《Keiran [Book 4 Stubbing Jan 3rd]》


 Chapter 1

    When I first opened my eyes, it was to stare down in confusion at the thin, grubby, dirt-smudged fingers of a child far too old to be a newborn. My hands, somehow, impossibly. They should have been the soft, pudgy digits of a freshly born infant, not even an hour old, but instead, I had months and months, maybe even years of memories of my new life.


    Something had gone terribly wrong.


    The invocations I¡¯d laid into my soul should have sparked my previous life¡¯s memories with only the barest brush of mana to trigger them. If not for my new body¡¯s memories, my first thought would have been someone had detected my passage through the reincarnation cycle and trapped me in a mana void for years. Just looking around was enough to dispel that line of thinking. The truth was both simpler and stranger, it seemed.


    There wasn¡¯t a speck of ambient mana in the air around me, not a drop in the dry, dusty earth. I was sitting in a garden, a place that should have been bursting with life, but each row of plants was sadder than the one that preceded it. They barely clung to life, sad, wilted, shriveled things starved for the mana they needed to flourish.


    It appeared I¡¯d been reborn in a desert, one that had been devastated by some cataclysm that had scarred the land. It had taken my new body years to generate enough internal mana to trigger the soul invocations that would awaken my previous life¡¯s memories. There¡¯d been no mistakes, just ill fortune that had seen me reborn on a swath of dead land.


    ¡°Gravin.¡±


    This was probably a blessing in disguise. If there was so little ambient mana in the environment that it had taken years to trigger the soul magic, I wouldn¡¯t have been able to do much during those initial years anyway. At least this way, I¡¯d been spared the tedium of having to live through them. The memories alone were bad enough, fragmented and disjointed as they were.


    ¡°Graaavviiin,¡± a voice cooed.


    I was going to need to adjust my time frame. Internal mana was going to be my only source of power as long as I was stuck in this mana desert, and I was physically too weak to survive on my own. It would be months before I built up enough mana to ignite my core. Damn. What rotten luck to be reincarnated in a place like this.


    ¡°He looks so serious,¡± a different voice said. ¡°Look at that scowl on his face.¡±


    ¡°Come here, Gravvy,¡± the first voice said, and suddenly a shadow appeared over me. I looked up just in time to see a plain-faced woman wearing rough home-spun leaning down to grab hold of me. My mother, if the memories of my new brain were to be believed.


    ¡°Did you have fun?¡± she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she whisked me away towards what could generously be described as a hut and said, ¡°Come on, let¡¯s get you cleaned up and we¡¯ll have dinner.¡±


    My mother said her goodbyes to the other woman, a neighbor by the looks of it, and carried me towards a nearby hut, one of dozens lined up next to a dirt street, our home if my new body¡¯s memories were to be believed. They were more or less identical, all mud-fired bricks of some sort with a woven thatch roof. I took that time to consider my mana core. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure something had gone wrong. Even in this desert, I should have generated enough internal mana to awaken far sooner than I had. I couldn¡¯t recall the exact averages for mana generation rates in babies, but I should have produced enough well before reaching two years of age.


    I didn¡¯t realize we were inside the hut until I was plopped down on a table and the woman carrying me started tugging at my clothes. ¡°Arms up,¡± she said in a little sing-song voice. My body reacted without my conscious decision, and she pulled my shirt off.


    I needed to figure out this mana situation immediately. Otherwise it was going to be a long few years.


    * * *


    My memory wasn¡¯t perfect, but I hadn¡¯t been an archmage for nothing. I¡¯d done the math, repeatedly, and the results just didn¡¯t make sense. I would have said my mana core was crippled in some way, but I could sense it perfectly. It was as flawless as any other two-year-old¡¯s. Even if my math was somehow way off, I could sense it generating mana. It should have only taken about twenty hours before my core had enough mana to awaken my memories, not over two years.


    Something was interfering with my mana generation. That was the only explanation that made sense, but I couldn¡¯t for the life of me fathom why. Even if someone found the records of my experiments, it was impossible to trace the flow of my soul through the afterlife to my new body. It would take a grand magus invoker to examine my soul here and now to note anything unusual, and judging by the conditions I¡¯d apparently been living in, I doubted there was one within a thousand miles, let alone one bored enough to spot check random babies for soul modifications.


    I could only speculate for now. Until I learned more, the best I could do was start working on building up enough mana to ignite my core. Given how pitiful my mana generation was at the moment, that was going to take a month just for the mana to form, and I¡¯d need more than my core was capable of holding. I¡¯d have to invest some time and mana into building a storage crystal to feed my mana into.


    Another frustrating delay. I could scarcely picture a way in which I could have started my new life in a worse position. This process should have taken me a few hours at most, not weeks and weeks.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    My new family appeared one by one. First, my older sister showed back up just as Mother was finishing dinner, followed swiftly by my father. I had memories of both but, perhaps unsurprisingly, a baby¡¯s memories didn¡¯t provide clear pictures. I wasn¡¯t even sure how old my sister was, though she certainly didn¡¯t have more than a few years on me. Gravin felt a baby¡¯s love for the parents who nurtured him, and perhaps curiosity at his older sister more than anything else. I supposed a bit of acting was in order.


    Fortunately for me, Gravin was a quiet child with a tendency to stare at whatever caught his interest. If anything, he seemed a bit timid. That should be easy enough to copy for the time being. Once I¡¯d ignited my mana core, things would have to change, of course. That was several months away, and without an abundant source of ambient mana, my progress was going to be agonizingly slow.


    Dinner was a simple affair of humble food prepared with more love than skill, and, unfortunately, no seasonings at all to help the taste. I focused my efforts on fine motor control, which was surprisingly difficult to accomplish and somewhat exhausting. Who would have guessed that eating a meal without making a mess all over myself would turn into such a grueling test? It wasn¡¯t even that it was hard to accomplish so much as it was that my stamina was non-existent.


    The whole while, my new sister nattered on about what she¡¯d learned that day, which I did my best to tune out. Basic numbers and letters weren¡¯t exciting when I had been the one learning them thousands of years ago and they weren¡¯t exciting today. More and more, I despaired of how tedious my life was going to be for the next few months. It wasn¡¯t until after dinner was done that something interesting happened.


    ¡°Good job, Gravin!¡± my mother said. ¡°You barely need to be cleaned up at all. How about we go to the square early today and you can watch everyone while we wait for the Collectors? We¡¯ll be right near the front of the line this time.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯d be a relief,¡± Father added. ¡°We can all go to bed early tonight.¡±


    My sister¡¯s round little face scrunched up at that, but she didn¡¯t say anything. At first, I thought it was the early bedtime that she had a problem with, but somewhere in Gravin¡¯s fuzzy memories were visions of a group of people all lined up in front of tables, moving forward every few seconds. It was hard to pick details out of it, in part because of Gravin¡¯s habit of fixating on things. I had one memory with a clear picture of a man¡¯s mud-stained boot in front of me, but no clues as to why we were in line to begin with.


    I supposed I¡¯d find out soon enough.


    * * *


    The village was one of those little huddled specks on the landscape, a collection of fifty or so huts surrounded by fields that barely grew enough for the people to survive. Everything was dry, dusty, and hot. I didn¡¯t get to see much of it during our short walk to the square at the center, but what I did see was not reassuring. These people were one crop-ruining storm away from being wiped out.


    More importantly from my perspective, there was no ambient mana at all. I would have said it was impossible if I wasn¡¯t seeing it myself. Everything had mana in it, even the world itself. Living things were the best source of mana, but even in a desert like this, there should have been at least a little. Instead, the whole village was bone dry. Not even the people had any mana coming off them.


    They had mana, of course. Each and every one had a dormant mana core, but not a single one of them was full. Maybe it was just that they were all coming back in from a hard day¡¯s labor. I could see it being common around here to spend mana on physical invocations to aid in farming. The techniques would be as basic and bare bones as possible, just a simple conversion of mana to energy, but it would explain why not a single person was producing ambient mana from a full core.


    While I studied the villagers, they started organizing themselves into four lines that stretched across the square. Families chatted with each other as they waited, though I wasn¡¯t able to tell what exactly it was we were all gathered for. Whatever was going on, it was common enough that nobody felt the need to discuss the details.


    The north side of the square had a wide, squat building, more than five times bigger than any of the huts various families had emerged from. It also had a single wooden door, which was the first one I¡¯d seen so far. The huts had all used rough cloth to drape the entryways.


    The door opened and eight people walked out in groups of two with tables carried between each of them. Those were lined up in front of the building, and four more people emerged. They were carrying large black rocks, probably about forty pounds or so, close to their chests. Without talking, they all stepped up to a different table and placed the rock down. We were close enough to the front of the line that I could easily make out the details.


    Draw stone. Of course. I should have guessed.


    The lines started moving, people placing a hand on the stone for a few seconds, receiving confirmation from the attendant and having their names ticked off a list on a nearby sheet of paper, and moving out of the way for the next. Each person¡¯s mana core was emptied into one of the draw stones, and within a minute, it was my family¡¯s turn.


    Father went first, then turned to my sister. ¡°Come on, your turn,¡± he said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t like it. It makes me feel tired.¡±


    ¡°I know sweetie, but everyone has to contribute so the barrier doesn¡¯t come down. The monsters will get in if we don¡¯t donate our mana.¡±


    My father took her hand and gently pressed it against the draw stone. What little mana she had drained out of her over the next few seconds, and she swayed on her feet. He scooped her up and carried her out of the way so my mother could take her turn. From what I could tell, he wasn¡¯t handling the mana drain much better than my sister.


    My mother let the draw stone take her mana, then knelt down and boosted me up so I could reach it sitting on the table. ¡°Just put your hand here, like we practiced,¡± she said.


    All around me, the other lines were moving forward. Behind us, more villagers were waiting their turns. No one was objecting, at least beyond some fussing from the smaller children. Everyone thought this was perfectly normal. Had I been reborn inside some sort of cult? And what barrier were they talking about? I would have noticed something like that.


    Her hand over mine, my mother guided my hand to press down on the draw stone so that it could steal what little mana I¡¯d managed to generate.


    To hell with that.


    * * *


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 Chapter 2

    Draw stones were easy to use, so easy in fact that they would passively steal mana right out of the cores of anyone nearby, albeit much more slowly than if someone touched one. It was no wonder it had taken so long for me to awaken if this was a nightly village ritual.


    Fortunately for me, anyone with the least bit of knowledge could block the pull of a draw stone. It was a simple matter to keep my mana right where it was. The only question was whether the attendant would realize, but considering there wasn¡¯t a single ignited mana core in this entire village, I was betting the answer was going to be no.


    I pulled my hand back after a few seconds of pretending to let the draw stone do its business, and the attendant just ticked off a box next to my name. Mother picked me up and said, ¡°There we go. Good job, Gravin! Maybe you should give Senica lessons on how to be brave.¡±


    My sister stuck her tongue out at me from our father¡¯s arms, and together we walked back to our one-room hut. At least I knew her name now. I was sure Mother and Father would suffice for our parents, and no one would look at me too hard if I forgot the names of anyone else I was supposed to know. No one was even really commenting on the fact that I hadn¡¯t said a word yet since I¡¯d awakened. Gravin had always been a quiet child.


    Now that I had a better idea of the situation I¡¯d found myself in, I could start forming a plan to get myself out of here. The first step was going to be creating a mana storage crystal. My own core couldn¡¯t hold all the mana I needed to ignite it, and there was no ambient mana to draw in. I¡¯d have to hoard it. That shouldn¡¯t be too terribly difficult. I just needed a physical object, some mana, and a great deal of patience. The biggest hurdle was going to be how weak my body was. Even without letting myself be mana drained, I was feeling drowsy.


    Toddlers slept a lot, and while I could use my own mana to energize myself, I needed it for other projects. A nap wouldn¡¯t go amiss right now. Luckily enough, the sun was going down and it looked like everyone else was getting ready to sleep too. That led me to take my first good look around the inside of the hut, and I realized almost immediately that there were only two pallets. One was a small, Senica-sized rectangle with a pair of dolls laying on it, and the other was big enough for two adults.


    Oh no. Was I still sleeping with my parents? This whole reincarnation was starting to feel like some sort of cosmic joke someone was playing on me. It was bad enough that I was sleeping on an unscented oblong bag of straw, but to have to share the pallet with two other people¡­


    Getting my own place to sleep was right up near the top of my priorities list.


    My new family went through their night time rituals before Senica crawled onto her own pallet and I was placed between my parents on the larger one. My mother handed me some sort of straw-stuffed doll shaped like what I assumed was a local animal. I didn¡¯t recognize it, but that could have been because the quality was lacking or because it was just an animal I¡¯d never seen before. Neither would have surprised me. Wherever I¡¯d reincarnated at, it wasn¡¯t a place I was familiar with.


    Apparently, it was just expected that I¡¯d want to hang onto ¡°Farnsley,¡± as my mother called the toy. It wasn¡¯t ideal for my purposes, but I only needed a storage crystal for a month or two. I could easily empty my mana into the toy every morning once I¡¯d modified it, and no one would think twice about me constantly holding it. It was almost galling thinking about the transference loss, but then again, it wasn¡¯t like I had anything better around to work with.


    I¡¯d get started on forming the storage crystal inside the toy where it couldn¡¯t be seen tonight, and over the next few weeks, I¡¯d slowly fill it. No one would suspect a thing. Perfect.


    * * *


    My eyes cracked open to see sunlight pouring in through the window. Both my parents were already up and preparing for the day, though my sister was still laying on her pallet. I groaned and sat up, then looked around for the toy. It had somehow made its way down past my feet while I slept.


    I had not managed to finish forming the storage crystal last night, not even close. I hadn¡¯t even managed to use all the mana in my core before I¡¯d fallen asleep. I crawled across the bed, scooped the toy back up, and got back to work.


    ¡°Oh, you¡¯re up early,¡± my mother said. Before I had time to think, she¡¯d crossed the room and picked me up. ¡°Come on, leave Farnsley here. Let¡¯s get your morning business taken care of.¡±


    With no say in the matter, I was whooshed out of the hut to the nearest communal outhouse. How humiliating.


    * * *


    It was far more difficult than I¡¯d expected to work on the storage crystal. I wasn¡¯t allowed to take the toy anywhere, and when I tried, I was told that I was getting too old for that now. Between that and my weak body¡¯s inability to stay awake at night, it was hard to get time to even work on the crystal. That was frustrating, but if I was being honest, it wasn¡¯t like I was generating mana fast enough that a ton of additional time would make a difference.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    It took me a week to finish forming the storage crystal inside the toy. It felt like a rock the size of a grown woman¡¯s thumb, and the only way to tell it was there was to squeeze the toy tightly. Its maximum storage capacity was pathetic, and if circumstances hadn¡¯t been so dire, I¡¯d be embarrassed to associate myself with its creation.


    The storage crystal was horribly inefficient and I was forced to once again revise my estimations about how long it would take to fill it. At least half the mana I poured into it leaked out before it stabilized, and if the tests I¡¯d done were in any way accurate, I was going to lose half of it again when I tried to pull it back out.


    Two months, at least. That was the best-case scenario. So far, nothing had interfered, at least not in any meaningful way. Mother was intent on monopolizing most of my waking hours, and when she wasn¡¯t, Father occasionally took over my evening. The only person who didn¡¯t seem particularly interested in me was Senica. At least, that¡¯s what I thought.


    * * *


    ¡°How come you don¡¯t talk anymore?¡± Senica asked me one afternoon.


    I slowly turned my head to look at her and blinked once. It suited my purposes to say nothing, and no one had made any demands otherwise.


    ¡°Mom¡¯s worried about how quiet you got. I heard her talking to Malra about it while we were gardening the other day,¡± my sister continued. She jabbed a finger in my direction. ¡°So how come you stopped?¡±


    I shrugged my little shoulders and told her, ¡°Nothing to say.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯d better start talking again soon. Malra said we should take you to the gover- the govenirer, no, the¡­ to Lord Noctra¡¯s house to see if you¡¯re possessed.¡±


    That was ridiculous. What kind of spirit would waste its time possessing a toddler? What would even be the point? Now, if they were worried about body snatchers or changelings, that would make sense. But a possession? That was just dumb.


    Just the same, I didn¡¯t need anyone taking a closer look at me before I had the ability to defend myself. Even if they couldn¡¯t see the soul invocations I¡¯d woven into myself, that might not stop some third-rate charlatan from pronouncing some suitably mystical sounding garbage to some frightened villagers that ended up with me in even more dire straits than I was now.


    ¡°Not possessed,¡± I said.


    ¡°Well, of course you¡¯re not, dear,¡± my mother said, sweeping me up into her arms. Curse my toddler senses, I hadn¡¯t even realized she¡¯d been listening. ¡°Senica is just being mean. Ignore her.¡±


    I spent the next half an hour reciting the names of various fruits and vegetables from the garden back to my mother as she told them to me, much to her delight. It looked like I hadn¡¯t done as good a job at acting like a normal toddler as I¡¯d thought.


    Two more months¡­


    * * *


    Everything would have gone so much faster if I¡¯d had the ability to cast even the most basic of spells. Mana draining my parents in their sleep, for example, would have increased the amount of mana I could put in my storage crystal. It was too bad I couldn¡¯t do it.


    Days turned into weeks, and ever so slowly, the storage crystal kept filling. Every evening, I went to the town square with my family and pretended to give up my mana to the draw stone, an event they called the tithe. Every night, I poured it into my storage crystal instead. Soon enough, it technically had enough mana in it to ignite my own core, but with so much being wasted upon drawing it out, it wasn¡¯t really close to enough. I needed to fill the crystal to the brim to ensure success.


    The whole thing would have been easier if Mother was just a little bit less interested in me. Her constant demands on my time were bad enough, but the amount of energy I wasted appeasing her attempts to play with and educate me were the true problem. It was impossible to keep up with her demands without tapping into my mana. Gravin, and no doubt every other baby here, had probably been doing it unconsciously. It was a common enough form of invocation, which itself was by far the easiest kind of magic to cast without realizing it.


    If I tried to get out of it, I got admonishments. If I persisted, it turned to concern about my health, which led to greater scrutiny. The last thing I needed was someone like that neighbor Malra snooping around or, worse, going to someone else who might actually be competent. Anyone with a lick of training would notice that storage crystal. I was running a calculated risk not shielding the mana, but it would take ten times as long to fill if I did.


    Why couldn¡¯t I have gotten an absentee mother, like in my previous life? That woman had been so disconnected from me that I couldn¡¯t even remember her name anymore. Thinking about her only brought to mind the smell of burning yamma weed that she¡¯d smoked from a long-stemmed pipe every day and the sound of flesh slapping on flesh, which was how she¡¯d paid for it.


    My new mother was nothing like that. It was ungrateful of me to resent her for being such a loving parent, but she was standing in the way of my progress. I played along and did my best to keep my mana expenditure to a minimum while silently fuming about even more delays. Weeks turned into months, and my goal of filling the storage crystal in just two months seemed laughable. Before I knew it, my third birthday had come and gone.


    That led to even more expectations, and my mana generation hadn¡¯t grown enough to keep up with them. It was now four months of this routine, and every day was an exercise in willpower as I resisted the temptation to tap into the storage crystal, drain it dry, and hope that I could squeeze enough mana out of it to ignite my core.


    The day was coming, and soon too. Even with all the stumbling blocks, I was over three quarters of the way to filling the crystal. Just another two months should do it. This time, I was sure.


    * * *


    ¡°Gravin,¡± my mother said. ¡°I have a surprise for you, sweetie.¡±


    I opened my eyes and looked at her. I¡¯d been sitting in the garden while she worked, doing my best to meditate and increase the amount of mana I was generating. With my core in the state it was, there wasn¡¯t really much I could do, and I would have normally considered it a waste of effort. In these circumstances, though, anything I could do to shave off a day or two was worth the work.


    ¡°This is Cherok,¡± my mother said, gesturing to a man standing next to her. ¡°He¡¯s going to be your school teacher for the next few months while you learn how to use your mana. Isn¡¯t that exciting?¡±

 Chapter 3

    The man standing at the edge of the garden had a round, soft face and thick, pudgy fingers. He wore the same rough home-spun as everyone else in the village, but in his case the fabric strained over a potbelly. In my former life, I would have pegged him as some sort of low-ranking noble, high enough up the ladder to not have to do manual labor, but not so high that he had the time and inclination to maintain a state of physical fitness. He would be someone for whom appearances weren¡¯t important.


    Here, where almost everyone worked the fields, and did so without much magic to help, finding someone with an appreciable amount of fat on them was something of a rarity. Everyone else I¡¯d met so far straddled the line between lean and malnourished. So then, this Cherok fellow must be important to the village¡¯s society, someone in a privileged position. He represented yet another complication I didn¡¯t need.


    He advanced through the rows of stunted tomato plants and squatted down in front of me. ¡°Hello, Gravin. It¡¯s nice to meet you.¡±


    I had no idea how Gravin would have reacted, but as my sister had pointed out, I¡¯d developed a reputation for not saying much among my family. There was no reason to change that strategy now.


    ¡°Hello,¡± I said. Then I waited.


    Cherok smiled patiently, but after a few seconds of me not saying anything else, he looked back to my mother, who just shrugged in response. ¡°Do you know what mana is?¡± he asked.


    It was a struggle not to roll my eyes, made easier by the fact that I had a very real fear that this man was going to be hindering my progress greatly. Depending on his capabilities, there were really only two ways to play this. Either I could pretend to be a prodigy and get through the unnecessary lessons as quickly as possible, thus wasting the minimum amount of my precious mana appeasing him, or I could pretend to be hopelessly thick, wasting no mana and deliberating failing all his lessons.


    The problem there was that I didn¡¯t know if I just needed to prove I could manipulate my mana or if the classes lasted the same length of time regardless. More than that, I didn¡¯t know how much he¡¯d be able to detect. There were too many unknown variables to make this decision with any degree of confidence, and of course nobody had bothered to talk to the toddler about what he wanted to do. Why would they?


    The only thing Gravin would know about mana was that the draw stones took it. That was a nice, safe topic. ¡°It¡¯s what we give to the big rock every day,¡± I said.


    Cherok chuckled at that. Perhaps I¡¯d just spent too many months as a small child, but I¡¯d noticed that a lot of adults were very patronizing towards children. It was to be expected to an extent, but there were degrees of difference. My mother, for example, wanted to celebrate every little thing. That was a perfectly valid tactic for encouraging children to grow and explore, but it did get a bit wearing to me personally.


    This particular adult was not like that. He clearly looked down on me, probably on all children, and considered me lesser. I disliked him immediately. If I¡¯d been on the fence before, that laugh of his sealed the deal.


    ¡°That¡¯s true, but that¡¯s not what mana is. That¡¯s just something you do with it,¡± he said condescendingly. I glanced over his shoulder at my mother, but she just stood there smiling at me. Obviously, I wasn¡¯t getting any help there.


    Cherok was waiting for me to say something again, no doubt intending to lead me through the conversation by the nose while he displayed his intellectual superiority to a literal toddler. I stared back at him and remained silent.


    The moment stretched between us, him waiting for me to ask the question he was baiting me into voicing, me more than willing to sit there all day ignoring him. I didn¡¯t need to ask him what mana was. I¡¯d known that for over two thousand years, and my original teacher had been an actual mage, not a dull like this guy. All he was doing was interrupting my meditation, which was just a way for me to pass the time and generate just slightly more mana than I would otherwise.


    ¡°Mana,¡± Cherok said, giving up on waiting me out, ¡°is the magic inside us. It makes us strong, and we collectively use it as a community to empower the great barrier that keeps Alkerist safe from monsters.¡±


    Almost nobody ever said the name of the village. I¡¯d been here for months before I¡¯d heard it the first time. For a group of people utterly isolated from the outside world, the real surprise had been that they¡¯d named their village at all. I suspected someone who¡¯d died a long, long time ago had come up with the name, and whatever meaning it had once had was long forgotten.


    Then there was this guy.


    ¡°Okay,¡± I said.


    Cherok frowned and glanced back at my mother again. She didn¡¯t say anything, and I felt a surge of malicious little glee at the whole situation. He looked back to me and said, ¡°My job is to teach children how to sense their mana and, more importantly, how to manipulate their spirit to make more of it. Some of my students are so advanced that they can even use their mana to make themselves stronger or faster. Doesn¡¯t that sound exciting?¡±The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    It really, really didn¡¯t. Also he didn¡¯t seem to know what he was talking about. Presumably, he meant he taught people how to manipulate their mana cores, but I couldn¡¯t be completely sure.


    ¡°Okay,¡± I said again.


    Cherok rose back to his full height and walked back over to my mother to talk to her in a hushed voice. I went back to ¡°playing¡± in the dirt, as my mother had termed my meditation sessions. A bit of mana sharpened my senses so I could pick up their conversation easily. It might have been wasteful, but it seemed prudent to keep on top of whatever they were planning for me.


    ¡°Maybe he¡¯s just a bit too young,¡± Cherok said, ¡°but he doesn¡¯t understand what I¡¯m saying, and he¡¯s not interested in learning.¡±


    ¡°It sounds like you¡¯re saying my son is stupid,¡± my mother said, a warning tone in her voice.


    ¡°No, no, of course not. Everyone develops at their own pace, and just because his sister started early doesn¡¯t mean he will too. There¡¯s nothing wrong with that. It¡¯s just how it is.¡±


    ¡°So you don¡¯t want Gravin to attend your next class?¡±


    ¡°He can, if you really want him there. But I won¡¯t be able to give him special instruction time to help him catch up. It might be best for everyone if we try again in a few months.¡±


    Yes, good. That sounded reasonable. It would give me enough time to ignite my mana core. Then whatever demands Cherok made of me would be easily compensated for. As long as the lessons weren¡¯t too intensive, I could probably spend most of the time strengthening my core so I could push past stage one quickly.


    Considering the utter lack of ambient mana in the village, increasing my own mana generation was really the only way to progress. Once I was strong enough to leave, I¡¯d get out of this desert and I could return to my original plans. I didn¡¯t like being vulnerable like this, though there were still a few failsafes left in my soul if the worst should come to pass.


    ¡°Senica wasn¡¯t that interested to begin with either,¡± my mother said. ¡°But you¡¯ll recall she ended up doing very well.¡±


    ¡°She did,¡± Cherok admitted. ¡°But as I said, every child is different. Your daughter was interested in playing and was extremely active. She thought the classes would be boring and a distraction from her games. Once she got a taste of what I had to teach her, her whole attitude changed. Gravin, on the other hand, well¡­¡±


    ¡°Well what?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s just kind of¡­ sitting there. And from what I understand, that isn¡¯t unusual behavior for him. He doesn¡¯t do much of anything, isn¡¯t curious, doesn¡¯t play, doesn¡¯t talk. I¡¯ve been teaching the children of Alkerist for twenty years now, and I¡¯ve never seen one as disinterested in the world around him as your son. Xilaya, he¡¯s not ready, and he might never be ready. There¡¯s something wrong with him.¡±


    ¡°There is nothing wrong with my boy,¡± my mother hissed.


    Cherok held his hands up and took a step back. ¡°As you say. You¡¯d know him best. Regardless, from my conversation with him, I¡¯d recommend waiting a few more months to see if he develops some interest. I can show you a few things to work on with him here at home that might spark something if you¡¯d like.¡±


    I hadn¡¯t realized I stood out so much. Here I thought I¡¯d just been well-behaved and easy to care for, and instead I¡¯d gotten a reputation as an idiot. I¡¯d be offended if there was even a single person in this whole village whose opinion mattered to me. As it was, I¡¯d take being looked down on if it meant I was left alone for the next few months.


    ¡°Our next Testing is in a month,¡± my mother said, her voice quiet and almost desperate. ¡°Gravin needs to be able to show that he¡¯s contributing to the barrier.¡±


    ¡°Well I¡¯m sorry, but even if the boy was a genius, it¡¯d be all but impossible to teach him mana techniques in just a few weeks,¡± Cherok said. ¡°Not even I can take a child to that height so quickly, no matter how talented they might be. And your son, I¡¯m sorry to say, isn¡¯t.¡±


    If only he knew how wrong he was. But no, it wasn¡¯t worth it to draw the attention to myself, not when I was still this weak. I had nothing to prove to a bunch of farmers living in the back corner of nowhere and clinging to superstitions about a fictional magical barrier that was keeping them safe from a vague, unspecified threat that never seemed to emerge to prove them wrong.


    ¡°What are we supposed to do then?¡± my mother demanded. ¡°Sellis is already working himself to death. We can¡¯t afford for him to be taxed twice a day.¡±


    ¡°There is nothing you can do,¡± Cherok said stiffly. ¡°My suggestion would be to keep your legs closed in the immediate future so you don¡¯t end up with a third child you can¡¯t afford.¡±


    It was a good thing I was studiously avoiding looking in their direction, otherwise one of them might have seen my smirk when I felt the mana in my mother¡¯s core surge in an unstructured invocation that bolstered her physical prowess. A second later, there came the smack of palm against cheek and Cherok let out a surprised, pain-filled squeal.


    It seemed I wasn¡¯t the only one who didn¡¯t like the village teacher.


    ¡°Well then,¡± his mother said, her voice cold, ¡°thank you for the deep insight into my family. Truly, your wisdom is without peer.¡±


    I risked a look over and saw Cherok still staggered back a step, one hand clutching at his face. He straightened up, shot me a nasty glare, and said, ¡°My recommendation is that you wait for your son to get older before he begins his schooling. He is nowhere near ready at this time. Good day, Xilaya.¡±


    And with that, he turned on his heel and stormed off down the street. My mother watched him go, her fists clenched at her side and her nose flaring with each breath. Only after he¡¯d turned the corner did she force herself to relax.


    ¡°And good riddance,¡± she muttered. When she turned to face me, she¡¯d resumed her normal, smiling expression. ¡°Well then, wasn¡¯t that exciting?¡±


    ¡°Mean man,¡± I said.


    ¡°People are complicated,¡± she told me. ¡°Do you understand?¡±


    ¡°Mean. Pretends not to be.¡±


    My mother paused, gave me a speculative look, and nodded. ¡°Yes, I suppose that¡¯s a good way to put it. There¡¯s nothing to be done about it, though. Why don¡¯t we see about getting this row weeded, and then we can start working on dinner?¡±


    It looked like I¡¯d managed to dodge school for now. With any luck, by the time that particular issue reared its ugly head again, it would be too late to matter.

 Chapter 4

    ¡°Cherok came by to talk to Gravin today,¡± I heard Mother say when Father came home.


    There was a silent beat, then, ¡°How¡¯d that go?¡±


    ¡°He implied there was something wrong with Gravin¡¯s brain and told me that if we can¡¯t afford the mana tax, that I should close my legs more often.¡±


    My father¡¯s expression darkened. ¡°Did he now?¡± he said quietly. I would not want to be Cherok when Father caught up with him.


    ¡°What¡¯s that mean?¡± Senica asked. I smothered a laugh and turned away from the rest of the family so they couldn¡¯t see my face.


    ¡°Oh, it¡¯s, er, it¡¯s just a grown-up thing you won¡¯t need to worry about for a long time,¡± Mother said.


    ¡°But what¡¯s it mean?¡± Senica pressed.


    ¡°I¡¯ll tell you when you¡¯re older.¡±


    My sister let out a huff and flopped onto her pallet. ¡°Fine!¡±


    ¡°What do we do now?" Father asked. ¡°There¡¯s only a few weeks left.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Even if we pushed the issue and got Gravin into training, this class is just starting too late for it to make a difference, and it¡¯s not right to put that kind of pressure on Gravin. He¡¯s only three.¡±


    ¡°I know, but that¡¯s the rule. Everyone contributes mana. No exceptions. We¡¯re a family of four, and Gravin is old enough to walk and talk. They¡¯re going to start assessing us higher. If we can¡¯t produce enough with a daily tithe, we¡¯ll both be wearing draw stone pendants for the next six months.¡±


    I wondered how many draw stones this village could possibly have. It wasn¡¯t like it was rare or anything, but considering these people were out in the middle of nowhere with no obvious way to acquire it, it was strange that they¡¯d have draw stones in abundance.


