《Counterwizard》


 Prologue: The Siege of Aegis

    For the past seven hundred years, the fortified city of Aegis blocked the only pass through the mountain range known as the Godswall. To the east of the pass lay the human kingdom of Atarah, westernmost of the kingdoms constituting the Alliance of Light. To the west of the pass, the taint of the Forsaken Lands, touched by chaos magic and populated by demonic Dreadspawn, was visible in the sickly color of the ground and in the mutated, skeletal vegetation.


    I was standing on one of the towers on the eastern wall of Aegis, observing the sun rising through the giant magical barrier that has blocked all traffic between Aegis and the Alliance for the eight weeks the city has been under siege.  Behind me, about a kilometer beyond the city''s western wall, and army of Dreadspawn has been assembling ever since the barrier went up. I was impossible to get an exact count of the enemy, but the rumors running through the barracks said that the ruler of the city and commander of its garrison, the duchess Elena Whiteshadow, estimated them to number over thirty thousand, more than ten times the number of warriors we had defending the city, and more of them kept streaming into the pass with every hour.


    I could see, beyond the semitransparent barrier blocking the pass, a whole army of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and all of the other races forming the Alliance. If they could get to us, they would be more than enough to lift the siege, but every attempt to pass through or above the barrier has been met with death, and every attempt to break it has failed.


    Standing to my right, one clawed hand resting on my shoulder and the other shading her eyes, stood a creature that, had I seen her six months ago, would have had me wondering who slipped the acid into my drink.


    Two and a half meters tall, muscled like a weightlifter, and covered with golden and red scales from head to razor sharp claw, the mere sight of the dragon''s hybrid combat form was enough to inspire terror in the hearts of the bravest of warriors.


    As the sun slowly rose higher into the sky, my new wife and I stood in silence, preparing ourselves for the moment we would attempt to bring down the barrier, and let our reinforcements come to our aid. Finally, the sun rose above the horizon, and the time to start the spell was upon us. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes for a second, concentrated on my unique talent, and opened them again to a changed world.


    I could no longer see any inanimate object, and living objects were only visible as vague shapes made of light, with differing colors and intensities based on the type and strength of their magic. Magic, itself, became visible to me, as thin lines crisscrossing the world, pulsing with the flow of mana. Spells were visible as complex weaves of light, linked to the wizard who created them. I gazed up at the great barrier, and it too resolved into a weave of light, the biggest and most complex I had ever seen. I concentrated, and the weave expanded in my vision, gaining depth as I looked into it, until eventually the entire weave was visible to me, and I could instinctively understand how it worked.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.And how to unravel it.


    I raised my hands, and took hold of the lines of mana in front of me, and started to slowly weave them into the spell that would perfectly counter the barrier. This would be the hardest spell I''ve ever cast, and even the slightest mistake would render it impotent, so I had to work very carefully, pulling one strand after another into my weave. I lost track of time while weaving, and it was close to noon by the time I was done. I gave my work one last examination, fixing a few errant strands that would have spoiled my spell if left unchecked, and then it was time to start the second phase of the spell. I looked to my right, seeing the wellspring of magical power that was the dragoness, and was once again amazed at the sheer amount of power available to her. Even the weakest human born in this world had at least five times the amount of mana I had, and my wife was the most powerful I''ve seen here. I concentrated on the magical bond linking me to her, and started to slowly fill my spell with mana.


    At first, everything went well. I felt the now familiar tingling sensation of mana being syphoned from me and into the spell, just as I''ve felt a thousand times over the past six months. But once the spell drained me of all my power, things became a lot more difficult. I reached through the bond connecting me to the dragoness, and mana started flowing from her into me, and from me into the spell. The pull from the weave grew stronger and stronger, and the flow of mana through me grew with it. The almost pleasant tingling grew warmer and warmer, and suddenly it was transformed, and it felt like liquid fire was flowing through my nerves. The pain grew stronger with each passing second, as more and more mana drained from the dragoness, through me, and into the spell, and it became harder and harder to concentrate.


    I clung to the weave in front of me with all of my strength, knowing that if I lost control of it, the spell would fail, and that with that much mana in it, I would have no chance to survive the backlash. My sight grew narrower and narrower, until my entire world was the pain and the spell, and then even those vanished, and there was only blackness.

 Chapter 1: Skeletons dont have Circuit Breakers

    Six months earlier


    "Club Warlock would be the absolute pinnacle of the town''s social life. Everyone who is anyone would be there, and everyone else would want to be there." At least, that''s what the owner, a Mr. Georg der Morgenstern, made sure to remind me very time I entered his soon to be opened establishment.


    Of course, the only reason I was in the place was to install the lighting system. Majoring in electronics and working as an electrician to pay the bills didn''t really leave me much time for partying.  Nevertheless, the guy was paying me enough to at least pretend to be attentive to his spiel.


    The club was setup as a " historically accurate warlock''s tower!" with the first floor being a bar and restaurant, the second floor sectioned into private party "labs" and the top floor featuring a second bar and a huge dancing floor, patterned to look like a "genuine demon summoning circle". It was this dance floor I''ve been working on for the third weekend in a row. Herr Morgenstern, as he liked to be called, has procured a large amount of some new electrical cable that glowed when current was run through it. We had red, purple and dark blue versions of these cables, and the "summoning circle" was to be patterned in them according to a sketch my employer dug out in some musty library.


    I finished soldering the last of the cables into the circuit board that would control the whole ensemble, replaced the clear plastic tiles covering the cables, and called downstairs to Herr Morgenstern "All done boss! You want to test the lighting?"


    "I am a bit busy coordinating with the unf?hig supplier of spirits, Mr. Duquesne," came the answer from the manager''s office on the second floor, "Can you start the tests on your own please? I will come up as soon as I am done here and we can fine tune the sequences after we see that everything is working."


    "Sure think, Herr Morgenstern. I''ll start the system up."


    "Danke Schoen, Mr. Duquesne." And with that, he went back to talking on the phone with, presumably, the alcohol supplier. Not that I could understand whatever it was he was saying, from the occasional words, in a combination of English and German, that floated up to me.


    Shrugging, I dimmed down the lights in the room so I could better see that dance floor, and turned on the lighting system.


    Genuine or not, I had to admit that the geometrical patterns on the floor, interspersed with weird symbols that looked almost but not quite like letters (the True Names of gods and demons written in Futhark, according to Herr Morgenstern) looked fairly impressive.


    I started by testing the cables one by one. Turning one on, setting it to flash on and off, and then turning it off and moving on to the next. After checking that everything was working properly, I set them to work in sequence. The software controlling the lights was fairly sophisticated, and was supposed to synch up with the sound system so that the lights would turn on, flash and turn off in time with the music. Without the sound system active, the software would use a randomized pattern instead.


    The dance floor started lighting up from the outside in. First, a purple circle surrounding the entire floor lighted up, followed by a ring of the strange writing, in red, just within the circle. The words started flashing on and off, and the second purple circle, just inside the red ring, lighted up. Inside the second circle, a blue pentagram lighted up, the light starting from a single point, and then running along each of the five edges. When the whole thing was lit, more red words lighted up inside each of the pentagram''s rays, leaving just the inner pentacle clear.


    As soon as the entire floor was on, I heard a small explosion, and sparks erupted from the fuse box near the stairway. I could hear a high pitched whine, and the readout on my control software showed the floor was pulling a lot more wattage than it was supposed to. The power drain rose higher and higher, far beyond the point in which the fuse was supposed to burn out and cut it off, and suddenly what appeared to be a purple-blue ball of lightning appeared in the middle of the dance floor. The ball started to twist around itself, spinning faster and faster, and I could feel a wind starting up as air was sucked into it. The wind grew stronger with each passing minute, and I had to hold on to the console to avoid bring carried with it. I held on with all my strength, but I could feel my grip loosening, until eventually I couldn''t hold on any more, and was pulled into the ball of lightning.


    ***


    It turns out that being thrown into a purple-blue ball of lightning doesn''t actually hurt. What did hurt was getting to the other side and being thrown against what appeared to be a pine tree.


    Between the pain from being thrown against the tree and the wind that was now blowing directly at me and pushing me against it, I couldn''t do much more then lie there and look around. I was lying on a patch of grass, and the sun was shining above me from the unobstructed sky. I was in what appeared to be a forest clearing, and right in front of me was the ball of lightning, wind blowing away from it.


    After a couple of minutes, the wind started to weaken, and I could finally push myself onto my feet. The ball of lightning was starting to slow down too, and I had the bad feeling that if I didn''t get back to the other side of what I now guessed to be some kind of portal, I would be stranded in wherever it was that it brought me to. I wasn''t very stead on my feet, however, and while I could stand up while leaning against the tree, I wasn''t up to walking against the still considerable wind. I tried to stagger forward, but was repeatedly pushed back against the tree, until the portal stopped spinning, and vanished.


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.I''m not ashamed to say that I panicked. I got pulled from the club I was working in to who knows where, thrown against a tree, and my way back just vanished. I ran to the spot where the portal was just a few seconds ago, and started to frantically dig at the ground, in a vain hope that I''d somehow find the way back. I kept digging at the ground, I don''t know for how long, but eventually I fell back, exhausted, my fingertips bleeding from digging at the hard ground. I stayed there, sobbing from a combination of pain exhaustion and fear, until I finally slipped into unconsciousness.


    ***


    I was woken up from my fitful sleep by the sounds of something crashing through the undergrowth. I got up to my feet, wary of whoever it was that was approaching me. It sounded too loud to be an animal, and since I had no idea where I was, I had to way to know if whoever it was would be friendly. I looked around me for something to defend myself with, in case whoever was approaching was hostile, but the few fallen branches that I could see didn''t look like they''d be of any use. Lacking and other choice, I took my multi tool out of my pocket and opened up its folding blade.


    Whoever it was that I was hearing was clearly moving in my direction, and I waited for them in the middle of the clearing, where I could have a clear view at anyone approaching. When I saw what came out of the forest, however, I started wondering if maybe I hit my head a lot harder than I thought when I got thrown through the portal.


    I am not what anyone would call a hardcore gamer. Between college and freelancing as an electrician, I didn''t have the time to sink into it. I did, however, play some quick online games every now and then, so when the skeleton walked out from between two trees, I started to think that I was dreaming about being in one of my games. A twinge of pain from my head convinced me otherwise, however, and I started to think that maybe I was in even bigger trouble than I imagined.


