, something to put out the fires, and hopefully drown the goblins, without in advertently killing my friends or the other person. I saw that my spell was working, my staff was glowing aquamarine with coalescing tendrils of mana waving about it. Stevens jump, which I swear was powered by aeromancy propelled him right behind a goblin with a torch and a two by four with a bunch of rusty nails driven into it. The next second almost scared me. As Steven landed he brought down his sword on the middle of the back of the goblins oval skull, neatly cleaving it in two and stopping at the base of the spinal column.
As I slammed my staff into the ground, hoping I hadn’t messed up in the way I shaped the mana, I saw Amanda run through one of the green skinned little pygmy freaks with her katana and in one fluid motion kick it off her blade into one of it’s former friends. My boots felt wet, there was muddy water rising up out of the soil. I started to panic, I’d already cast the spell, there was no way to reverse it now, only try to control it. I took up my staff, it burned with an aura of dark energy. I charged into the fray wanting nothing more than to help my friends and that other person. Once I got into the middle of the fight I clubbed a goblin with me staff, a blow that alone wouldn’t have killed it, or even knocked it out, but once the staff made contact, the aura flared and the goblin shrieked, it’s eyes nothing more than black portals as it fell back and writhed for a second before expiring. Suddenly I turned to face the next goblin when a gout of water shot up out of the earth and enveloped it. I turned to see Steven standing in a pile of dead green skins, his sword and his armor soaked in blood, I hoped little, if any, was his. Fountains of water had begun to shoot up randomly out of the dirt, some engulfing goblins, some totally missing. As the bodies piled up, I had to do something to control it, so I did all I could, I sat and focused. I had to focus, Etherenasia, the mages sense, was telling me where the pillars of liquid death were going to strike next, since it was my spell, I had to be able to guide it, my instructors told me to never to mix elemancy with regular spell casting, and now I knew why. The sheer magnitude of what I was trying to control was horrifying. I started to channel the mana instead of bend it, thinking that if I could channel it, make it a part of myself, that I might have an easier time controlling it, so I began to try and channel my own spell, another thing I’d been warned against. Then I felt it. Pure unadulterated power, I could feel my body coursing with it, but not being able to get rid of it quick enough. I opened my eyes and looked to see what was around me, goblins, standing in a circle around me, with confused looks on their ugly faces. With a savage cry a torrent of water shot up around me, it pulsed in rhythm with my heart, and forced itself into the goblins lungs. There faces were contorted in fear, as they struggled against it. Once they stopped trying to fight I stood up and the waters around me crashed to the ground leaving the soggy corpses in a circle around me. The mana was still coursing into me, my skin was starting to burn, I had to expel it quickly before it killed me. I swung my arms at the fires sending waves to combat the blazes. I felt like I was going to die before the fight was over, I wasn’t going to see who I saved. Then it hit me, I took up my staff again and started to funnel the mana into it. The staff in turn began to once again glow with an aquamarine aura, but much more violently this time.
The mana level in my body was stabilizing but I knew that soon my staff would break and I would have to try to live thought the mana shock that would likely kill me. I had to neutralize it. Taking what I could, I started to convert the water mana that was flowing into my body into electrical mana, for once using something my teachers hadn’t told me not to do, to cancel out the water mana. Water and electricity, fire and ice, light and dark, earth and air, they were all in balance in the world, and so I would balance them inside myself, and hopefully avoid death. I could feel my skin starting to cool, and with the heartstone in my pocket, I could tell that Steven and Amanda were still close, still alive. I’d know the last foe was slain when I, more sensed than saw, my two friends and that stranger come over to me. I slumped to my knees, and then fell backwards. The last think I saw was the face of a pretty girl I knew I recognized, then my world went black.
Magesty by Cameron Carpenter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at magesty.wordpress.com.