    On a more personal level, if I was understanding this conversation correctly, we were looking at having draw stones literally hanging off our necks. Maybe it would just be my parents, but I still didn¡¯t want the stuff in our home. The constant need to resist a draw stone¡¯s pull would wear on me, and especially since I still had to sleep in the same bed as my parents, it would be practically touching me all night. It was just a matter of time until it started stealing away my precious mana while I slept. Worse, my storage crystal would have no such protections.


    ¡°Hey,¡± Senica said to me. ¡°What¡¯s wrong with your brain?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I said.


    ¡°Nothing is wrong with his brain,¡± my mother said. ¡°Cherok was just being an as- a jerk. He was saying mean things because he doesn¡¯t get along with your father and wanted to take it out on us.¡±


    ¡°Cherok¡¯s not the problem right now,¡± Father said. ¡°He can be a jerk all he wants. It¡¯s the Collector showing up in a few weeks that we need to think about.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s a Collector?¡± I asked.


    ¡°They¡¯re the ones who administer the draw stones, sweetie. The man at our table is a Collector, and so is the person who will come do our Testing next month.¡±


    Of course they were. That made perfect sense. The whole village government was obsessed with harvesting mana from its populace, though I¡¯d yet to see any evidence of what it was all being used for. If I could get my hands on one of those draw stones, my mana problems would be over instantly. Come to think of it, maybe it was a good thing if both my parents ended up wearing one. I could drain the mana out of it, pump it into my storage crystal, and finish igniting my mana core.


    It would be better if I was left alone to do it myself. There was less chance of drawing scrutiny that way. I wasn¡¯t sure if I could do it in a month though. I could make an attempt right now, if I wanted, but depending on how bad the loss converting the mana from the storage crystal was, I might fall short. If I didn¡¯t have enough, all of my work over the last eight months would be wasted.


    ¡°Maybe we¡¯re worrying over nothing,¡± Father said. ¡°They might show up, do the Testing, and determine we generate enough mana for a family of four. It¡¯ll be Gravin¡¯s first time. He could score really high.¡±


    ¡°Maybe,¡± Mother agreed, but I could hear the doubt in her voice. ¡°He does spend a lot of time just sitting there. He¡¯s probably not using too much passively.¡±


    She wasn¡¯t wrong. That was a deliberate choice on my part. I didn¡¯t move around much because I didn¡¯t have enough energy to last all day, and time spent napping was time not spent speeding up my mana generation. If I could just get a few weeks undisturbed, and maybe some better food, I could get this interminable weaning stage over with. I was tired of being a dull.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    My parents spent the rest of the evening going in circles about things that were outside of their control and stressing themselves out over it. They only stopped once they realized Senica had picked up on it and was getting a wild look in her eyes. That led to Mother taking a break to soothe her while Father took me outside to sit in the garden together.


    ¡°You know, son, I don¡¯t think that teacher knew what he was talking about. Plenty of wise men knew to keep their mouths shut when there was nothing important to say,¡± he told me.


    I wisely stayed quiet in response, which caused my father to laugh after a moment.


    ¡°Yeah, just like that. You know more than you let on, don¡¯t you? Well, either way, don¡¯t worry about this whole Testing thing. It¡¯s not that big a deal. It¡¯ll just make for a rough few months, nothing your old man can¡¯t survive.¡±


    ¡°Will we fail?¡± I asked.


    Father shrugged. ¡°Who knows? It would certainly help if you had some mana to tithe, but you¡¯re too young for them to expect very much. A few years ago, we wouldn¡¯t even be worrying about this, but right around the time you were born, Lord Noctra let us know the barrier was becoming unstable again, that we weren¡¯t tithing enough mana to keep it active all the time. That¡¯s when the Barrier Wardens became a thing, to keep a look out for monsters so we can activate the barrier whenever one gets close.


    ¡°Supposedly we¡¯re building the reserves back up, and soon we¡¯ll be able to run it full time instead of just at night when no one can see if there are any monsters out in the dark. Sure has made for a rough few years though.¡±


    Interesting. That might explain why I hadn¡¯t seen much of this supposed barrier since my awakening. If they only ran it at night to conserve power, well, it was a rare day indeed that I managed to keep my eyes open once the stars started coming out. I¡¯d yet to spot all six of our moons despite months of looking. It might be worth it to spend a bit of mana just to stay up late and see if I could get a look at this barrier.


    ¡°Have you ever seen a monster?¡± I asked.


    Father took a moment to answer. ¡°The Wardens keep us safe when the sun¡¯s up, and if they spot something they can¡¯t handle, Lord Noctra comes out and fries it to a crisp. Then the barrier keeps everything away at night, like I said. All I have to do is grow food during the day and take care of you at night.¡±


    A simple life. I wouldn¡¯t say I was jealous, not considering the cost, but I could see the appeal. I did notice that Father hadn¡¯t answered the question though. There was more to that story, but I wasn¡¯t getting it out of him, not tonight at least.


    * * *


    That night, I clutched the toy holding my storage crystal tight to my chest and carefully examined it. At maximum capacity, it could hold twenty times as much mana as my own core. I lost about half of the mana I put in, and I¡¯d lose half of it again pulling it out. It was currently three quarters full after six months of work. Like I said, it wasn¡¯t a very good storage crystal, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances.


    It took me six days for my mana core to fill to full naturally, or five if I was given enough uninterrupted time to stimulate my core so it would generate mana faster. I needed eight times my maximum mana to make my core ignite, so in theory, the storage crystal didn¡¯t need to be completely full. There was a bit of leeway there in that I could fill my own mana core to the brim prior to starting the ritual, and of course skill counted for a great deal in these sorts of things. If I did it properly, I could get away with as little as seven times my maximum mana in the crystal.


    The rest was a buffer, just in case something went wrong. I¡¯d rather spend eight months and ensure I did it perfectly the first time than spend seven and risk wasting it all by failing. The draw stones were a complication, especially if my parents were going to be wearing them at all times. If I did the ignition right before the Testing in a month, I would theoretically still have more mana than I needed, but only a bit under eight mana cores worth instead of ten. The margins were tight, but I could do it.


    If I ignited my core prior to the Testing, I could probably cheat in some way to make it seem like my family produced enough mana to satisfy whatever the requirement was. My ignited core would generate mana twenty times faster than it did in its dormant state. I¡¯d have enough to spare, and it¡¯d be worth the investment to keep draw stones out of our home. I supposed it might also relieve some of my parents¡¯ stress as well.


    That settled it then. I¡¯d give the storage crystal a few more weeks, then look for a good opportunity to ignite my core. It¡¯d probably be one of the days when Senica was home from school during the day and Mother was visiting with that nosy neighbor who¡¯d thought I was possessed. Senica was supposed to keep an eye on me, but really, who trusted a six-year-old to babysit? Then again, nothing bad had happened, so maybe Mother was right to think Senica could do it.


    * * *


    As we got closer to the Testing, my parents got more and more agitated. From what I gathered, they were convinced they were going to fail, despite both of them doing their best to limit the amount of mana they used during the day. Seeing as to how they weren¡¯t really trained at all, at least not that I could tell, almost all of Father¡¯s mana usage went towards instinctive invocations to give himself more strength or stamina. Mother pushed most of her mana into our garden to try to help the scraggly plants grow.


    There were three days left, and it was Senica¡¯s last day off from school before the Testing. If I wanted to do this, it had to be today. We went through the morning routine, breakfast, garden work, play time, and then I was put down for a nap on the pallet I¡¯d been sharing with my parents. Senica played with her two dolls at the table, and Mother went outside to chat with the neighbor, that way she wouldn¡¯t keep me up.


    Thanks to my own invocation, I was wide awake. I clutched the stuffed animal toy tightly, the better to pinch the storage crystal between two fingers, and with a glance at Senica to make sure she was still ignoring me, I accessed the crystal.


    Immediately, I felt the mana inside. It was mostly full, not quite enough topped off. That was fine. I could do this without a safety net. It would mean months, possibly years considering what kind of setbacks I might see, of work to try again if I failed. But I hadn¡¯t gotten to be an ancient archmage without taking a few risks.


    I was so sick of being a toddler. It was time to take some control over my life.

 Chapter 5

    Igniting a core was so easy that people did it accidentally in areas with high ambient mana. The only ingredient required is an overabundance of mana, more than a mana core can hold. The smaller and weaker a mana core is, the easier it was to ignite. If not for the fact that there was no ambient mana at all here, I would have done it years ago.


    That wasn¡¯t the circumstance I¡¯d found myself in, however, so I was forced to use a workaround. My method needed actual skill at controlling mana, since I had to use what I¡¯d saved up in my junky storage crystal to create an artificial cloud of ambient mana. Depending on how quickly I managed to cycle the mana through my core, it would react and reach a critical threshold. The entire core would start producing mana instead of just the one spot where it touched on the Astral Realm.


    What I was about to do was in essence what being a mage was all about. Any idiot could channel some mana from their core into a basic invocation to help them hoe the dirt a little harder. Controlling mana that wasn¡¯t already connected to them is a whole different skill set. Controlling seven or eight times the total amount of mana my core could even hold was not something the average mage had the ability to do.


    But I needed my artificial ambient mana to stay near me where I could use it, so that was precisely what I was going to do. Left to its own devices, it would diffuse and spread until there was nothing left, drunk up by the parched earth of this desert. If there¡¯d been someone I could trust to release the mana from the storage crystal at a steady rate, this would have been simplicity in itself to perform, but I was on my own. It all had to come out at once before I started the process.


    I broke the seal on the storage crystal, and mana flooded out of it. Immediately, I started pulling it into my core, packing it in denser, spinning it around. The first coreful was easy; mana in its natural state sat loosely. The second coreful was when things started to get strained and I had to work to cycle the mana around. When people did this accidentally, it was normally by overexerting themselves casting various spells. That method required far more mana than I had available, and my version was significantly more uncomfortable.


    I¡¯d managed to pack in four times as much mana as normal and had it spinning inside my core like a raging vortex when I noticed I was losing more than I¡¯d accounted for. At the same time, Senica had stopped playing and was looking around the hut, far too alert. She¡¯d noticed something. It wasn¡¯t hard to guess that some of the ambient mana had been close enough to her that she¡¯d instinctively absorbed it into her own core.


    That was great for her. That kind of natural talent was prized, and if she¡¯d been born somewhere else, she probably would have been on the fast-track to full mage status. It was both of our misfortunes to have been born here in this village. Probably one or both of our parents had a similar talent, as such things did tend to get passed down from generation to generation. If I¡¯d been forced to guess, I¡¯d say our mother was the more likely candidate, just given the state of our family garden compared to the neighbor¡¯s.


    Regardless, it was a problem for me. I needed that mana, and my margins were already thin. If Senica took too much of it, the ignition would fail. I eyed up what was still left in the air, determined that I could still make things work, and stretched myself to take in the ambient mana closest to Senica first. I needed it far more than she did, especially considering anything she took would just end up in a draw stone in a few hours.


    I kept pulling in more and more mana, adding it to the collection, keeping it from exploding outward through sheer force of will and the speed of the cycling drawing it tighter. It was like that ride that was popular at a mage carnival, where people would climb into a giant bowl and the operator would use his magic to make it spin so fast that they were pulled to the walls. But in my case, I was doing it with pure mana, and the more I layered in, the harder it was to keep it moving at speed.


    I added another core¡¯s worth on top of what was already there. That made for seven times as much as normal. One more should do it, but the ambient mana was thin now. Senica had stolen too much of my buffer, and now she was out of her chair and approaching me. ¡°Gravvy?¡± she said. ¡°Are you sleeping?¡±


    I didn¡¯t answer, both because I didn¡¯t want her hanging around me soaking up more of my mana and because I didn¡¯t have the spare mental capacity to hold a conversation while I spun around more than twice as much mana in my three-year-old core than the average full-grown adult could comfortably hold. Mana kept draining out of the air into Senica, despite my best efforts to snatch it back to myself.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Was there enough left now, or had my sister doomed me to another eight months of slowly building up the reserves in my storage crystal so I could try again? I honestly couldn¡¯t tell. An ignition wasn¡¯t an exact science, nor was it baking where I just followed a recipe with clearly labeled portions. The only thing I could do was keep drawing in as much of the remaining mana as I could.


    ¡°Gravin?¡± Senica said, climbing onto the pallet next to me. I felt her lean over me, but I kept my eyes squeezed shut and did my best to keep my breathing even. I was asleep, damn it, go away.


    ¡°Do you feel it?¡± she whispered. ¡°All the mana. You feel it too, right?¡±


    The last of the ambient mana disappeared, the lion¡¯s share going to me as I actively drew it in, but enough of it funneled into my sister¡¯s core through her mere presence and her instinctive desire to claim it that the outcome was far from certain.


    I spun my core as fast as I could, and held it for as long as possible. Still, no ignition. I could feel the mana start to escape back out now, too much for me to keep and not held long enough to catch a spark. I needed more, and the only source was Senica. I could take it from her. Right now, my core was so overflowing with mana that was about to go to waste, it would be a simple matter to cast a mana drain spell and take back what she¡¯d stolen. Her own core was full enough that it would still be a net gain.


    She¡¯d know, of course. Maybe she wouldn¡¯t understand exactly how it had happened, but she¡¯d know I¡¯d drained her mana. Everyone in the village was intimately familiar with the experience of having mana drained from them. There was no way she wouldn¡¯t recognize that I was doing it.


    Without that mana, I was going to fail. That was a simple fact, so there really wasn¡¯t a choice. I gathered up the tattered strands of mana that had fallen out of the spin before they could get away, wove them into the spell, then rolled over and grabbed Senica¡¯s hand.


    She jerked back, startled, but I didn¡¯t let go. My spell touched her core and, just like the draw stone she handled every day, began pulling it out. I took it, all of it, and added it to the maelstrom spinning in my core. And finally, finally, there was enough.


    My core shifted and the mana began to absorb into it. No longer did the core simply hold and contain the mana, now the mana flowed into the walls. Where before my core had been spongy and soft, an air bladder filled with the building blocks of magic, now it was a ceramic orb, hard and unyielding as mana infused it. The more the mana soaked in, the faster everything that was left spun.


    Senica cried out and pulled away from me, but I¡¯d gotten what I needed and I ignored her. The ignition was almost complete, but I could still botch it if I didn¡¯t keep the rest of the mana spinning until it was gone. It would only take a few more seconds, three¡­ Two¡­ One¡­


    I let out a groan and collapsed down onto the pallet. It was done. My core was empty, but I could already feel it generating new mana. It would most likely be completely full in the next eight hours instead of six days. Finally, I had the spare mana to use magic again. Everything was about to get easier.


    ¡°What did you do to me!¡± Senica screeched.


    Almost everything.


    There was no playing dumb here. She already knew. I sat up and looked her in the eyes, then said softly, ¡°I borrowed your mana.¡±


    ¡°Give it back!¡± she demanded instantly.


    That was it. There was no question as to why I¡¯d needed it or how I¡¯d taken it. She just knew that it was her mana and I¡¯d taken it without permission, like stealing one of her toys. Never mind the fact that at least half the mana I¡¯d taken from her had been mine to begin with.


    Little kids were simple that way. In a few hours, I¡¯d have more than enough mana to give back everything I¡¯d taken from her, but I didn¡¯t think Senica was going to be that patient. Besides, giving mana to someone else directly required some knowledge and skill from them. Sure, I could forcefully push mana into her core, but that could damage her, perhaps permanently.


    Then again, Senica had shown a surprising and annoying amount of talent at scooping up ambient mana. I could just expel some of mine into the air around her and let her absorb it into her core on her own. Whatever she managed to get would be what she got. It wasn¡¯t like she had any way to keep track.


    That did bring me back to the first problem though. I didn¡¯t have any mana left, and it would be an hour or two until I had enough. It was time to see how patient a little girl could be. ¡°I can¡¯t,¡± I told her. ¡°I used it.¡±


    ¡°You can¡¯t do that! You¡¯re supposed to save it for the tithe.¡±


    ¡°I know, but I didn¡¯t. It¡¯s gone.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m telling Mom,¡± she said.


    Little tattletale.


    ¡°I¡¯ll give you my mana once I make more, but I don¡¯t have any right now.¡±


    That seemed to appease her. She settled back onto the pallet and jabbed a finger at me. ¡°You¡¯d better. Don¡¯t forget.¡±


    ¡°I promise,¡± I said.


    I was a little bit surprised that she¡¯d accepted the whole mana drain so easily, with almost no questions about what had happened or why. I would have been way more suspicious when I was a kid, but I suppose I¡¯d had a different childhood than Senica did. It might have been nice to grow up as sheltered as she had.


    ¡°Did you feel the mana too?¡± she asked suddenly.


    ¡°No,¡± I lied. ¡°I was sleeping until you woke me up.¡±


    ¡°No you weren¡¯t. You had your eyes all scrunched up and you were groaning.¡±


    Was I? I hadn¡¯t realized.


    ¡°You did something with it,¡± Senica said. ¡°Tell me.¡±


    ¡°No I didn¡¯t,¡± I insisted.


    ¡°Tell me or I¡¯ll tell Mom and Dad you were doing something and that you took my mana without asking first.¡±


    Unbelievable. I was being blackmailed by my kid sister. I took back every single nice thought I¡¯d ever had about her.

 Books 1-3 Now Available on Amazon

    Hello!


    I hope you''ve enjoyed the sample of this story. If you''d like to keep reading it, you can find it on Kindle Unlimited and Audible at the following links.


    Book 1:


    Amazon: https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0CW9QLCCP</a>


    Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Faded-Land-Audiobook/B0CZ4XV97P</a>Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Book 2:


    Amazon: https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0CW1GL45H</a>


    Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Wolves-of-the-Wastes-Audiobook/B0D6NMXZDT</a>


    <table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 58.3266%" border="1">


    <tbody>


    <tr>


    <td style="width: 100%">Book 3 releases on September 25th. It is currently unavailable as it transitions between platforms.</td>


    </tr>


    </tbody>


    </table>


    Book 3 is available for pre-order. We do not have an expected release date for the audio yet as there were some delays in production. Our best guess is mid to late October.


    Amazon: https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0CW1JW41T</a>


    Audible:  TBD

 Book 4 Cover Art and Blurb

    The man who broke the world has risen back out of the pages of history, and Keiran is the only one who can stop him from making things even worse.


    Two years ago, in the process of determining exactly how to fix Manoch¡¯s world core and restore mana to the planet, Keiran accidentally awakened the lich lord, Ammun Nescect. Now his former apprentice, an archmage in his own right, stands between Keiran and his goals of tearing down the tower rooted in the world core itself, a goal that would result in the lich¡¯s utter annihilation.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Keiran has been preparing for that battle this entire time, thankfully absent Ammun¡¯s interference as the lich remains trapped in his demesne, unable to leave the world¡¯s one and only source of mana. Keiran isn¡¯t the only one who¡¯s been preparing, and if Ammun¡¯s machinations come to fruition, nowhere will be safe from the lich¡¯s reach.


    Still struggling to reach the heights of his lost power, Keiran knows that if Ammun manages to free himself from his prison, the outcome of their next meeting has inevitable, and fatal, implications for him.

 Book 4, Chapter 1

    For two years, I¡¯d devoted practically every waking moment to a singular goal. I¡¯d made compromises, I¡¯d sold my skills, and I¡¯d begged favors to keep the mana I needed coming in. I¡¯d sacrificed time with my family and secluded myself away to stay focused. And now, finally, I was ready to reap the rewards of that dedication.


    I stood in the middle of a forest, in a clearing that had been made when a local druid had decided to relocate his home, treehouse and supporting trees both, to escape the encroaching stone. Rather than plant new trees to replace the ones he¡¯d left with, I¡¯d decided to turn the site into the ritualistic center of my plan. I¡¯d used magic to smooth out the ground into flat, bare stone, and spent endless hours carving runes into it. Now I stood in the center of a circle of a million runes spread out fifty feet in every direction.


    Surrounding me were a hundred thousand trees, every single one of them petrified from their roots to their crowns. It was a forest of living stone, what would have been a natural wonder of the world if not for the fact that it was all artificial. I¡¯d made it, along with the help of that druid and his assistants.


    Mana hung thick in the air around me, probably the second densest place on the planet next to the demesne of my greatest enemy. That tower was sunk directly down to the world core, providing him with an unconquerable advantage when it came to sheer quantity of mana. It had also broken the rest of the world, leaving it with no mana at all.


    We¡¯d disagreed strongly on the best way to solve that the last time we¡¯d met.


    Despite promises to find me, and soon, I¡¯d managed to keep myself and my sanctuary hidden while I prepared for this ritual. And now, unless that evil old lich managed to interrupt things in the next half an hour or so, I was finally about to form my genius loci and advance my mana core to stage six.


    I put those thoughts out of my head to focus on the task at hand. Every single tree was producing mana, and I needed to tap into that. I stood in the center of my ritual circle and began pumping mana into it, runes lighting up in a rush around me, line after line until, finally, the whole thing was glowing.


    The ritual wasn¡¯t a long one. My mana reached out into the area around me and laced itself through the entire valley like a net. More and more strands wove themselves through, reaching for the far-off border of my domain and for my hidden underground labs underneath it. They stretched until they touched the line of ember blooms making up the east and west borders, all clippings from the original I¡¯d found years ago and had carefully cultivated over the last eighteen months.


    My awareness merged into the ritual magic. This was the most dangerous part, where the sudden influx of information threatened to overload my mind. If I failed to hold the ritual together, everything would fall apart and months of mana would be wasted.


    So of course that was when the ground started rumbling and plumes of dirt shot up into the air.


    Thanks in large part to my new awareness of the entire valley, I already knew what was happening. I¡¯d had a few problems with these creatures over the past year. They were some sort of enormous worm that ate rock, and they were extremely interested in the petrified forest I¡¯d created. More than once, I¡¯d had to exterminate a colony of the beasts.


    They generally stayed underground, but I¡¯d embedded explosive spells at a depth of about fifty feet all over the forest floor, just waiting for something to run into them. These ones came from about half a mile to the north, meaning the worms had come in from under the mountain and just reached the edge of the valley¡¯s floor. It wasn¡¯t particularly surprising. I¡¯d been dealing with them on a weekly basis for months once their colony had discovered the valley, but I¡¯d just killed the last group yesterday and I¡¯d been expecting a few more days of peace.


    Normally, I¡¯d use various divinations to get a visual on the intruders, then head over there directly and destroy them if my various automated defenses couldn¡¯t get the job done. Rock worms in particular were hardy enough that they tended to survive my countermeasures and aggressive enough that they didn¡¯t even consider retreating.


    Now that I¡¯d begun to establish my bond to the genius loci of the valley, I could dispense with the surveying and travel portions. Though the bond wasn¡¯t yet permanent, it was still a bridge between my mind and my home. An act of willpower was all it took to get a sense for what was happening at the northern edge, and another to form the spells from where I stood that sent pressurized jets of water to cut through dirt and stone.


    All six of the rock worms fell to pieces in a matter of moments, and I felt something akin to smugness come from the genius loci. It wasn¡¯t a sapient being, but it was¡­ aware, and it knew that I was its partner. We¡¯d protect each other for as long as the bond lasted. And that would be a very, very long time.Stolen novel; please report.


    The interruption dealt with, I returned my full attention to the in-progress ritual so that I could solidify the bond.


    * * *


    Ironically, one of the first things I did after bonding my genius loci and advancing to stage six was leave the valley. It wasn¡¯t happy about that, but no genius loci ever liked when its mage was absent. Unfortunately for it, I had places to be and things to do.


    That was why I¡¯d teleported to New Alkerist, the farming community my father had designed and built with my help. Over the last few years, I¡¯d rarely seen my family. This was in part because I was extremely busy and in part because I did not want an assassin tracing me to the village and killing people in a bid to get to me.


    Having the attention of a stage nine archmage¡ªwho also happened to be a lich¡ªfocused on me was not pleasant. I¡¯d expected him to make a serious effort to find me, but so far, I¡¯d only had to deal with his agents twice. Both times, I¡¯d intercepted them before they could cause damage and sent them on their way, their knowledge of the island altered to believe that what they sought was elsewhere.


    Twisting their minds left a foul taste in my mouth, but there wasn¡¯t a better alternative. Options were the privilege of the powerful, and I wasn¡¯t one of them, not yet. I absolutely could not afford to be found. In two years of pondering, I¡¯d determined that I was faced with an impossible situation. Prying a lich out of his demesne when it produced many, many times more mana than my own wasn¡¯t a possibility. The only option was to regain my former strength so that it became equally impossible for him to defeat me.


    I appeared inside my room in my family¡¯s home. I¡¯d built the house for them using stone shaping magic, and even though I had no plans to live there, both my parents had insisted I carve out space for myself. Two chairs and the scrying mirror I¡¯d gifted them years ago were the only ornamentation in my otherwise empty room.


    The mirror itself had a teleportation beacon woven into its enchantments, making it easier and cheaper for me to appear in front of it than anywhere else in town, and despite my newfound advancement to stage six, it was impossible to have too much mana in this desert of a world to be wasteful. I could walk the last twenty feet with no complaints.


    I exited my room into a hallway with four other doorways, those of my other family members and a bathing room. At the end of the hallway was a kitchen, currently empty, and beyond that a parlor where they were all gathered.


    Father sat in a chair at the far end of the parlor and studied a map of the village mounted on the wall. Senica had made it for him last year, and its magic allowed him to continually update it as he saw fit. He used it to keep track of crop rotations in the field, which seemed a waste to me, but everyone else was happy with it, so I kept my opinion to myself.


    My sister was at a desk, flipping through a book and jotting down notes of her own. Ever since she¡¯d managed to put together her mana lattice, she¡¯d been progressing by leaps and bounds. It was unfortunate that I wasn¡¯t able to spend more time with her, but we¡¯d spoken regularly over the last few years, so I wasn¡¯t completely out of the loop.


    It was Mother, holding my new baby brother on her lap, who noticed me first. ¡°Gravin!¡± she said in surprise. ¡°I swear, you need to announce your presence instead of just sneaking into the house.¡±


    At one and a half years old, Nailu was exhibiting none of the signs of being anything other than a normal, happy, healthy child. I¡¯d plied my mother with quite a few alchemical concoctions throughout the pregnancy to ensure that he had all the advantages I could grant him, which at this point weren¡¯t much. When he got a bit older, though, I had high hopes for his ability to control mana. If Senica was any indicator, we had the pedigree to be a powerful mage family.


    ¡°Hello,¡± I said, pausing to conjure a small illusion in front of Nailu. He giggled and swished his fingers through it, causing it to break into little streamers of light that spiraled out and vanished, only to reform a moment later. With that accomplished, I claimed an empty seat and relaxed into it.


    ¡°You¡¯re different,¡± Senica said.


    ¡°Stage six,¡± I told her. That was all the explanation she needed, having studied the topic of core advancement extensively. My parents, still sitting at stage one and showing no desire to go further, knew only the broad strokes.


    ¡°So the valley is all stone now?¡± Father asked.


    ¡°As of about a week ago, yes.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s too bad. It was beautiful the way it was,¡± Mother said. She touched Nailu¡¯s head and added, ¡°We had some good memories there.¡±


    ¡°Ewwwww,¡± Senica groaned. ¡°I don¡¯t want to think about that!¡±


    Our parents exchanged looks and simultaneously rolled their eyes while I laughed softly and Nailu let out a stream of incomprehensible babble. ¡°That¡¯s right, Nailu,¡± Mother said. ¡°Your big sis is just so dramatic.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t listen to them,¡± Senica pleaded with our baby brother.


    My laughter just got louder. Of all the things I¡¯d missed, these moments with my family were at the top of the list. Unfortunately, the mood wasn¡¯t meant to last.


    ¡°The traders came back this morning with news about a group of strangers in the towns up north,¡± Father said soberly. ¡°Three different places so far. They weren¡¯t being obvious about their intentions, but we don¡¯t get strangers often enough for it to be a coincidence.¡±


    ¡°Ammun¡¯s men,¡± I agreed. ¡°Were they pale skinned?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Very obviously foreign.¡±


    ¡°They have good timing, I suppose. I¡¯ll have to intercept them tomorrow and send them on their way.¡±


    Not for the first time, I wondered what life was like for the civilization that lived in Ammun¡¯s tower now that he¡¯d resumed power. Perhaps some of them had fled, but I doubted it. In life, he¡¯d been some sort of minor nobility, presumably schooled in the skill of ruling. Assuming those skills hadn¡¯t completely atrophied, I¡¯d expected him to smoothly step into the tower¡¯s ruling class and begin making whatever changes he desired.


    As I was making plans to track down Ammun¡¯s people, a rapid knock came from the front door. Without waiting for anyone to answer, one of the farmers burst in. ¡°Sellis,¡± he said, addressing my father with a shaky voice. ¡°Intruders on the platform, all armed.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 2

    In the worst-case scenario, Ammun¡¯s hunters finally caught up with me and came in numbers. Even if they were all stage fours, I still wasn¡¯t worried about them actually killing me, but the fact that they¡¯d found my family¡¯s home was a different matter.


    ¡°What are they doing?¡± Father asked, rising to his feet and crossing the room to reach the farmer.


    ¡°They haven¡¯t attacked yet. I saw them teleport in and ran to tell you right away.¡±


    ¡°So they¡¯re still in the market square?¡± Father asked.


    I tuned out the conversation and sent a scrying spell over to see for myself. There were nine of them loitering near the teleportation platform, mostly just looking around and muttering to each other in low voices. No one had confronted them, but the locals were giving them curious or frightened looks, sometimes both.


    All of them wore metal armor and wielded spears or axes, but none of them were threatening anyone quite yet. None of them were mages, at least. I judged them to be dangerous to a random person, but not an issue for me to deal with. The real problem was that if they were hunters looking for me, them not reporting back would draw attention to the area and lead to even more people coming here.


    ¡°Let¡¯s go see what they want,¡± I suggested.


    ¡°What if they¡¯re here looking for you?¡± Father asked.


    ¡°They won¡¯t find me.¡±


    Senica and I both stood up. She snatched up her wand from her desk and gave me a nod, then we all filed out into the street. As we walked, I cast an enchantment on myself that would make it hard for people to focus on me. As soon as that was in place, I followed it with an invisibility spell, which was probably overkill, but it cost practically nothing at this point.


    ¡°I wish I could do that,¡± Senica said wistfully as I faded away.


    ¡°Huh?¡± Father asked.


    One of the drawbacks of the enchantment was that it worked on my family as well. Father had already forgotten that I was walking next to him, and Senica wouldn¡¯t resist much longer. She frowned at the empty air and shook her head. ¡°It¡¯s nothing,¡± she said, struggling to remember what she¡¯d been thinking about.


    Father approached the market square with Senica and the farmer who¡¯d rushed to let us know about the strangers flanking him on either side. New Alkerist was a far cry from the dirt road and mud-brick huts I¡¯d known when I¡¯d been born, and the center of the town reflected that. The streets were paved in stone, and the buildings were one or sometimes two stories tall. They were also shaped from stone, with glass windows and sturdy wooden doors. I¡¯d made the initial handles and latches with magic, but at some point, they¡¯d acquired a blacksmith who knew more than just repairing farm tools.


    The traders used the platform network I¡¯d created to get around and they¡¯d come back with plenty of metal, among other things. The town had grown so prosperous, in fact, that they¡¯d switched off the bartering system and were now using the same currency the neighboring kingdom had pioneered, a type of cloth-based paper they called velci that was quite difficult to replicate with transmutation magic.


    The square hadn¡¯t been crowded to begin with, and, other than the tavern serving meals to farmers coming in late from the fields, everything was closed for the night. A group of strangers appearing on the platform was reason enough for everybody else to clear out.