    The skeleton looked entirely real. The bones were more yellow than white, which I believe meant that the skeleton was fairly old, and tattered pieces of cloth and leather were hanging from it, probably the remains of its cloths. It was carrying a large scary mace in its right hand and a battered shield in its left.


    As soon as the skeleton saw me, it started running in my direction, raising its mace and getting ready to attack. It wasn''t very fast, but I was still in pain, and there was no guarantee that I would be able to outrun it. Fighting it, of course, was really not an option. Even if it didn''t have better reach from me and a shield, the blade of my little multi tool would be completely useless against it. My best chance, it seemed, was to get into the woods and try to lose it.


    I managed to get into the forest before the skeleton caught me, and I started moving deeper into the forest, hoping that the skeleton would lose sight of me. Fortunately, the forest seemed to be impeding the skeleton a lot more than it did me, and I was able to open up some distance between us. And that, naturally, was when I tripped over a tree root and fell down.


    I managed to cover my eyes as I fell, to protect them against stray rocks and branches on the ground, and when I opened them again, the world was gone. I was standing on nothingness, with large, vertical ropes of light all around me. The ropes started out as individual strands below me, each group of strands pulling closer together the higher it got, until a little below my feet the wove together into huge ropes. The ropes rose several meters above my head, and frayed back into individual strands at the end. Small balls of light moved around in the frayed parts of the ropes, seemingly at random. I didn''t have a lot of time to look around me though, since the sounds of the skeleton pursuing me were coming closer. I raised my hands above me to feel my way forward, and started moving forward, but I was moving a lot slower than before, since I couldn''t see the trees that I knew were still there. It only took me a few seconds after I started walking to realize that the ropes of light around me were, in fact, trees. The bark of the trees seemed to be a centimeter or two beneath the other layer of strands, and as soon as I realized this I could start moving a little faster.


    I still couldn''t move faster than the skeleton, however, and it kept gaining on me. Eventually, I had to turn around and face it, since getting away from it was impossible without seeing properly. What I saw behind me, however, didn''t look at all like a skeleton. A vaguely human shape made of multicolored light was closing in on me, as the more I looked at it the more details I could see. I can''t really describe how it looked. The closest I can get is that it looked like a tapestry made of light, with a pattern that looked like a printed electric circuit. The tapestry was mostly static, but light kept flowing through the circuit-like pattern. Somehow, I knew that the pattern was the only think animating the skeleton. I also knew, instinctively, that disrupting the pattern would stop the skeleton, but that doing it improperly would be really really bad. I reached out to the closest tree light, and unraveled a strand from its rope. My hand moved almost without my conscious direction, making a complicated net from the strand, and stringing it between two trees in front of me.


    I moved slowly back, watching the skeleton approach, and it was clear that the skeleton couldn''t see the net. In fact, it walked straight into it. Light started to flow from the skeleton, into the net, and from the net straight into the ground. The light flowed brighter and brighter, and I had to close my eyes. When the light dimmed enough for me to look, I opened my eyes and saw that the world has turned back to normal. The ropes of light were trees, the ground was visible beneath me, and a pile of lifeless bones marked where the skeleton met my trap.

 Chapter 2: Friend or Foe?

    With the skeleton moved from the "mostly dead" column into the "all dead" column, and the world back to looking normal, I started to retrace my footsteps and try to get back to the clearing. The portal that got me here wasn''t there anymore, but if there was any chance of it reopening, I didn''t want to miss it


    It took me a lot longer to get back to the clearing than I expected. I left fairly obvious signs of my passage, but the low amount of sunlight that managed to pass through the forest canopy, coupled with my lack of anything resembling tracking skills made my return trip take far longer than the chase, and it was getting towards evening when I finally stumbled my way back into the clearing. With the portal nowhere in sight, and no immediate danger presenting itself, I sat down to take stock of my situation


    My first instinct was to attribute everything that happened to me to hallucinations. After all, authentic or not, who in the twentieth century has ever heard of a demon summoning circle that actually works? I was certain it wasn''t drugs. I''m not above smoking the occasional joint, but I''ve never used anything more serious, and even the joints haven''t been what anyone would call recent. I just didn''t have the money for such indulgences these days. It was possible that one of the wires I was working on shorted out, and I got shocked and hit my head. I certainly ached all over after the portal transition and running through the woods¡­


    And there I was treating everything that happened like it was real. It certainly felt real. Even the surreal parts, if that makes any sense.


    OK. Let''s think about this logically, I thought to myself. As far as I can recall, I''ve always had the habit of talking to myself, in my own head. the most logical explanation here is that I''ve hit my head and am now hallucinating. If that''s the case, Herr Morgenstern will finish his phone call soon, find me, and get me to a hospital. Not much I can do about it from here. If, on the other hand, the whole portal and skeleton busyness were real, then I need to figure out how to get back.


    So. Assuming this is real, and I can''t count on the boss to get me out of it, the next question is "where am I?" There aren''t any walking skeletons on Earth, as far as I know, but there also aren''t any teleportation portals, so the skeleton doesn''t automatically rule out Earth.


    If I''m on earth, getting home would be as easy as finding the closest city, and may be taking a plane back. If I''m not on earth, I''ll need a portal back. Hoping that my boss would reopen the portal was probably useless. From what I remembered about what happened before I got sucked into the portal, the room''s electrical system was completely fried by the portal. Herr Morgenstern would need to find a new electrician to fix it, which would take time, and even when it was finished, I had no idea what caused the portal to open, and no guarantee that just turning the dance floor on again would work. And even if it worked, the wind was blowing out of the portal on this side, so I might be unable to enter it.


    No, my best bet would be to find a way to open the portal from this side, and hope that I would get sucked back to Club Warlock. Lucky for me, the fanny pack with my primary tools and the plans for the dance floor was on my when the portal activated, and stayed with me when I ran from the skeleton.


    I would be able to reconstruct the circle on this side.


    Assuming I can find glowing electrical wiring, a computer with the right sequencing software, and a power source.


    So, no matter where I am, I''ll need to find civilization, and there''s no use staying here.


    It was getting dark by now, and I had a feeling that stumbling through the forest at night would not be a good idea. The problem was that sleeping in the forest clearing where one walking skeleton has found me already was probably not a lot safer. I took out a granola bar from my pack, and started munching on it while I tried to decide on a course of action, when a man stepped out of the forest, from the same direction the skeleton earlier came from.


    He was fairly short, about a meter sixty, and he wore what at first glance appeared to be tattered green and brown rags, but were in truth a set of worn out but also well maintained leather armor, dyed in a pattern that would offer excellent camouflage in the forest. He was carrying a long wooden staff, and had a short sword strapped to his left hip and a quiver full of arrows over his shoulder.


    As soon as he saw me from across the clearing, the man pulled on a string that was connected to the top of his staff, and before I could figure out that he was stringing what was, in fact, a longbow, he already had an arrow drawn and aimed at my heart, and was shouting at me in a language I could neither understand nor place.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Don''t shoot!" I cried at him, and raised my hand to show him that I was unarmed, and the next thing I knew was the piercing pain of an arrow hitting my right shoulder. I would have collapsed from the pain, but the damned arrow went straight through my shoulder and into the tree I was leaning against, immobilizing me.


    The man who short me had a second arrow ready before I even registered that I''ve been hit, and he shouted at me again, in the same unknown language. I tried to yell that I was unarmed, but as soon as I opened my mouth he raised his bow and aimed it at my heart, and I got the message that he expected me to shut up. We stayed like this, me nailed to a tree and him aiming an arrow at me, until three more figures walked out of the woods. It seemed like we were waiting for hours to me, but it was probably closer to minutes, since there was still enough light to see the people who were probably the archer''s friends.


    The first person to enter the clearing was even shorter than the archer, being a meter forty at most, from the top of his crested helmet to the bottom of his armored boot, and almost as wide as he was tall. He was wearing steel armor that covered every inch of his body, except for the eye slits. His helmet was crested with what looked like red hair, the same color as the impressive beard, plaited into a complex braid and stuffed into his belt. He carried a massive hammer in his left hand, and a shield as tall as he was in his right, lacquered in white and with the shape of a black dragon roaring on it.


    Behind the armored man (dwarf?) came a tall woman wearing a red leather armor. She was taller than the archer, by about five centimeters, with short black hair beneath a leather skullcap, and was carrying a long wooden staff in her hand.


    The last person to enter the forest I had trouble recognizing as a person, at first. It looked like a two meter tall tree was walking into the clearing. As it approached, I could see that it was vaguely humanoid, with two wooden feet and two wooden arms, but it still looked like a miniature walking oak to me.


    They all stopped in their tracks when they saw me, and all four started talking to each other in that unknown language. The archer lost a lot of his tension when the trio had joined him, and returned his drawn arrow to the quiver so he''d have a hand to gesture with.  He gestured at me and wiggled his fingers, talking fast, until the red clad woman raised her own hand to cut him off, and turned to me.


    She started talking it what was clearly a different language, rhythmic like a chant or a poetry recital, and waved her hands in a complex pattern in front of me. I was still in pain, and between one blink and the next the world changed again. Like before, the ground and trees vanished, replaced with the vertical light ropes I now knew were somehow the trees themselves. The archer, dwarf and walking tree were replaced with pools of light, the dwarf''s pool being noticeably stronger, and streaked with black patterns. The red clad woman, however, was obstructed by what looked like a tapestry made of light, and as she continued talking I could see the tapestry growing larger, and a pattern looking like an electrical circuit started to appear on it. Somehow, I knew when the pattern was complete even before she stopped talking, but I still had no idea what it was.


    I blinked again, and the world turned back to normal, and I could now see the woman looking very closely at me. Seemingly satisfied, she turned back to her team mates, shaking her hand and talking to them, now back to the first unrecognized language. All four of them seemed to relax, and the dwarf approached me, talking in the same language, but this time clearly asking me a question. Somehow, I got a feeling of peace from the heavily armored fighter, and while I was still in pain and fairly angry with the Fantasy Four, I managed to answer him politely, "I''m sorry, but I have no idea what you are saying"


    Hearing me talk, the archer quickly raised his bow again, shouting something at his friends, but the red clad woman shoved his bow down and answered him in a somewhat disgusted tone.


    The dwarf asked me the same question again, clearly understanding me about as much as I was understanding him. "Je suis d¨¦sol¨¦, mais je ne sais pas ce que vous dites", I repeated my statement in my badly accented French.