    ¡°Why did I think it was a good idea to let you come?¡± Father muttered to Senica after the crowd of strangers came into view.


    ¡°Because I¡¯m the strongest mage available,¡± she told him.


    ¡°There are nine of them!¡±


    ¡°It¡¯ll be fine.¡±


    It would be, but I suspected if it came down to a fight, Senica wouldn¡¯t win it by herself. She was doing well, but she¡¯d almost certainly run out of mana before she could put them all down. Practicing magic was an expensive process, and her mana crystal was less than a quarter full. I¡¯d have to step in to help if things weren¡¯t resolved peacefully.


    ¡°I¡¯m here,¡± I said softly from behind them, making all three of them jump.


    ¡°Oh, right,¡± Father said. He¡¯d forget again soon enough, but the reminder gave him the confidence to approach the group without worrying about Senica¡¯s safety.


    ¡°Hello,¡± one of the strangers said as we walked up. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered with a shaved head and piercing eyes. ¡°Is this the village called New Alkerist?¡±


    ¡°It is,¡± Father said. ¡°What can I help you with?¡±If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    ¡°We were told that this village produces a surplus of food that they use for trading. We would like to purchase some.¡±


    That was true. I¡¯d spent some time creating a few custom transmutation spells to turn the ground here from a dead, sun-baked wasteland to something arable. We¡¯d also diverted a river to help with irrigation, and with so many of the farmers having ignited cores and some education in casting invocations, they easily outworked the other villages. Admittedly, we¡¯d made no effort to keep that knowledge concealed and it was slowly spreading to those communities, so it was a temporary advantage.


    I had no problem with people being given the tools they needed to improve their lives, though in this case it was creating a bit of a trail leading back to me. We¡¯d started the process years before Ammun had woken back up, however, meaning it was far too late to do anything about it now.


    ¡°That¡­ could probably be arranged. We¡¯re primarily operating on a velci currency here, but if you don¡¯t have any, we could do some bartering. Before we get into that, though, how much food are you talking about and how are you planning to transport it?¡± Father asked.


    ¡°As much as you can possibly spare,¡± the bald man said. ¡°We have an entire town of refugees to feed and not enough food to last us a week.¡±


    Father was taken aback at that. ¡°Refugees? From what?¡±


    ¡°You see our skin, hear our accents? We flee a war from far, far away. Our home was a coastal town, so when the soldiers came to demand we submit in the name of their empire, we fled in our boats. We ended up on this island, on a spit of land to the west of the mountains. Most of our people are still there, but some of us continued on to find food and supplies. We landed at a place you call the Outlander¡¯s Gateway and heard about this town there.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t even know there was any land west of the mountains,¡± Father said. ¡°Why choose to settle there?¡±


    ¡°We are fisher folk. We wanted a town with access to the ocean. Also it is good land, much better than what I¡¯ve seen of the interior so far. The majority of this island seems to be desert or scrubland, excepting your town, of course. I am confident that in a few months, we¡¯ll be completely self-sufficient, assuming we can last that long.¡±


    Father nodded along. ¡°Which brings you back to buying food to fill the gap in your supplies. I think we can be of some help, but it¡¯d be best if you talk to our traders. I run the farms themselves, but I don¡¯t negotiate on behalf of the town.¡±


    ¡°I see. Very sensible of you to direct us to whoever it is we need to talk to,¡± the man said. ¡°Would it be possible for my men to rest in that tavern I see over there?¡±


    ¡°As long as they can behave and keep those weapons sheathed, I don¡¯t see why not,¡± Father said. He turned to the farmer accompanying him and said, ¡°Would you go in with them and make sure nobody does anything foolish?¡±


    ¡°Of course,¡± the farmer said. ¡°Happy to.¡±


    He didn¡¯t look at all happy about it to me, but my father had grown to be quite respected these days. Unlike his time living as the town pariah in Old Alkerist, here he was judged on his actions today, not on a mistake he¡¯d made as a child. Whatever this particular farmer¡¯s personal thoughts on the request, he was going to do it just because it was my father who¡¯d asked.


    I¡¯d keep an eye on this situation, but from all appearances, this group wasn¡¯t a threat. I hadn¡¯t been able to scry the Sanctum of Light properly since Ammun had taken control of it. His claim on its genius loci made it impossible to penetrate its defenses, and I¡¯d been more focused on improving my own position regardless, but perhaps I should have spent more time observing the land around the tower. Unfortunately, the land around the Sanctum was too far away to scry without some sort of beacon, and the ones I¡¯d left during my journey there had long since been starved of mana and collapsed.


    That did not mean I was completely out of options, just that my efforts to obtain information would be both expensive and limited. I would start with something a bit closer to home, however. If these strangers were being honest, it would be simple enough to find their new settlement and confirm their story. And if they were lying, well, it would be equally simple to find out why they were really here.


    The square emptied out quickly enough and I made my way back to my family¡¯s home to let Mother know what had happened. There was no sense in leaving her to worry, and I left scrying spells both at the tavern and following Father to ensure our uninvited guests remained on their best behavior.


    While I walked, I considered my own next step. I¡¯d spent years preparing to bond a genius loci and claim my demesne, but now that I¡¯d done that, I needed to start preparing to reach stage seven. Things got complicated there since it involved opening a portal to the Astral Realm, which was going to be particularly challenging since I doubted there was a single point of mana resonance left on the planet. I¡¯d have to manufacture my own, something I wasn¡¯t entirely sure could even be done.


    It had been so much easier in my old life. Mana resonance points were well-known, at least in my circles. They might be difficult to reach, but the whole thing was a straightforward process. If the world hadn¡¯t been broken a few thousand years back, I¡¯d already be on my way to the nearest resonance point to bring my core in line with the Astral Realm so I could advance to stage seven.


    Now¡­ I shook my head and sighed, causing a merchant walking past me to peer in my direction for a moment. Then my attention redirection enchantment washed over him and the man promptly dismissed the sound. Truthfully, it wasn¡¯t doing me much good to keep the enchantment running anymore; I already had eyes on all the strangers and none were near me. But it was good practice in my never-ending quest to perfect my magic.


    Enchantments, inscriptions, and alchemy were the worst offending disciplines for my technique of casting spells without wasting mana, but I was slowly making progress in figuring out the trick to things. It would just take time and patience.


    I dropped both spells as soon as I got home and found Mother still sitting on the couch. Nailu was fast asleep laying on her while she absently stroked his hair. ¡°Welcome home,¡± she said, looking up at me as I entered the room. ¡°You don¡¯t seem upset, so I¡¯m guessing things went okay.¡±


    ¡°Okay enough,¡± I said. ¡°But I¡¯ve got to do some work to get caught up on current events on foreign shores. Apparently, we have refugees fleeing a war and washing up here.¡±


    With that, I pulled my scrying mirror out of my phantom space and started casting spells through it. When Father and Senica came home an hour later, I¡¯d barely moved an inch. I glanced over to meet his eyes and shook my head. ¡°It¡¯s not good,¡± I told him.

 Book 4, Chapter 3

    If anything, the refugees were understating the precariousness of their position. It had taken me a few hours to look everything over, but by my rough count, they had close to five hundred people with them. That number included a hundred or so children who would not be able to contribute meaningfully to the construction of their new home.


    Even with the best help magic could offer, they¡¯d need a few months before their first harvest. In the meantime, they were living off what little stores they had left after their months long journey and trying to supplement that with a great deal of fishing using a very small number of boats that I personally would not have trusted out on the open ocean.


    That was supplemented by two full ships anchored off the coast and manned day and night, but it was a losing proposition. Of course, they knew that already. That was why they¡¯d sent a single ship up the channel to look for civilization. They¡¯d eventually reached Outlander¡¯s Gateway, where even now that ship was moored. I was only speculating, but I suspected they¡¯d had no less than five or six groups going in different directions on the hunt for food and probably some other resources.


    Shelter was another concern for their new village, based on what I¡¯d seen. If I had to guess, I suspected they came from somewhere with plentiful timber. Their new home did not have that natural resource, and as a result, they were struggling to find new ways to build their homes. Since most of them weren¡¯t mages themselves, not even ignited, from what I could tell, they were suffering under the cooler coastal weather.


    That certainly explained the refugees¡¯ interest in the town¡¯s buildings. New Alkerist was unique in that everything but the doors had been built with transmutation spells, mostly stone shape and sand to glass. Stone doors had proven too heavy to be popular, especially after the original population of Sanctuary had realized they had a readily available source of wood in the valley. Though their original homes had been abandoned, they¡¯d taken the doors and furnishings with them when they left.


    I finished explaining what I¡¯d learned to my family and held back a grimace at the expressions on their faces. Sentimental as they all were, it was no surprise that they¡¯d want to help. I fully expected I¡¯d be out there putting down a teleportation platform to send workers and relief supplies over to this new town tomorrow at minimum.


    ¡°What can we do to help?¡± Mother asked.


    ¡°Their first priority is food,¡± Father said, a frown on his face. ¡°But¡­ five hundred people. That¡¯s a lot. Even if it¡¯s only for a few months, we don¡¯t have that much to spare.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re not the only place they¡¯re looking for help from,¡± I pointed out. ¡°We don¡¯t need to supply their entire village with food.¡±


    ¡°Our mana reserves should be more than sufficient to put a few communal houses up for them,¡± Senica said. ¡°Even at Tetrin¡¯s outrageous pricing markups. That¡¯s something, at least. Maybe if we made some more boats, they could get more fish?¡±


    I held back a laugh at that idea. Nobody in this village knew anything about fishing, least of all how to make boats. Most of them hadn¡¯t even seen a fish. Aquatic monsters were a rarity, but since it was equally rare for a random farmer to be willing to tangle with one, people tended to stay away from streams and rivers. The ocean was on a whole different level, of course.


    I suspected it was probably far safer now than it had been in the past, the worst of the sea monsters having starved and died off thousands of years ago, but safer wasn¡¯t the same thing as safe. There was a reason the few ships they had stayed in the shallow waters near the coast, and while more fishing boats probably would help somewhat, I doubted it was the solution they needed here.


    ¡°A bigger concern for me is sustainability,¡± I said after a few more minutes of debate. ¡°These people, their culture, they worship mages who pretended to be divine messengers. The ones I met didn¡¯t believe it was possible to even learn magic. I don¡¯t know how far away from the Sanctum of Light this particular town was, but I haven¡¯t seen anything to make me believe their beliefs differ in any substantial manner. Will they ignite their cores? Will they learn to use their mana? Or will they struggle and rely on others to save them from every single disaster that comes their way?¡±


    ¡°We all survived for centuries with dormant cores,¡± Father pointed out.


    ¡°Alkerist was one bad harvest away from starving,¡± I said. ¡°All the villages were. You weren¡¯t connected to anything else and had no reserves. It was all you could do just to survive. It wasn¡¯t that many years ago you were spending half your life working the fields and coming home exhausted every night. How many villages do you think ceased to exist when the wrong monster found them or the crops got ruined a single time?¡±


    ¡°They managed to survive an attack from an enemy and flee thousands of miles across the sea,¡± Mother said. ¡°They must have been prospering before coming here. Who¡¯s to say they can¡¯t do it again?¡±This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I shook my head. ¡°The lands around the Sanctum are different. However faint it might be, there¡¯s still mana in the air. The soil is better. The plants grow healthier. Game animals live in their forests. Yes, they¡¯re all capable warriors who can defeat a monster with coordination and a lot of swords and spears, but they¡¯re not going to have access to the natural resources they¡¯re used to here.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s some truth to that,¡± Father ruminated. ¡°Everything grows so much better here after all the work we did to the soil, and we still put loads of mana into the crops. Even just having ignited cores is a huge boost, but a few dozen mages would make it so much easier for them to prosper.¡±


    ¡°You should feel out how open they are to becoming mages,¡± I said. ¡°Given that an army attacked their home and forced their entire population to cram themselves into a handful of boats to flee, they might be amenable to abandoning some of their old traditions, especially if it means the difference between their families surviving or starving to death.¡±


    The conversation lapsed into silence after that, all of us lost in our own thoughts. I wasn¡¯t personally all that interested in helping the refugees, but I knew my family saw it differently. I¡¯d long ago learned that it simply wasn¡¯t possible to still have my own life if I accepted responsibility for every problem that was within my power to change. Today it was this group of people. Tomorrow it would be something else. And the day after, a new problem would pop up.


    In my previous life, I¡¯d tried to strike a balance by only helping in situations that were right in front of me. I¡¯d assumed that as long as I didn¡¯t go looking for problems, it wouldn¡¯t overwhelm all my time. That hadn¡¯t worked out. Instead, word started getting out and before I knew it, I had people hunting me down to beg for help. All a sudden, my reputation was bringing me a flood of petitioners and, as much as I¡¯d determined I would atone for past misdeeds, it became too much.


    That was a large part of the reason I¡¯d become so reclusive for the second half of my life. A century of being a bleeding heart for every lost cause that sought me out had left me bitter toward mankind and their petty problems. It was a lesson well learned, and not one I was eager to repeat this time around.


    Yes, I could go out there and spend a day or two building them an entire town made of magic-shaped stone. Yes, I could descend into the sea and harvest enough food to see them through the coming weeks. Yes, I could establish schools to train their people in mana control and provide the necessary mana needed to ignite cores. I had in fact done much of that in limited forms for other villages on the island.


    But one of the reasons I¡¯d done that was so that I wouldn¡¯t personally have to address problems like this in the future. This was something that was within my father¡¯s power to handle, though I could tell he didn¡¯t think he was up to the task. All he was seeing was the overwhelming immediate need, which he knew couldn¡¯t be answered by New Alkerist alone.


    ¡°I should go,¡± I said abruptly.


    ¡°So soon?¡± Mother asked.


    ¡°I¡¯ve been here for hours,¡± I reminded her.


    ¡°It¡¯s alright, I understand.¡± Father rose with me and clapped a hand on his shoulder. ¡°This isn¡¯t your responsibility. We¡¯ll manage just fine.¡±


    ¡°Thank you,¡± I said. It was nice to not have to justify my cold-heartedness to my family. They did understand, too. It wasn¡¯t just something Father was saying to make me feel better. More than anybody else, my family knew exactly how strong my magic was, that I could literally make almost anyone¡¯s problems disappear with a wave of my hand, and that nobody had the right to demand that from me.


    ¡°Wait!¡± Senica said. She scrambled to her feet and rushed over to me. ¡°I need some help with an alchemy thing."


    Well, almost nobody had a right to make demands. Senica seemed to consider herself immune to that restriction. To be fair, she was my sister.


    ¡°You¡¯re supposed to be working on divinations,¡± I said.


    ¡°I can do more than one thing at once! I was going to ask you earlier, but then things started happening and¡­¡± she trailed off with a shrug.


    ¡°Fine, fine. What is it you¡¯re working on?¡±


    ¡°Here, let me show you,¡± she said, grabbing my hand and dragging me toward her workshop. We¡¯d modeled it after mine when we¡¯d been building the house, though only in shape. The contents diverged wildly since she was still a beginner in the discipline, and not one given to the amount of patience required to truly excel in it.


    ¡°So I¡¯ve been trying to make an elixir of heat resistance,¡± she started to explain, though I¡¯d already deduced that from the herb drying rack and the ingredients she¡¯d processed and stored. ¡°I thought they might go over well as a trade good for farmers in other towns who haven¡¯t got the time or skill to master the invocation.¡±


    I nodded. That wasn¡¯t a terrible idea. Nobody liked toiling under the hot sun all day, especially when it was at its peak. ¡°But the blue leaf keeps settling out of the mix instead of properly bonding when you add the catalyst,¡± I finished for her as I eyed up the equipment.


    ¡°Exactly! I can¡¯t figure out why. I know I¡¯m following all the steps. I haven¡¯t skipped any. The ingredients are properly prepared. What am I doing wrong here?¡±


    I pointed to a delicate, spiraling piece of glassware, but said nothing. Senica followed my finger with a confused frown, then looked back at me. ¡°What¡¯s wrong with it?¡±


    ¡°You used river water to clean it instead of distilled water.¡±


    Senica¡¯s jaw dropped for a moment before she schooled her expression. ¡°No I didn¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°Yes, you did. What have I told you about lying to me?¡±


    ¡°Fine. Yes, once. I was out of distilled and didn¡¯t realize it. I didn¡¯t want the syrup from the extract drying in there, so I had to use what was available. But I recleaned it with distilled water as soon as I had some more!¡±


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter,¡± I said. ¡°There are contaminants in the coil now. You¡¯ll need to flush the whole thing with a mild acidic solution, then reclean it again with distilled water.¡±


    ¡°Noooo. There has to be another way. Can¡¯t you just make me a new one?¡±


    I chuckled. That coil was a huge pain to clean, and I¡¯d been guilty of throwing them out and making new ones myself more than once. Senica, lacking my transmutation skills, didn¡¯t have that option. ¡°I¡¯m afraid not,¡± I told her mercilessly.

 Book 4, Chapter 4

    Curious apprentices had asked me many, many times over the years what it felt like to be bonded to a genius loci. Place spirits, as they were sometimes called, encompassed so much more than the human range of senses, and connecting to one on a profound level had a tendency to fundamentally alter how we viewed the world.


    I¡¯d never come up with a satisfactory answer. I could talk about the expanded sensory information, how it dwarfed even master-tier divinations in terms of processing it. That was true. I could talk about how it made me feel like a giant with thousands of ants crawling across my body, each one some individual animal or monster inside my demesne. And that was true, too.


    But mostly, it was ineffable. I imagined a god, if there truly existed such a thing, probably felt much the same, though on a far grander scale. There was a sense that I ruled the bounds of my demesne with absolute authority, though many a mage had found out in a spectacularly painful manner that that wasn¡¯t true. There were limits to that expanded power, but the jump to stage six was a far greater advance than anything that came before it.


    Returning home was like stepping into a warm, secure shroud of authority. It was comforting in many ways. Not coincidentally, more than a few mages had reached stage six and simply never set foot outside their demesne again, unwilling to be parted from their seat of power even temporarily. I¡¯d gone several decades inside the Night Vale after I¡¯d achieved stage six, working both to improve the land I¡¯d claimed and to take advantage of the unrivaled mana control having a demesne offered me.


    The petrified valley was no Night Vale. Despite my best attempts, it remained a mediocre stretch of land by my standards. It amplified my mana generation a thousand times over, probably more, but I still felt a sharp pang of loss for my former home as I settled back into my workshop. For my current purposes, this genius loci would suffice, but I was not done working on it, not by a long shot.


    For all its faults, one of the best things about the valley was that I could draw literally every last drop of mana out of it without having to worry about damaging anything. The trees were already stone, but because they were living stone, they¡¯d just keep right on producing new mana and filling the whole valley back up again.


    I wasn¡¯t going to do that, but if I needed to, I could. Before I did anything else, I had a great deal of mana debt to repay to my associates in our island¡¯s only city, the former capital before the world had been broken, Derro. The Hierophant was still running the place, and he¡¯d loaned me a huge portion of the mana the city had harvested over the last few years. It was time to start returning that.


    Now that the ritual was complete and the valley¡¯s mana levels were beginning to rise, I filled several huge storage crystals and set them aside. One would go to my family, my contribution to their refugee crisis. The other four were destined for Derro, but it would be a few more weeks before I had enough to clear what I owed, and I wanted to take care of it all in one trip. In the meantime, I would limit my activities significantly.


    I spent the rest of my evening walking the length of my demesne, not that I needed to. It was beautiful in its own way, but it was also a stark reminder of the loss of the Night Vale. Ammun had destroyed my former home when he¡¯d built his tower there, his lust for power overriding any respect he¡¯d once had for the place.


    The walk wasn¡¯t just to reminisce. It was to see with my own eyes what I¡¯d accomplished, and to solidify my plans for what would come next. I was not content to have a demesne that was nothing but a mile or two of dead, petrified trees. It wouldn¡¯t happen soon, but someday, I¡¯d fill this entire valley with a hundred feet of good soil and grow a new forest right over top of this one, one that was supported by the mana-radiating stone trees that served as their foundation.


    That might someday rival the Night Vale in beauty, if I did it right. I smiled a little at that thought.


    Someday.


    * * *


    The refugees called their new village Beacon of Hope, or just Beacon for convenience¡¯s sake. It took two days of haggling and arrangements, the end result of which I never fully discovered, but which necessitated a flight across the island and over the mountains to find the fifty-mile-long peninsula jutting out of the southwest corner of the island.


    I landed on the path they¡¯d worn from their collection of wood-framed animal skin tents to the beach they¡¯d taken to launching their fishing fleet from, sending more than one refugee scurrying away in fear and causing a half dozen more to converge on me, spears poised to skewer me where I stood.


    It was only my darker skin tone and foreign attire that stopped them from attacking immediately. Given their previous experience with a group of mages demanding fealty from them and driving them from their home, I found the suspicion to be understandable. That did not stop me from reading the minds of everyone around me to ensure there were no surprises.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    ¡°Hello,¡± I said, hands held up disarmingly, even though the gesture did nothing to diminish my magic. ¡°I represent a town some of your people have traveled to in search of aid. I am here to deliver the agreed upon assistance. Is there someone in charge I can speak with about the particulars?¡±


    Three different warriors thought the name Baviru along with a mental picture of a middle-aged man with crow¡¯s feet at the corners of his eyes and an infectious smile upon his face. The leader himself was already hustling down the path, having heard the commotion and dutifully come running to investigate.


    ¡°You¡¯ll forgive these men, I hope,¡± Baviru said, making no move to shove past them and talk to me face to face. I could respect the desire for caution, and fought to keep an amused smirk off my face. Just standing behind a few men with spears and chain shirts was not going to save him.


    ¡°I understand,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve been given to understand that your home was¡­ occupied by a squadron of mages. The suspicion is natural, but trust me when I say I have nothing to do with that.¡±


    Technically, that was a lie. If I hadn¡¯t discovered Ammun¡¯s crypt and led the leader of a terrorist faction of mages inside the tower right to the door, he wouldn¡¯t have woken up and in all likelihood, there would be no conflict in the old empire of Ralvost.


    ¡°No, I don¡¯t suppose you did,¡± Baviru said. ¡°Pardon my confusion, but I thought I overheard you say you¡¯re delivering supplies to us. You seem to be traveling somewhat light.¡±


    I pulled a thick leather sack out of my phantom space, causing everyone to jump at its sudden appearance, and offered it to the nearest of Baviru¡¯s warriors to investigate. Cautiously, he snatched it out of my hand and pulled it open. ¡°Food!¡± he said.


    It was just beans, but I was well aware that when a person got hungry enough, anything could taste like a king¡¯s feast. No doubt, these people had been strictly rationing their food for months. ¡°I¡¯ve got nine more bags of those for you,¡± I said. ¡°I also need you to direct me to a spot where you¡¯d like your teleportation platform installed.¡±


    ¡°Teleportation¡­ platform?¡± Baviru asked. He tilted his head curiously and traded looks with the warriors, who all seemed just as confused as he did.


    ¡°To connect you to the rest of the island,¡± I explained. ¡°You¡¯re going to have a bit of a hard time getting trade goods and supplies here with the mountains in the way.¡±


    ¡°I am only vaguely familiar with such magic. That is how the divine emissaries travel from their holy land to the villages, yes?¡± Baviru spat out the title like a curse, leaving no doubt how he felt about the mages from the Sanctum of Light and their treatment of those they disparagingly referred to as ¡®dirt people.¡¯ By that, they meant anyone with a dormant core who didn¡¯t live in their tower.


    ¡°Correct, although this platform won¡¯t connect to anything from your homeland. We have a network of them throughout the island linking various villages together for easier trading and travel.¡±


    Baviru thought about that for a few moments while I waited, then shook his head. ¡°Forgive me, I do not mean to be rude, but we do not want such a thing here. We deliberately chose this place for its isolation to give us time to rebuild. We are not ready to integrate with the rest of the world just yet.¡±


    ¡°I see. Well, that is unfortunate since the warriors you sent out to look for food and supplies already bargained for this platform and the workers are waiting for it to be dropped so they can come through to help you build proper shelter.¡±


    The warriors all perked up at that news. It was easy to see why, too. There was a cool sea breeze blowing my hair around, far colder than I was used to anymore. It was pleasant for now, but I suspected I¡¯d soon grow tired of it. I definitely wouldn¡¯t want to try sleeping in it without magic to keep me warm. Based on the ruddy complexions of the refugees surrounding me, I suspected they were sick of it, too.


    ¡°What¡­ What have we paid for such assistance?¡± Baviru asked.


    That was smart of him to ask. It showed he was wise to the ways of the world not to expect something for nothing. In this case, though, the price was one I suspected they wouldn¡¯t mind paying. It was one I¡¯d requested for my services, and I¡¯d be doing the bulk of the work.


    ¡°I wasn¡¯t part of the negotiations. I only know my own price, which is information about what¡¯s going on back in your homeland. I have quite a few questions to ask, but those can come later after we get your people settled. Now, come, let¡¯s stake out a good spot and we can discuss your village¡¯s housing needs. I¡¯m guessing you¡¯ll need probably a hundred or so homes? Maybe less if your warriors sleep in a barracks? You¡¯d probably like some proper docks as well? Maybe a well-paved network of streets to keep you from walking around getting mud on your boots?¡±


    ¡°I¡­ er¡­ Yes, I suppose that¡­¡± Baviru trailed off.


    ¡°Not much for city planning, huh?¡± I asked him. That was fair enough. His hometown had probably been built generations before he¡¯d even been born. It had never been a particular interest of mine, but I¡¯d learned enough just in this life from setting up two different villages for my family.


    I made my way through the warriors, who parted to let me through, and dragged Baviru along as we headed back to camp. He followed in a daze, half-heartedly mumbling confused answers as I bombarded him with questions about the logistics of his fledgling town. It was clear he was a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing, but I managed to get the salient decisions out of him. By the time I¡¯d pulled a teleportation platform out of my phantom space and filled it with mana, I already had a rough mental map of how their new village would be laid out.


    ¡°By the way,¡± I said. ¡°I understand that your people are primarily fisherfolk. But how do you feel about farming? The land here is surprisingly good for it.¡±


    ¡°Farming?¡± Baviru repeated, his eyes glazed over. ¡°I¡­ Yes, I suppose we could.¡±


    ¡°Perfect,¡± I said, keeping up the friendly fa?ade. This wasn¡¯t the first time I¡¯d had to help someone almost against their will, and I knew how to overwhelm them into accepting what was offered without giving them time to think about it. ¡°How about we rope off some plots over there for fields?¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 5

    Baviru sat in one of the dozen stone petitioner¡¯s chairs I¡¯d shaped for the meeting hall I¡¯d built in their administration building while I leaned against the table where the town¡¯s leadership would be seated.


    ¡°Alright,¡± I said. ¡°I want you to walk me through everything that happened. Just start at the beginning.¡±


    ¡°The beginning,¡± Baviru muttered, more to himself than me. He heaved a sigh and said, ¡°I suppose the beginning was when a Lightbearer showed up out of nowhere one day. We¡¯d just had the procession come through three months earlier, and they¡¯ve never come unannounced before. But this one came alone.¡±


    ¡°What did they look like?¡± I asked, not because I wanted a description, but because I was skimming Baviru¡¯s thoughts and I wanted the mental image.


    ¡°Tall. Slim. I remember he had dark hair that was too long to be practical. Soft hands, too. Not a callus to be found. Clearly, he wasn¡¯t someone accustomed to doing any sort of labor. That was before I knew he was from the Sanctum of Light, of course. It all made sense once he started displaying miracles to prove his identity.¡±


    People in general were bad at remembering specifics. They thought they could see things clearly in their minds, but those images rarely matched reality. Mages generally did better since their work so often relied on them recalling precise instructions and paying attention to details, but we weren¡¯t infallible either.


    So I got a picture of what this man looked like from Baviru¡¯s mind, and while the mage wasn¡¯t one I recognized, that didn¡¯t necessarily mean the memory was accurate. I hadn¡¯t met most of the higher ups in Ammun¡¯s loyalist organization, so it was entirely possible that Baviru¡¯s recollection was perfect. Either way, I filed the image away as one to investigate later.


    ¡°And what did he want?¡± I asked.


    ¡°To demand more food from us,¡± Baviru said. ¡°I tried to tell him we¡¯d just given the emissaries all of our extra a few months back and needed more time, but he wouldn¡¯t hear of it. Nothing I said or did could convince him that we simply didn¡¯t have more to give. He said we had two months to come up with something and he¡¯d be back to collect. No explanations. No negotiations. Just the demands. And then he left.¡±


    That was what I¡¯d expected to hear. Ammun was raising an army, and armies needed food ¨C the one thing magic couldn¡¯t provide for them. I wondered what it was he was planning on conquering.


    ¡°What happened after that?¡± I prompted Baviru when he fell silent again.


    ¡°There was nothing we could do. Our fleet was already working at maximum capacity. It wasn¡¯t like we could build new boats in such a short amount of time. Our hunters supplemented our food supplies, but not enough to make up for the outrageous demands the Lightbearer had dropped on our head. So we got organized, delayed as long as we could to build up our supplies, and we left.¡±


    I saw mental images of ships lined up in their docks, far more than they had with them now. Barrels filled the holds ¨C food and fresh water. People took what small valuables they could as they abandoned their homes and crammed themselves into the ships.


    ¡°We should have left sooner,¡± Baviru said. ¡°We were set to flee a week before the due date, thought it would give us plenty of time to put some distance between ourselves and the Lightbearer. He knew, somehow. Maybe it wouldn¡¯t have mattered. Maybe they were always watching us.


    ¡°Six of them showed up as we were loading everyone up. They didn¡¯t ask any questions. They just started killing people.¡±


    I didn¡¯t have to ask for a description this time. Baviru¡¯s mind showed me a scene of half a dozen Breaker mages standing on a dock, bodies scattered around them. Some were floating in the water; others were slumped over on the streets behind them. Baviru saw the whole thing from the rail of a departing ship, only a few hundred feet out to sea. A dozen other ships just like his were fleeing alongside him.


    One of the mages raised a hand and unleashed a familiar white-hot beam of fire that struck a nearby ship. He raked the beam across the deck, killing sailors and setting the ship on fire. Another mage started hauling the ship back in with some powerful form of water manipulation after the sails were shredded and burnt.


    Working in concert, the mages destroyed ship after ship, killing the people on them and looting the supplies before letting the burnt husks sink into the ocean. Only four of the ships got away, and even then, only because the mages let them. If I had to guess, I¡¯d say it wasn¡¯t for any altruistic reasons. They¡¯d probably just run out of mana.


    Baviru didn¡¯t describe the carnage to me. He just sat silently, lost in his thoughts, for a few moments, then shook his head softly. ¡°Most of us didn¡¯t make it out,¡± he said after a while. ¡°Of those that did, well¡­ we did our best to supplement our rations with fishing and foraging once we¡¯d been sailing for a week or so to put some distance between us and the Lightbearers. We¡¯ve lost more than a few good people on the journey here.¡±This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Considering Baviru¡¯s memories and my own headcount, I guessed that roughly a fifth of their population had survived. Most had been killed in the attack on the ships, and the rest had suffered a variety of poor ends on the journey. That was a lot of broken families.


    ¡°How long were you on the ships?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Six months, I think. Why does it matter?¡±


    ¡°I know a few people who¡¯d be interested in learning that an army is being raised and might be planning on expanding outwards,¡± I said.


    ¡°An army?¡± Baviru jerked upright. ¡°What army?¡±


    ¡°Why do you think they needed all the extra food all of a sudden? My understanding is that the Sanctum¡¯s been doing these pilgrimages on a regular basis for decades, maybe even centuries. Now they¡¯ve cut off all future resources they could get from your town. Forever. And if they did it to you, they¡¯re probably doing it to plenty of other places.¡±


    Baviru considered my words and nodded in agreement. ¡°I hadn¡¯t considered that the Lightbearers would be building an army. There doesn¡¯t seem to be any need for one. We¡¯ve lived peacefully for generations. But I suppose it does make sense.¡±


    I didn¡¯t mention the second half of my suspicion, that Ammun was probably planning on kicking out a few hundred thousand of the lower-class citizens living in his tower and forcing them to take over those farming, fishing, and hunting jobs. As it was, those people were an enormous drain on the tower¡¯s resources, specifically on the amount of mana it produced.