    By this time, the dwarf has reached me and placed one large hand on my shoulder, the other grasping at the arrow, and with one swift move pulled the arrow out of my shoulder, causing me to black out for the second time in one day.

 Chapter 3: The Curse of Blood

    I woke up to a frantic conversation in a language I didn''t recognize but could somehow understand perfectly.


    "We''re running out of time, Hilde. You''re running out of time!" I recognized the angry tones of the archer from earlier. "It''s night time already. If you don''t start soon, you''re dead."


    "And don''t you think I know that?" asked a tired sounding, yet still patient female voice. "I can feel it starting to wake, Jared."


    "Then leave the dead weight, and let''s go!" yelled the archer, Jared. "We can still find the bones and start the ritual in time."


    "And what sort of Valkyrie would I be if I left a wounded man to fend for himself? And one, I might add, that wouldn''t have been wounded if it wasn''t for the unprovoked attack of my own team mate."


    "I thought he was spellcasting. I thought he was a Necro!"


    "Enough of that, Jared." A third voice, this one belonging to the woman in red from earlier. "You know perfectly well that Hilde won''t leave a wounded man. It''s up to the rest of us to find the skeleton in time."


    "If the skeleton is even here, and we aren''t chasing shadows." Muttered Jared.


    By this time, I felt well enough to open my eyes and look around. I was lying on a padded piece of leather, probably a sleeping bag of some kind, and my shoulder hurt a lot less than I expected it to. There was a large campfire close enough to me that I could feel the heat, and beyond it sat the woman in red and the archer, Jared. The dwarf was sitting next to me, the plate armor piled up neatly next to her.


    Yes, her. It was fairly obvious, now that she wasn''t armored. The dwarf, which I now assumed was the Hilde who refused to just leave me and go, was still as short and as wide as she was while wearing the armor, but it was now obvious that she had an hourglass like figure. A very wide hourglass, but an hourglass nonetheless. What I earlier thought to be a horsehair crest was, in fact, her hair. It was long enough that it reached the ground when she was sitting, and as red as her braided beard, which I now saw was growing from her chin, leaving most of her surprisingly pretty face hairless.


    The walking tree was nowhere to be seen, but I wasn''t sure I''d even recognize it if it wasn''t moving.


    The dwarf, Hilde, must have felt me stir, because before I could even try to sit up, she placed one of her large hands on my shoulders to hold me down. "Easy there," she said, "I''ve placed painlifter paste on your shoulder, but you are still wounded, and shouldn''t be moving yet."


    "What is going on?" I asked. "Where am I?"


    "I''m sorry," she answered me, "but I can''t answer any of your questions right now. As my companion was quick to point out earlier, I am in fairly dire straits, and now that you are awake, we need to start working."


    "If you are looking for the walking skeleton, it''s dead," I told her.


    "what?" yelled Jared, jumping to his feet. "Hush, Jared," said Hilde, and turned to me.


    "Where is it?" she asked me. "Tell me, please!"


    "In the forest," I answered. "I don''t know if I can find it again."


    "Jared!" Hilde turned to the archer, who was already on his way to the clearing''s edge.


    "I''m on it." He said, before vanishing from the light.


    "Melissa, can you get the circle ready?" Hilde asked the woman in red.


    "As if you even need to ask." Came the answer, and the woman, Melissa, took a pouch of something from her pack, and started tracing a circle in some sparkly white powder.


    Hilde herself took a small pot from her own pack, filled it with water, and started to slowly stir in something viscous that gave off a metallic smell. "Now then, my friend," she asked me while she was working. "Can you tell me how you came to be here, with knowledge of a destroyed skeleton?"


    I was thrown here through a portal that shouldn''t have existed, chased by a walking skeleton through the forest, and shot by one of this woman''s companions, but something still urged me to confide in her. I started hesitatingly telling her my tale, but her quite attention soon pulled the entire story out of me. "And then that asshole shot me, and a few minutes later the rest of you entered the clearing," I finished.


    "That is the most otherworldly tale I''ve heard in a long time, Antoine. I wish I could help you get back to your home, but that kind of magic is not what I''ve chosen to study. And even if I had, the amount of power it would require to open a portal such as you''ve described in beyond the ability of mortal wizards." She worked in silence for a few more minutes, stirring her pot and occasionally adding a pinch of powder or a dried herb to whatever she was brewing inside. "Your best course of action, I believe, is to go to the city of Aegis and seek to talk to a Dragon who has studied transportation magic."


    "A dragon?" I asked her. "But aren''t they dangerous?"


    "Dangerous? I suppose so. But I see no reason why a dragon would wish to hurt you. Dragons are the most noble of us all, else they would never have survived."


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    At that point, Jared came running back into the circle of firelight, a pile of bones held in his hand.


    "We will have to continue this discussion later," Hilde said, as she started to rummage through the pile of bones. "Time grows short, and we now have everything we need."


    She chose one of the bones from the pile, and set it on a small anvil she took from her pack. Then she raised her hammer, and smashed the bone to powder, which she quickly added to the boiling pot. "How are things on your end, Melissa?" she asked while she poured the foul smelling liquid into a ceramic jug.


    "All done here, Hilde." Came the answer.


    "Very well then." Said Hilde, and strode determinedly towards the center of Melissa''s circle. "Remember, everyone. If I turn, it will be up to you to destroy me." And with those words, she drank the liquid from the jug, grimacing at the taste, and started to chant in a language I couldn''t understand.


    I watched, mesmerized, as Hilde began to dance inside the circle. It was something between a ballet and a martial arts kata, graceful and precise, matching the rhythm of her chant, and carefully confined within the inscribed circle. Jared and Melissa both sat down on my side of the fire, and all three of us watched Hilde''s motions. "What did she mean?" I asked them. "Why would she want you to destroy her?"


    "Hilde has been infected with the Curse of Blood." Said Melissa, and I could hear the sadness in her voice. "If she can''t Subvert the curse¡­" Her words trailed off into nothing.


    "What is this Curse of Blood?" I asked.


    "How could you possibly not know about it?" snarled Jared. "Every child over the age of five knows about the Seven Great Curses."


    "Ease up, Jared." Melissa came to my defense. "You weren''t here while they were talking, but Antoine here is from another world. A world, apparently, where Curses are considered nothing but a tale.


    "The Curse of Blood", she continued, "is one of seven incurable curses. It is the curse of the vampire, and those infected with it turn into vampires at the third midnight after being infected. For Hilde, that''s tonight, and tonight is her one and only chance to overcome it."


    "Didn''t you say that the curse is incurable?" I asked her.


    "Yes. The Seven Great Curses cannot be cured. Once infected, you will carry them with you forever. However, it is possible for a wizard with enough will and knowledge to Subvert the curse and gain control of it. It''s never an easy task though. There are requirements to fulfil before one can even try the ritual."


    "Is that why you needed the skeleton?"


    "Yes." Answered Melissa. "You may well have saved Hilde''s soul by killing that skeleton."


    Hearing that, Jared snorted in disgust and moved away from us, leaving the light again.


    "Don''t mind him," said Melissa. "He''s angry at himself for failing to track the skeleton sooner, and for causing Hilde to almost give away her chance to Subvert the curse."


    Hilde was still dancing and chanting, and my vision shifted again as I was watching her. The fire changed very little, turning redder than it was before, but it wasn''t lighting the clearing any more, just itself. Not that I needed it to. I could clearly see the ropes of light that marked the trees surrounding the clearing.


    The circle inscribed by Melissa earlier was visible as a wall of blue light, opaque enough to see but still transparent enough that I could clearly see Hilde inside it. Hilde herself became a strong pool of light again, moving gracefully and leaving lines of white light in her wake. The streaks of black inside her were larger than before, and I could see them growing even stronger. She was dancing around and around, tracing the same pattern on the ground again and again, strengthening it with every repetition, but I could see that she was starting to falter, as the black streaks started to block the white light circulating inside her.


    "Will she make it?" I asked Melissa.


    "I don''t know. We have everything necessary for the ritual. The vampire who cursed her is dead, and she has consumed his purified blood. You gave us a token of the Curse of Bones, which will inhibit the Curse of Blood and make the Subversion easier. The rest is all up to her. But she''s a stubborn one. All dwarves are, and the Valkyrie even more so. I think her chances are good."


    It was hard to look at Hilde and see her struggling. See the black streaks, which I now knew to be the Curse, grow stronger inside her with each passing minute. "Tell me more of the Great Curses," I asked Melissa, hoping for a distraction.


    "Maybe I should start at the beginning." She answered, and settled down into a more comfortable position.


    "The first Curse, the Curse of Bones, was created by a mage who was searching for immortality¡­

 Chapter 4: The Three Curses of Death

    "The first Curse, the Curse of Bones, was created by a mage who was searching for immortality. He was, they say, the greatest mage who ever lived, with access to more mana than any mage before him, and with knowledge that is still unrivaled to this day. One of the elvenfolk, he was. All of the great mages were elven, since none could match their lifespan and experience. But for this elven mage, whose name is lost to history, even the thousand years of life elves are known to live was not enough, and he has spent hundreds of years researching ways to prolong his life.


    Life, however, follows its own rules. And while the mage could slow down his aging, he could not completely stop it, let alone reverse it and return to his youth. In his hubris, he turned to more extreme methods, using great rituals to strip away the life from plants and animals and use it to bolster his own. Finally, he found a methods that could give him back his youth, but the price was inconceivable. A herd of cattle, drained to death, would erase a year of his age. And afterwards, he found that he aged faster than before, as fast as a dwarf, and not an elf. And none of the methods he used before to slow the process down would work. In his desperation, the mage left his home, and went deep into unclaimed, unsettled land. Into the Great Forest to the west. More and more life was drained by his rituals, but still he aged faster and faster, now aging almost as fast as a human.


    Mad as he was, obsessed with living as he was, always before there were always limits that the mage would not cross. None of his experiments or rituals were ever aimed at any of the sentient races. But now, having turned the Great Forest into a blasted wasteland, all to no avail, madness gripped him, and for the first time he tried to drain the life from a fellow elf, one of the two servants who went with him into the Forest. A torrent of life force, greater than any he has ever felt, surged into him, instantly returning him from being a nearly dead elder to being a youth at the height of his strength. Moreover, the drained servant wasn''t dead. There was nothing left of him but his bones, but those bones still moved, and obeyed the mages commands. For a while, the servant''s mind still dwelt within his bones, and could converse with the mage. He could even still use what little magic power he had before. But by the end of three days, there was nothing left of the servant, and only mindless obedience was left.


    The mage still aged as fast as a human, but he now had a way to quickly restore himself to his youth. He quickly found that he could store the life force from his other servant inside specially prepared jewelry, and wasted no time before draining her, and turning her into another walking skeleton. With the mere sixty years of a human lifespan ahead of him, and sixty more years stored in his new gauntlet, the mage returned from his self-imposed exile, and set out to drain enough life so he could live forever.


    Even before his madness, he was the most powerful mage alive, and there was none who could stand in his way. Whole villages were left barren behind him, the skeletons of the dead villagers following the mage''s footsteps and serving as his army. There were, however, survivors. Woodsman who happened to be in the forest when the mage attacked. Shepherds who tended their herds away from the village. One of them, a fairly strong human mage, managed to see the ritual used by the great mage, and glean enough of it to be able to reconstruct it. He, too, started to drain life from the dwellers of isolated hamlets, in order to extend his own life. But this human mage, while powerful, was nowhere near as mighty as the great elven mage, and he has made the mistake of attacking a remote dwarven mining camp. The dwarves were caught unaware by his attack, and were all drained before they could mount a defense. However, one of the dwarves in the camp was an old, retired Valkyrie, who we now remember as F?rstadrake. She was caught in the draining ritual, and reduced to being a walking skeleton, but her mind and magic were still intact.


    You might not know this, coming from another world, but the Valkyrie are the elite of the elite amongst dwarvenkind. These dedicated dwarves spend decades training with the elite dwarven infantry, the J?rnriddare, and after reaching the rank of captain of the J?rnriddare, they spend decades more learning the craft of the Healers. Even the mightiest of human warriors and mages would fall before a dwrven Valkyrie. And while F?rstadrake was now old and weak, being transformed into a skeleton removed from her a lot of the infirmities of her age. F?rstadrake battled the human mage, and defeated him with ease. Then, having felt the effects of the ritual used to drain her life, she used her knowledge of healing magic to revese the spell and return to life. Morover, she was restored to the prime of her life, and was stronger, in both body and magic, than she ever was before. She was unable to restore the other dwarves in her camp, however. The spell she used could only be cast on ones own self.


    F?rstadrake went to the capital of the dwarven lands, to inform the leaders of the battle, and before long she, and an army of elite dwarven warriors, set out to battle to increasing amounts of mages who learned the draining rituals. It was not long before it was discovered that F?rstadrake''s reversal of the draining spell rendered her immune to it, and that the spell could be reversed using her counterspell, but only if the casting mage was dead, and only by extremely strong mages.


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    The elven mage, meanwhile, continued to experiment on captives he took, and discovered that he could take the life force a person, and trap it in a shadow. The shadow could then possess others, controlling them and slowly draining them of their life and sending it to the shadow''s master. When the victim died, he would become a shadow himself.


    Thus, the second curse, the Curse of Shadows, was born, and the mage gained access to more and more power.


    Knowing that eventually he would have to face F?rstadrake and her dwarven armies, who were now joined by brave warriors and mages from other races, the elven mage sent out his own army of shadows to harass them. Many of the brave warriors fell prey to the insidious shadows, until eventually one of the shadows managed to possess F?rstadrake herself. F?rstadrake, however, was not one to just lie down and die. Though her body was controlled by the shadow, she managed to wrest back control of her voice, and began to chant a spell that she has prepared to combat to shadows. Without the ability to move, casting the spell took twice as long as it normally would, with the shadow constantly trying to regain control of her voice, but after several hours of chanting, the shadow was destroyed.


    Even more power surged into F?rstadrake when she was freed from the shadow, and she used her new magic to banish the shadows from her army. In the aftermath of that fight, F?rstadrake found that her skin was nearly impenetrable by anything not enhanced by magic, and her bones unbreakable.


    A few other mages have managed to free themselves from shadows, but once again this was a feat that only a master mage could accomplish. Those mages gained some of the same abilities that F?rstadrake gained, though other than her, none had managed to survive both the draining spell and shadow possession, and none had gained as much as she.


    Their victory was far from complete, however. Many of their army were dead, either directly killed by shadows or slain by their possessed brothers and sisters in arms. Even worse was the fact that one of their strongest mages, a dryad who had managed to survive a draining spell, fell to the shadows. And the shadow that was born from her was different than all other shadows. Stronger and more intelligent, it managed to escape F?rstadrake''s cleansing spells, and returned to the elven mage''s side.


    While F?rstadrake''s army was battling the shadows, the elven mage was busy creating even more abominations. Monstrous skeletons, composed of the bones of multiple victims. Shadows infused with elemental magic who could cast spells of their own, and a brand new abomination. By draining a victim''s life force almost to the point of death, and than fusing a shadow into the remains, a new creature was created. Starved of life force, these walking corpses the elven mage called "vampires" could feed on the lifeblood of living beings, and had the ability to vanish into the shadows that were a part of them. Even worse, their blood was contagious, and anyone contaminated by it would transform into another vampire.


    Once again, the elven mage sent his new creations to harass F?rstadrake, and once again her army was decimated. F?rstadrake herself was infected by the vampires'' blood in one of the battles, but her masterful command of healing magic came again to her rescue, and she managed to prevent herself from becoming one of the abominations. And once again, the experience left her stronger. She could move with speed and grace that were thought to be the province of elves and fay alone, and what wounds she could suffer through her armored skin would heal in minutes instead of days.


    By that time, the elven mage had an army of skeletons, shadows and vampires, and has even joined forces with some of the mages who managed to copy his draining magic. Against them, F?rstadrake had an army comrpised of every intelligent race in the world, from the smallest gnomes to the biggest giant-kin, and reinforced with mages who managed to survive the Curses of Bones, Shadow or Blood.


    The stage to the biggest war the world has even seen was set."


    Parched from the story, Melissa stopped talking, and gazed at Hilde, who hadn''t stopped her dancing and her chanting for even a minute. Hilde''s face shone with her sweat, and her voice was ragged, but she didn''t falter. I blinked, and my vision changed again, and I could see the incredibly complex, incredibly strong spell she was casting, and I sensed that it neared completion. But I could also see that the blackness inside her was still spreading, and had nearly consumed her.


    None of us spoke after Melissa''s story. The combination of the tale she told, and of its newest chapter that was unfolding in front of us, left us entranced.

 Chapter 5: The Liquid of Life

    The battle between a mage''s will and the Curse of Blood, Melissa told me, can only last for the time between the sun setting on the third night after the infection and until midnight on the same night, yet Hilde''s battle against the Curse of Blood seemed to take an eternity. I shouldn''t have been so invested in her battle. After all, I only met these people, and our meeting was far from friendly. And yet, I found myself on the edge of my metaphorical seat, together with Melissa, watching the dwarven woman''s struggle.


    I didn''t notice when Jared came back to the fire. I think it was sometime during Melissa''s tale. He sat away from the two of us, but still within the circle of firelight, and was watching Hilde with just as much intensity.


    As midnight drew nearer, I found myself more and more restless. I came from a different world, a world were magic and curses were nothing but stories, and yet it seemed as if I should be able to do something for Hilde. My vision kept switching between its normal mode and the mode which, I now suspected, allowed me to see magical forces. The spell Hilde was casting hovered on the edge of my understanding. I felt like I was looking at a drawing of an electrical circuit, but with all the symbols for electrical components switched with unrecognizable symbols that looked like Herr Morgenstern''s runes. I knew that I could short circuit Hilde''s spell with ease, just like I now understood that I did to that skeleton. But disrupting Hilde''s spell would doom her, and I had no idea how to do something that would help.


    I considered, for a few moments, trying to short circuit the black markings inside her, since I assumed that they were at the very least related to the Curse, but I had no idea how to get to them without hurting Hilde and destroying her spell.


    I tried asking Melissa about it, but just to my surprise, she told me that she couldn''t actually see magic the way I could. In fact, she never even heard of such an ability before.


    "How do you use magic without being able to see it?" I asked her.


    "Learning magic is a lot like learning to read, except in reverse," she answered. It was clear that she was once again looking for something to distract her from her companion''s struggle. "You start by memorizing combinations of words and movements that cause a spell to happen, and eventually start to understand what the individual sounds and motions mean, and how to replace one with the other and eventually create your own spells."


    "Why are you even talking to this fool?" Came a derisive question from Jared. "It''s clear that he knows nothing of magic, and just trying to puff up his own importance."


    "And yet this fool managed to kill a skeleton without damaging its bones." Answered Melissa.


    "Or he found the skeleton, got scared by the bones, ran away, and lied to us about it."


    I don''t consider myself a violent man, but at that moment I seriously contemplated punching Jared''s nose. Of course, he was armed, and obviously knew how to use his weapons. All I had was the folding blade on my multi tool.


    "Oh, just shut up, Jared. Hilde is fighting for her life, and all you do is whine." Melissa sounded as fed up with the man as I was, and Jared just huffed and turned his back to us.


    I already knew that their words and movements created the woven circuits I could see, and that those circuits would in turn cause various effects, but that did nothing to help me understand the circuits themselves, and from everything Melissa told me, I already knew that there was nothing her own method of spell casting could do to help Hilde. My frustration grew the closer we got to midnight. I knew, somehow, that I should be able to help Hilde subvert the Curse, but I also knew that trying anything with my nearly nonexistent knowledge would be more likely to hurt than to help.


    The only way I had to tell time was the size of the black marks of the curse inside Hilde, but I judged it mere minutes before midnight when her chanting changed tempo, and started to crescendo. Her voice kept rising for about a minute, and the last words came out in a shout, which coincided with her arriving at the center of her circle and standing still.


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    Magic surged inside the circle, visible now even to my normal sight, and swirled around her in a bright white vortex. The magic vortex span faster and faster, drawing closer and closer to the center point where Hilde stood, eventually drawing into her body. My vision switched to magic mode again, and I saw the intricate white strands that were Hilde''s spell wrap around the black marks of the Curse and slowly force them to take on a new shape. The marks fought back against the spell, and Hilde started screaming, her already raw voice expressing the pain of having two opposing spells wrestling inside her.