    As a mana-hungry lich and a mana-hungry archmage, Ammun probably felt he had better uses for that most precious of resources than to let a bunch of useless freeloaders feed off it. I could see that line of reasoning working for him. If they were worthless where they were or, worse, an active detriment, then the thing to do was put them somewhere else where they could contribute. A farming village worked by mages, even poor-quality ones like the dregs of the tower, was far more efficient than one staffed by dims.


    What I wasn¡¯t sure about was why Ammun needed an army in the first place. As far as I¡¯d been able to tell, Manoch didn¡¯t have much in the way of nations left, certainly nothing that could stand against a group of well-outfitted stage four master mages. Was he expecting me to raise an army of my own somehow and preemptively preparing to fight back?


    Or did he just know something I didn¡¯t? I¡¯d spent a few months exploring this new world, but that hardly made me an expert. There were plenty of corners left for me to poke at. Maybe this army had nothing to do with me at all.


    But when had my life ever been that easy?


    ¡°Thank you for your help,¡± I told Baviru. ¡°I know this wasn¡¯t easy for you, but I appreciate that you¡¯ve given everyone living here a chance to prepare just in case this army shows up at our borders. That warning could save a lot of lives.¡±


    It couldn¡¯t, not really. An army of a few thousand mages would roll across the island unimpeded by the handful of stage two mages we could muster, and it would be the work of a decade or more of dedicated training to create even a small elite fighting force. Whatever Ammun was trying to accomplish, he¡¯d do it long before we were in a position to fight back.


    I left the fledgling town of Beacon and returned to my demesne to consider these new developments. While I wasn¡¯t terribly worried about the army assaulting me personally, I didn¡¯t relish the idea of letting Ammun proceed across half a continent uncontested. As always, I needed more information.


    The problem was that it was dangerous to get it. I¡¯d need to venture back into the lands that formed the old empire of Ralvost, which would completely negate the advantage of having a genius loci in addition to putting me in a place where I might have a direct confrontation with Ammun. I wasn¡¯t sure how far from his tower he could venture these days, but I was betting he was willing to risk up to at least a few hundred miles.


    It would get more expensive the farther he got from his phylactery, however, and I doubted he wanted to carry it around with him. At some point, it wouldn¡¯t matter how much mana he was hauling around. He¡¯d just bleed it out in a matter of hours. Then again, it was exactly that supposition that had allowed Ammun to trick me with the empty phylactery he¡¯d used when we¡¯d first battled, so I needed to be careful about planning around that.


    Regardless, I didn¡¯t have much choice. The tower itself was strictly off-limits, but I would need to divine what was going on around it. That meant I needed to travel back to that part of the world sooner or later, which meant risking another fight.


    I spent the rest of the evening making preparations. My crucible was put through its paces for hours, manufacturing various trinkets and contingencies. Most of them weren¡¯t even for me, but instead to be given to Senica and some of my more promising students. In the event that I didn¡¯t return, I¡¯d already left an enormous library behind detailing everything they¡¯d need to know to reach stage five, though I had a few volumes in progress detailing my journey to stage six in this new world and my speculations on the final three stages.


    I didn¡¯t expect things to go sideways, but the possibility existed. The soul invocations I¡¯d cast in preparation for my reincarnation were still present, though I wasn¡¯t confident in their integrity to last a second time around. Even if they did, I had no way to control where I¡¯d be reborn or how long it¡¯d take, and I wasn¡¯t keen to come back in a world where Ammun controlled everything.


    To that end, I¡¯d been preparing to leave my successors as many edges as possible. This would likely be the most dangerous thing I¡¯d done since being reborn. The last thing I did before retiring for the night was teleport an invisible letter into Senica¡¯s bedroom, hidden and sealed. In three months, the enchantments would fade. By that point, I¡¯d either have returned and taken the letter back, or she¡¯d be given the metaphorical keys to my kingdom and my best wishes at achieving archmage status in her own right.


    With that, I closed my eyes to rest and awaited a new day.

 Book 4, Chapter 6

    I¡¯d stumbled upon lossless casting a few years ago when I¡¯d encountered a flock of gigantic sapient birds. It hadn¡¯t been a skill I¡¯d needed in my old life, but now that I was living in a world without ambient mana, it was perhaps the greatest technique in my repertoire. Unfortunately, I¡¯d struggled to bring my skill with it up to the level needed to use it in conjunction with master-tier spells.


    Even now, after more than three years of practice, the best I was able to do was a slight efficiency increase. I knew this was a ¡®me¡¯ problem, not a limit of the technique, mostly because I¡¯d seen the brakvaw leader, an enormous and ancient bird they called Grandfather, use their equivalent to master-tier spells seamlessly. Despite that, I¡¯d gotten stuck at advanced-tier.


    On the bright side, anything short of a master-tier spell was basically no longer a cost for me. That meant I could fly indefinitely at the fastest possible speeds while invisible the whole time, which was exactly what I did when I left. I¡¯d drained as much mana as possible from my demesne and stored it in huge mana batteries designed to feed the enchantments in my home and workshop, which I estimated would give me about three weeks before the valley was at maximum capacity again.


    My journey started from the new teleportation platform I¡¯d dropped at Beacon. It was as far west as it was possible to get while still on the island, and my other teleportation beacons I¡¯d dropped in my previous journey had all long since unraveled or been discovered and destroyed. From there, I spent the next three days flying and scrying, to use an old military reconnaissance term from my past life.


    For the most part, it was a boring job. I considered that a good thing, since it meant I wasn¡¯t fighting for my life against a group of mage hunters or, worse, Ammun himself. That was expected, though; I was still well over a thousand miles away from the Sanctum of Light and I doubted an army, even one composed entirely of mages, had pushed that far in less than a year.


    On the fourth day, things got interesting. It was only a few hours after dawn when my scrying spells showed me a group of six people, all adults around the age of twenty, attempting to bring down what appeared to be some sort of bull-like monster that had three pairs of curving horns coming from its head, chitinous plates on its chest and flanks, and an extra thousand pounds of muscle.


    It quickly became apparent that the human side of this fight was operating on pure muscle and presumably some subconscious invocations. Four of them had spears, well-made with straight hafts and leaf-shaped steel heads. The other two wielded bows with half-empty quivers. The bull itself already had a few dozen arrows sticking out of it, including one jutting straight up from a ruined eye socket. That didn¡¯t seem to be slowing the monster down.


    Even as I approached the scene, the bull charged forward. Two of the spear-holders managed to plant their weapons and hold them steady against the bull so that it would impale itself, but one was unlucky enough for the tip of his spear to catch on the chitinous chest plate and ended up getting trampled. The other sunk his weapon in somewhere around the monster¡¯s shoulder and dove out of the way in time.


    Then the bull was past the hunter it had downed and rampaging through the backlines, sending both archers fleeing in opposite directions. The unfortunate fellow that caught the bull¡¯s eye fled toward a copse of trees, perhaps thinking to climb to safety or that he could shelter behind trees too tightly packed together for it to fit between.


    I was pretty sure what would actually happen was that the bull would knock those trees right over, probably crushing the young man in the process. This seemed like a good time to interfere, however, so it never got that far. A bolt of lightning dropped out of a clear sky, striking the bull on its horns and arcing down into its skull. I expected it to die just from that, but this monster was made of tougher stuff and all I accomplished was to momentarily stun it.


    There was nothing to do but play it off like that was part of the plan. I followed my lightning bolt down, a phantasmal sword held in my hand like a length of clear, blue-glowing glass. The blade passed cleanly through the bull¡¯s neck with no resistance, beheading the monster in a single strike.


    I let my invisibility fade away to reveal me standing on top of it, then hopped off before it could fully topple over. The group stared at me with various expressions of shock, all except the one who¡¯d been trampled and his friend trying to stem the flow of blood. I strode past the stone-still hunters, none of whom managed to process what had just happened fast enough to jump in front of me.


    The injured hunter was on his back, bleeding from a cracked skull with a few crushed ribs, a broken leg, and a full body¡¯s worth of lacerations from the hooves kicking him. His companion was trying desperately to stop the bleeding, but there was far too much of it for the shirt he¡¯d pulled from a pack to handle. Even if there¡¯d been time to rip it into bandages, the injured man would have needed three or four shirts¡¯ worth of materials.


    ¡°Step back,¡± I said softly.


    The wild-eyed hunter glanced up at me, surprise in his expression. He¡¯d been so intent on his wounded companion, I doubted he¡¯d even realized the fight was over. It was admirable, I supposed, but also foolish. If I hadn¡¯t stepped in, they¡¯d have been down two warriors instead of one. Though, truth be told, I doubted any of them would have walked away.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Healing was an interesting category of magic, one part conjuration, one part transmutation. It had a host of diagnostic divinations that accompanied it, most of which had to be maintained in the background so that the mage could tell what their healing spells were doing. It was also a relatively slow process, not something even the greatest healers could do mid-battle.


    For this man, I started with the crushed ribs. Those were the greatest danger, since several of them were poking against his lungs and if I ended up having to heal a few perforated organs, that would make everything much harder. The head wound was serious, as well, but he wasn¡¯t going to die of blood loss now that I was here.


    Everything else was secondary beyond those two injuries. I focused my efforts there first while his companions gathered around, silently watching. One of them started to speak, to ask some question about who I was or if their friend was going to be alright, only to be shushed by their leader, a young woman who¡¯d been the luckier of the two fleeing archers.


    About five minutes after I¡¯d started, the trampled hunter groaned and opened his eyes. ¡°Wha-¡± he started to say as he tried to rise, only to halt when my hand pressed down on his chest and firmly laid him back out on the ground.


    ¡°Don¡¯t move yet,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯ve still got internal bleeding I¡¯m dealing with and a broken leg.¡±


    ¡°I feel okay?¡± he asked as much as said.


    ¡°I¡¯m blocking the pain,¡± I explained. ¡°Otherwise you¡¯d be screaming and writhing around on the ground, making everything harder for me.¡±


    ¡°Just do what he says, Gaerg,¡± his leader told him.


    It wasn¡¯t that I couldn¡¯t talk while I worked on the young man, but I was busy snooping through their minds first. All of them had dormant cores, which eliminated almost all the risk of being caught. I was liberal in my use of mind reading, which I had to be since most of their surface thoughts revolved around the question of who I was and their concern for their friend.


    Below that, though, was the kind of information I was looking for: who they were, why they were here, and what they knew about military forces pushing out from the west. The last two were tied together. Mages had shown up in their home village, a place called Jaeska, and started commandeering not just food and water, but other trade goods the locals produced. Jaeska was primarily a hunting community with a strong leatherworking economy, and the army saw the appeal of extra boots, belts, and harnesses.


    The villagers didn¡¯t see it that way, of course. As far as they were concerned, they¡¯d been robbed of everything valuable and were now scrounging just to survive, which was an entirely accurate viewpoint. That was why these six novices were out here trying to bring down something they had nowhere near the skill to actually kill: for the meat and the hide.


    I allowed Gaerg to get to his feet a few minutes later. Other than the torn and blood-stained outfit he was wearing, he looked as whole as he¡¯d ever been. That led to a round of relieved hugs as the dam of silence burst and the whole group launched into high-spirited babbling. Only their leader kept to some level of decorum as she approached me.


    ¡°Thank you,¡± she said, sincerity dripping from her voice. ¡°We¡¯d have lost at least Gaerg if you hadn¡¯t arrived. My name is Miribel. Might I have yours?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°As far as you six are concerned, I was never here. You killed the monster on your own and suffered no injuries. I recommend burning those clothes if you¡¯ve got some fresh ones to replace them with.¡±


    Miribel took a second to process that, then nodded. ¡°You are on some sort of mission, one that relies on secrecy,¡± she said. ¡°You risked it to save us.¡±


    ¡°Something like that,¡± I said. ¡°If you want to pay me back, tell me everything you can about the mages that are making trouble around here, then forget you ever met me.¡±


    ¡°They are your enemies, too?¡± she asked.


    I didn¡¯t answer.


    Nodding to herself, Mirabel said, ¡°I understand. They appeared about a month ago, at first just three, but after we drove them off, they came back with fifty more, killed a few people, burned a few houses down, and looted the whole town.¡±


    It was a slightly different story than I¡¯d gotten from Baviru, but it mostly differed in the mechanics of how Ammun¡¯s mages had gone about their business, not the end result. Jaeska as a town was already outside the radius of the tower¡¯s former business and had never been the destination of a pilgrimage. It seemed the soldiers were just raiding any towns or villages they could find for supplies, regardless of their affiliation with the Sanctum of Light.


    ¡°You have no mages of your own,¡± I noted.


    ¡°No,¡± she shook her head. ¡°Not for many, many years.¡±


    That wasn¡¯t surprising. We were still well outside the radius of the tower¡¯s ambient mana cloud and these people spent their mana surviving. The brief look I¡¯d gotten at their battle revealed only rudimentary mana manipulation skills, but then again, this group was young. The more experienced hunters might be better prepared to ignite their cores.


    I could help, start spreading the knowledge here as I¡¯d done back home. It might even cause a problem for Ammun in the short-term, though the more likely result was that if they proved to be any sort of threat, stronger mages would just come through and raze the village down to its foundations.


    More importantly, if I left behind a storage crystal and written instructions, it would be evidence that I¡¯d been here. Ammun would know I was moving through his territory, spying on him. The more people I talked to, the more likely it was that someone would give up information about me. No, I couldn¡¯t leave any hard evidence behind. Some basic knowledge, on the other hand, could come from anywhere.


    ¡°The secret to creating a mage is to put more mana into a core than it can hold,¡± I said. ¡°Practice your mana control, then pull in mana and make it spin, like water sloshing in a bucket. It will take up to ten times as much mana as your core can hold, but expect to only get seven times as much actually in your core. The rest will be wasted as part of the process.¡±


    Miribel¡¯s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Before she could say anything, I added, ¡°I was never here,¡± and cast an invisibility spell on myself and flew away.

 Book 4, Chapter 7

    I spent two weeks flying around the edges of the old Ralvost Empire placing scrying beacons anywhere and everywhere. Some might be found, but I went out of my way to make the objects they were attached to unobtrusive and to shield them from casual detection. If Ammun himself randomly stumbled across one, I doubted he¡¯d be fooled, but I figured my efforts were too sophisticated for the rank-and-file shock troops marching through the countryside to see through.


    I also made a point to interview the refugees from various small towns I came across, often adopting different personalities and disguising myself, even going so far as to encourage people to forget they ever met me. The stories were similar, usually that of a smaller group coming to make demands followed by a larger group to see the threats through if the village didn¡¯t give in. Since those demands were often so unreasonable that to agree to them would result in mass starvation, it was the rare town that wasn¡¯t attacked and razed to the ground.


    It wasn¡¯t until my third week of skirting around the edges of Ammun¡¯s territory, still far enough away from his tower to be safe, that I encountered the army itself. There were over a thousand of them in the kind of magic-crafted fortified bunkers I vaguely remembered armies using in my past life. It was all earthwork ramparts and barracks, with support buildings laid out in neat, disciplined rows.


    If anything, I was a little surprised by how orderly it was. The army couldn¡¯t have had that much practice given how long they¡¯d existed. I wasn¡¯t impressed, however. Neat rows were all they had going for them. Real mage armies would have covered their camp in wards designed to prevent scrying and detect intruders. This one didn¡¯t even have basic vermin repellents to keep rats and bugs out of their food stores.


    I levitated a few thousand feet in the air under a shroud of invisibility and stared down at the camp while my scrying spells roamed about, unimpeded. They were definitely tower mages, most either with stage one or two cores. I saw an officer here and there with a stage three, but nobody higher than that. The commander¡¯s cabin was hidden amongst the other officers¡¯, a popular strategy from my time to make it harder for assassins to find them.


    That was the only part they got right, however. The mere fact that the square stone building was doubling as a command center made it trivially easy to pick out. Any competent assassin would have recognized its strategic importance immediately and quickly realized that the guy in charge also had his living quarters in the same building.


    Luckily for him, I wasn¡¯t here to assassinate anybody. I just wanted to snoop through their records to find out where they were from, where they were going, and what they were planning on doing once they got there. These types of camps were designed to be temporary, set up only if an army was going to be in the area for a few weeks while they worked through an objective before packing up and moving again.


    Unfortunately, while it was possible for me to use a combination of scrying and long-range telekinesis to rifle through their records, it wasn¡¯t possible to do it without someone noticing, mostly because there was no separate records room from the office. There was always at least one person in there, even if it was just a secretary. Usually, it was two to five people.


    With hours to kill until it got dark and people started going to sleep, I had nothing better to do than fly wide circles around the area, dropping new scrying beacons as I went and hoping to stumble across anything interesting. My luck was poor, however, and I ended up wasting the second half of the day just waiting for my chance to get a closer look at what was going on.


    * * *


    It was after midnight, as dark as it was going to get with three partial moons in the sky above me. The vast majority of the army mages were sleeping now, with only the sentries standing guard. The commander was still awake in his quarters, but was showing no signs of leaving and he¡¯d already dismissed his aide for the night. I wasn¡¯t likely to get clearer access to those files than right now.


    It was trivial to bypass the patrols, the walls, and the few wards they¡¯d actually bothered to enact around the commander¡¯s cabin itself. Apparently, these mages were so used to the tower providing endless mana for them¡ªnot to mention so many wards being built right into the framework of their homes¡ªthat they had no idea how to make them last without drawing on ambient energy. The ones they did have were actually being actively powered by a mage doing nothing but standing there and keeping it running.


    It made me feel somewhat embarrassed to be threatened by Ammun¡¯s forces, but quantity was a quality all its own, unfortunately.


    Invisible and silent, I landed on the roof of the command center and used phantasmal step to slip inside. For the next half an hour, I proceeded to ransack the place for every last scrap of information I could find ¨C everything from troop deployments to relief schedules to supply logistics. I was no tactician, but all put together, it painted a grim picture. Whatever Ammun was doing, he wanted everyone out of the land around his tower.Stolen novel; please report.


    Probably the most interesting thing I discovered was the shipment of raw materials, their exact quantity and composition unlisted, passing through the area to some mysterious site, destination unknown. The only reason the army even knew of its existence was to know to stay away from it. Whatever was in that supply caravan, Ammun didn¡¯t even want the normal soldiers to catch sight of it.


    Patrol schedules had been altered to leave a gap for the caravan to pass through with only the top executives of this base knowing about the holes deliberately opened in their defenses. Three times in their paperwork, I found caravans had passed out of old Ralvost¡¯s territory into the world beyond, all with no records of destination or cargo.


    Now that was something worth looking into. Ammun was obviously building something secret, but why did it need to be so far from the tower? Or was it even him doing it? Perhaps some of his higher ups were chafing at life under his rule and were trying to carve out a spot of independence far enough away that he couldn¡¯t interfere.


    I wouldn¡¯t know until I found the place, and that could be a lengthy project. Even at my speed and with my divination skills, searching hundreds or thousands of square miles for a base that was probably far better hidden than this one was no easy task. If only there were some clues as to where the caravans were going, I¡¯d have a place to start.


    I wasn¡¯t going to find that in the paperwork. I might find it in the minds of some of the top officers here if I cared to look, but those were the types of people that I¡¯d have little luck casually reading their thoughts, and certainly not without them noticing. That wouldn¡¯t be necessary, thankfully. I just needed a little patience.


    I knew the route the caravans took. I just needed to drop some scrying beacons with proximity wards attached to them to let me know the next time one came through, then follow it to its destination. It might take a few weeks before it happened, but this way, I¡¯d find out about it without anyone ever knowing I¡¯d been here.


    There were risks, of course. It was possible there wouldn¡¯t be a fourth caravan, that they¡¯d complete whatever they were working on with the materials they had on hand. It could be that I¡¯d lose my one and only chance if I didn¡¯t act now. It was equally possible that by kidnapping and interrogating a bunch of officers here, I¡¯d reveal my presence and make it impossible to accomplish anything substantial.


    Either way was a risk, but I was more inclined to take the one that didn¡¯t have a good chance of getting me caught. Ammun still had hunters out there looking for me specifically, and I did not need them getting a fresh trail to follow while I worked.


    So I put everything back as close to the way I¡¯d found it as I could. Enough people handled these files that if anything was slightly out of place, whoever noticed would just think someone else had moved it. Then I did one last sweep with divination magic to make sure I wasn¡¯t missing anything or anyone who might have spotted me through my invisibility, confirmed the commander was still working in his private quarters, and left the base.


    * * *


    Eventually I had to give up on my recon mission. I¡¯d confirmed that Ammun had tens of thousands of mages on the move, that he was pushing everyone out of the villages and towns that had sprung up in the intervening millennium since he¡¯d vanished, and that he was sending troops out to the borders to patrol them, presumably to hold that land.


    My best guess was that he simply planned on reestablishing his empire, though why he was pushing out the villages already there instead of incorporating them remained a mystery, as did his secret project beyond the edge of his borders. I had some theories¡ªthings like an advanced scrying station seemed likely¡ªbut I wasn¡¯t sure why that would need to be secret or beyond his established defensive line ¨C again, unless it wasn¡¯t Ammun¡¯s project at all.


    Feeling frustrated with the whole thing, I returned to my demesne to continue working on my own projects. Building a mana resonance point manually was going to border on impossible, but I was utterly convinced any wild ones had collapsed long, long ago. If I couldn¡¯t figure out a way to do it myself, I was never going to make it past stage six.


    In a way, it was almost a relief when a messenger showed up in New Alkerist asking for me. I¡¯d been doing nothing but going in circles for close to a month, no closer to solving a single problem than I was when I¡¯d started. Sure, I¡¯d started rebuilding some of the specialty tools and rooms that were essential to a researcher¡¯s work, but I¡¯d only done so because I couldn¡¯t find a better avenue to direct my efforts down.


    I teleported immediately, surprising my mother, who was still standing in front of the scrying mirror in my room. ¡°Oh!¡± she yelped in surprise as she flinched away. ¡°I wasn¡¯t expecting you to just pop over like that.¡±


    ¡°I was looking for a reason to take a break,¡± I said. ¡°This is as good as any. Who¡¯s this messenger and what do they want?¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s at the tavern,¡± Mother said. ¡°And she didn¡¯t say, just that it was important and time-sensitive.¡±


    ¡°Anyone with her?¡±


    ¡°Not that we saw. I didn¡¯t talk to her personally. One of the serving girls ran the message over to us.¡±


    I nodded and cast a quick scrying spell. It zipped across town, slipping through the privacy wards on the tavern without issue, and gave me a good look at the floor. The place wasn¡¯t busy this time of day, but there were three people there. The first was the bartender, one of three who rotated shifts. The second was one of the orphan crew that had come in with Juby, a girl perhaps twelve or thirteen years old now.


    The third was someone I vaguely recognized. It took me a moment to place her face since it had been years since I¡¯d seen her. Perhaps if she hadn¡¯t been so tired and ragged looking, I would have gotten it quicker.


    ¡°Ah¡­ That¡¯s probably serious,¡± I said. ¡°It looks like the Hierophant¡¯s sent his daughter all the way from Derro to see me, and with no escort either.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 8

    When I¡¯d first traveled to Derro, it was with the intention of breaking a cabal known as the Wolf Pack. They¡¯d managed to set up a system where they were harvesting mana from tens of thousands of people all over the island, with agents installed in practically every village and town. Even Derro itself was using leech stones as currency, draining people of their mana just by handling them.


    A significant portion of that had gone to their leader, Monarch, who was already several hundred years old and no longer able to produce the mana she needed to support her life extending invocations without outside assistance. I might have had some sympathy for her, considering I¡¯d been in a similar state myself at the end of my previous life, except she¡¯d tried to kill me a few times. That tended to dull any warm feelings I might have for a person.


    I¡¯d dismantled her cabal, killing most of the core members. A few had lived through the process, including Tetrin, who I¡¯d personally recruited with the promise of more mana, a fully stocked workshop, and tutoring in the old ways of enchanting and inscription. His skills had risen dramatically over the last half a decade and he¡¯d even managed to bring his mana core up from stage two to three a year back.


    Two other cabal members who¡¯d survived but stayed in Derro were Keeper, who cared only for her library and expanding on it, and Zara, who¡¯d been a sort of brain-washed hostage meant to ensure the cooperation of her father, the nominal leader of the city. The price for his help in reaching Monarch was the safe return of his daughter, not necessarily an easy task since she was an active, hostile combatant at the time.


    Seeing her sitting here in New Alkerist was a bit of a surprise. During my infrequent visits to Derro, I¡¯d never caught so much as a glimpse of her. I¡¯d been told they had a lot of work to do on her, not because Monarch had used mental magic to manipulate her mind and personality, but just because she¡¯d been raised from childhood to be a member of the Wolf Pack, groomed to work as Monarch¡¯s personal seer.


    I was unclear whether Zara was grateful to be rescued and reunited with her father or bitter at having her cabal destroyed. Considering how she¡¯d spent almost her entire life working with those people and probably considered some of them like family, I was leaning toward the latter.


    I entered the tavern and crossed the room, waving off the barmaid with a single gesture when she started to follow me over. Zara glanced up at me, but her eyes betrayed no recognition. That didn¡¯t surprise me. I had looked like a four-year-old child the last time she¡¯d seen me, and aged close to twenty years in the span of just six.


    ¡°Hello, Zara,¡± I said as I pulled out the chair opposite of her and sat down at the table.


    ¡°H-hi,¡± she said.


    ¡°You¡¯re a bit more timid than I remember.¡±


    ¡°¡®Than you remember¡­¡¯¡± she repeated. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, do I know you?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m the person you came here to talk to,¡± I said.


    Zara raised an eyebrow and made a show of looking over the side of the table at my legs. ¡°Huh, well, you don¡¯t appear to be a child on stilts, so I guess my response to that would be, ¡®I have questions.¡¯¡±


    ¡°I needed an adult body to maximize the size of my mana core before I could advance to stage three and didn¡¯t want to wait an extra decade, so I sped up the process,¡± I explained.


    ¡°I¡­ was not aware that was a possibility.¡±


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t cheap. But we¡¯re not here to discuss me. You said you needed to talk to me.¡±


    ¡°Yes. I need help. Well, Derro needs help, but I¡¯m responsible for it, so¡­¡±


    ¡°Help with what?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Are you aware of the project we¡¯ve been working on for the last few years?¡±


    ¡°You mean the city restoration?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s been slow going. There were a lot of objections from the inner city, mostly claims that the funds should be allocated there first. Father lost his temper a few times.¡± Zara smiled to herself there. ¡°Many of the nobles found themselves stripped of titles and lands, not coincidentally the ones who¡¯d worked the hardest to undermine him when Monarch first rose to power.¡±


    ¡°People in power rarely want to give it up and never appreciate what they consider to be rightfully theirs being diverted to the impoverished,¡± I said.


    I hadn¡¯t dug into the motivations behind the Hierophant¡¯s decision to begin restoring Derro, mostly because I wasn¡¯t concerned about it. The city existed in the middle of a desert and relied on outlying farm villages powered mostly by magic to produce food. It could easily house a hundred times more people than it currently had, and greater than half of the city was nothing but ruins. There wasn¡¯t much reason to live there at all, as far as I was concerned.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Zara didn¡¯t argue my point with me. ¡°Regardless, the restoration has been proceeding at a sustainable pace and quite a few mages in the city have begun picking up transmutation skills to participate. Everything was going fine until a few weeks ago.¡±


    ¡°What happened then?¡±


    ¡°You are aware of my father¡¯s abilities?¡±


    ¡°And yours,¡± I said. Her family practiced a difficult form of divination that tried to peer through time instead of across space.


    ¡°We started having visions of floods of refugees filling the cities, thousands and thousands of them. If it comes to pass as we¡¯ve foreseen, not only will we have far too little space to house them, but food will almost immediately become a major issue.¡±


    ¡°The refugees are already starting to appear,¡± I told her. ¡°We had a whole town show up in boats and start moving through the teleportation network not two months ago.¡±


    ¡°It must be a different group,¡± she said. ¡°They never came to Derro.¡±


    ¡°No, they ended up here. We helped them.¡±


    ¡°Did they say why they were fleeing their homes? We haven¡¯t been able to divine the cause of all this.¡±


    That didn¡¯t surprise me. Ammun kept anti-scrying wards up, ones powerful enough to block even temporal divination. Most likely, he maintained the expensive defenses to prevent me from doing exactly what Zara and her father had tried to do, and for much the same reason I was powering the same wards against him.


    That protection only extended so far. Ammun himself might as well not exist as far as Zara¡¯s magic was concerned, and it would probably block her from seeing the direct results of his actions, but things rippled out and eventually the wards couldn¡¯t shield the effects from being seen, especially when it was something that affected an entire continent. So she was seeing potential futures of refugees coming to Derro, but lacked the skill to trace it back any farther.


    ¡°An army of mages is claiming a huge chunk of land a few thousand miles west of here and making probing strikes past their new border,¡± I said. ¡°I suspect they¡¯re going to continue to expand as far as they can.¡±


    Zara was understandably alarmed at the news, but I brushed past it and said, ¡°You still haven¡¯t told me why you¡¯re here.¡±


    ¡°A couple reasons. One was to see if you could help us figure out what was going on, but I suppose you already knew. Another was to see about recruiting you to speed up the restoration of the city, though I can see from the look on your face that you¡¯re not interested. Finally, I have a message for you from Keeper. She said she found something in the archives she wants you to look at, nothing urgent, but intriguing enough that she¡¯d like your opinion.¡±


    ¡°Did she say what she found?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Some kind of record for ancient city infrastructure. We can¡¯t figure out what most of the equipment is for, not from the diagrams at least. Hopefully, it¡¯ll be something useful, but we¡¯ve been getting along without it for hundreds of years, so a few more weeks won¡¯t change much.¡±


    There were any number of old devices that could be, though if it was important enough to make it into the ancient city records, it was probably something big and powerful. Given the state of Derro as little more than an old desert ruin that had been steadily filling with more and more sand when I¡¯d found it, I doubted there was anything functional left there.


    ¡°I guess I could make a trip to Derro,¡± I said. It wasn¡¯t like I had much better to do besides experiment and hope to stumble across a way to create an artificial resonance point.


    ¡°Keeper will be delighted to hear it,¡± Zara said dryly. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose there¡¯s a chance you¡¯d help with the restoration while you¡¯re there?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not really interested. Maybe you should ask Tetrin. His rates are steep, but he does good work.¡±


    ¡°I actually already did,¡± she admitted. ¡°He turned me down, said he was busy working on a project.¡±


    Knowing Tetrin, that could be any number of things. He hadn¡¯t gotten in contact with me, so it was either something he already knew how to do or something he was trying to work out for himself. For as many things as I¡¯d taught him over the years, he did have a love for tinkering and occasionally got an idea that he was hellbent on putting together without any assistance.


    ¡°I guess that¡¯s that, then. I¡¯m going to go see what Keeper wants. You can come with me if you want to save the cost of a teleportation spell.¡±


    Zara gave me a strange look and said, ¡°You know, you¡¯re not really much like what I expected you to be.¡±


    ¡°Oh? What were you expecting?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Someone grimmer, I supposed. Darker, maybe.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps I made a bad first impression on you. We were on opposite sides then.¡±


    Zara flinched at that, but didn¡¯t deny it. The first time she¡¯d seen me, it was through a temporal divination reviewing a battle I¡¯d had with the Wolf Pack¡¯s resident alchemist and flesh crafter. I¡¯d killed him and his menagerie of mutated monsters. Then I¡¯d proceeded to systematically destroy mage after mage until I¡¯d slaughtered almost the entire inner circle of the Wolf Pack.