    The fight continued for long minutes, but eventually I could see that one by one the black marks bending under the onslaught, and being forced into the shape Hilde''s spell chose for them. And whenever a black mark lost the fight, it would merge with Hilde''s white magic and take on a bright copper color. With each black mark that lost the fight, the rest would visibly weaken, and before long it was clear that Hilde was winning the fight against the curse. Eventually, the last black mark was Subverted, and my vision switched back to normal as Hilde staggered towards the edges of her circle.


    "Hilde?" Asked Jared fearfully, "Is that you, or¡­" he couldn''t finish the sentence, as Hilde turned towards him.


    "Thirsty¡­" She moaned in a ragged voice that bore little resemblance to her rich chanting from the beginning of the evening. "So thirsty¡­"


    "Give me the liquid of life!" croaked Hilde as she started to stagger towards Jared, and he backed away from her in fear, and I thought I interpreted the magic vision wrong. That Hilde had fallen to the curse and was now a vampire.


    Jared fumbled with his weapons, his obvious terror interfering with the weapon skills I knew he had. Melissa rose and took lifted her staff, getting ready to blast the undead creature that used to be her companion with her magic.


    And then, Hilde knelt next to a cloth sack, and rummaged inside it. When she rose again to her feet, a ceramic jug was clutched in her right hand, and she bit of the cork, spat it to her side, and drank deeply from something so alcoholic that I could smell it from across the fire.


    "Good dwarven mead!" Laughed Hilde after she finally took the jug away from her mouth. "Truly, the liquid of life itself!"


    Jared slit down to the ground, his relief at finding out that Hilde wasn''t after his blood evident. Melissa, however, seemed to be more angry than relived.


    "Hilde!" She yelled as she walked towards her friend, staff still clutched tightly in her hand. "You¡­ you¡­ you¡­ Agh!" she raised her hands in disgust. "How could you?"


    "I¡¯m sorry, Mel. You know I can never resist pulling Jared''s leg. And I truly did need a drink. More than I''ve ever needed one before."


    "Foolish dwarf." Melissa started sobbing, the tension of the previous hours brought to a head by Hilde''s practical joke. "Don''t you ever scare me like that again!"


    "I''m sorry Melissa. I should have thought about how terrible it must have been for you, watching me fight the Curse and preparing yourself to killing me if I failed. Come on. We could all use something to eat and some rest."


    "Something to eat" turned out to be dark travel bread and jerked beef, which they gladly shared with me. There wasn''t a lot of night left, so Jared went to the edge of the forest and started his own magic, eventually coming back to the fire light with a different walking tree in tow. With the tree ordered to guard us, we all quickly fell asleep.

 Chapter 6: Lessons in Magic

    Authors Note:


    Apologies for the long wait. It''s been a busy couple of weeks.


    Also, please forgive my seriously lousy drawing skills.


    ***


    I woke up to the sounds of voices talking in a language I didn''t understand. I sat up on my bedroll, and saw Hilde, Melissa and Jared sitting in front of the nearly dead fire and eating a breakfast of hard bread and jerked beef. In the light of the morning, Hilde looked subtly different from the previous evening. Her previously pale skin took on a slight coppery tinge, and her teeth were slightly pointed. Melissa was visibly calmer and less tired than last night, and even Jared was less stressed and sounded like a halfway human being.


    Hilde turned to me when she saw me stir, and handed me a piece of the bread and some jerky, saying something that might have been "good morning".


    "I''m sorry, but I have no idea what you''re saying" I told her after accepting the food, and she turned and spoke quickly to Melissa, after which Melissa cast a quick spell on me.


    "I''m sorry," she said. "The translation spell I cast on you yesterday burned out during the night."


    "I wondered how it was that I understood the three of you yesterday." I answered her, and turned to Hilde. "Good morning, and thanks for the food."


    "Good morning to you too, and thanks again for the skeleton bones."


    "I''m glad I could help." I said between bites of breakfast. "Melissa told me a little about the Curse last night, and it sounds like something I wouldn''t wish on anyone."


    "Aye. The Curse of Blood is the worse to succumb to, they say, since it is the one where the cursed keeps most of his self." Having finished their breakfast, Hilde started to pack her equipment back into her backpack. "It is, however, good fortune for you that I was Cursed, and managed to Subvert it. You''ll want to head to Aegis to look for someone who can send you back home, and I''ll be headed there myself now."


    "You''ll be what?" yelled Jared from the other side of the campfire, which he was busy putting out. "We need to head back to Port Aurore to report on the vampire''s death and get our reward."


    "I''m a Dragon now, Jared," She answered. "You know that anyone who enters the First Circle has to register with the garrison at Aegis."


    "We nearly died on this mission, Hilde. Death and the Moon, you nearly became a vampire. We earned that gold."


    "We can go back to Aurore and report after I''ve registered."


    "By the time we get back from Aegis, we''ll miss the deadline and lose the gold."


    "I''m as fond of gold as any other dwarf, Jared, but I have an obligation to my King, and therefore to the Alliance." Hilde said, adamantly. "If it''s that important to you¡­"


    "You are both forgetting something." Interrupted Melissa. "A vampire and a skeleton in the same region means there''s a good chance that there''s a full Necromancer here, and you," she turned to Hilde, "can''t ignore your duty to deal with him, while you, Jared, have to know that the reward you''ll get for a Necromancer''s head in Aegis is a lot more than the bounty for a vampire."


    "Scales of the First, you''re right. And we''ve passed a village an hour''s walk from here. We can''t leave them to the mercy of a Necromancer!"


    "You want the three of us to hunt a full Necromancer?" Yelled Jared, "Death and the Moon! Are you both out of your minds?"


    "Then who else, Jared?" Asked Hilde quietly, "there''s no major city less than a week''s journey from here, and nobody in Port Aurore who can deal with a Necro."


    "To the Forsaken Lands with it!" Cried Jared and lifted his backpack to his shoulders, "if you''re set on suicide, you can do it without me." And he turned and started walking towards the direction the three entered the clearing from the previous evening.


    "Jared, wait!" Began Hilde, but Melissa shook her head at her.


    "He''s a bounty hunter, Hilde. He deals with outlaws and bandits. We could barely get him to aid us with the vampire. And with us tied up with a possible Necro and traveling to Aegis, he can get the full reward for our mission."


    "You''re probably right," sighed Hilde. "But it leaves us without a scout. I''m not sure how we''d find the Necromancer without his help."


    "We still have most of the bones from the skeleton. I can try to cast a seeking spell on them."


    And with that, she took one of the bones from the pile, and started casting a spell on them. It wasn''t nearly as complicated as the spell Hilde used to Subvert the Curse, but still took a while to cast, and my vision did the now familiar shift into seeing magic, so that I could see her spell being woven, and lighting up thin, nearly invisible threads linking the bone to the rest of the pile, and another one leading off into the forest. Melissa finished casting the spell, and turned in a circle, the bone pointed before her. She completed the circle, and shook her head. "I can''t feel anything. If there''s a Necromancer in the vicinity, he''s too far for me to locate."


    "We''ll have to go back to the village then," Hilde answered her. "Maybe someone there will know of a likely place for a Necromancer to hole up in."


    "Excuse me," I hesitantly joined the conversation, "I think I can help you. When Melissa cast her spell, I could see a thread of magic leading from the bone."


    "That''s a really useful ability you have, Antoine." Said Melissa.


    "But we can''t possibly take you to face a Necromancer," Hilde shook her head. "You''re unarmed, and untrained. We''ll have to go back to the village. You can show us the general direction, and we''ll ask the villagers if there''s anything of note there."


    "And you''ll leave me with people I can''t talk to, once Melissa''s translation spell burns out again?" I asked her, "I''d rather take my chances with the two of you."


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original."He''s got a point there, Hilde. And it''ll be a lot easier to locate our target with him around."


    "I don''t like this," Hilde said, "but we can''t stand here and argue all day. Antoine, you''ll have to promise me to stay behind the two of us and out of harm''s way, if I agree to take you with us."


    "I promise."


    "Let''s go then." And she kicked sand over the campfire and led us into the forest in the direction I pointed towards.


    It was slow going, following the faint trace of magic. It''s far too easy to get turned around when traveling inside a forest, and at first, we had to stop every few minutes so that Melissa could cast her location spell and make my vision switch to magic so we could be certain we were still in the right direction. By the end of that day, however, I''ve learned that if I closed my eyes and concentrated just right, I could make my vision switch into seeing magic at will. Our progress sped up somewhat after that, but I couldn''t maintain the magic vision for more than a few minutes at a time, so we were still rather slow. Towards evening, we located another clearing to make camp in, and I asked Hilde and Melissa to teach me about magic.


    I learned really quickly that neither of my companions could see magic the way I did. In fact, they''ve never heard of anyone being able to do it, and my descriptions of the weaves and magic circuits I could see made no sense to either of them. It was fairly easy for me to see, however, that there was a certain connection between the chants and motions Melissa did and the way the magic wove itself when she was casting, and since Melissa knew what her chants meant, I could connect the symbols on the magic circuits to magical effects.


    It turned out that while my ability to see magic made it a lot easier to understand what I was doing, my inherent magical power, or mana, was extremely low, and I could barely manage to cast even the weakest spells Melissa knew, not to mention Hilde''s healing magics, which even most human mages would have had problems with. The most I could manage to do with actual spells was to maintain Melissa''s translation spell. I couldn''t cast it from scratch, but I could prevent it from burning out.


    Over the next few days, however, we learned what I could do. I remembered, from my "fight" with the skeleton, that I could touch the lines of magic, and move them around. It took a lot of experimentation until I could consciously do it, but eventually I discovered that by concentrating in the same way I did to shift my vision, I could coat my hands with a thing film of magic, which let me touch and move the lines. With that, and the knowledge of what the circuits meant, I could try to replicate what I did to the skeleton, and disrupt magical spells while they were being cast, and even ongoing magical effects.


    As an experiment, Melissa cast one of the basic attack spells taught to mages, the fireball. Conjure up a ball of flames, and throw it at the enemy. Fairly simple spell, composed of four symbols:


    The symbol on the bottom is "Source" and is the beginning of every spell ever cast, as it is the point where the mage connects to the circuit and feeds it with magical power. "Source" leads to "Orb" which is one of a standard set of symbols used to shape a spell. In this case, into an orb, or a ball. The third symbol is, naturally, "Fire" and will fill the shape created by "Orb" with flames, and the last symbol is potentially the most complex, and controls the path the fireball takes. For our experiments, Melissa used the symbol for "Forward" which causes the fireball to move away from the mage until it hits something. Each of the symbols on the circuit can have several modifiers, or "accents", which control details of the spell. For example, "Orb" has to come with an accent that controls diameter, and "Fire" with an accent for the flames'' strength.