    It was no wonder Zara hadn¡¯t wanted to get anywhere near me. Her forecasts about the refugee problem must have worried her immensely to get her to overcome that fear and seek me out. Maybe I should do a bit of temporal divining of my own. I wouldn¡¯t get close to Ammun and the cost was ridiculously expensive for what was unreliable information, but with my demesne fully bonded, I could afford to take a few stabs at fishing for something useful.


    That would be a project for later. I stood up from the table and escorted Zara to the teleportation platform. ¡°These things,¡± she said softly. ¡°It¡¯s probably for the best that you didn¡¯t bring this magic back until after Monarch was dead. I can¡¯t imagine much good coming from her gaining access to them.¡±


    I wisely didn¡¯t remind Zara how much she¡¯d personally benefited from Monarch¡¯s rule or how little she¡¯d seemed to care about the commoners exploited and left for dead at the time. Whether this change of heart she was going through was genuine or not, I¡¯d be doing myself no favors needling her over it. That didn¡¯t mean I was going to trust her, though. She hadn¡¯t switched sides willingly.


    Putting a platform in Derro had been a decision made by the merchant¡¯s council, a coalition of trading leaders hailing from different villages across the island. I wasn¡¯t in favor of it, but they¡¯d requested it and if I¡¯d wanted to overrule their decisions, I¡¯d have put myself in charge. Since I didn¡¯t fancy myself a king, Derro had gotten a platform.


    It saved me a bit of work now, at least. I activated New Alkerist¡¯s platform and we disappeared, reforming an instant later and several hundred miles away.

 Book 4, Chapter 9

    There were three mages waiting for us at Derro¡¯s platform, all of them with anxious looks on their faces. Zara froze for a second when she saw them, then asked, ¡°What are you doing here?¡±


    ¡°Waiting for you, of course. Your father¡­ he was not happy with your decision to leave¡­¡±


    ¡°I do not need his permission,¡± she snapped.


    Before anyone else could say anything, I raised a hand and cut in, ¡°I¡¯m not terribly interested in this piece of drama. Zara, unless we have any more business, I¡¯ll leave you to sort this out while I go take care of things.¡±


    ¡°No, this isn¡¯t something you need to worry about,¡± she told me. ¡°Though don¡¯t be surprised if someone hunts you down with an invitation to speak to Father before you leave.¡±


    ¡°Maybe just let him know I¡¯m preemptively declining,¡± I said as I floated up into the air. Despite the city¡¯s restoration project, Keeper¡¯s home hadn¡¯t moved since she¡¯d been forced to relocate out from under the palace after the Wolf Pack¡¯s defeat. It was still what was essentially a refurbished warehouse in the inner city, stuffed full of tens of thousands of books. It was nowhere near as physically secure as her original archives, but the building was so heavily warded that I was certain she was getting mana from an outside source.


    I flew over the inner wall, mentally shrugging off all the alarms and tracers that had just tried to go off with a burst of mana. There¡¯d been a time when that wall had been a major obstacle, all but impenetrable with the enchantments laid on it. I¡¯d barely had the mana budget to expend on just studying the wall back then, and I¡¯d been forced to do it by standing right next to it and dodging patrols.


    Now it was no more effort than parting a curtain, though to be fair, I didn¡¯t care if anyone saw me these days. Also to be fair, if I did care, I could have easily slipped through the ward screen extending up over the wall anyway, and been invisible to the eye while I did it. My childhood years truly had been a frustrating time, and it was good to have some measure of my old power back.


    A number of people saw me as I flew over the city, including an entire squad of Enforcers that tried to wave me down and gave half-hearted chase when I ignored them, but no one actually got in my way. A minute or so later, I landed outside the front door of Keeper¡¯s new archive and knocked. While I waited for her to answer, I took a moment to study the wards.


    Nothing looked to have changed since the last time we¡¯d spoken a few years back. The stonework was battered, reinforced by magic to keep it upright. The windows were sealed, not with glass, but with some sort of transmuted sandstone that looked like it had been grown in to fill the holes in the building. Was this how they were doing their restoration work?


    While I was examining Keeper¡¯s privacy wards, I noted her approaching the front door. She paused about thirty feet away, glanced at my scrying spell, and sighed. ¡°I see the wards need a bit of work,¡± she said. ¡°You might as well come in and save me the extra steps.¡±


    I walked through the door without bothering to open it, the wards there also insufficient to keep me out. That earned me another sigh and an eyeroll, followed by a beckoning gesture as she started the trip back to her office. She was walking a lot slower these days than when I¡¯d first met her, probably as a consequence of reduced mana budget with no room for life extension spells in it.


    I followed her in and dropped down in the chair opposite her desk while she slowly settled herself into her own seat. When she was done, she looked over at me. One of her eyes was green, the other blue. It was the blue one that was fake, an old piece of magical equipment called a memory sphere that someone had decided should be shaped as an eyeball and inserted into the mage¡¯s skull instead of left as a freestanding device.


    I never had gotten the details on that one and could only assume that its original owner simply liked the way it looked. Certainly no mage who could afford to have a custom memory sphere commissioned was too poor to have a missing eyeball regrown. There was no good reason for it to have been built that way, but Keeper had felt it was valuable enough to pluck out one of her perfectly functioning eyes to access the memory sphere.


    ¡°I heard you found something you wanted my advice on,¡± I said.


    ¡°Something like that. Less advice on what I¡¯ve found and more on what to do with it.¡±


    ¡°What can you do with it? Zara said it was something about some old city infrastructure. I¡¯d assume it¡¯s in shambles by now.¡±


    ¡°Not exactly,¡± Keeper said. She raised a hand and telekinetically pulled a book off a nearby shelf to her. After a moment of flicking through it, she spun it around and slid it toward me. ¡°If this book is correct, every city built during the Age of Wonders had something like this. Apparently, they controlled all sorts of things in the cities they were installed in, which got me thinking that Derro might have one, too.¡±Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I scanned through the passage while she spoke. It was a diagram for some sort of complex underground machinery that would theoretically span the entire city, handling public transit, sanitation, security, and provide access to a complex inter-city portal network. We¡¯d had something similar, though far less complicated, when I¡¯d been a child in my previous life.


    ¡°Even if something like this exists, the enchantments definitely starved themselves out a thousand years ago,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m sure there are plenty of inscriptions on it, but what makes you think they¡¯ll be more than partially intact?¡±


    ¡°Keep reading,¡± she said.


    Past the basic description were schematics for installation and support infrastructure to allow access to it, including labor prices and estimated construction times. It was all entirely irrelevant since the city being described wasn¡¯t Derro, but I skimmed through the text anyway. Other than the contractors¡¯ estimates taking at least four times longer to install the thing that I felt they needed, I didn¡¯t see anything strange. Maybe the prices were high, as well. I couldn¡¯t be sure since it wasn¡¯t a currency I was familiar with.


    It was only when I got to the outlined plan and actually read the materials list that I got it. I drew in a sharp breath and glanced up at Keeper to see her grinning smugly. ¡°And you think Derro has one of these?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve got some anecdotal evidence on the history of the city that suggests it might,¡± she said.


    ¡°Thousands of tons¡­¡± I muttered to myself. ¡°What are you proposing?¡±


    ¡°I doubt we¡¯ll ever excavate it without your help, and even if we did, what could we do with it besides sell it? I¡¯ve done all the leg work to point you in the right direction. I¡¯ll give you all of that and help in any way I can. In return¡­¡±


    I didn¡¯t like dealing with Keeper. There was only one thing she wanted: knowledge. Old books, old stories, old skills, it didn¡¯t matter what it was to her, just that it was something she hadn¡¯t seen before. It was always time consuming to make a deal with her, mostly because the only thing I could just give her was books, and her collection was impressively robust already.


    ¡°No way,¡± I said. ¡°For something this valuable, it would be years of work paying you back. You could die before being paid in full.¡±


    ¡°Yes. Mysteel is quite valuable,¡± she agreed. ¡°Happily for you, I¡¯m beginning to feel my age. What I want now is not more knowledge, but more time to enjoy the knowledge I¡¯ve already collected.¡±


    ¡°Ah.¡± I leaned forward. ¡°Now that I think we might come to an agreement on.¡±


    ¡°Training in your best life extension techniques and spells and enough mana to keep me going for another two hundred years,¡± she said.


    ¡°The best techniques you¡¯re capable of mastering right now and enough mana for fifty years,¡± I countered.


    ¡°One hundred and fifty and I¡¯ll convince the Hierophant to fence all the mysteel you recover so you don¡¯t have to deal with the hassle.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to sell it. I want to keep it,¡± I said.


    ¡°Ridiculous. What could you possibly do with that much mysteel?¡±


    I thought about the enormous rent in the world core¡¯s outer mantle, an absolutely mind-boggling quantity of that most precious of metals. A single city¡¯s infrastructure probably wouldn¡¯t have close to enough mysteel to patch it. A dozen cities¡¯ worth might not be enough, and all of this was based on some assumptions that no one else had scavenged this all first.


    ¡°Irrelevant,¡± I told her. ¡°I¡¯m not interested in selling it.¡±


    ¡°Fine. A hundred and twenty years and personal instruction on life extension magic.¡±


    ¡°Instruction, a fifty-year supply of mana, and I will personally make a decade¡¯s worth of potions needed to reverse aging,¡± I countered.


    Keeper glowered at me as she considered my offer. ¡°Make it seventy-five and we¡¯ve got a deal.¡±


    That would set me back quite a bit. ¡°Sixty and I¡¯ll provide the storage crystals.¡±


    That gave her pause. ¡°You¡­ have that much mana on hand?¡±


    ¡°Enough for a few years right now, yes. It¡¯ll take me a month to build up the rest.¡±


    ¡°A month! What kind of mana core do you have now?¡±


    ¡°A very big one that makes mana very, very fast,¡± I told her. That was a completely true statement, just not one that addressed how I was actually going to get my hands on that much mana. No matter how big my mana core got or how fast I could generate mana, I was never going to outpace an entire forest of living stone. Even when I regained my stage nine core, the bulk of my mana was going to come from my genius loci.


    ¡°You¡¯d better not even be thinking of scamming me,¡± she warned.


    I snorted. Now that I knew of the potential existence of a great deal of mysteel beneath the ruins of various ancient cities, I was going to get it one way or another. I¡¯d pay Keeper for the knowledge of where to find this one, but only if we could come to an agreement. My scrying spells were more than developed enough to find it myself if I needed to.


    ¡°Sixty years of mana, deliverable in storage crystals provided by me, a decade¡¯s worth of age reversal potions, and personal tutoring in a life extension spell suitable for a mage of your abilities,¡± I said.


    Sixty years was more than enough time for her to get her own situation sorted, and we both knew it. As it stood, she probably had another decade or two left on her own, but age reversal would give her the energy she needed to pursue self-sufficient life extension magic.


    ¡°You know how to raise your core to stage three,¡± she said. ¡°Teach me how, as well.¡±


    ¡°I will give you a lesson and a primer on the process. You¡¯ll have to make your own arrangements for completing it.¡±


    ¡°Agreed.¡±


    I was giving up a good bit, more than the information was probably worth, but at this point it was to reinforce Keeper¡¯s behavior. She¡¯d gone digging, noticed something, and researched it to the point that she felt she had a valuable find. And then she¡¯d brought it to me. The next time she found something like that, I wanted her to do the same thing.


    ¡°Show me what you¡¯ve put together so far,¡± I said.

 Book 4, Chapter 10

    Whatever faults she might have, Keeper was a thorough researcher. She¡¯d pulled information from dozens of different sources, speculated on what hadn¡¯t been written down, confirmed those speculations, and compiled everything into an entirely logical conclusion. I couldn¡¯t find a single fault or unaccounted for variable in her chain of reasoning.


    I just wished the entry point was anywhere else.


    The Actalus family had no reasons to like me and many, many reasons to hate my guts. I¡¯d killed their head of house and his daughter, as well as a decent portion of their guards and probably a few unlucky servants who¡¯d been caught in the crossfire. I¡¯d also caused a significant amount of property damage in the process.


    All of that made it easy to understand why the woman standing across from me radiated hostility. Their former leader, a man named Roenark Actalus, but more appropriately known to me as Velvet, the charismatic socialite who controlled the Wolf Pack¡¯s lesser ranks, was her cousin, and the familial resemblance was obvious.


    ¡°Let me get this straight,¡± she said, her voice tight with anger. ¡°You want me to grant you access to my family¡¯s castle grounds, but you won¡¯t explain why or what you¡¯re doing.¡±


    When she put it that way, it would have been suspicious even if she didn¡¯t already hate me. I said nothing, though, merely waited for Keeper to formulate an answer.


    ¡°Lady Vaciana, I understand your skepticism, but I¡¯ve already given my word that nothing we¡¯re interested in will bring any harm to you or your own. Considering the payment we¡¯re offering, I hardly think we¡¯re being unreasonable here.¡±


    Keeper was far politer with this woman than she¡¯d ever been with me, but there was enough steel in her voice to know that she¡¯d haggle just as fiercely when it came down to it. If it came down to it. Vaciana was giving every indication that she was about to summon the guards and have us tossed out onto the street. Probably the only reason she hadn¡¯t was that the scars from my last visit were still visible in certain parts of the castle.


    ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°Not for you. Never for him.¡±


    That was that, then. I didn¡¯t blame the Actalus family for not wanting to deal with me, but that wasn¡¯t going to stop me from getting what I was after. A pair of retainers escorted us back out of the castle, a slow trip in deference to Keeper¡¯s age, and we waited until we were alone to discuss our next move.


    ¡°Do you have a second-best place?¡± I asked.


    ¡°We do have a few other options, but the Actalus crypts are by far the deepest and also the closest to where I suspect we can find the core of the device. The next best spot would add weeks to the excavation at minimum.¡±


    That wasn¡¯t an idle estimate, either. We¡¯d already discussed how fast I could dig with my magic, a speed that I¡¯d had to assure her wasn¡¯t an exaggeration. But dirt and stone were still heavy and not even my mana was unlimited. Digging down a thousand feet just to reach the depths we needed wouldn¡¯t take too long, but then finding the device itself was another matter altogether.


    Keeper was confident at least a part of the mysteel framework ran directly under the Actalus castle, which was why we¡¯d wanted to start from their catacombs. Unsurprisingly, they weren¡¯t interested in cooperating. ¡°What if we find someplace close by, dig deep enough to get under the Actalus catacombs, and then go straight for them before we go the rest of the way down?¡±


    ¡°That¡­ might work,¡± she admitted. ¡°I¡¯ll have to look into the closest place we can find that might be amenable to us working there.¡±


    ¡°Alternatively, we can use the Actalus castle as a starting point anyway,¡± I said. ¡°Honestly, it¡¯s not like it would be hard to get in there and once I get started, I could seal up the hole behind me and set up a teleportation beacon. There would be at most a half an hour window where someone might stumble across me while I do the initial work. Do you think they patrol their catacombs that frequently?¡±


    ¡°That is also a good option. Yes, I rather like that one. Vaciana should have just taken the offer,¡± Keeper said with a laugh. ¡°This would be illegal, of course. And since I no longer have any measure of political power in this city, if you get caught, you¡¯ll have to deal with the Hierophant¡¯s justice system. If I recall, the Enforcers do not like you and I doubt your stay in prison would be pleasant.¡±


    ¡°You are greatly underestimating my abilities if you think any amount of Enforcers in Derro could even capture me, let alone keep me restrained for an extended period of time.¡±


    ¡°All the same, I would have thought you¡¯d prefer to keep better relations with the city.¡±Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    ¡°Derro means nothing to me. I care more about this supposed cache of mysteel under the city than the city itself.¡±


    ¡°I feel a bit too old to be moving my archives again,¡± Keeper said. ¡°And unlike you, I¡¯m not confident I can fight off every mage in the city at the same time. How certain are you that you can get in and do the work without getting caught?¡±


    ¡°Completely,¡± I assured her. ¡°I¡¯ll get started tonight.¡±


    ¡°No, get me my payment first.¡±


    I rolled my eyes. ¡°Fine. I¡¯ll brew your potions and build your storage crystals. Give me a week for that, then I¡¯ll be back to start digging.¡±


    With a final nod, Keeper started shuffling down the street, back to her converted warehouse. I didn¡¯t bother going with her. Instead, I spent a few minutes completing a teleportation spell and returned to my demesne. I had work to do.


    * * *


    One of the drawbacks of living in a petrified forest was that it was difficult to find any alchemical reagents growing wild. I did have a few greenhouses set up, but I was busy enough that I didn¡¯t take care of them like I should. Back when there¡¯d been other people living here, Hyago and his assistants did most of that for me, and I¡¯d found I quite missed being able to offload that work.


    I considered the idea of tracking Hyago down again and seeing if I could convince him to grow more reagents for me. The last I¡¯d seen him, he¡¯d gone to New Alkerist with the rest of the population of the little village we¡¯d established in the valley. At some point in time, he¡¯d decided that wasn¡¯t the life for him and left, but I wasn¡¯t sure where. Once I found him, I knew I could tempt him into doing some work for me, though.


    In the meantime, I needed to grow my own and I was sadly short on a few key ingredients for the potions I¡¯d promised Keeper. I frowned to myself as I surveyed my supplies and considered how best to go about obtaining what I needed. There was the trader¡¯s market in New Alkerist, though that was unlikely to have what I was looking for. Perhaps the Arborists in the original Alkerist might have some of it.


    No, that was even more unlikely. I had enough to make a third of the potions needed. I¡¯d deliver that and Keeper would just need to accept that I¡¯d have to bring the rest to her at a later date.


    Not for the first time, I resolved to do a better job keeping up on my greenhouse work. It had been so much easier in the Night Vale where everything I needed just grew wildly, and if it didn¡¯t, I had connections to trade for it. Damn Ammun for destroying it.


    * * *


    ¡°Do you happen to know where Hyago moved?¡± I asked my father through my scrying mirror.


    ¡°No, I don¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°Could you do me a favor and ask around?¡±


    Father nodded slowly. ¡°Suppose I could. Ryla might know. Maybe Tetrin.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d appreciate if you could find out for me. I have some work for him but I¡¯ve lost track of his whereabouts with everything else on my plate. I really thought he¡¯d stick around New Alkerist longer.¡±


    ¡°I heard someone say he decided it was too structured for him, that planting trees in neat little rows was less exciting than he thought it¡¯d be.¡±


    ¡°Well, I can¡¯t argue with that. There¡¯s a reason I want to hire him to grow stuff for me instead.¡±


    Father laughed at that. ¡°What kind of stuff? You know we¡¯re a farming village, right?¡±


    I started to tell him that it required a lot of mana to grow, but then I paused to think about it. Father was technically an apprentice mage, even if he had no desire to ever advance past that. He imbued plants with his mana literally every day. With my demesne supplying me so much mana, I could easily afford to cover anything and everything he might need to grow what I wanted.


    Why hadn¡¯t I ever considered that before? Probably because I hadn¡¯t needed to. Up until a few years ago, I¡¯d had Hyago to do that for me. ¡°It¡¯d be a couple greenhouses,¡± I warned. ¡°Probably a full-time job. It¡¯s not hard, just time-consuming.¡±


    ¡°Sounds perfect for your sister.¡±


    ¡°Hmm. Not a bad idea. I can teach her how to properly manage her alchemical reagents and pay her in mana so she can get some practice in. Is she home? If she¡¯ll agree to it, I¡¯ll come over right now and set the greenhouses up.¡±


    ¡°Uh¡­¡± Father looked behind him through the open door of my bedroom. There wasn¡¯t much of the rest of the house to see from that angle. ¡°One minute.¡±


    I waited while he walked out of the room and looked around. When he came back, he shook his head and said, ¡°She¡¯s ¡®hanging out with friends¡¯ right now. So probably just Juby and probably not so much hanging out as looking for some privacy.¡±


    I chuckled. No teenager was ever half as sneaky as they thought they were, and my sister, despite her growing proficiency with magic, was not an exception to the rule. I¡¯d hunt her down later with the job offer.


    ¡°Maybe some other time then,¡± I said.


    ¡°You could still come visit for dinner,¡± Father offered.


    If I was going to make the trip there anyway, it wasn¡¯t wasted mana. I¡¯d just have to stay a bit longer than I planned to set things up afterwards. Even if Senica didn¡¯t want to take care of the greenhouses, I was sure I could find someone that could be trained to do the job. Why couldn¡¯t Hyago have just stayed in New Alkerist? That would have made this much easier.


    ¡°Give me an hour,¡± I said. ¡°I need to make a few mana batteries to power the greenhouses'' enchantments first.¡±


    I¡¯d also want to head out into the desert and use the sand there as raw ingredients for the many, many panes of glass that I¡¯d need, but I could do that after I went home. It was easier to find out there than it was up in the mountains where my demesne was.


    ¡°I¡¯ll see you soon,¡± Father said.


    ¡°Wait, what are we having?¡± I asked just as he started to let the connection go.


    ¡°Uh¡­ That is a good question. I¡¯ll go find out.¡±


    ¡°Never mind,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯ll just be a surprise for me. I¡¯ll be there soon.¡±


    The mirror went blank and I stood up from my desk. After a quick lap to confirm the progress of a few alchemical solutions with long brew times, I put together six mana batteries, topped them off by pulling on the mana coming through my genius loci, and stashed them in my phantom space. Then I walked over to my own personal teleportation circle, one that wasn¡¯t connected to the rest of the platform network, and went to visit my family for dinner.

 Book 4, Chapter 11

    Unlike the old village, New Alkerist had only continued to grow since its founding a few years ago. I wasn¡¯t entirely sure where all these people had come from, but the introduction of the teleportation platform network across the island had certainly encouraged traveling. With the knowledge of exactly how to ignite a mana core spreading and with the removal of the Wolf Pack agents scattered all over, just about every village was doing significantly better than it had been a decade ago.


    With that came a need for bureaucracy, as distasteful as it was. Gone were the days of just plopping down on an unused chunk of land at the edge of a village, especially since in New Alkerist¡¯s case, the entire town was surrounded by farms and had a comprehensive road and sewer structure running through it. They¡¯d known the town was going to grow when they¡¯d founded it, and that meant I needed to do some paperwork to claim a spot for my greenhouses to stand.


    Well, someone needed to do the paperwork. It didn¡¯t have to be me, just so long as it got done. Fortunately, I had a family who all loved me and included a father on the council. By the time I showed up with the mana batteries and seed samples, he¡¯d already run over to the town hall and claimed one of the pre-sectioned plots on the north side of town.


    ¡°Does this cost anything?¡± I asked.


    ¡°An administrative fee, normally. They waived it for me.¡±


    ¡°Oh. That was nice of them.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure you¡¯ve got a lot more credit with the town than getting a bit of paperwork done,¡± Father said. ¡°The air cooling enchantments on the building alone make you the hero of everyone who works there.¡±


    ¡°I suppose so.¡±


    The whole island was a desert with occasional pockets of life nurtured mostly by the people that lived there. Despite the surprising number of streams coming down from the mountains, very little actually grew out in the wastelands where there was no mana to nourish the plants. The heat was ever-present and absolutely punishing, so it really wasn¡¯t much of a surprise how much everyone loved having a cool place to work.


    The plot itself wasn¡¯t big enough for six greenhouses, at least not of the size I¡¯d been planning. Once I thought about it, though, that was probably for the best. If I was going to have Senica tending to them, she wasn¡¯t going to be nearly as effective as Hyago. I built the three greenhouses over the span of the next few minutes and placed the mana battery in the first one, but left the other two empty. I¡¯d have to come back and do the enchanting later.


    Creating physical locks was a difficult task compared to most transmutations. Locks were relatively complex to shape, and doing so while maintaining the transmutation spell magnified the concentration required many times over. It wasn¡¯t anything beyond my abilities, though I generally preferred magical locks, but I hesitated to make one.


    My initial intention had been to craft duplicate locks for all the greenhouses and supply Senica with a key, but locks weren¡¯t really a part of the culture here. In part, that was simply because metal was a scarce resource, meaning that farming equipment was the top priority for it, followed by weapons as a distant second. Impractical uses such as jewelry were almost unheard of.


    Creating locks might draw more attention than just leaving them open like everywhere else. These were hardly the only greenhouses in New Alkerist, not since I¡¯d introduced an easy supply of glass via an intermediate-tier transmutation spell. They¡¯d be less conspicuous if they looked just like all the other ones. With that thought in mind, I left them open and resolved to doubly ensure the wards and enchantments were well-hidden.


    ¡°Are you ready to go?¡± Father asked.


    ¡°Hmm. Yes, for now. If Senica agrees to help, I¡¯ll bring her back out to do the initial setup together. It¡¯ll be good for her to learn that part of the process, too.¡±


    We returned home together to find that Senica had beaten us there, and that she had Juby in tow. He was sitting at the table while she played with Nailu, his eyes shifting around and his muscles tense. When we came in, he gave us a quick glance, then did a double take when he saw me. I could almost hear his teeth tightening into a grimace behind his lips.


    ¡°H-hey, Gravin,¡± he said. ¡°I didn¡¯t know you were joining us tonight.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t know you would be joining us, either,¡± I said, claiming the seat opposite him. ¡°Is this a regular thing I¡¯ve been missing out on?¡±


    ¡°Hah. No, it¡¯s¡­ you know, Senica invited me. It would be rude to decline, but I can go if it¡¯s-¡±The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Juby. Relax.¡±


    Unsurprisingly, that didn¡¯t do much to calm him down on its own. I caught both Mother and Father smirking behind his back, Mother¡¯s shoulders actually shaking a bit as she tried to hold in a laugh. Senica threaded her way past the table with Nailu in her arms, slowing down only to lean in and hiss into my ear, ¡°You be nice to him or I will make you pay.¡±


    ¡®I would never be anything but,¡¯ I telepathically replied.


    ¡°Hmmph,¡± she said as she completed her walk past.


    For his part, Juby looked like he was about to pass out from fright. I had never seen him this jittery, and when I¡¯d met him, he¡¯d been an orphan who¡¯d been pressed into service by a local street gang. By the time I¡¯d caught up to him, he¡¯d fully expected me to kill him on the spot, and he¡¯d still managed to carry himself more calmly than he was doing now.


    ¡°How long until dinner is ready?¡± I asked Mother.


    ¡°Another ten minutes or so,¡± she said as she threw a look at Father. ¡°Less if I could get someone to come help me.¡±


    ¡°You know I would be delighted to assist,¡± he told her as he sidled up next to her and put an arm around her waist.


    ¡°Assist me with cooking or with something else?¡± she asked.


    ¡°Whichever you prefer.¡±


    With a snort, she slid the pan of veggies she¡¯d been frying over to him. ¡°Finish these up for me, then.¡±


    Ten minutes was plenty of time. ¡°Come on, Juby. Let¡¯s take a quick walk.¡±


    I got a blank stare from him for a moment before he scrambled to get out of his seat. ¡°Okay, that sounds good.¡±


    We walked out of the house together, me ignoring my sister¡¯s warning look and him so relieved to get out the door that he didn¡¯t even notice. As soon as we were back out into the hot, dry air, his shoulders immediately relaxed and the tension drained out of him.


    ¡°Did I miss something before I got there?¡± I asked. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever seen you that on edge.¡±


    ¡°No¡­ it¡¯s just¡­¡± Juby let out a frustrated sigh. ¡°I know it¡¯s not a secret and that you guys tease her about it all the time, but we¡¯re kind of making things official tonight and I¡¯m a bit worried that your parents are going to have a problem with it, which I know is stupid but that doesn¡¯t make me feel any better so I¡¯m just kind of trying to keep it together, but it¡¯s not really working and I keep thinking the best thing to do is just run away and now you¡¯re here so that¡¯s even more pressure not to screw anything up and-¡±


    ¡°Stop. Take a breath before you pass out,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m going to tell you a few things here. First, my parents like you, and more importantly, Senica likes you. Second, it¡¯s normal to feel nervous about something important, even if you have no reason to suspect things could go wrong. Third, absolutely no one is going to be surprised by the official announcement. If they had a problem with it, you¡¯d know already.¡±


    ¡°I, uh, I noticed you didn¡¯t include yourself in your list of people who like me,¡± Juby said.


    ¡°Do you really care about my opinion?¡±


    ¡°Well, yeah. Obviously. You¡¯re, you know¡­ You¡¯re you.¡±


    ¡°So what? Do you think I¡¯m going to challenge you to a mage duel for the right to see my sister?¡±


    Juby gave an awkward laugh. ¡°I hope not. It¡¯d probably be a short one.¡±


    ¡°I trust Senica. She¡¯s smart enough to make her own decisions. They won¡¯t always be the right ones, but she¡¯ll learn from her mistakes just like everyone else.¡±


    ¡°Are you saying I¡¯m not the right decision?¡± he asked.


    ¡°No. I have no idea if you¡¯re a good decision or not. But you make her happy right now, and that¡¯s got to be worth something.¡±


    It might not be enough in the end. Plenty of people had entered relationships that made them happy in the beginning, only to have things fall apart later. That was just part of life. But if Juby wasn¡¯t going to be her partner forever, which no matter what it seemed like today, was almost certainly the case, she¡¯d realize that and do what was necessary. A relationship didn¡¯t need to last to the death to be a good one.


    Though mine had. Her death, specifically.


    I was probably the wrong person to consult on matters of the heart.


    ¡°Anyway, my point is that you don¡¯t have a lot of reasons to be nervous right now, so just take a minute to compose yourself, then come back and eat dinner while you make small talk. It¡¯ll only take an hour and then it¡¯ll be over.¡±


    ¡°Right. I know. I do. It¡¯s just a big step for us.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll get through this. Like I said, this isn¡¯t a surprise for anyone. If my parents were against it, you¡¯d already know. I want my sister to be happy at the end of this meal, got it?¡±


    ¡°Me, too,¡± he said. ¡°I care about her a lot, you know?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s good. I¡¯d be wondering what you were doing here if you didn¡¯t.¡±


    More importantly, it was going to be a lot easier to ask Senica to take care of my new greenhouses if she was in a good mood. I was sure I¡¯d convince her one way or another, but depending on how well the night went, it might end up costing me a lot more to persuade her. Juby didn¡¯t know it, but I had a lot riding on him making a good impression tonight.


    We lapped the block and the house came back into sight. Juby paused when he saw it, took a breath, and straightened his shoulders. ¡°I can do this,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s just dinner with the family. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m a stranger meeting them for the first time.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the spirit,¡± I told him.


    ¡°You¡¯ll help me get through this if I need to be rescued?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Me? Hell no. But I¡¯ll keep my laughter quiet so it¡¯s less distracting.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re evil. I knew it from the first time I saw you. I just didn¡¯t know you were this bad.¡±


    He was more right than he knew. Despite how badly his life had been turned upside down when I¡¯d bumped into his group in Derro almost eight years ago now, he really hadn¡¯t seen how vicious I could get firsthand. It was lucky for him that I had a soft spot for kids, otherwise things would have turned out quite different.


    I clapped both hands onto his shoulders and steered him to our front door. He resisted for a moment, but it was a half-hearted thing. We timed it perfectly, returning just in time to see the plates being loaded. With a final look back at me, he made his way to his seat next to Senica, who watched me with narrowed eyes before turning to look back at her almost-official boyfriend.


    ¡°Well, you don¡¯t seem to be hurt,¡± she told him. ¡°Good walk?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± he agreed, his voice still a bit shaky. ¡°Good walk.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 12

    Senica and Juby followed me into the greenhouse. I¡¯d explained what I wanted, and not only had my sister agreed to help, she¡¯d volunteered Juby¡¯s assistance as well. When he¡¯d tried to protest, it had only taken a single look from her to silence him. Perhaps if our parents hadn¡¯t been there to witness the conversation, forcing Juby to be on his best behavior, he might have fought harder.