    To cast the spell, the mage first chants the circuit into existence, and then starts to feed it power. The power flows from "Source" and hits "Orb". As soon as "Orb" starts to receive power, the orb appears (at least to my vision). It appears as a small dot, and grows as it absorbs more power. When it reaches the designated size, the magic starts to spill over the "Orb" symbol and reaches "Fire", at which point the orb starts to fill with flames and becomes visible to normal vision. When the fire reaches the desired heat, the magic spills over "Fire" and reaches "Forward" and the fireball flies away. Building the circuit takes her about half a minute, and filling it takes another half. A stronger mage can push magic faster into the circuit, and a stronger fireball (bigger and/or hotter) will take longer.


    What I''ve learned to do is disrupt specific symbols, which can really screw with the caster. Disrupting "Source" will spoil the spell. Can''t push magic into it, spell won''t have an effect. Disrupting "Forward" will cause the fireball to just sit in front of the caster until it burns out. Disrupting "Fire" will cause a ball of nothing to be thrown at the target. Disrupting "Orb" is the nastiest. Disrupt it at the beginning of the spell, and the caster summons a small flame in front of him. Disrupt it near the end, and the already formed fireball will blow up in the caster''s face. Lucky for Melissa, I insisted the experiments will take place with a very weak fire, and she only got slightly singed, but in a real fight this would be a very potent skill. Especially after I learned how to use magic lines as sort of whips and do it at a distance.


    By the end of a week of traveling, I felt at least slightly better about heading into combat with a hostile Necromancer. And just in time, since we found ourselves in front of a ruined fort, and my magic vision told me our target was inside.

 Chapter 7: Necromancer

    "Your ability to see and manipulate magic has astounding potential, Antoine, but you have neither the training nor the equipment for this battle." Hilde said to me while checking her armor and hammer before heading into the ruin. "Battle is chaotic and quick, and I cannot protect you from the Necromancer and his minions."


    "I''m not staying out here alone, Hilde." I answered her, nervously clutching a makeshift quarterstaff I fashioned during the search. "But is it really safer for me to wait out here?"


    "He''s right, you know," interjected Melissa. "If the Necromancer has a vampire, it means he has shadows, which means that as soon as he knows we''re here, he will be able to take Antoine out with ease. We may as well take him with us and hope he can use his abilities to aid us."


    "Very well. But you will have to guard yourself, Antoine. This fight will be the hardest I''ve ever fought, and I will not be able to protect you."


    "I understand."


    We walked carefully towards the ruins, Hilde taking point, myself in the middle and Melissa taking up the rear guard position. As we got closer, we could see a pair of skeletons guarding what seemed to be the only entrance to the fort. We didn''t even try for a stealthy approach, since Hilde was about as far from stealthy as a person can get and to be honest, I wasn''t much better. And as Melissa explained to me on the way, while the Necromancer can''t see what his skeletons were seeing, he will know as soon as one of them is destroyed. With that in mind, we approached the skeletons to a distance of about thirty meters before they noticed us, and as soon as they started moving, Hilde charged towards them, lifting her hammer over her right shoulder and smashing it down and to the left, crushing the ribs and spine of the first skeleton. At the same time, Melissa chanted a quick spell, and a ball of condensed air smashed the second skeleton''s skull into splinters, and just like that the first battle was done.


    With what little surprise we had gone, we quickly started moving into the fort, to give the Necromancer as little time to prepare as possible. I was once again running between Hilde and Melissa, and I shifted into my magic vision mode just in time to shout a warning to Hilde before she rushed into a net of sickly looking green magic lines. I had no idea what the thing was supposed to do, but it looked nasty, and I was willing to bet good money that it was some sort of trap. Unlike a spell being cast, there were no visible symbols to the net, so my only course of action was to short circuit it and try to ground its power. I quickly wove the line of ambient magic into a similar construction to the one I used on the skeleton, anchoring one side of it to the ground, which was visible between cracks in the fort''s floor, and throwing the other side into the trap. There was a flash of light, visible even to normal vision, and a brief smell of ozone, and the trap vanished.


    "Good work." Hilde complimented me before continuing her headlong rush into the fort. We ran undisturbed for about ten more meters before exiting the gate tunnel and stepping into the courtyard between the gate and the fort itself. There were five more skeletons waiting for us there, armed with short swords and wooden clubs, along with what looked like a classic fantasy elf: Tall, slim, and inhumanly pretty despite his pointed ears. He was unarmed, but as soon as we entered the courtyard, he turned to us and smiled, and I could see a pair of long, pointed teeth in his mouth.


    "Vampire!" Hilde shouted and barreled her way through the skeletons on her way to engaging him. "If his blood enters your body, you''re Cursed. Leave him to me and deal with the skeletons, Melissa!"


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    Melissa started to cast her spells, but with five skeletons closing in on her, I knew she wouldn''t have enough time, and I raised my staff and moved to stand in between. The skeletons were mindless, and had very little skill with their weapons, but I wasn''t much better. My main advantage was that without the vampire to command them, the five skeletons were constantly getting in each other''s way. I was fighting completely defensively, trying to block the skeletons and give Melissa enough time to finish her spell, and was mostly successful in blocking the skeletons'' clumsy attacks. The first two skeletons to reach me were a short, dwarf-sized skeleton with a heavy club and a taller skeleton that could have been a human or elf or something else entirely, and was wielding a short sword. I shoved my staff between the ribs of the sword wielder and managed to keep him out of sword range, and between me and the three other skeletons, but the dwarf skeleton took advantage of my stuck staff and smashed my ribs with his club.


    My chest exploded with pain, and my breath was knocked out of me, but I somehow managed to reach out with my left hand and rip away at the magic holding the skeleton together, and it staggered back from me, the bones from its right hand cluttering as they fell to the ground, drained of magic.


    At that moment, I heard Melissa''s chant reach a crescendo, and a barrage of small stones flanked me and bombarded the skeletons, breaking their bones and leaving them useless.


    With our part of the battle finished, we turned to Hilde in time to see her deliver an armored kick into the vampire''s left knee, followed by a mighty hammer blow that pulverized its head.


    "Everyone all right?" Asked Hilde, and I could see that she wasn''t even breathing hard after running in full armor and fighting a vampire. I, on the other hand, could barely breathe with my bruised ribs.


    "Antoine took a hit when buying time for me to finish the skeletons," Hilde answered her. "I don''t think anything''s broken, but you should probably check."


    I lifted my shirt and let Hilde prod at my ribs and pronounce them bruised but not broken. She rubbed some foul smelling paste over them, and the pain started to dull immediately, and the three of us continued our way into the fort.


    The fort''s door lead directly to the great hall, and the Necromancer was waiting for us inside. She was human, and looked to be in her early twenties. She was dressed in elaborate black robes embroidered with screaming faces in red thread. I couldn''t see much of her body under the robes but her face would have been beautiful if it wasn''t twisted in rage. She had a dozen more skeletons with him, as well as another vampire, and was carrying a long black staff made of twisted wood and topped with a horned skull.


    "You!" She screamed at us as we entered the hall. "Do you have any idea how hard I''ve worked to create my servants? How hard it is to find useable bodies without getting discovered? Seven skeletons and a vampire you''ve cost me!"


    "Put down your staff and order your Forsaken to stand down, Necromancer!" Hilde exclaimed proudly, pointing her hammer towards the Necromancer. "I am Hilde Siggurdsdotter, Dwarven Valkyrie and Dragon of the First Circle, and I am here to put an end to your depravity!"


    "The only end in sight is your own, dwarf! I will gladly take a Forsaken Drake as compensation for my lost minions!"


    And with that, she gestured with her staff, and a ball of green fire launched from it towards us, with the skeletons and vampire following closely behind it

 Chapter 8: Life

    Author''s Note:


    I had some down time at work today, and tried to pretty up the fireball spell I drew for Chapter 6, so now I have a passable cover pic.


    Also, the following chapter gives a little more info about how spells work. Antoine doesn''t know this, but the dwarven language uses runes that are very similar to the old Norse Futhark. I''ve expanded a few of their meanings to fit the story''s needs, but the names, shapes and most of the meanings are the same.


    ***


    One of the things we''ve discovered during the march from the clearing I entered this world from and the Necromancer''s ruined fort is that the symbols I see when I look at spells are very similar to the alphabet used by the dwarves. This meant that I now had names to go with the symbols, and didn''t need to describe them anymore. Even more interesting and useful, the Dwarven alphabet was based on the old system of runes the ancient dwarves used for divining the future, and the meanings assigned to each rune were very close to the effects the spell symbols had.


    This meant that I could now make an educated guess about what each of the symbols that make up an unknown spell do, and aim my counters accordingly.


    I also learned that a spell could be prepared, charged up, and held back without releasing it by linking the last symbol in the spell back to the first. Then, with a simple mental command, the link is erased and the spell is released. This delayed cast method is how the Necromancer was able to cast a spell on us this quickly and without any chanting or gestures.


    Seeing that vile looking spell flying towards us, I quickly shifted to my magical vision, and erased Thurisaz, in its meaning of "directed force of destruction" from the approaching spell, stopping it in place. Then, a couple of seconds later, I erased Laguz in merkstave, or reversed, in its meaning of "caught in a circle", causing the spell to burst and the green fire to spray on the first skeleton to walk beneath it. The skeleton''s bones immediately started to burn and crumble, and within seconds nothing but ashes was left of it.


    Hilde, of course, started charging towards the Necromancer as soon as the battle started, and smashed into the skeletons mere seconds after I caused the spell to backfire, and unlike the previous battles, she wasn''t holding back this time. Her motions, which were utilitarian and meant to conserve stamina in the previous fights, were now more extravagant, and as she started chanting in Dwarf, I realized that her hammer swings were doubling as spell gestures. Her hammer started glowing bright red, and I could see that her blows held more force than could be accounted for by even a dwarven knight''s prodigious muscles. Melissa, meanwhile was slinging fireballs towards the vampire, trying to keep it from the fight long enough for Hilde to finish with the skeletons.