    Regardless, he¡¯d agreed to help and it wasn¡¯t like I was asking him to do it for free. We¡¯d agreed on a price in mana for each greenhouse, which the two of them could split however they chose. I hoped my sister wouldn¡¯t sacrifice her own progress to prop him up, but if she chose to, that was her business. Juby was decent for his age, but he was no genius. He¡¯d need all the mana I was paying and then some just trying to catch up to her.


    ¡°Alright, let¡¯s get some tables in here,¡± I said. ¡°Senica, if you would?¡±


    She was more than familiar with how I set my greenhouses up, and stone shape was a basic tier spell, making this more of a test of her control in a discipline she didn¡¯t much care for. Judging by the dirty look I got, she knew exactly what I was doing. With a sigh, she started pulling tables up out of the ground, shedding loose dirt as she drew on the raw material under the surface. After a moment¡¯s hesitation, Juby joined her.


    Between the two of them, they got the outer ring of tables done, though I made a mental note to go back through later and fix some of the uneven legs Juby had crafted. That was enough to tap them both out, however, prompting me to pull a small¡ªrelative to my limits¡ªstorage crystal out of my phantom space and toss it over.


    Senica refilled her mana core completely and handed it to Juby, who did the same at a significantly slower rate. Then they got to work on the middle tables. Each one was more of a basin on legs, a square trough about a foot deep that would need to be filled with soil before we planted anything in them.


    ¡°Good work,¡± I told my sister when she finished. ¡°Very smooth and even. Do you think you can repeat it on the other greenhouses while I do the initial enchanting here?¡±


    ¡°Depends on how long your storage crystal holds out,¡± she said.


    ¡°There¡¯s more than enough for me to do it myself in there,¡± I said. ¡°If it¡¯s not enough for you to do the same, then I suppose some remedial transmutation lessons will be in your near future.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, yeah. I¡¯ll get it done,¡± she said. ¡°Give us an hour.¡±


    If they kept burning through mana at the rate they were going, there was no way they¡¯d get the work done before they ran out. Senica could probably do it by herself, but Juby wasn¡¯t half as efficient. As the pair walked out, I sent a telepathic message to Senica and told her, ¡®Take a bit to help Juby refine his technique before you get into it. His spell structure is bleeding at the linking runes.¡¯


    She nodded without turning her head and followed her boyfriend out into the night. I put the two of them out of my mind and started laying the enchantments the greenhouse needed to function. Spells to reinforce the glass were my first priority, followed by a series of sprinklers hooked into the framework that would draw from the town¡¯s water supply. The river wasn¡¯t anywhere near as close as I¡¯d like, but I¡¯d established water lines connecting to the houses years ago, so it wasn¡¯t a huge task to simply add a few more buildings.


    After that came the mana capturing enchantments to keep the interior ambient mana high enough to grow the things I needed, followed by the wards to keep everyone but Senica away. Almost reluctantly, I added Juby to them as well. My parents went on as a matter of safety. If something were to happen to anyone inside, I didn¡¯t want there to be no one who could go in to help them.


    When I finished my enchanting, I took a moment to reshape Juby¡¯s work. Once it was up to my standards, I started pouring soil out of my phantom space to fill each table, then went to go fetch my new assistants so we could discuss what I needed them growing, how it should be tended, and what they¡¯d need to do to process it once it was ready to harvest.


    Then my scrying spell caught sight of them in Greenhouse Three and I immediately changed course to Greenhouse Two while cutting mana to the spell. I also made a mental note to use a hundred pounds of sand to scour the floor of Greenhouse Three later on. It was the only way to make sure it was truly clean¡­


    * * *


    With everything set up, it was time to return to Derro and claim my prize. More specifically, it was time to argue with Keeper about why I didn¡¯t have her full payment and then sneak into the catacombs under the Actalus castle so I could start boring through the bedrock until I found this still theoretical buried mysteel infrastructure.


    I teleported directly to Keeper¡¯s warehouse, mostly because she¡¯d warded it against exactly that and I thought it might help my position if I reminded her that there was a vast gulf between her abilities and mine.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    ¡°Agh!¡± she screeched when I appeared in front of her. ¡°What¡¯s wrong with you?! You almost gave me a heart attack.¡±


    She¡¯d been sitting at a desk positioned directly under a light enchantment, a dozen different books open in front of her and a loose sheet of paper she¡¯d been scratching down notes into using a steel-nibbed pen enchanted with a connection to a nearby ink well to require no dipping. Upon my arrival, she abandoned her seat to clutch at her chest and glare daggers at me.


    ¡°Hello, Keeper,¡± I said, ignoring the outburst.


    ¡°Yes, yes, hello to you too,¡± she grumbled, sinking back into the chair she¡¯d practically leapt out of. ¡°Took you long enough. You have my payment?¡±


    ¡°Most of it,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll need a bit longer to finish gathering the mana, but I¡¯ve got enough for a few years of life extension already.¡±


    I pulled three squat circular pillars, two feet tall and one foot wide, from my phantom space and dropped them to an open spot on the floor. They hadn¡¯t been enchanted to reduce their weight or size, but each one still had thirty times as much mana as Keeper did.


    ¡°And the age reversal potions?¡±


    I handed over what I¡¯d been able to make, less than a third of what I owed her. We both looked down at the wooden rack when I put it on the table. It was only partially full of vials with murky brown liquid that looked like nothing so much as bottled muddy water. ¡°I used up everything I had making those. I¡¯ll make you another batch next month when I can renew my supplies.¡±


    ¡°That wasn¡¯t our deal,¡± she said immediately, her tone turning ugly.


    So much for her being cowed by my abilities.


    ¡°I am aware,¡± I told her. ¡°This is what I have left. I thought I had more, but I don¡¯t. There¡¯s nothing I can do unless you have a secret herb garden for me to ransack.¡±


    If looks could kill, my shield ward would be activating right now. ¡°I want an extra year¡¯s supply,¡± she said.


    ¡°That wasn¡¯t part of the agreement.¡±


    ¡°Neither was getting my payment on an installment plan.¡±


    She had me there. It really was my own fault for forgetting how low my own stores were. I¡¯d gotten distracted preparing the genius loci ritual and no longer had Hyago keeping me supplied. I really did need to track him down sooner or later.


    ¡°Fine,¡± I told her. ¡°One extra year, to be delivered within the next three months.¡±


    ¡°Good boy.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow. ¡°I am¡­ significantly older than you.¡±


    ¡°Stop looking so young, then.¡±


    ¡°Oh no, I plan to enjoy my youth this time around.¡±


    Keeper cocked her head to the side, perhaps sensing a story that wasn¡¯t in her archives. ¡°You had a difficult childhood as Keiran?¡±


    ¡°I did, and let¡¯s just leave it at that.¡±


    The wheels were turning in her head. She was going to be pestering me for first-hand stories about the time before the Age of Wonders again. I¡¯d thought I¡¯d broken her of this the first time she¡¯d tried several years ago, but now she had information she knew I wanted, and she was exactly ruthless enough to leverage that for all she could get.


    Damn. That was going to be annoying.


    ¡°Did we have any last-minute adjustments to our digging plans?¡± I asked, changing the subject in an attempt to derail her train of thought. I could tell it wasn¡¯t working.


    ¡°None. Will you go in tonight?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°Right now. No reason to delay it.¡±


    ¡°Maybe wait until night when most people are sleeping,¡± she said dryly.


    ¡°No need. I¡¯m already scrying the catacombs and there¡¯s nobody in there.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not warded?¡± she asked. ¡°No, what am I saying? It is, but not enough to stop you.¡±


    ¡°Now you¡¯re catching on. I¡¯ll be back tomorrow morning after I finish digging.¡±


    ¡°Very well. I have some work of my own to do,¡± Keeper said, eyeing up the row of potions on the table next to her and the storage crystals on the floor.


    ¡°Then I¡¯ll leave you to it,¡± I said.


    * * *


    It was a frivolous waste to teleport directly into the catacombs, but I had the mana to spare. More importantly, I was still slowly refining my ability to cast lossless spells at the master tier. Since teleportation was one of my most used spells of that nature, it was the perfect one to practice with.


    The catacombs were pitch-black, that absolute, oppressive, heavy darkness that only came from being deep underground where no sun or moons could reach. I conjured up a small globe of light to illuminate the area around me, mostly support pillars and arches that held up the castle above my head.


    There was a cloying stink in the air, faint but unmistakable. This was a hole in the sand, stone, and dirt, a place to store the remains of the dead. If there¡¯d been any ambient mana left in the world, I would have readied myself to face rogue undead.


    For better or worse, that wasn¡¯t going to happen here. Perhaps somewhere in Ammun¡¯s tower, or if anyone stumbled into my petrified forest and buried the remains of a departed companion there, a zombie might arise. In the resting place of the Actalus line, it was an impossibility.


    Though I doubted I¡¯d see a guard, I sent a scrying spell to explore the halls above me. If someone did venture down here, I¡¯d see them coming and overpower them. Until then, I started casting a powerful earth manipulation spell, one that would dig a hundred feet in a few minutes, though it would take considerably more time to open that hole enough to descend through. That wasn¡¯t the goal, though.


    Scrying through a thousand feet of dirt and stone was no easy feat, even for me. It was even worse when the composition wasn¡¯t uniform, which made the most efficient method of getting a look down there the one I was currently using. The spell quested downward, shoving aside material and compacting it into the wall.


    There were other spells that could dig far faster, of course. I¡¯d once forced open a pit a thousand feet deep in an instant during my battle with Monarch, but using that here was not a good idea. Not only would it draw a lot of attention, there was every possibility it would drop the castle on my head. It wasn¡¯t necessary, anyway.


    Half an hour of digging revealed a pocket in the stone, large enough to suit my purposes. I teleported myself again, a short-range version that was both cheaper and faster to cast, then sealed off the hole I¡¯d bored through the ground. This would be my new base of operations, if necessary, though it lacked some essential comforts, things like enough air to breathe. I¡¯d come prepared for that, however.


    Hopefully the rest of this expedition wouldn¡¯t have such a hostile environment. I kept digging, determined to find the answer.

 Book 4, Chapter 13

    The cavern wasn¡¯t natural, of that I was sure. It was another five hundred feet lower than the little pocket I¡¯d claimed earlier, well below the sewer lines running under Derro. If Keeper¡¯s theory was correct, it was part of the ancient machinery used to elevate the city from mundane to a magical paradise.


    I doubted it had been like that, but what did I know? The only cities I¡¯d ever seen with a subterranean mysteel infrastructure were ones that flew in the sky, and those weren¡¯t for poor, struggling mages like I¡¯d been. By the time I¡¯d gathered enough power to set foot on such places, I¡¯d already learned enough to realize how they were nothing but foolish, expensive, vanity projects.


    I couldn¡¯t even begin to guess what one under a place like Derro had been designed to do, but I reminded myself that this island hadn¡¯t always been a desert. It probably hadn¡¯t even been an island, originally. Breaking apart a whole moon and letting its pieces rain down from the sky had dramatically altered the geography of the world.


    Regardless, there was no mysteel in this cavern. Worse, it had partially collapsed. Something had shattered the south wall, leaving me with the options of taking the east exit or trying to dig out half the room. For the time being, I decided it was worth it to send a few scrying spells out to explore while I telekinetically excavated the rubble.


    That was a simultaneously easy and complicated task. Moving earth wasn¡¯t hard. Doing it in such a way that even more didn¡¯t come down on my head was a different story. I started with a lot of transmutation spells designed to reinforce the cavern, a somewhat tedious task made slightly easier by the fact that all the stone I was using came directly from the cave-in. By the time I was done, I¡¯d used something like a fifth of the rubble, which still left me with plenty to move.


    But now that I didn¡¯t need to worry about being delicate with it, it didn¡¯t take long to clear it out with great, booming applications of force spells. I wasn¡¯t anything approaching subtle, but I was far enough underground that no one up on the surface was going to hear me anyway. And if there was anything living down here, the earlier I found out, the better.


    With the way before me open and my divinations returning nothing of interest behind me, I ventured forward. According to Keeper¡¯s best guesses, I should run into something directly west of the Actalus castle, but the problem with underground exploration was that it was incredibly easy to walk right over or under the goal without ever realizing I¡¯d passed it by, separated by a few feet of stone. To help counter that, I started running a spell called earth sense that let me sort of see through the ground around me.


    For the most part, it didn¡¯t find anything besides an unusual amount of unmixed stone that I assumed was due to the underground tunnels and caverns being man-made. There were occasional pockets of other material, usually sandstone or sometimes clay, nothing interesting or unexpected. At least, there wasn¡¯t until something in the stone shifted and disappeared from my earth sense.


    Frowning, I pumped more mana into the spell to expand the range. Mana started bleeding out of the circuit, too much to be contained in the spell form and cycled back into my core. As soon as that started happening, the shifting spot in the stone flexed and started moving toward me, and a few dozen more came into range.


    ¡°Ah,¡± I said softly. ¡°Unexpected.¡±


    It was a colony of some sort of subterranean monsters, one I thought I recognized. The fact that they were reacting to the excess mana I¡¯d inadvertently dangled as bait when I¡¯d overcharged my spell made it unlikely they were animals, not to mention that they were having no trouble moving through solid stone. It barely even slowed them down.


    The closest one angled its approach to breach stone right above my head. I walked forward and watched the gap in my earth sense perception adjust direction. Twenty more all chased me down, coming at me from every possible angle, but none were as close as the first one I¡¯d sensed.


    The stone overhead cracked and vanished, probably drawn into the maw of whatever was bearing down on me. Creatures like these always had a few things in common, namely a worm-like body, a mouth that could grind anything that got caught in it into paste, and a thick, nigh-impenetrable hide that made them difficult to injure.


    Difficult wasn¡¯t the same as impossible, however. When the monster lunged out of the hole it had chewed through the ceiling, I sent a force lance directly down its gullet. The spell shattered into a hundred smaller shards of force and started spinning around, turning the monster¡¯s guts to slurry as it spasmed in place. Ichor dripped out of a corpse that slid partially out into the air before its body got pinched in the curve of its own tunnel, leaving it hanging in front of me.


    I sidestepped the puddle forming at my feet and made it another two steps before the next one dug into the tunnel. It met the same fate, and so did the one after that. At that point, I was forced to stop walking to deal with them as they started popping up three or four at a time.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I pulled my legs up and levitated, sitting in the air in the center of the tunnel so that I could target the worms coming up beneath my feet. Force lances shot out in every direction, slaughtering the monsters half a dozen at a time. After a minute of that, the worms stopped coming, though I doubted it¡¯d be the last I¡¯d see of them.


    I flew forward twenty feet to get clear of the mess before resuming my walk. Never had I been happier that my shield ward could deflect the spatter of those monsters¡¯ churning guts than right now. That alone was worth every scrap of mana it cost me to recharge it back to full capacity.


    I made it another ten minutes without incident, not because I didn¡¯t detect more of the monsters in the stone around me, but because I stabilized my extended earth sense spell to stop the mana leakage. Without that to latch onto, it seemed the monsters didn¡¯t notice my passage.


    The whole time I was walking, I was being fed information from eight different divinations that were busy mapping out the whole underground complex I¡¯d dug my way into. Whatever else might be here, it was obvious that Keeper had been right about it being artificial. There was far too much worked stone making straight hallways, though they were usually buried under a layer of loose gravel and sand.


    Unfortunately, my scrying magic didn¡¯t reveal the prize I was after. The network of tunnels was big, possibly spanning the entire length of the city, though I hadn¡¯t proved that just yet. It was also entirely empty of any trace of mysteel. It was possible it was buried elsewhere and I¡¯d just missed it, or that I hadn¡¯t explored far enough to find it, but Keeper¡¯s theory was that it ran under the entire city, and so far, there was no evidence of that.


    Maybe I was just in the wrong section. I¡¯d discovered a few tunnels below or above me, but no connections leading to them. It might be time to make my own. Boring through thirty or forty feet of stone wouldn¡¯t take me all that long, maybe half an hour at the worst, depending on the material. I did a bit of surveying to find a tunnel passing beneath me that wasn¡¯t blocked off by solid stone, then started digging.


    That attracted more of the worm monsters, of course. They might ignore me walking around as long as I wasn¡¯t dangling mana in front of them, but there was no way they were going to miss me shaping a magical tunnel when I was deep into their territory. I killed them as they surfaced, hundreds of them this time, and eventually cut my way through the bedrock to the tunnel beneath.


    Preceded by a simple light spell, I levitated down into the much narrower tunnel to continue my explorations. Occasionally, one of the burrowing worms would leap out at my light spell, only to pass through it and smack against the opposite wall or floor, where it flopped around until it lined its mouth back up with the stone, then burrowed back into hiding while the light spell flickered slightly at having some of its mana stolen. It was actually harder to kill them that way than it was when they came straight at me, and I quickly gave up bothering to try.


    After twenty minutes of exploration, I saw a door through one of my scrying spells. Halting, I examined it while mentally tracing a route from my current location to there. It was metal of some kind, possibly steel, but if so, it had been polished to a high shine. Despite the dust and dirt caking its surface, it was in flawless condition, not a scratch on it. It was lacking any sort of handle, but that was hardly an uncommon characteristic.


    I made my way there, noting as I did that the giant worm monsters were getting rarer until finally, they disappeared from my earth sense altogether. By the time I got to the door, it was like they¡¯d never existed at all.


    A brief examination was all I needed to get it open. The bolts inside that locked it had to be manipulated by a combination of divination and telekinesis, not because anything was damaged, but because whoever had built the door had designed it that way. Presumably, anybody with a reason to go in or out would have no trouble with that.


    Whatever wards might have been placed on the door had long since expired, which made it easy for me to scry past it. After confirming there were no immediate mechanical traps in the area, I pushed the door open, or rather, slid it sideways into a slot in the wall. Beyond was a long, dark hallway made of the same metal.


    I tapped my foot against it and cast a few divination spells to identify the composition. As far as I could tell, it was some sort of steel, high quality but otherwise mundane, except it was plated with a different, more brittle, type of metal. It resembled steel, except that it was reflective like polished silver.


    What it wasn¡¯t, however, was mysteel. Interesting as it might be, I wasn¡¯t here for this metal. I stepped through the door and started exploring, mostly by sending my scrying spells down the hall, then splitting them up as they came to intersections and forks.


    I was starting to despair of finding anything truly valuable when one of my spells stumbled across a room with a large pillar covered in runes. It was hard to tell from just the divination, but I was almost certain. I¡¯d finally found what I was here for. And that much of it¡­ That alone was worth the time and effort I¡¯d spent on this expedition. If there were more pillars scattered around down here, so much the better.


    I hurried toward the pillar, following the path my spells had mapped out for me. Within minutes, I was in the room, eyeing up the enormous chunk of mysteel. It was twenty feet tall and eight feet wide, every inch of it carved with runes that no longer had any mana running through them. Perhaps those would give me a clue where to find more.


    As I approached the pillar, a hidden panel slid partially open in the wall nearby, revealing some sort of golem. I stepped back, preparing myself to be attacked, but the construct¡¯s eyes just flickered with mana for a moment before it tipped forward and collapsed onto the floor.


    ¡°Well¡­ that was anticlimactic,¡± I said.

 Book 4, Chapter 14

    I glanced around, curious to see if any other secret panels would open to reveal guardians that had long since lost any semblance of power. Whoever had been in charge of security must have decided that one was enough, or else the panels had malfunctioned in some way. It might be as simple as there not being enough mana to activate them, much like everything else down here.


    It was honestly surprising that even this single door had held onto the flicker of mana needed to slide three feet to the right before dying. It hadn¡¯t even made it all the way open, either, which was what had caused the construct to topple over onto its side instead of falling straight forward. Once I was sure there was no mana left inside it, I approached it curiously.


    At its full height, it¡¯d be eight feet tall and probably weighed half a ton. It was human-shaped, though with the exaggerated trunk common to constructs, making it appear something like a barrel with limbs. It was difficult to condense everything needed to keep a construct functioning into a human-sized chest cavity, even if it was scaled up to this construct¡¯s height.


    I rolled it onto its back with magic and straightened out the limbs so I could examine them. It appeared to be smooth metal, the same reflective steel that the door I¡¯d passed through was made of, but there were no runes carved into its surface. I suspected I¡¯d find them on the inside of the plates, but unfortunately, the easiest way to tell was to run mana through the construct so that I could see them.


    That sounded like an extraordinarily foolish idea. Reanimating a guardian construct just to have it immediately attempt to kill me wasn¡¯t on my list of mistakes to make this life. I¡¯d already done that once with an undead that had been on the brink of expiring, only to have to put it down a minute later when it attacked me. I hadn¡¯t even gotten the chance to study it like I¡¯d wanted.


    That wasn¡¯t an issue this time. This construct had survived for probably a thousand years or more, and I had all the time in the world to poke and prod it, to tear it apart and see how it worked. I was tempted to stick it in my phantom space right now for later study so that I could get back to tracing the mysteel pillar to see if there were more.


    Before I could make good on my plan, I noticed something where the golem¡¯s broad chest met its throat, a seam of sorts. I couldn¡¯t open it from the outside, and even my divinations were struggling to slip through its mirrored outer shell, but I wasn¡¯t willing to be defeated after a mere minute of effort.


    An inch or two of metal shouldn¡¯t be strong enough to block my spells without any sort of warding scheme backing it up. Whatever this material was, it hadn¡¯t existed during my last life and I was starting to find it annoying now. On the other hand, if I could figure out how to make it myself, it could be extraordinarily useful.


    After twenty minutes of tinkering, I finally managed to modify a steel shaping spell enough to curl the lip of the seam open a paper¡¯s width so I could slip a divination spell inside. As I¡¯d suspected, the interior was so densely carved with runes that it would be the work of weeks to sort them all out. What was strange about the whole thing was that the inside of the golem was largely hollow, more a mass of braided steel cables running through the limbs than anything else. Even odder, my scrying spells were reacting to the material in some way and starting to pull apart the longer I looked.


    ¡°What are you?¡± I muttered to the motionless body. ¡°I¡¯m almost tempted to feed you some power, just to see what happens. As soon as I can construct a safe cage to hold you, that¡¯s exactly what I¡¯m going to do.¡±


    For now, I stowed the construct away. Once I had it back to my workshops, it was getting my undivided attention, but this wasn¡¯t what I was here for. I already had a giant pillar of mysteel, far more than I¡¯d expected to find, and I needed to get back to dealing with that.


    I approached the pillar and did a lap around it, just studying the runes carved onto its surface. I could already tell it had noncontinuous connections to other sites down here, possibly as some sort of cheap, low-distance teleportation hub. Whether it was for people or something else remained to be seen, but either way, it boded well for the existence of other mysteel pillars.


    There was no way I could remove this thing and chop it up before I knew what it was for. I¡¯d been expecting a destroyed system, but the pillar was in pristine condition. It might even be possible to reactivate it, though I couldn¡¯t imagine the Hierophant had anywhere near enough mana in his treasury to tempt me more than the mysteel itself. No, this thing was mine now.


    I settled in for a long night of deciphering rune constructs, the process sped up by my divinations peering at it from every angle at once. So far underground, with no sun or moon to track time, I lost myself in my work, stopping occasionally for food or a nap. And slowly, so slowly, I started to unravel the pillar¡¯s secrets.


    * * *


    ¡°Three weeks,¡± Keeper told me. ¡°I thought you were dead.¡±Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    She was sitting in a different chair at a different desk with different books spread out in front of her this time. I wasn¡¯t sure what she was working on, but she had this set up replicated at least thirty times throughout her new archive. Apparently, carrying the books to one central location just wasn¡¯t her style.


    ¡°Why would I be dead?¡± I asked.


    ¡°It was supposed to be a day, maybe two, before you returned to the surface. I expected you¡¯d run into some sort of trouble, a cave in perhaps, or a strong monster that ambushed you.¡±


    ¡°No, no, nothing like that. There was simply a lot down there. It took some time to sort it all out.¡±


    And I still hadn¡¯t even gotten started on that golem yet. After I¡¯d finished the first mysteel pillar, I¡¯d discovered no less than twelve more of them. Those were all smaller, only about ten feet tall and two wide, but the runes carved onto their surfaces had been just as dense as the large one. After having thoroughly examined them, I understood why such an expensive project had been approved.


    They were masterful, a rune carving virtuoso¡¯s life project. No, it would take a whole team of them working in concert for years. The pillars didn¡¯t just have a single set of runes on the outside. They were layered, dozens and dozens of concentric mysteel sheets in the larger pillar and twenty or so in the smaller ones. Each layer had its own distinct rune structures carved on the inside, meaning each pillar had hundreds of thousands of runes at minimum.


    They had a hundred or more functions. If they were properly powered, they could allow those connected to their network to teleport around the entire city at will, or send supplies to designated locations. Users could track every single living creature in the city in real time, raise barriers to block or trap invaders, or even teleport them into prisons.


    It was also a city-wide communication hub, and not just for the military. Every single person in the city, including temporary visitors, would be automatically tagged with an identification enchantment that allowed the network to target them for any of its various functions. They could be denied entry or deported at will, though from what I could tell, those kinds of administrative privileges required more than a casual level of access.


    Beyond that, when activated, the mysteel pillars would radiate mana upwards to promote health in Derro¡¯s citizens, making them stronger and more resistant to disease. Administrators could designate sections of the city, arranged in a grid, that let people use magic like levitation at will, drawing on the pillars to power the spells.


    They could also connect with other cities to enable long distance communication, though I hadn¡¯t been able to discover any coordinates for additional mysteel networks. It looked like they sent out a signal when activated that allowed them to find each other.


    If I had to guess, my theory was that they¡¯d drawn all of their power in one titanic surge to deflect a huge chunk of moon debris falling on the city many, many centuries ago. Even that hadn¡¯t been enough to completely protect Derro. With the loss of ambient mana in the world and the damage from the sky falling, they¡¯d probably been knocked out and never been powered back up.


    ¡°And you found the mysteel?¡± Keeper asked.


    ¡°I did.¡±


    ¡°Did the quantity meet our expectations?¡±


    ¡°It did not,¡± I said. We¡¯d expected connecting lines to span the city, but that hadn¡¯t been the case.


    ¡°You don¡¯t seem upset about that,¡± Keeper remarked, her expression shrewd. ¡°Maybe you found something better.¡±


    ¡°Someone certainly put a lot of work into the project,¡± I said, feigning disinterest. It would not be wise to let Keeper know how keen I was on my discovery. She¡¯d use it to raise the price on information about future sites to explore. ¡°Removing the mysteel is going to be a chore, but there¡¯s enough down there to make it worth the effort.¡±


    ¡°I see,¡± she said in a tone that made it clear that she knew I was hiding something. ¡°Three weeks just to survey how much is down there seems a bit much.¡±


    I waved off her concern. ¡°I like to be thorough. Even though I had no reason to think there¡¯d be any mana left in the system, I wasn¡¯t about to start cutting pieces of it off without confirming. That much mysteel could hold enough mana to destroy the whole city.¡±


    That was an understatement. The central pillar could do that by itself if it was fully charged. Adding the ancillary ones would also destroy every single outlying farm village around Derro. It might even wipe out the entire basin, which included New Alkerist.


    ¡°Oh. I¡­ see,¡± Keeper said again, this time considerably taken aback. ¡°Then¡­ you¡¯ve extracted it safely?¡±


    ¡°No, I haven¡¯t started yet. This system is more complex than the old sky engines that held floating cities up in the air I¡¯m familiar with. All that work was just to confirm I understood what it was designed to do so that I could safely salvage it.¡±


    Keeper considered that for a few seconds, her fingers tapping together. ¡°What happens now?¡± she finally asked.


    ¡°I need to check on some other things I¡¯ve been neglecting, like making sure the reagents for your potions are coming along properly, then I go back down and start dismantling everything.¡±


    That was a lie. I wasn¡¯t going to dismantle anything. I was going to relocate it to my demesne and set it back up there. It would take some tweaking, but the defensive capabilities it offered were absurdly powerful. The only issue was going to be how mana hungry the pillars were, but I was confident I could keep the costs reasonable as long as I didn¡¯t activate anything but the protective measures. I hardly needed a communication hub or an on-call teleportation network, after all.


    ¡°And how long will that take?¡± Keeper asked.


    I shrugged. The smaller pillars were easy enough, but the big one was too large to fit in my phantom space, so I¡¯d be upgrading that first. ¡°A few more weeks,¡± I guessed. ¡°Mysteel isn¡¯t exactly easy to work with.¡±


    ¡°Hmph. Good enough. When you¡¯ve finished that and given me the rest of my fee, we can discuss the next location I¡¯ve discovered. This one is a bit farther afield, but I¡¯m confident you can find it with the clues I¡¯m digging up.¡±


    As loath as I was to destroy something so sophisticated, I did need several thousand tons of mysteel to patch up the ruptured shell around the world core. This probably wouldn¡¯t be enough, but I had to start somewhere.


    I said my goodbyes to Keeper and teleported away.

 Book 4, Chapter 15

    Unfortunately, just transplanting the mysteel pillars and expecting them to work wasn¡¯t a reasonable assumption. Even if I managed to get them in the exact same formation, right down to the inch, there wasn¡¯t the slightest chance of them activating once I fed them mana. Instead, I had to deep dive into their rune constructs to find the parts that controlled their connections to each other and the areas each governed.


    Also unfortunately, mysteel was far more difficult to modify than stone. Given its construction method, I couldn¡¯t even ¡®borrow¡¯ some of the material from the inside to patch up the runes I¡¯d need to rewrite, since that material also had runes on it. And since no one had handed me all the shavings that had been carved off the metal during its original construction, that meant I needed an outside source of mysteel to update the rune structures.


    In that, at least, I had some good luck. It just so happened that I¡¯d come across an old mysteel door that had sealed a vault of mine a few thousand years back and reclaimed it. Then it had sat, forgotten, in my storage for a few years waiting for me to find a use for it. Today was that day.


    Working with mysteel was difficult. It demanded a high level of skill and devoured mana to make even the simplest changes. If not for my demesne supporting me, I¡¯d struggle with this project for months just trying to scrape together the resources I needed. With the mana not being a concern, however, I wouldn¡¯t need more than a few weeks to rewrite the rune structures.


    I hoped.


    I¡¯d already surveyed the whole valley and determined where I wanted to place the pillars, so the only thing left was to alter their relative positioning coordinates in their rune structures, which weren¡¯t on the top layer, because of course they weren¡¯t. That would have been too easy.


    By the third day of work, I was starting to think I¡¯d overestimated myself. By the tenth, I¡¯d revised my completion time from a few weeks to two months. I had to take a break to finish Keeper¡¯s potions¡ªSenica had done a passable job tending my greenhouses, though Juby wasn¡¯t going to last at the rate he was going¡ªand deliver them.


    Then, before I could get back to work, I had to return to New Alkerist to get the greenhouses going in the right direction and give another lesson on how to keep them that way. As I was going to leave, Ryla tracked me down to let me know they were having problems with the teleportation pad out in Beacon, which prompted another unscheduled detour.


    It turned out the locals hadn¡¯t been keeping the platform properly charged with mana, which was understandable considering how few of them were mages, but they¡¯d inadvertently cut themselves off from contact with anywhere else. After taking care of that, I finally managed to get home, a full three days after I¡¯d left.


    Though there were still many weeks of work to do here, at that point, all I wanted was to fall face first into my bed for a day. So that was what I did.


    * * *


    ¡°Moment of truth,¡± I said as I finished up the large, central pillar. Everything was perfectly placed, modified to precise specifications, and fed with weeks of mana production from the entire petrified forest. It might not be enough to run for long, but it would be enough to test the setup to make sure it worked.


    Just as I was about to reach out to telepathically flip the switch on the whole thing, a divination scratched at my consciousness. I frowned as I turned to mentally focus on it, only to see a strange caravan passing through an unremarkable countryside. It took only a moment to realize it was the one I¡¯d been trying to track from Ammun¡¯s military outposts, the one with the secret destination.


    ¡°Of course you¡¯d make your move now,¡± I grumbled.


    I didn¡¯t need to go rushing over there. Now that they were en route, I had an hour or two window where I could easily catch up to the supply train. That didn¡¯t really leave me enough time to do all the testing I needed to on my new defensive system, even if it worked perfectly.


    With a sigh, I turned away from my new project and headed for my teleportation platform.


    * * *


    I floated in the air, invisible and undetectable by anything less than active scrying from a master-tier divination. Unless Ammun himself was in one of those wagons, no one on the ground was going to notice me following them from a few miles back.


    The supply train was a lot longer than I¡¯d expected, easily two hundred wagons. That couldn¡¯t all be food, but everything was warded to prevent snooping. Whoever had done those wards had invested a decent amount of raw mana into them in addition to being skilled in their creation, which made it difficult for me to thread my way through them. The fact that they were moving and I was so far away didn¡¯t make it any easier.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    On the other hand, I had a lot of time to keep working on it since it didn¡¯t look like the soldiers were going to be reaching their destination any time soon. After surveying the entire train, I selected a wagon that had a set of guards hanging around nearby escorting it. The wards were even thicker than usual, and I was almost certain the guy sitting next to the driver was a mage at the fourth stage who was actively monitoring them.


    I really couldn¡¯t have picked a harder target to crack, but all the safety precautions just meant that this wagon was the one that could tell me what was going on here. I moved forward about two miles and got to work unraveling the defenses.


    The first thing to do was take care of the mage monitoring the wards. Luckily for me, he wasn¡¯t talkative. Instead of conversing with the driver, he was just sitting there, eyes closed and unmoving. If I didn¡¯t know better, I could have mistaken him for being asleep. My hope was that the man sitting two feet away from him would do the same.


    The hardest part of the magic wasn¡¯t the range, it was keeping it undetectable. Mages in general were poor targets for various enchantments, because the best way to counter an enchantment was to rip the mana out of it. Anyone with good mana control could throw off all sorts of enchantments just by being aware of them.


    The loophole there was to use enchantments that were, by their very nature, deceptive. In this case, I needed to rob the mage of his senses without him realizing it. As long as I could properly hide the enchantment and he didn¡¯t grow suspicious, he¡¯d sit there, blissfully unaware of anything going on around him while his brain tricked him into thinking he was hearing and smelling everything he was supposed to.


    I used the mage¡¯s open conduit to the wards on the wagon as a vector to slip the enchantment in, where it took hold without so much as a ripple. I could rip the entire ward scheme off the wagon now, and he wouldn¡¯t notice. There was a risk of the driver poking at him and shattering the illusion, but that was a risk I was willing to take.


    The guards flanking the wagon as it trundled down the road with the rest of the supply train were a non-issue, there only to guard against monster attacks or other physical threats. My work was subtle enough that as long as no one was actively looking at the wards, I was confident I¡¯d slip through undetected.


    The train carried on through the night, moving at unnatural speeds as they burned mana to lighten their wagons and empower the horses they had pulling them. While they moved across the dark landscape, I wormed my way through the wards on my target. Long before they were ready to stop, I had my scrying spell inside.


    What I found confused me at first. The wagon was packed to the brim with wooden crates, each stuffed with straw and housing a singular component of what appeared to be some massive three-dimensional puzzle. Runes were inscribed across the surface of every piece, but without the whole structure to study, it was like seeing random words on a page with no context.


    It was obvious that Ammun himself had created these. They were far and away beyond anything I¡¯d seen from any of the tower mages during my time there, even their stage five rulers. This kind of skill had been lost to the ages, and only old monsters like the lich and myself retained knowledge of it. I supposed it was possible he¡¯d just stumbled across something, much like I had when I¡¯d found the mysteel pillars beneath Derro, but it didn¡¯t matter much in the end.


    I studied each piece as thoroughly as I was able, more to keep a mental record of them than to tease out their purpose. There were only twenty sections here out of what could be hundreds or even thousands of components. I didn¡¯t know how much time I had left, but I needed to thoroughly check as many other wagons as possible while I still could.


    None of them were quite as difficult to gain access to, though some were close. A few had more rune-scribed components, including one that was stacked high with panels of etched marble, and I found several caches of mana in the shape of storage crystals, batteries, and in one case, what seemed to be a mana wraith that had been compressed and imprisoned inside a phantasmal orb. That was no doubt draining to hold, but I couldn¡¯t imagine what the purpose was behind it.


    The problem with trying to predict Ammun¡¯s decisions was that he had at least a thousand years of magical advancement on me before the whole world went to hell. I was playing catch up with some of the stuff that had popped up in between my death and the loss of mana, not that there was all that much of it just lying around.


    Whatever he was making here, I just didn¡¯t have the clues needed to figure it out. It was definitely supposed to be secret, so much so that the minds of anyone I dared snoop around in was completely devoid of useful information. Admittedly, I had to use the lightest of touches and could only skim surface thoughts, and even then, only on specific targets that demonstrated a lack of awareness of their mana, but the results were borderline useless.


    There was one piece of information I managed to pry out of the lead wagoneer¡¯s thoughts, however. He knew where the supply train was heading, which saved me another two days of slowly trailing along behind them. I sent scrying spells ahead, tracing the route I¡¯d pulled from the man¡¯s thoughts to confirm the facility they were headed for.


    While my magic coursed over miles and miles of land, I debated what to do with the supply train. I could destroy it, and that would both set Ammun¡¯s plans back a month or two and net me a tidy profit in stolen mana. But if I did that, it would tip him off that someone was aware of his secret base, and I doubted he had too many enemies who could wipe out the entire caravan without leaving a witness behind.


    For now, it was best to cover my tracks. Once I knew what he was up to, I could decide where, when, and how best to insert myself into his business. That decision made and my target destination located a hundred miles to the east, I let my magic carry me away and watched the wagons dwindle to nothing behind me.

 Book 4, Chapter 16

    Most of the facility was underground, with only a few silos breaking through the dirt to squat amongst the rolling hills that made up the area. That did make it a bit harder to break in unnoticed, or at least it might have if I hadn¡¯t stolen the knowledge of the site¡¯s unloading grounds from the supply train.


    It was an impressive¡ªand wasteful¡ªuse of mana. Rather than unload the carts or let anybody into the facility, everything was parked in a single barn, one that was about five hundred feet long. The horses were unhitched and the team rode them back out of the site. What happened from there was outside the knowledge of anyone I¡¯d scanned, but it was easy to see once I got there.


    Everything, wagons and all, were teleported five hundred feet straight down. Why they needed the wagons was a mystery to me, but teleporting supplies over such a short distance in the name of security was ridiculously wasteful. Just what were they building down here that they thought it was worth that?


    Much like the Sanctum of Light itself, the teleportation effect was all sorts of warded against tampering. Unlike the tower¡¯s platforms, this one had no key to allow unrestricted access through. Every single spell was manually cast using the barn¡¯s framework as part of the spell. It was entirely possible that I could sneak myself into the spell without anyone realizing, but far less likely that I could force a teleportation down to the facility itself.


    There was always the option to dig my way down there, but if they were this paranoid about just bringing in supplies, I didn¡¯t believe for a second that there wouldn¡¯t be wards to detect any tunneling. Even the ground above the facility was seeded with alarm wards to detect anyone moving around there. If I so much as landed on the grass, someone in that underground bunker would know about it.


    An enormous amount of mana was going into this project, even on the scale Ammun¡¯s tower produced it at. The more I found out, the curiouser I grew, and right now, I was only seeing around the outside edges of things. I needed to find a way into that facility, hopefully without anyone realizing I¡¯d done it.


    Worst case scenario, I¡¯d come back in a few days when the supply train got close and execute my plan to hitch a ride on the teleportation as some unintended luggage. That would require waiting, however, and, worse, it would bring me in at the moment when security was at its highest. It wasn¡¯t ideal.


    Luck was on my side. It took a bit of investigating, but I eventually found what I was looking for. Humans needed air to breathe, and one of the major hurdles of an underground fortress was keeping enough clean air coming in that its occupants didn¡¯t start to pass out. It was entirely possible to recycle that air with magic, but it wasn¡¯t easy or cheap.


    Given how much mana this place had wasted on their insane security measures, I¡¯d despaired of finding any sort of chimney. If they were willing to teleport their supplies a few hundred feet, there was no reason to think they¡¯d balk at the expense of air scrubbing enchantments.


    And yet, there it was: a small tube of stone, perhaps six inches across and hidden inside a nest of overgrown bushes tangled together. Even with as diligently as I¡¯d been searching, I might have missed it but for one fact. A thin curl of smoke rose from its depths and broke apart on the branches around it, but my magic still picked up the scent.


    I sent a divination down it to check for wards and found a few down near the base, but I was confident I could get through those. All I needed to do now was cast an elemental form spell to turn myself into living air and slide down the pipe.


    There were numerous screens made of fine razor-edged mesh wires that would have shredded any monsters attempting to descend the vent, but which did nothing to slow me down. I swirled downwards, the smoke mingling with my body as I went, and stopped when I got to the first ward. It was a simple insect repellent, a standard precaution in any sort of chimney. The only surprising thing was that it was so far down from the mouth of the pipe.


    When I considered it, though, there was something else unusual. In facilities like this, all the wards were connected to a ward stone so that they couldn¡¯t be overpowered one at a time, and so that if one of them was broken or tampered with, an alarm ward monitoring the stone itself could sound. This ward stood alone.


    That made it pathetically easy to defeat simply by draining its mana and letting it unravel. I could have done as much when I was three years old. Even better, there were no other wards until I got to the base of the vent. There, I encountered the expected ward setup, one that was properly tied into the facility¡¯s ward stone and that I couldn¡¯t break without being noticed.


    I could, however, slip through it with a careful application of mana to tease the strands of the ward apart. It didn¡¯t even take that much effort, given my current physical state. I slid past them in a matter of seconds and finally reached the bottom of the vent, where a bonfire burned in a room while dozens of enchantments did their best to clear the smoke and feed clean air to it.


    It was all starting to make sense now. This was some sort of disposal room, apparently for the useless wagons, judging by the current contents. Whoever was in charge of disposal probably had a lot of issues with the fire being starved of the air it needed to burn and the enchantments not being powerful enough to offset the smoke.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    A small fire would have sufficed and burned indefinitely with just these enchantments, but small fires would take ten times longer to destroy all the wood. Someone had made some modifications to increase airflow, probably without approval and definitely without having it properly secured like the rest of the facility.


    No matter how many times I saw evidence of it, I was always struck by how human beings themselves were the weakest point of every security system in existence. All they had to do was not mess with what someone else had set up, but they just couldn¡¯t manage it. Laziness won out in the end ¨C good for me, but bad for whoever had made that vent once the person in charge discovered its existence.


    The fire was untended, yet another flaw in their garbage disposal system. But it did allow me to take my time analyzing the wards around the room to confirm that they were designed to keep the smoke from leaking out of the room while the enchantments worked. If I¡¯d still had a face, I would have grinned.


    Now that I was inside, it looked like I had damn near free rein of the place. Apparently, if someone was trusted enough to be let in here, they were trusted enough to go anywhere unsupervised. I ghosted through the hallways, past living quarters and mess halls, through workshops and labs, skipped by the sealed room with what was no doubt a massive ward stone sitting in it, and eventually found the main floor.


    There were no less than fifty people hard at work there, some of whom were assembling a massive array of what I assumed were parts that had already been delivered beforehand. As I¡¯d expected, it was a three-dimensional puzzle that needed to be built on itself, which explained why none of the sections I¡¯d examined were congruent with each other. Each one went somewhere else on the outermost visible layer of the construct.


    This did give me an opportunity to examine more of it, but I¡¯d need to be careful not to tip off any of the mages working here of my presence. And they were mages, every last one. At casual glance, it looked like most of them were at least at stage three with a few stage fours. One woman fully into stage five stood at the far end of the room, discussing something with a group of mages gathered in front of her.


    Tempting as it was to go eavesdrop, it was better to keep away from a mage strong enough to reach that level of advancement. I wasn¡¯t truly invisible in this form, though it would be difficult to detect me without specialized divinations or enhanced magical senses like the brakvaw back home had.


    I circled around the monstrosity being slowly put together in the center of the room, reading the runes on it and making guesses about what was already hidden below. I couldn¡¯t be certain without tearing it apart, but there was definitely a resonance component to the machine designed to connect to somewhere else, somewhere hundreds and hundreds of miles away.


    It wasn¡¯t a standard communications array, more like a syncing construct to ensure both sites were correctly aligned. That didn¡¯t make any sense though, not when it was far cheaper and easier to just build everything in one spot. There had to be more to it.


    I kept searching, and to my utter lack of surprise, I found not one, but seven sites besides the one I was at. It took a bit of work to decipher the coordinates, but eventually I had it pieced together. The eight sites formed a giant ring with Ammun¡¯s tower in the center.


    Perhaps it was some sort of massive barrier designed to encompass the entire empire he was rebuilding. I didn¡¯t see much reason to put so much effort into that, or to keep it secret even if he did. Ammun wasn¡¯t at war with anyone. As far as I could tell, there simply weren¡¯t anything remotely approaching real nations anymore. The largest kingdoms I¡¯d seen were nothing more than a single city with some vassal towns surrounding it, not unlike Derro.


    Maybe that wasn¡¯t it. Ammun¡¯s big problem was that, as a lich, he needed mana just to survive. Undead didn¡¯t generate their own supply, which meant that he was stuck in his tower or near about it. Maybe this project was an attempt to correct that deficiency. If he did it right, the arrays might create a tether of mana connected to him that would let him access his supply as long as he stayed within their bounds.


    There were some holes in that theory. Some of the rune constructs I¡¯d examined didn¡¯t support that supposition. Of course, there was no reason to assume these facilities had just a single use. Perhaps they were a barrier, a tether, and more besides. Ammun had already proven his ability to execute a grand design with the formation of his tower, a structure that descended all the way to the world¡¯s core to feed directly on the mana of an entire planet.


    Whatever was going on here, destroying it was suddenly my highest priority. I needed to confirm the locations of all eight of these facilities, and to confirm that there even were eight. For all I knew, this might just be a single ring. Maybe there were a hundred more of them radiating out from the tower, each one on their own resonance network.


    There wasn¡¯t much more to be gleaned from this site. The mages were too good to risk a casual mind read or to spend more time than I needed to, lest I risk being caught. When I did strike, I needed to be lightning rushing from one facility to the next. If someone spotted me now, everything would be ruined before it even began.


    I retreated, my mind whirling with the preparations I¡¯d need to make. At minimum, I needed to set up a teleportation network all over Ammun¡¯s territory and somehow keep it hidden. Then I needed huge caches of mana to replenish myself between attacks, divination blocking tools that I could use to shroud each site so that none of the others would know what was happening.


    What I really needed, more than anything else, was some help. But I didn¡¯t have anyone I could trust who was capable of an assault on this level. Tetrin and Hyago were probably the most powerful friendly mages I knew, and neither of them were even combat-oriented, let alone skilled enough to do this kind of fighting. Senica wanted to be a combat specialist, but her core was still at stage one.


    There was one possibility, but it would require some work. It was a good thing nobody was nearby when I thought of it, because it was impossible to suppress a groan. Hijacking a golem¡¯s control structure was such tedious, boring work.

 Book 4, Chapter 17

    I spent the next six hours scouring the lands being absorbed into the new Ralvost Empire. My first project was to confirm the locations of the other seven facilities I was guessing existed, which wasn¡¯t something I could complete in a single night. I settled for the nearest two, both of which were inaccessible unless I wanted to make some noise. I¡¯d gotten lucky stumbling across the one that had a hole in the physical defenses I could exploit.


    I left hidden teleportation beacons scattered across the landscape behind me. It was a risk, but I needed to be able to move around Ralvost more quickly than flying could let me. Hopefully, I¡¯d placed them in obscure locations that no one would have any reason to stumble across.


    Unfortunately, my attempts to trace the supply train¡¯s route backward in hopes that it had multiple stops that would lead me to other facilities wasn¡¯t working out. The wagons themselves didn¡¯t exist as far as any sort of temporal scrying was concerned, and it seemed like the train¡¯s staff and guards were close enough to Ammun that his own wards were bleeding onto them. It wasn¡¯t an unexpected result, but it was frustrating.


    That left me with trying to follow the physical trail directly, something I was not well-equipped to do. It went fine for a little while, perhaps a day¡¯s worth of their travel. Their tracks were easy to follow when they went cross country, but once they got back onto an actual road, things got a bit more muddled. I could make some guesses that were probably reasonable, but I was an archmage, not a game warden. Deciphering which particular ruts belonged to the wagon train I was trying to trace wasn¡¯t a game I was likely to win, long term.


    Each guess I had to make only increased the likelihood that I¡¯d get it wrong and start following some other set of wagons. The sheer size of the supply train helped somewhat, but even that was far from foolproof. More often than not, every crossroads I came to saw me standing there, casting divination after divination on other tracks, trying to determine which set I needed to follow by process of elimination.


    It was ironic that I was spending all my time casting not only divination spells designed to feed me information, but ones specifically focused on peering through time. If my focus hadn¡¯t been so narrow, I might have gotten more than an instant¡¯s warning that I was being attacked.


    This far from Ammun¡¯s tower, the ambient mana was basically nonexistent. A sudden surge of mana around me was my only clue that something was wrong before a pillar of white-hot molten fire descended from the sky, erasing the night and smiting me like a vengeful god from on high.


    I threw myself away just before it hit, my movement sped up by magic so that I moved twenty feet in an instant. That got me out from directly underneath the attack, but still left me caught up in the radius of its aftereffects. Tendrils of fire thicker around than my waist arced off it, rising into the air and flicking out to dissipate into pure heat as the temperature spiked upwards to lung-scorching and skin-searing levels.


    My shield ward made a valiant effort to keep me unbroiled, but it took less than two seconds for it to run through all the mana it held. I desperately pushed more in as I scrambled to put some distance between myself and the outdoor oven I¡¯d gotten caught up in, but all that did was give me another fraction of a second before the ward broke entirely.


    That would have been enough. I could go a hundred feet in a second, and easily. The pillar was a bare thirty feet wide. While I wouldn¡¯t have been out of danger completely, I¡¯d have successfully evaded the most dangerous initial strike. All of that would have been true, but the damn thing started moving.


    It ripped across the landscape, leaving a trail of fire and scorched earth as it chased me, every bit as fast as I was. It was all I could do to keep ahead of it, but while I couldn¡¯t increase my speed, I could and did throw out my counter attacks at its source, high up above me.


    There were four of them up there, lurking just at the bottom edge of the clouds. One of them was a stage four master mage whose name I¡¯d never officially gotten, but who¡¯d been designated as Seven by the organization he worked for. The flaming beam spell was his specialty, though I¡¯d never seen it charged to this extent. Somebody had been taking lessons from Papa Ammun.


    Of more concern to me were the other three. One of them was holding the enchantments they were using to try to hide from me, a task he¡¯d failed spectacularly at. I could dismiss him for now other than to make sure his role didn¡¯t shift into something else once they realized their attempts at obfuscating the source of the burning death beam chasing me around had failed.


    The other two were more immediate threats. One of them had started launching telepathic attacks at me, nothing serious, but obviously aimed to distract me. I brushed off her attempts to break through my mental defenses easily. The final member of their group was trying to cut off my escape by conjuring up force spells in my way. With my shield ward so thoroughly drained, I was left to manually dodge around them.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    Their jobs were obviously to distract and disorient me so that Seven¡¯s master-tier destructive evocation could finish me off, which made them far more dangerous than the minimal amount of mana they were using would suggest, but at the same time, significantly less important to deal with than Seven. Stopping his spell, or at least outlasting it, all but removed the threat this entire group posed.


    I was faster in my elemental form, but casting the spell to shift to it took a minute normally. I could get it down to forty seconds with my staff, which was about thirty-five seconds more than I had before I turned into a greasy smear on the dirt. I had time to get off one good spell, and I needed to make sure I hit the right target with it.


    Seven was the obvious choice, but also likely the best protected of the bunch. A better choice would be whichever one of them had divined my presence. I had several active spells to hide my presence, but those obviously were doing me no good. I could cast an aura crash spell on one of them before the death beam caught up to me. But which one?


    It wasn¡¯t Seven. I¡¯d dealt with him before and I knew what he was capable of. He was the magical equivalent of a hammer ¨C all force, no finesse. The mind and force attacks coming from the other two were lackluster, the attempts of weak mages who had no business being in a fight with an archmage. They barely qualified as distractions.


    That left the one trying to cloak their location, a feat he¡¯d successfully managed right up until Seven had launched his attack. There was some real skill involved with that, which made him the most likely candidate. He was also the least threatening of the possible candidates, and therefore the biggest gamble. If I wasted my one shot on the mage who was doing absolutely nothing to hinder me, I could very well end up dead.


    Doing nothing and overthinking it would lead to the same result. I cast aura crash, my mana spilling out of me and weaving itself into an elaborate knot of runes before streaking through the sky in a blink to strike my victim, the mage who was still trying to hide their presence from me.


    Instantly, his spells crumbled. Without his magic to hide behind, I could feel the other three mages clearly. Seven was every bit as protected as I¡¯d expected him to be. He was the scion of a Great House, after all, and had clearly been gifted every possible advantage in his life. Just because Ammun had returned and taken over the tower didn¡¯t mean he¡¯d let himself be cast down from his lofty position.


    More importantly, I¡¯d been right. Without the other mage¡¯s magic to guide them, the force spells that had so precisely thrown themselves in my way became wild and erratic, more of a random bombardment than anything targeted. Most of them could be outright ignored.


    It also meant my evasive maneuvers quickly shook Seven¡¯s death beam. I watched it slice through the ground in the wrong direction and put some more distance between us, just in case it was a ploy to reverse direction and cut me apart as I ascended to cloud level to attack them directly.


    The death beam cut off and I caught the faint noise of them panicking as they realized that not only had they lost their ability to discern my location, but that they could no longer hide their own. As a group, they turned to flee. Seven left the other three behind, and they were slowed by the two I hadn¡¯t hit with aura crash struggling to support their comrade between them as they flew off. He¡¯d probably pull himself together in the next few seconds, but by then it¡¯d be too late.


    I cast a grand telekinesis spell and grabbed all three of them, then jerked them straight down to plummet to the ground. As a group, they probably could have resisted the spell well enough to allow one of them to get away. Fighting individually to save themselves, they had no chance of making it work. They hit the ground with bone-breaking force and I landed next to them a few seconds later.


    The mentalist was unconscious with blood running down the side of her face and her leg fractured in several places. Bits of bone poked out through the skin, visible under the blood and torn fabric of her pants. The force magic user had managed to cushion his fall enough that he was battered, but awake. He groaned in pain and tried to haul himself upright as I approached.


    I was still invisible and silent, undetectable to mundane senses, so it was no surprise that he didn¡¯t realize I was there yet. It was the third mage, though, the one I¡¯d struck with aura crash, that impressed me the most. Even now, he was working to fix the damage I¡¯d done to his mana control while he pretended to be dead. A thin veneer of illusion hid his efforts, so subtle that if I hadn¡¯t been looking for it, it was possible that I might have overlooked it.


    ¡°Your boss just left you for dead to save his own skin,¡± I said, dropping my invisibility to hover directly overhead. ¡°And you¡¯re too dangerous to leave as is, so the way I see it, you¡¯ve got two choices. I can drain you of your mana and we can have a conversation, or I can just kill you now.¡±


    The force mage looked up at me. He was a middle-aged man with a thick beard, heavily muscled and wearing simple, practical clothes. I didn¡¯t recognize him, but I didn¡¯t have a hard time picturing him wearing the cloak and mask of a Breaker of Chains, the terrorist group that had woken Ammun up from his millennium-long nap.


    He started to cast a spell, some kind of force magic, but I countered it immediately and hit him with my own force lance. It struck him on the chest, slamming him straight into the ground and leaving him insensate to the rest of the world. The woman was truly unconscious and would probably die without intervention, leaving just the clever one of the group.


    ¡°What¡¯s it going to be?¡± I asked, focusing my attention on the one playing dead.


    Realizing that his ruse had failed, the man cracked open one eye and grimaced. ¡°Doesn¡¯t seem like I¡¯ve got a lot of options left. I surrender.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 18

    After draining the mana from all three of them and taking a few minutes to stabilize the woman¡ªand drop a sleep spell on her while she wasn¡¯t in the right state of mind to resist it¡ªI turned my attention to the one I¡¯d dubbed as the clever part of the hit squad.


    ¡°Let¡¯s start with your name,¡± I said.


    Tendrils of my mind reading spells wormed their way into his brain, interrupting the man before he could even begin to speak. He recognized it as easily as any other mage would, but I wasn¡¯t trying to be subtle at this point. ¡°Laphlin,¡± he said through gritted teeth.


    ¡°Truth. Good. Next question, Laphlin. How did you find me?¡±


    ¡°Luck and excessive manpower.¡±


    He didn¡¯t need to say anything more than that. I could see it in his mind ¨C hundreds of mages sequestered in a room in Ammun¡¯s tower, all divining different sections of his empire constantly. It was the brute-force equivalent to a full divination ward setup, entirely too wasteful but far quicker to mobilize and cheaper in the short-term.


    ¡°That explains how you¡¯re watching all this territory Ammun is trying to claim, not how you found me specifically.¡±


    ¡°I¡­ I don¡¯t know. I didn¡¯t find you,¡± Laphlin said. ¡°Our senior scrying team did that.¡±


    A vision of six men and women swam across Laphlin¡¯s mind. All of them were powerful, much stronger than Laphlin, and there were notes of reverence tied to the memory. Whoever these mages were, this guy thought they were the pinnacle of diviners. Maybe he was right. Someone had found me, even if I was starting to think it had been a fluke more than anything.


    Or maybe I had fouled up some hidden ward at that facility, something that had sent up a silent alarm. It was clear that Laphlin didn¡¯t know. His job had just been to relay my location to the rest of his strike team until they¡¯d gotten close enough for him to lock onto me directly. That did mean that the divination masters back at the tower were likely watching us even now.


    Well, that I could fix. I took a moment to cast a master-tier divination ward over the area, one that could stop Ammun himself from peeping on us. It was so expensive to maintain that I¡¯d need to let it drop after a few minutes, but that was fine. It was only a smoke screen to hide my next few spells.


    I started by stripping any active spells on all three of my prisoners, something I¡¯d been planning on doing at the end of the interrogation anyway. Depending on what I¡¯d learned, I might have wanted to follow the trail of any divinations attached to them back to the source. Now that I¡¯d plucked the answer to that question directly out of Laphlin¡¯s head, it was no longer necessary.


    It took very little effort to set up a quick teleportation circle to spread the effect of the spell to my new victims, and well before the divination blocker expired, I¡¯d whisked all four of us a thousand miles away to a random location I¡¯d dropped a beacon in while I was exploring a few months back.


    Laphlin watched me work in silence, and the other two were still held in the grips of my magic. Neither was going anywhere until I decided to let them go, which wouldn¡¯t be until I was done questioning the smart one of the group. When my teleportation spell grabbed hold of us, the man completely deflated, all hope flown from him.


    ¡°No, there won¡¯t be any rescue team coming for you,¡± I said. ¡°There probably wouldn¡¯t be one even if we¡¯d stayed there. Perhaps another kill squad might have attacked me, but at that point you three would just be collateral damage. I doubt very much that your new lich overlord values your lives so highly that he¡¯d let an opportunity to kill me slip by just to save them.¡±


    ¡®So we¡¯re dead,¡¯ he thought, despair radiating off him in waves.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t say that,¡± I responded to his unspoken assessment. ¡°I need competent underlings just as much as the next archmage, and you wouldn¡¯t be the first mage I¡¯ve recruited from an enemy faction. Really, your survival depends on just how much you can convince me that you¡¯re both trustworthy and an asset. Since I¡¯m in your head, it should be remarkably easy to do so. Or not, I suppose, if you aren¡¯t trustworthy.¡±


    Laphlin gulped and glanced past me to his two unconscious companions. ¡°What¡­ What do you want to know?¡±


    The good news was that he had no intention of lying to me. I¡¯d take it as a start. ¡°Let¡¯s talk about these secret facilities all over the place. What do you know about those?¡±


    * * *


    I was relentless in my quest to dig every last useful piece of information out of Laphlin¡¯s head. I took names from him. I took jobs. I took every interaction he had with anyone giving him orders. I learned about Ammun¡¯s new Sanctum of Light, that he¡¯d essentially turned the mages he¡¯d allowed to stay into a military organization and pressganged everyone he¡¯d kicked out into running the farm villages and towns that had been overrun.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Morale was low and dissent was high. The Breakers of Chains were still an active force, though obviously under new leadership since their old boss had been some sort of secret Ammun cultist whose only real goal was to find the being he worshipped and serve him. Now the Breakers were actively fighting Ammun¡¯s hostile takeover, a battle they were losing badly. The only reason their ranks weren¡¯t completely empty was that Ammun¡¯s draconian laws kept driving new recruits to them.


    More relevant to my immediate concerns, Laphlin knew absolutely nothing about any secret facilities, let alone whether there were more than the eight I¡¯d already discovered. That was vaguely disappointing, but not surprising. He was a low-level grunt from Ammun¡¯s divination team, not without his talents, but nowhere near the top of the tower hierarchy. He didn¡¯t make decisions, which meant he didn¡¯t need to know about almost anything outside his current objective.


    The high point to the whole interrogation was determining that while Laphlin wasn¡¯t much interested in a job offer, he was extremely interested in not working for the tower anymore. As a former spy for one of the Great Houses, he hadn¡¯t been given a choice about being pressed into service in Ammun¡¯s new society. Initially, he¡¯d been grateful to have been spared a one-way trip to the fields, but he¡¯d quickly grown weary of the work he¡¯d been asked to do and, more importantly, the utter lack of compensation he¡¯d received for his efforts.


    As a consequence of that, he was more than happy to spill his guts on everything he knew or suspected, often drawing connections between memories I wouldn¡¯t have had the context to do myself. All of this was a mere act of self-preservation. The happier I was with the outcome, the more likely I was to let him go free. At least, that was his hope.


    I didn¡¯t have much reason to let him live if he wasn¡¯t going to be useful to me beyond the immediate conversation. As reluctant an enemy as he might have been, he¡¯d still been instrumental in guiding Seven to me. Before I made my final decision, however, I decided to question the other two.


    It turned out they knew almost nothing useful. I got some more insight into what was going on in the tower itself, but these two weren¡¯t part of anything important. The mind mage was part of some sort of secret police that interrogated suspected dissidents, and the big guy with the beard was just part of a vanguard unit for any sort of combat. He¡¯d been deployed three times to wipe out villages that had failed to surrender every scrap of food they owned.


    Unlike Laphlin, that guy didn¡¯t mind being drafted. In fact, he¡¯d enjoyed crushing the villagers and townsfolk with his magic. The woman didn¡¯t take pleasure from her work invading the minds of those who were abducted for questioning, but she did feel a sort of grim satisfaction at doing it. Every time they managed to uncover someone who¡¯d been actively plotting against Ammun¡¯s new society, it justified their tactics in her mind.


    I was certainly no saint. It would be hypocritical of me to judge either of them, so I didn¡¯t. That having been said, I had no use for either and every reason to think that letting them live could come back around to cause problems for me later. They weren¡¯t going to see the next sunrise.


    That just left the diviner. Perhaps he saw it in my expression as I considered him and his companions, because his anxiety spiked and he started giving serious consideration to some of the half-hearted escape plans he¡¯d cooked up. Even knowing they were futile, and not just because he was completely overmatched, but because I¡¯d watched his mind concoct them, he was still trying to figure out which one had the best chance of success.


    ¡°Relax,¡± I told him. Unsurprisingly, that did nothing to calm him down.


    ¡°You¡¯re going to kill us,¡± he said. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead and running down across his face now, and there was a noticeable tremble in his hands.