    This, of course, left the Necromancer to me, and with the amount of spells she had stored up and ready, I had an extremely hard time keeping up. She started by casting more of the green fireballs, which I could now see were using a combination of the runes Fehu and Uruz, both merkstave. Based on the effect on the first skeleton, I too their meaning to be "atrophy" and "sickness" instead of the Sowilo, or "cleansing fire" in Melissa''s fireballs. I didn''t want those spells reaching Hilde, so I countered them over the rearmost skeletons, destroying two more of them before the Necromancer realized what I was doing and after screaming what I was sure were various profanities I couldn''t understand, switched to different spells, which I judged by their runes to have mental effects, and therefore useless against the skeletons. These spells I countered as soon as she cast them, and they had no effect on either the Necromancer''s forces or us. By this point, Hilde was finished with the skeletons and had turned to the vampire. Unfortunately, the vampire vanished into the shadows as she closed in on it, only to appear behind Melissa and bite her before any of us could react. Distracted by Melissa''s plight, I failed to counter the Necromancer''s next spell, and it hit Hilde, freezing her in place.


    With Melissa disabled by the vampire, the Necromancer turned to me, and before I could try to remove the spell from Hilde, she pointed her staff at me and a beam of black energy hit me, too fast for me to react.


    The minute the beam touched me, I started to feel more pain than I''ve ever felt before. It felt like a syringe was driven into every cell in my body and immediately used to drain something from all of them at the same time. Even in my agony, it took me only a second to realize that I''ve been hit with the Curse of Bones, and the Necromancer was now draining all my life from me. I also knew that there was no way that I, with my limited training and even more limited magical power, would be able to cast the incredibly complex, incredibly demanding ritual needed to Subvert the Curse, and that if I let the spell run its course, I would be finished. My hands were still coated in the layer of magical energy I used to counter spells, and I grasped the black beam in my left hand, twisted it around my wrist to get a better grip, and pulled with all my strength. The pain I felt immediately lessened, and I knew that the draining was stopped for now, but the spell tagged at me with relentless strength, and there was no way for me to keep hold of it for long.


    I had to act fast, before I either lost the tag of war, or the vampire came for me. The black beam of the Curse of Bones started at a big gem embedded in the Necromancer''s staff, and by looking really closely I could see the spell that was creating it. I didn''t have the time to analyze the spell properly, so I used my right hand to form the same short circuit spell I used to drain the power of the trap in the gate tunnel, and sent it at the gem. The Necromancer screamed in fear and pain as the gem shattered, and I felt all of the life force drained from me slam back into my body, followed by what seemed like the life drained out of every skeleton we''ve fought in this ruin.


    I couldn''t think and I could barely see, and I felt like I was drunk and high at the same time.


    I vaguely remember seeing the Necromancer fly back from the explosion and hit the wall behind her, and Hilde breaking free from the spell that froze her.


    I remember flashes of Hilde running to Melissa and killing the vampire with a single hit from her glowing hammer, and then frantically casting spells at her to save her from dying of blood loss.


    Something or someone must have killed the Necromancer, because the next thing I could remember clearly was seeing Hilde pulverize what remained of the black staff, after verifying that the Necromancer was dead. I was lying next to the unconscious Melissa, with no idea how I came to be horizontal.


    When she saw that I was coherent again, Hilde turned to me, and I could see that she was exhausted from the fight and frantically healing Melissa. "What¡­ what did you do?" she asked me. "I saw you hit by the Curse of Bones. How are you even still alive?"


    I tried to answer her, but found that my voice was completely hoarse. I didn''t remember screaming when the Curse hit me, but I didn''t remember much except for the pain.


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    It took me a while to reach into one of the packs and take out a waterskin, but I eventually managed to explain what I did.


    "This is¡­" She started, "I can''t even begin to think about what this means. You have to get to Aegis and talk to the dragons."


    I was too hoarse to do much more than nod at her words, and shortly afterwards she took off her armor, started a fire and the two of us sat down on one of the bedrolls, staring into the flames and throwing off the lingering terror of the fight.


    After what could have been a couple of minutes or half an hour, I felt Hilde''s hand on my shoulder, and turned to her. She didn''t say a word, but when I looked into her eyes, I saw a clear invitation in them.


    I leaned slowly toward her, and she didn''t draw back from me, and her mouth opened in anticipation as I drew closer. Her lips were soft, and I could taste the sweetness of the mead she had after the fight as I kissed her.


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    I deepened the kiss, sliding my tongue between her lips as I slid my right hand around her waist and my right behind her head. I saw her in battle, and I could feel her strong muscles under my hands, and I knew that she was far stronger than me, but she offered no resistance when I gently pushed her down on the bedroll and lay on top of her. I worked my left hand under her thick red hair and gently massaged her scalp, while my right hand slid down from her waste to her left thigh. I raised my mouth from hers, and slowly trailed kisses down her chin, around her soft beard, and to her neck, stopping on the spot her neck became her shoulder. She moaned as I licked the sensitive spot and breathed in her scent.


    Hilde''s skin smelled of the silvered steel of her armor, and the sweet smell of the oil she used to clean it, and beneath it a heady, earthy smell that must have been her own, and after the exertion of battle, her skin tasted salty from her sweat. I wouldn''t have expected it before this, but I found the combination to be incredibly arousing.


    Hilde was talking softly in a language I couldn''t understand, even with the translation spell on me, but I could hear the encouragement in her voice, so I pulled back a bit and pushed open the padded garments she usually wore under her armor, revealing her magnificent body. Her skin, white but with the slight coppery sheen she must have acquired when she subverted the Curse of Blood, was smooth and unblemished. Her breasts were the largest I''ve ever seen on any woman who wasn''t surgically enhanced, topped with large areolae and hard, copper colored nipples, and had no sag at all. Underneath her gorgeous breasts, I could see a well-defined six pack, leading down to a well-trimmed patch of red hair between her legs.


    I admired Hilde''s beauty for a few seconds, and then I returned my left hand to its place behind her head, and took her heavy left breast in my right, caressing it and lightly pinching the nipple as I leaned forward to kiss her again. She gasped into my mouth, and I could feel her forcibly restraining herself from flipping me and taking over. I traced the path down her chin and neck again, this time continuing the trail of kisses up the smooth expanse of her right breast, circled her nipple with my tongue before taking it into my mouth and sucking. Hilde gasped again, and grasped the back of my head with her right hand, holding it in place over her nipple.


    I kept alternating between sucking her nipple and licking around it, and caressed her skin with my right hand, slowly working my way down to her smooth buttocks, squeezing the firm flesh and drawing further moans and muttered encouragements. After a couple of minutes, Hilde moved my head to her other breast, and I happily paid my homage to her left nipple.


    Leaving her glorious breasts, I continued my trail of kisses down Hilde''s body, licking and kissing her smoothly muscled stomach on my way down to her pubic hair, and teasingly circling around it to kiss my way down the inside of her smooth right thigh. Hilde''s thigh felt amazing to kiss. Her skin was soft and smooth, but the muscle beneath it was as hard as rock. I could feel her struggling to stay still and let me pleasure her as I kissed my way down her thigh and shin, and then switched to her left leg and back up to her stomach. I circled her pubic hair again, and finally ran my tongue into her wet slit. Hilde tasted tangy and intoxicating, and her loud gasps as I started licking inside her almost caused me to lose control. I alternated between licking inside, circling her clit, and sucking at it, with my left hand still massaging her scalp and my right hand playing with her hard nipples, and her breathing quickly grew ragged, while her muscles visibly strained as she fought to remain passive. I kept at her for long minutes, feeling her getting closer and closer to orgasm, and eased up at the last minute, keeping her on the edge and prolonging her torment, until finally she couldn''t take it anymore, and she grabbed my head and held my mouth against her clit until she came, shouting my name in her climax.


    I only gave Hilde a minute to rest afterwards, before I stood up on my knees behind her, pinned her hands above her head, kissed her hard, and drove my hard cock inside her. She felt wonderful around me, hot and wet and tight, and she moaned into my mouth as I started moving slowly inside her. She was so short that I had to arch my back in order to kiss her, but that small discomfort went unnoticed behind the sensation of sliding in and out of her, and the taste of her mouth. I kept a slow steady rhythm, my left hand pinning both of Hilde''s and my right hand playing with her soft breast and her hard nipple, and in far too short a time I felt a tightening in my balls and within another minute I drove all the way inside her and stayed there, gasping as I felt the intense pleasure of climaxing inside her.


    I don''t know if it was the incredible attraction I felt for the woman lying underneath me, the boost to my strength and stamina from the life force I absorbed earlier, or both, but I was still hard, and didn''t need even a moment of rest.


    I resumed my slow, rhythmic motions inside Hilde''s pussy, and lowered my head to catch one of her nipples in my mouth, sucking hard on it and hearing her gasp with pleasure. I felt the pleasure start to build up again inside me, and altered my rhythm in an attempt to prolong it. I kept it up for a while longer, switching rhythms whenever I got to close, hearing Hilde''s breaths grow more and more ragged, until I felt her pussy tighten up around me as she screamed my name again. The sensation of her pussy clenching around me and the knowledge that I made her cum again drove me over the limit, and I shouted her name as I emptied myself inside her for the second time.


    Afterwards, I released her hands and collapsed on top of her, and felt the events of the day finally catch up to me. Exhausted from the battle and its aftermath, we both fell asleep shortly, with my head resting on her soft breasts.

 Chapter 9: Contemplation

    Author''s Note: A somewhat short chapter this time, because I had very little time to write lately, but really wanted to get something posted. Next one will hopefully be faster and longer.


    ***


    While Melissa managed to avoid the Curse of Blood, the vampire''s bite left her with severe blood loss, which could be only partially remedied by Hilde''s magic, it took a full day for her to regain consciousness, and then it was three more before she was strong enough to travel.


    This delay was very welcome for me, since it gave me a chance to get used to the changes thrust upon me by the fight against the Necromancer.


    You see, apparently breaking the life drain spell while pulling on the drained life force has the same results as suffering the Curse and then Subverting it, and I was now a Dragon of the First Circle.


    I was stronger and quicker than I was before, and it took a lot more to tire me out. This may sound like every man''s dream, and I am definitely not complaining about it, but suddenly every move I made, especially things that were completely relegated to muscle memory, required conscious thought. I couldn''t even walk properly, since ever my feet pushed at the ground with just a little bit more power than my body expected, so that every step caused me to stumble. And then, of course, I would overcompensate for the stumble. Hilde says that this was a very common problem for people who managed to Subvert the Curse of Bones. People just aren''t wired for such sudden changes.


    Another common condition of people who have Subverted one of the Curses of Death, according to Hilde, was enhanced libido. To put it simply, I was horny.


    More or less constantly.


    Lucky for me, Hilde was in the same boat, and has been there for the whole week it took us to get to the fort. I don''t even want to think about how walking around for a whole week in a state of constant horniness feels like.


    Which definitely explains the night after the battle. And the one after that. And¡­ yeah. Melissa was very emphatic about Hilde and me sleeping in a different room, once she woke up.


    While Hilde spent her nights with me, her days were mostly filled with taking care of Melissa and aiding her healing. I helped her as much as I could, but that mostly amounted to finding firewood and cooking, which left me with a lot of time to burn.


    Couple that with my need to get used to my enhanced body, I ended up in a more or less constant need to move, which I spent on exploring the ruined fort. I got myself a nice stout piece of wood to use as a cudgel, and got Hilde to give me a few fighting lessons, and went hunting for whatever remained of the Necromancer''s forces.


    Which amounted to nothing more than a handful of skeletons, which, between the little baseball I played in high school and Hilde''s combat lessons, were fairly easy to destroy, once I knew what I was doing.


    The fort itself was not in good shape. I had no idea how old it was, but it was old enough that nearly every outside wall was covered in ivy, and at least a third of it was so overgrown it was nearly indistinguishable from the forest. Inside the fort, no sign remained of any doors or other wooden furniture, and any decoration that once graced the walls was long gone. I found what appeared to have been an armory, but the few pieces of armor that were left in it were either rusted, rotten or both.


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    The one exception to the utter neglect of the fort was the suite of rooms that the Necromancer used when she was still alive. While she didn''t bother with any decorations, she did manage to get useable furniture into the fort, and she had a library full of very well maintained books on magic and magical theory.


    These books were mostly related to fairly vicious types of magic, and neither Hilde nor Melissa wanted anything to do with them. And naturally, everything but the most basic of spells was beyond my ability. But learning spells wasn''t my purpose in reading the Necromancer''s books. Instead, I learned about how the spells functioned, and on the uses and variations of various runes. Fighting the Necromancer was terrifying, and if I ever came face to face with another of her kind, I wanted to be ready with counters for their spells.


    I also spent a lot of my time just thinking. When I first came through the portal, my main goal was to find a way back home. Now, however, I was starting to reconsider my priorities. My time here has mostly been a combination of intense terror and an almost painful combination of boredom and concentration. And yet, beneath it lay an excitement I could no longer deny. I''ve been an avid reader of fantasy for most of my life, and the chance to live in a fantasy world was not something I could just abandon.


    Hilde, too, was a consideration. I didn''t delude myself into thinking that what we had was even close to true love. It was more a combination of mutual horniness and admittedly growing affection. But whatever it was, I was enjoying it. Immensely.


    And last but not least, the Curse of Bones changed me on a fundamental level I couldn''t even begin to understand. I was some sort of magical being now, and I had absolutely no idea what would happen if I tried to go back to my magicless world. There was just no way I could return before I knew for a fact that going through the portal won''t leave me as a mindless walking skeleton.


    All of the above meant that I would be staying in this world for at least the near future. And if I was staying here, I would need the support and aid that the¡­ Alliance of Light I seemed to remember Melissa referring to the loose federation of kingdoms I found myself in. And from what I understood, as a Dragon, I would instantly have a high status in the Alliance, but I would also have to take part in defending the Alliance from Necromancers and other Forsaken, as people who succumbed to one of the seven Curses were called.


    And if I was going to have to fight Necromancers and Forsaken, I needed to be ready for them. I was probably the weakest magic user to ever become a Dragon, and there was no way I could just brute force my way in a magical battle. Finesse would have to be my way, and knowledge would be my rapier.


    And that''s how I passed the time it took Melissa to recover, and when we were finally ready to continue on our way to Aegis, I felt far better prepared for what the road would bring.

 Chapter 10: Life, Death and the Moon

    The distance between the ruined fort and Aegis was too far to reasonably cover on foot, and Hilde''s plan was to walk to the nearest settlement big enough to feature a guard station, which happened to be a medium sized elven town called Willow''s Crown, and use our status as Dragons to requisition horses for the rest of the journey. It would take about a week to get from the fort to a major road, and two more days on the road to get to Willow''s Crown. From there, it would be a two week ride to Aegis.


    Unlike our previous trek through the forest, I had nothing to do except walk. This led to a lot of time to think about what one could expect when walking through a fantasy wood. I started to expect to be jumped at any moment by anything from hungry wild beasts, through marauding bandits and up to savage fairy folk angry that we were trespassing on their sacred woods.


    I voiced my worries to my companions, and was very firmly reassured that wild animals know to stay away from armed warriors, fairy folk were highly civilized and unlikely to accost random travelers, and bandits were much more likely to be found nearer to where they could actually find someone to rob, and even if they were around, even the most suicidal of bandits would think twice before trying to rob a dwarven Valkyrie.


    We finished the first day of travel without encountering anything more dangerous than a swarm of gnats, and as we were sitting in camp after eating a stew made from a small animal Melissa caught, we found ourselves discussing our lives and families.


    Melissa, it turns out, was the fourth daughter of a minor baron. Her parents were married for political reasons, and spent most of their time cordially detesting each other. As the fourth daughter, Melissa''s inheritance was more or less nonexistent, but being even a minor noble gave her access to a decent magical academy, where she spent most of her teenaged years getting past her apprenticeship, and was now an adventuring journeywoman, with at least five more years before she would be considered for a mastery.


    Hilde''s father, on the other hand, was a master blacksmith, and her mother was a skald, or warrior poet, a title as hard to achieve and as prestigious as that of Valkyrie. They met when Hilde''s father was a journeyman, traveling with a dwarven expeditionary force into the Forsaken Lands. Hilde''s mother saved her father from a pack of werewolves, her father gave his masterpiece, a suit of articulated plate armor to her mother, and the rest is history.


    "Literally history," said Melissa after Hilde finished her story. "The bards wrote four ballads and a play about them."


    "We do not talk about Sigmund and Ingrid!" I could see Hilde''s face reddening behind her mead mug.


    "No, Hilde. you don''t talk about it. I talk about it every chance I get." Melissa stood up, and placed her left hand dramatically on her forehead, and recited, in her best attempt at a bass voice. "Oh, hammer of my grandfather! Strike swiftly, with the strength of the mountain, that my gift be worthy of my love!"


    That was about as far as she could go with a straight face, and she collapsed giggling back on her bedroll.


    "Enough about me!" Hilde exclaimed to renewed giggling from Melissa. "Tell us about yourself, Antoine."


    I talked a bit about my parents, a librarian and a car mechanic, and about growing up in a poor but decent neighborhood. My parents loved each other, and they loved me and my sister. When I got to the part where, in order to pay for college, I joined the army as a mechanic, Melissa chortled with joy.


    "Well, Hilde. You know what they say about girls falling for guys who remind them of their fathers, right?"


    To which a now thoroughly embarrassed Hilde responded by splashing Melissa with the contents of her mug, only to realize that she just spilled the last of her mead, and would have to wait until we got to a "proper dwarven brewery" before she could get any more.


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    At which point she turned to me with an exaggeratedly lecherous expression. "I guess that means I''ll have to find another source for the Liquid of Life, Antoine¡­"


    And the last coherent sentence uttered that night was Melissa''s groan of "get a room, you two!"


    ***


    The next day of travel was once again uneventful, and that evening I asked Hilde and Melissa a question that has been bothering me since I read the Necromancer''s books.


    "Melissa, the day we met you told me the story of how the three Curses of Death were created, but the books mention that there are a total of seven Curses. What''s the story with the other four?"


    "The Four Curses of the Moon," Melissa answered, "that story is not quite as exciting as the other one. It''s not that much of a story, really.


    "The Four Curses of the Moon are far older than the Curses of Death. Nobody knows quite how old, since stories of the Mooncursed are as old as our oldest records. As far as anyone can tell, they are as old as the fairy races themselves.


    "The Four Curses are the Curse of the Wolf, the Curse of the Shark, the Curse of the Hawk and the Curse of the Salamander, named after the creatures the Cursed turn into. The change is accompanied by uncontrollable bloodlust, similar to that caused by rabies, and any sentient that survives being bitten by one of the Cursed will turn into the same type of Mooncursed on the next full moon.


    "For most of our history, the Mooncursed were few and far between. The bloodlust made them easy to find, and whenever found they were hunted and destroyed. A very small number of Mooncursed would learn to suppress the bloodlust enough to stay hidden, and they learned to be very careful about infecting others, since an out of control Mooncursed would set of a hunt, and even the most careful of the Cursed might find themselves caught when dedicated hunters were around.


    "This all changed, however, when the Necromancers started to appear. We don''t know when, precisely, but one of the Necromancers learned to dominate the Mooncursed, and before long every Necromancer had to have a pack of werewolves or hawkmen at their beck and call. Nobody has ever seen Mooncursed cooperating with each other or with anyone else before that, and many warriors, mages and even Dragons fell before them. The Curses of the Moon, which nobody knew how to remove, created Forsaken Drakes, former dragons who fell to a new curse, in formerly unimaginable numbers, and the Necromancers ran over large parts of the Alliance. For a time, the Alliance forbade Dragons from fighting the Necromancers, because even a Necromancer rampaging freely was better than a Forsaken Drake. The rout went on for years before a group of gnomish and elven scholars discovered that the Curses of the Moon followed similar patterns to the Curses of Death, and modified the Subversion rituals to work on them.


    "The Curses of the Moon, when Subverted, gave new abilities to the Dragons. The Curse of the Wolf gave the ability to change your fingers into claws that could shred metal. The Curse of the Shark gave the ability to grow scales that would protect you from most bladed weapons. The Curse of the Hawk gave you wings, and the ability to fly. And the Curse of the Salamander gave you the fiery breath of the half elemental lizards. With these new abilities, the Dragons were able to push the Necromancers back, and the Alliance was once again secure."


    I lay awake for hours that night, trying to wrap my mind around everything Melissa told me, and eventually into a fitful sleep, dreaming of evil wizards and shape shifting monsters.