    The bearded man sneered at him. ¡°Coward,¡± he said. Though he was outwardly calm, he was raging inside, both at the violation of his thoughts and that he¡¯d been bested in combat. Apparently, he¡¯d thought of himself as quite the battle mage prior to me bruising his ego. I honestly should have been thankful for him. His arguing to stay and fight was what had delayed their flight and allowed me to so easily capture them.


    The woman, oddly enough, had accepted the mind probe the best out of the three of them. Her defenses were the most formidable, but she knew when she was overmatched and was now the calmest of the three. She was scheming on how best to ingratiate herself to me, everything from offering to go back and spy on my behalf to trying to seduce me with her feminine wiles to buying her life through copious amounts of mana.


    She was cold-blooded, that one. If I let her live, that¡¯d be the one I regretted most. With a mental sigh, I dual cast two force spells and slit both their throats at the same time. For the first time, surprise showed on the woman¡¯s face as she tumbled backward. The man tried to summon every last bit of his mana to attack me even as he died, but the bare whisper he called forth couldn¡¯t have hurt me even if I¡¯d stood defenseless and naked in front of him.


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to kill you,¡± I told Laphlin. ¡°I probably should, to be honest. You are a dubious asset at best and more likely a liability. The only reason you¡¯re alive is that you didn¡¯t ask for any of this. So I¡¯ll give you a choice. You¡¯re not going back to the tower. And you¡¯re not coming to work for me. You wouldn¡¯t do it voluntarily and I have no need for your skills, anyway.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the choice?¡± the diviner asked.


    ¡°I¡¯ll take you somewhere far away from here, find you a village in need of a mage, and drop you there. You¡¯ll never see your friends or family again. You won¡¯t be working for Ammun anymore. You won¡¯t be anywhere near me or mine. But you¡¯ll be alive.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not a choice.¡±


    ¡°You know what the other option is,¡± I said.


    Laphlin swallowed hard and bobbed his head. ¡°Right. I get it. Could it be somewhere warm? I always hated the cold.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re in luck,¡± I told him. ¡°Most of the world is quite hot these days.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 19

    The whole world, at least as far as I¡¯d gotten around to exploring it, consisted of a thousand little villages, most with populations of less than three hundred people. Sometimes they had connections with other nearby villages; usually they didn¡¯t. The places that did have real connections with their neighbors usually had a light density of monsters, or sometimes no real monsters at all.


    I took Laphlin to one of those towns, some little place just big enough that no one thought it was odd when a stranger showed up. We teleported onto the side of the road a mile away and I gave him his final instructions.


    ¡°Don¡¯t cause problems here. Don¡¯t try to take it over. Don¡¯t try to bully people because you¡¯re better at magic than they are. This is your home now, unless you want to walk somewhere else. It¡¯s far enough away from the tower that you¡¯re never getting back home on your own,¡± I said.


    ¡°So that¡¯s it? I¡¯m¡­ exiled¡­ to this mana-dry dirt clump for the rest of my life?¡±


    ¡°Welcome to how the rest of the world lives,¡± I told him. ¡°If your tower never existed, it wouldn¡¯t be like this. Even now, that place sucks up practically every drop of mana the world core produces to use for itself, leaving the rest of us with nothing.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not my fault,¡± he protested.


    I shrugged. ¡°I¡¯ll be back to check and make sure you¡¯re¡­ adapting to your new life. So be on your best behavior.¡±


    The problem with teleportation was that it took too long to cast, thus making it unsuitable for a dramatic exit. It was hard to have the last word if I had to stand there for several minutes casting the spell, so instead I cast a simple flight spell and shot straight up into the air. The mage I¡¯d stranded in the middle of nowhere scowled up at me, no doubt thinking I couldn¡¯t see him, but then he heaved a great, weary sigh and started trudging to the road.


    However he might feel about his new life, he knew what the alternative was. He¡¯d been forced into service, but I wasn¡¯t running a prisoner of war camp. I didn¡¯t have the time or resources to secure enemies I took alive, even if I did have some empathy for his situation. It was an unwinnable game, and I¡¯d given him the best outcome I could afford.


    With that done, it was time to decide my next move. Tracking the supply train hadn¡¯t done much good. Not only was it tedious and growing more difficult with every intersection I followed its trail back through, I was almost certain its initial departure point was just one of the villages near the tower that had a teleportation platform in it. The other sites probably got their own individual trains.


    The good news was that likely meant there were only the eight facilities I¡¯d already determined the locations of. It made sense for separate supply trains to go to each one since they were all in different directions, and if they had no other stops, there probably weren¡¯t other facilities hidden in the interior of the new Ralvost Empire.


    The bad news was that I was making some assumptions to draw that conclusion and had no hard proof. I might very well end up needing to attack a facility to search for more evidence after all. It was too bad real life never left conveniently labeled folders and files on desks in suspiciously unguarded offices. Most of my research time was spent sifting through far too much information, trying to figure out what was actually important and useful. It was a good thing I could cheat with magic to sort through it all faster than a normal person.


    Regardless of what I decided to do about the facilities, I¡¯d already found enough of them to make attacking them one at a time a bad idea. Ideally, a simultaneous strike against all eight locations would eliminate them without allowing them to contact each other or the central tower. That plan relied on me being in eight places at once, however, which I couldn¡¯t actually pull off.


    That brought me back to the golem I¡¯d stashed in my phantom space. I¡¯d been so busy with everything else I¡¯d discovered that I hadn¡¯t had time to come back to it and figure out a safe way to power it up. Rewriting a golem core was a chore under the best of conditions, and they generally weren¡¯t useful enough to justify the expense, but in this case, it might be exactly what I needed.


    I didn¡¯t necessarily want anything complicated, either. If I could sneak them past any defenses in the facilities and position them near whatever Ammun was having built, then all I really needed to build was a shielded golem core set to blow, essentially a bomb with legs. At the right time, they could all charge their targets, detonate their cores, and set Ammun back by months or even years.


    There were a lot of flaws in that plan, a million ways things could go wrong, but I couldn¡¯t be everywhere at once. What I could do was mitigate the chances of them being discovered and defeated with a careful selection of spells scribed into their rune scripts. If the one I¡¯d salvaged from beneath Derro was advanced enough, I might be able to slave the other ones I¡¯d build to it and increase the amount of direct control I could exert substantially without wasting six months building infrastructure.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    There was no point in speculating on plans any further until I managed to pry open the golem I already had and see what I was working with. The whole plan hinged on it being as advanced as the mysteel pillar it was guarding, or at least somewhere in the same area.


    I finished my teleportation spell and started my journey back to my workshop.


    * * *


    After a full day of tinkering, I was forced to accept that I had no way to crack open this golem while keeping it intact. Sure, I could break it. That was easy. But getting it open without damaging it or the delicate runes inside was a different story. Maybe if I could figure out what this metal actually was, that would help.


    I knew that it was two different substances bonded together magically, that one was the base metal¡ªsome sort of enhanced, lightweight steel¡ªand that the other was almost like a coating it had been dipped in. I didn¡¯t have the first clue what spells had been required to do this, though it was almost certainly something in the transmutation and alchemy disciplines.


    I really didn¡¯t want to break this thing, but I needed access to its golem core to ensure it didn¡¯t try to immediately murder me as soon as I gave it some mana. I¡¯d hoped to gain access through the mana intake on it, but I couldn¡¯t figure out how the mechanism worked. In fact, I was almost certain it was either broken, or it needed some sort of internal input to unlock the channels. If that was the case, I was screwed because there was nothing going on inside that could possibly send that signal.


    There was only one thing left to do: crack the golem open and hope I didn¡¯t break anything beyond my ability to fix. I lacked a fully equipped golem lab to enact repairs, not to mention I¡¯d be working on someone else¡¯s designs. Paired with the fact that I¡¯d found it in an incredibly advanced facility, it was entirely likely that it¡¯d be the work of weeks just figuring out how the core worked.


    I set up the golem on a table the size of my bed and encased its arms and legs in restraining steel. For the amount of force I was about to bring to bear on its chest cavity, nothing less would suffice.


    Then I started casting spells. My first choice was a fine beam that had been superheated to the point where most metals melted when they encountered it. It was a precision spell, one that was generally reliable. If it worked, I¡¯d be able to carve open the golem¡¯s chest plate without doing more than heating up the interior. Hopefully that wouldn¡¯t damage anything.


    It didn¡¯t work.


    After that, I tried pressurized water, another powerful cutting spell with an equally draining mana cost associated with it. It would soak the interior even as it cut through, but as long as it spent the majority of its force on the chest plate itself, it probably wouldn¡¯t damage the golem core.


    That failed, too.


    Grumbling to myself, I moved on to my next idea. This one was going to be both messy and expensive. I took a chunk of mysteel and flattened it out into a disk that would fit into the palm of my hand, then sharpened it and gave it teeth like a saw. Working with mysteel using nothing but magic was a giant pain, damn near impossible for anybody else, but since I wasn¡¯t a master blacksmith with a smithy full of enchanted tools, I made do with what I had.


    Once my saw was ready, I cast a force spell to press its edge down against the golem¡¯s chest plate and set it to spinning. Mysteel being the hardest thing in the world and resistant to magic, I was confident that I¡¯d crack the golem open this attempt. Hopefully there wasn¡¯t anything important directly behind the outer shell, because I¡¯d be cutting that apart, too.


    I couldn¡¯t even see the golem through all the sparks flying everywhere. Despite the saw only being a few inches wide, it was slowly carving a line straight down the center of the golem¡¯s chest, visible only through a divination that filtered out all the light from the sparks. Both edges of the incision absolutely glowed with heat, but the mysteel saw was stronger.


    Unfortunately, I¡¯d miscalculated how damn thick the golem¡¯s frame was going to be. Not only was there no interior damage, I hadn¡¯t even cut all the way through it. The saw was going to need a second pass, which would have been a nightmare if it wasn¡¯t being held and spun by magic.


    I tapped into the mana being generated by my demesne to keep me going and sent the saw back to the top to try again, this time at half depth. With my actual eyes squeezed closed while I stood with my back to the golem, I watched through my scrying spell, trying to see if I¡¯d made it through so I could adjust the height of the blade.


    It took another half an hour and I was pretty sure I nicked at least one important mana channel on the inside of the golem that would require some sort of patch to repair, but in the end I cracked the shell. Even then, the metal was so strong that I couldn¡¯t actually pry the chest plate open, so I ended up cutting it off completely.


    I winced and tried to ignore a snapping sound that I was almost certain was a set of overlapping plates that allowed the golem to bend and turn at the waist while I was doing that. If that was the worst of the damage, I¡¯d count myself lucky.


    Finally, the chest plate was gone, the metal had cooled, and I got a chance to look at the golem core. I leaned over the table, wanting to see this with my own eyes so I could appreciate the work properly. Even with no mana left, a golem core was still a beautiful piece of work to behold.


    Thus, I was quite surprised to find what appeared to be a dead, lifeless human boy, perhaps ten years old, lying inside the golem where its core should be.

 Book 4, Chapter 20

    There was no way that body was actually human. For one thing, it was far too small to properly fit the body of the armor, if that¡¯s what the golem truly was. For another, it was perfectly preserved after what had no doubt been centuries of isolation trapped in a closet. There were plenty of spells that could do exactly that in the short term, but not for a thousand years without being refreshed, not in this manaless hellhole we were all living in.


    I got to work analyzing it immediately. My first step was to remove it from the shell, which required a bit of finesse to pull off. After that, I set the body aside on a new table and took a moment to confirm that the ¡®golem¡¯ didn¡¯t have an actual core. Weirdly, it had almost everything I¡¯d expect on the inside of a golem, things like joint articulation, mana channels, and rune constructs in all four limbs and the head. It was just missing the power source in the chest.


    One strange thing about the armor was that there were clearly mechanical parts on the inside that made me think it was designed to split open. I just hadn¡¯t been able to find a way to activate them. Perhaps if I¡¯d known the interior layout ahead of time and had managed to slip some force magic inside, I could have forced it to open without resorting to cutting through. But since neither of those things were true, I¡¯d been left with brute force.


    The body was more interesting than the shell it had been stuck in. By all appearances, it was a human corpse. Or maybe ¡®corpse¡¯ wasn¡¯t the correct term for it. It was more like a living person, except one who didn¡¯t breathe or have a heartbeat. There was no trace of rigor mortis. The skin hadn¡¯t even lost its color. It was like a body that had just died a few minutes ago, at most, easily confused for someone who was asleep.


    When I looked deeper, however, I discovered that the appearance was only skin-deep. Beneath that fleshy exterior, there were no bones or muscles or organs. No veins or arteries carried blood through the body. Instead, it looked more like a shapeshifter did. It had a rigid, spongy material ¨C strong enough to support its own weight, but soft enough that prodding the body produced a realistic response. Without the actual anatomy of a living creature, however, it would be unable to move except by magic.


    That meant there were only two options. It either grabbed mana from the environment, which didn¡¯t work anymore, or it had a power source that had long since dried up. Most likely, it did both. I moved my scan up to the corpse¡¯s chest and nodded to myself in satisfaction. Here was what I¡¯d been searching for this whole time: a golem core.


    Why this child-sized body was the golem and not the gigantic metal construct was a mystery to me. Presumably, it was some sort of versatility thing. I certainly hadn¡¯t discovered any shells specialized for various tasks, but that didn¡¯t mean they hadn¡¯t existed in the distant past. If that wasn¡¯t the reason for this unusual configuration, then I was out of guesses. It didn¡¯t really matter anyway. I didn¡¯t need the golem to fight for me. I needed it as a coordination hub to control all the other, dumber golems I was going to build.


    Perhaps unsurprisingly, the golem core was built from mysteel. Once again, I was both astounded and annoyed by whoever it was that thought doing delicate rune work on a metal famously resistant to magic was a good idea. Yes, it made it practically indestructible, which was an important trait to have for something that was both fragile and likely to see combat, but there were other options that were significantly less annoying to work with.


    However, I¡¯d spent weeks and weeks prying the secrets out of those mysteel pillars. There was no way a compact little golem core barely eight inches across was going to defeat me now that I finally had access to it. And judging by how complicated it was, I was starting to think it could do exactly what I needed.


    Rubbing my hands together eagerly, I started casting the diagnostic spells I¡¯d developed specifically to work with mysteel.


    * * *


    ¡°This is dumb,¡± I complained as I sat in a chair I¡¯d conjured up and considered my findings. ¡°Nobody is stupid enough to have built this.¡±


    It would have taken thousands of hours to construct this thing. Thousands of hours, at least. As far as I could tell, the vast, vast majority of the layers inside the golem core were devoted not to allowing it to move correctly, or to cast spells, or to do anything remotely useful. No, whatever mad genius had built this thing had invested years of effort into making something akin to a homunculus¡¯s personality matrix, except completely artificial.


    If I fed this thing enough mana, it would wake up and act like a living, breathing person with hopes and wants and fears. More than that, it definitely could and would change its shape whenever it wanted. The kid-sized body was probably something it had taken on specifically to fit inside that shell it had run out of mana inside of.


    It was a morphic golem with a fully integrated personality. And I couldn¡¯t think of a single rational reason anybody would have wanted to build it.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    The thing was essentially worthless to me. A golem I couldn¡¯t control was a golem I had no need of, and the best use I could put its mysteel core to was to use it as a chunk of scrap metal.


    And yet¡­


    What secrets were locked away in this golem¡¯s memory? Could I persuade it to give them to me? It would be a drain to keep it fully powered, but that was a good thing, in a way. That made it dependent on me if it wanted to stay awake, which gave me a handle to control it. It wasn¡¯t as good as a mindless golem that would obey my every order, but it was a start.


    I needed to secure the golem before I brought it to life, but that was a bit more difficult to do when it could reform its body¡¯s shape at will. Simple restraints would do nothing to hinder it. I needed a box, completely sealed and magically reinforced to stand against the strength of a giant.


    That, I could make. The only question was where to put it.


    I opted to do things right and carved out a whole new room just for this golem. It was deep underground, fifty miles north of the valley, lined with enchanted steel, and without any kind of exit. I put the golem¡¯s body in there and flooded the room with enough mana to awaken a dormant core a hundred times over, then settled back to watch through my magic.


    It took about thirty seconds for the golem¡¯s eyes to flicker. When it woke, it did so immediately, jumping to its feet and peering about in the darkness. I hadn¡¯t bothered to provide a light, having seen its rune scripts. I knew it didn¡¯t need one.


    ¡°H-hello?¡± it called out in a voice surprisingly deep for its child-like appearance. ¡°Is anyone out there?¡±


    ¡°Hello,¡± I said. An audible illusion carried my voice to its prison. ¡°I imagine you¡¯re a bit confused.¡±


    ¡°I am,¡± the golem told me. ¡°Who are you, and what have you done with me?¡±


    ¡°I am a mage. I discovered you deep underground, sealed inside a suit of armor and without a drop of mana running through your core. After a thorough examination, I concluded that you would react unpredictably if awoken and decided to take some¡­ precautions.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s understandable,¡± the golem said. It was a bit shaky, but that was a perfectly natural reaction to this situation. It ¨C no, ¡®he¡¯ was more appropriate for now. Depending on his shapeshifting proclivities, it was difficult to refer to something that looked and acted human now that he was awake as an ¡®it.¡¯ He was taking the situation pretty well, despite having a full matrix of runes designed to mimic a human personality.


    ¡°What are you going to do with me?¡± the golem asked.


    ¡°I haven¡¯t decided,¡± I told him honestly. ¡°You are a¡­ very unusual creation. I¡¯m sure you already know that. Unfortunately, you also take quite a bit of mana just to keep going, and that¡¯s not a cost I can justify just as charity.¡±


    ¡°I would not ask you to,¡± the golem said politely. ¡°If you could just let me go and point me towards Dherevo, I will make my own way.¡±


    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t last thirty minutes,¡± I told him bluntly. ¡°You have been¡­ asleep¡­ for a long time and many, many things have changed. There is no mana left in this world. At my best guess, you¡¯ve been gone for about a thousand years.¡±


    ¡°A t-t-thousand years?¡± the golem stuttered. ¡°No. No, that¡¯s impossible. I have work to do. Professor Velder needs me. Please, let me go. I need to go.¡±


    I considered for a moment. The golem didn¡¯t appear dangerous, but looks could be deceiving. I hadn¡¯t been lying when I said I¡¯d thoroughly investigated his core. Almost all of it was devoted to his personality matrix, but that did not mean he was defenseless. There were rune constructs for several dozen spells built into his body, though they were mostly benign.


    It did seem clear that he¡¯d been built as a researcher¡¯s aide, but I couldn¡¯t ignore the framework I¡¯d pulled him out of. That thing was a weapon, one that I was convinced this golem kid could use simply by hopping into it. His own core would interact with the frame, granting him a hundred new offensive spells. The fact that it was missing a chest plate would make him vulnerable, yes, but he would still be a threat.


    Fortunately, the shell was still sitting safely in my workshop, nowhere near the golem¡¯s humanoid body. Right now, I was in no danger. Much as I doubted the golem would be able to find a big enough source of mana before he ran out of his own were I to let him go, it wasn¡¯t a risk I was willing to take ¨C not without some sort of reason.


    ¡°I think you¡¯ve skipped over the part where I said there¡¯s no mana out there,¡± I projected through my magic. ¡°I know how much it takes to keep you up and functioning. You¡¯re not going to find that. You¡¯re going to walk a mile or two and then fall over dead again.¡±


    ¡°Please, sir mage. I won¡¯t trouble you. Thank you for waking me up. I¡¯d like to be on my way now.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re rather single-minded, aren¡¯t you? Do you think that I¡¯m lying to you?¡±


    ¡°Of course not. I wouldn¡¯t dare cast such aspersions on the character of a man I¡¯ve only just met.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s remarkably na?ve of you. Plenty of people are liars who are just out for themselves.¡±


    ¡°Are you?¡± the golem asked quietly.


    ¡°A liar? Not generally. Out for myself? Most certainly.¡±


    ¡°Then why did you wake me up at all?¡± he demanded.


    ¡°Curiosity. I suspect you were there the day the moon fell from the sky. You probably remember it like it just happened, don¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°I do, yes. Is that what you want? A story from me?¡±


    ¡°To start,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t know who created you. I don¡¯t know why. I can tell you were some sort of assistant. The spell selection you¡¯ve been inscribed with gives that away.¡±


    ¡°A family,¡± the golem said. ¡°The professor, he got¡­ lonely.¡±


    And crazy, from the sounds of it. What kind of nutjob went and built himself a kid?


    ¡°I¡¯m not your family,¡± I said. ¡°But let me tell you a little bit about what I¡¯m trying to accomplish, what I think you can do to help, and what I¡¯m willing to offer you in exchange.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve got me at a disadvantage, sir mage,¡± the golem said. ¡°I don¡¯t even know your name.¡±


    ¡°Keiran,¡± I told him.


    His eyes flickered at that, but whatever he was thinking, he didn¡¯t comment. ¡°Mine is Querit,¡± was all he said. Then he settled back to listen, and I began to explain what he¡¯d missed.

 Book 4, Chapter 21

    I summoned Querit out of his cage after a few minutes of discussion. It was obvious he was having trouble processing some of what I¡¯d told him, and I thought an in-person meeting in an area completely devoid of mana might help speed things up. Not coincidentally, I didn¡¯t want him to have access to my demesne just yet.


    Instead, I flew a hundred miles northeast of the valley and summoned him there. We stood together on a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean, a mountainous backdrop behind us. When he appeared, he was as naked as he¡¯d been when I found him, a fact that didn¡¯t seem to bother the golem at all.


    ¡°You¡­ were not exaggerating the lack of mana in the region,¡± Querit said, looking around. ¡°There¡¯s practically nothing, just some hints of it deep into the mountains.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m surprised you can feel it from so far away,¡± I said. Unless I missed my guess, he was sensing the streams of mana running from the various guideposts the brakvaw had built all over the world to guide their young on their journeys. ¡°That¡¯s not natural ambient mana, however. It¡¯s part of a network a group of monstrous birds developed to help them navigate.¡±


    ¡°And Dherevo? Or no, you said it was called Derro now,¡± Querit said. ¡°Is it in this situation, too?¡±


    ¡°Dry as a bone,¡± I confirmed. ¡°Humanity lost almost all of its magical traditions, even the basic stuff like how to ignite a core. The whole world is full of dims struggling to survive with only the mana their dormant cores can produce.¡±


    ¡°It all sounds so unbelievable, especially with you standing in front of me. You are obviously at least a master mage at stage five, possibly higher.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not from this time,¡± I said. ¡°Kind of like you, actually. My knowledge of magic predates the cataclysm that broke the world.¡±


    ¡°That sounds like a fascinating story,¡± Querit said. ¡°You aren¡¯t a golem like me, I¡¯m sure of that. You don¡¯t appear to be an undead, either. Some sort of stasis spell?¡±


    ¡°Reincarnation. I created a framework of soul invocations to carry my memories intact through the process.¡±


    ¡°Remarkable!¡± Querit¡¯s eyes gleamed in excitement. ¡°No one¡¯s ever done that before. So then, when you say that you¡¯re Keiran, you mean you¡¯re that Keiran? Keiran of the Nightvale?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± I said with a soft smile. A moment later, it turned bitter. ¡°Not that there¡¯s a Nightvale anymore.¡±


    ¡°This¡­ cataclysm you spoke of,¡± the golem said. ¡°I believe this may have been the event that prompted Professor Velder to direct me into a war frame to guard the primary pylon. The royal seers were going crazy, warning of some great calamity that was to befall the city, something unstoppable. They couldn¡¯t be sure what it was, only that it would strike like lightning and that we would not be able to stop it.¡±


    ¡°One of the moons broke. Amodir. Pieces of it rained down from the sky. I recovered a chunk from Derro. I can¡¯t even imagine how big it must have been before it broke down to the size it is today.¡±


    Querit stared at me in disbelief, once again making me marvel at the amount of effort that had gone into making the golem as human-like as possible. If I didn¡¯t know he was a construct of magical engineering, I would have believed he was a person. Of course, the effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that he was still naked. Apparently, shame wasn¡¯t part of his personality matrix.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to fall asleep again,¡± the golem finally said after a minute of silence. ¡°But how can I even exist in a world without mana? I¡¯d be forever dependent on someone else just to keep my mind active. Maybe¡­ Maybe it¡¯s for the best if I simply¡­ stop.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t get all fatalistic on me just yet,¡± I said. ¡°We haven¡¯t gotten to the part of the conversation where we talk about my goals and how I think you can help.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the point?¡± Querit asked. ¡°I know how much mana my core takes to keep running. It would take far more mana than any single person could spare. Even a stage four mage would struggle to keep me supplied. Please, I mean no offense, Keiran of the Nightvale, but this is hopeless.¡±


    ¡°About that,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re a research golem, right? You were created to be someone¡¯s assistant. That was my read on your core.¡±


    ¡°I am,¡± he said. ¡°But why does that matter?¡±


    I pulled back the shield around my mana core enough to let Querit see me cast a simple light spell. The orb formed, floating next to me, as perfect as always. His brow furrowed as he considered the magic. ¡°What did you do? The mana¡­¡±


    ¡°I call this lossless casting. It¡¯s a technique I picked up a few years ago that allows me to cycle almost all of the mana I use back into my core instead of being released into the environment or back to the Astral Realm. I haven¡¯t been able to adapt it to enchantments, inscriptions, or alchemy yet. Too many other things have occupied my time. But if I had a competent researcher I could pass the workload off to¡­¡±Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    I left unsaid that master spells were still proving tricky to adapt to this style as well. I¡¯d had some minor successes, but not enough to allow me to freely cast my full repertoire without concern for cost. Even as I advanced my core stage after stage, I was still rationing my reserves. Perhaps if Querit was willing to work for me, I might see about a way to create an artificial mana resonance, as well. He came from a time of magical enlightenment with a thousand years of progress stacked over what the world had known at the end of my life. He might already know.


    That would come later, though. For now, dangling lossless casting in front of him would be enough. If he could learn it and figure out how to make it work with his own golem core, he would essentially never run out of mana. That was a danger in its own right, especially if someone like Ammun discovered the technique and then further adapted it to support his own undead existence. As long as I could keep the knowledge contained for my own use, however, it would be a huge boost to my capabilities.


    Querit wasn¡¯t stupid. He understood what I was baiting him with immediately. This task was directly relevant to his own wellbeing, meaning he¡¯d be extremely motivated to get results. I¡¯d keep him functioning until then. If our working relationship was good enough, perhaps I could keep him on for other purposes. If not, well, I¡¯d get something important out of it, and he¡¯d go back to Derro or whatever. As long as he didn¡¯t end up in Ammun¡¯s clutches, I didn¡¯t much care what he did.


    Truthfully, I didn¡¯t want a research assistant. I preferred to do it myself. But I had other problems to deal with and not enough hours in the day. The looming threat of whatever the old lich was working on needed to be addressed, and golem crafting was far too advanced to delegate to a mage of Tetrin¡¯s skill. Though, perhaps Querit could help with that, too. I¡¯d need to question him about his capabilities soon.


    ¡°I understand,¡± the golem said. ¡°I¡¯m willing to work with you for the time being. I do have a request, before we get started.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°More mana. I assumed this form to use the war frame, and my mana reserves are too low for me to change my shape into something more familiar.¡±


    ¡°That I think I can help with,¡± I said with a laugh. I pulled a storage crystal out of my phantom space and tossed it to him.


    He examined it briefly, nodded to me, and pulled the mana out of it. A second later, he shot up two feet in height and his limbs thickened with muscle. His hair remained the same, short, brown, and wavy, but his cheekbones grew more pronounced and eyes were deeper set. It gave him a handsome brooding loner appearance.


    Clothes also sprouted from his bare flesh, or at least something that looked like clothing. It was actually the same inorganic material the rest of him was made of, just modified in texture and weight to mimic cloth. The outfit was an unusual one, not at all like the loose, flowing clothes the desert-dwellers of the island normally wore.


    Instead, it had wide pants that tapered down at the ankle, soft slippers, and a sash looped around his waist. His chest and arms were bare and well-muscled, but a thin, blue scarf hung from his neck, thrown back so that it trailed down behind him.


    ¡°That was the style back when you were last active?¡± I asked as I eyed up the outfit.


    ¡°One of them, yes. I suppose people dress more like you these days.¡±


    ¡°Some of them. The poorer ones. The family I was reborn into were farmers and I don¡¯t have an eye for high fashion. Maybe you can bring the style back,¡± I said, though I didn¡¯t have the faintest clue why anyone would want to wear a scarf in this heat. Maybe if he¡¯d wrapped it over his head to keep the sun off, it would have made sense.


    The slippers didn¡¯t seem practical to me, either, but I really couldn¡¯t be bothered to pretend to care about that. Querit could wear whatever he wanted, so long as he brought me results. If he wanted to spend his spare time researching modern fashion senses, I wished him all the best.


    Shrugging his shoulders and stretching his newly lengthened limbs, the morphic golem said, ¡°Do you have a lab set up for me to work in? Oh, and were you able to recover any of my other frames?¡±


    ¡°I have a few unoccupied workshops. I¡¯m sure one could be refurbished to meet your needs. I¡¯ve also got some documentation on the lossless technique I¡¯ve compiled that you should review before we begin lessons. And no, I only found the one frame you were in.¡±


    But I¡¯d be going back to look around for others.


    ¡°That sounds perfect,¡± Querit said. ¡°I¡¯ll be up to speed and ready to assist in no time. Pardon me if I¡¯m overstepping, but what will you be doing in the meantime? You mentioned you had some goals of your own you were attempting to achieve.¡±


    ¡°Yes, that,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s a bit of a story. Essentially, one of my former apprentices built a tower that digs all the way through Manoch to reach the world core. He ruptured the mysteel shell and killed off the core itself. That¡¯s what¡¯s caused all the mana to dry up. I need to pry his dusty, bony ass out of his tower and tear it down so I can get access to the core and shell to repair them.¡±


    Querit¡¯s eyed widened slightly as he thought that over. ¡°It¡¯s¡­ certainly an ambitious plan. I take it from your explanation that your apprentice transitioned to lichhood as a form of immortality.¡±


    ¡°Correct.¡±


    ¡°How did he manage to keep himself going without any mana?¡± the golem asked. ¡°Perhaps if we could replicate that-¡±


    ¡°No. He just woke up a few years ago. He¡¯s been gone practically since he broke things, locked up in his phylactery in a sealed box to wait out what he thought was going to be a short-term drought. Things would have been a lot simpler if he¡¯d never woken back up.¡±


    That was at least partially my fault. Without my help, the guy who¡¯d unlocked Ammun¡¯s box never would have gotten anywhere near it. The lich probably would have slept on decades more, probably only waking back up after I¡¯d fixed the problems he¡¯d caused.


    ¡°Oh. I see then. His method of keeping himself alive is irrelevant to what you¡¯re trying to achieve,¡± Querit said. ¡°And I assume you¡¯ll be taking an active hand in foiling his plans, thrashing his minions, and breaking his toys?¡±


    I grinned. ¡°Something like that, yes.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 22

    I set Querit up in a set of rooms near the outer edges of my demesne, a place where there was enough ambient mana that he wouldn¡¯t drain himself dry just existing, but where he wouldn¡¯t be anywhere near my own workshops or the mysteel pillars I¡¯d pilfered from his homeland and hadn¡¯t gotten around to telling him about. We had a brief discussion about his accommodations; he looked human, but golems didn¡¯t generally need things like beds or toilets. Once he was happy with the workshop, I furnished him with a set of books covering what had happened in the last thousand years since he was gone.


    Next to those were the many books I¡¯d put together myself, the start of a series designed to take someone from core ignition through novice-tier spells and all the way up into intermediate in every discipline. I¡¯d included field guides for identifying useful alchemical reagents and understanding the composition of various forms of inorganic matter common to the area. There was even a slim volume on how to advance a core to stage two, though that had admittedly been written specifically for Senica. A broader version covering different ways to approach the problem would be needed for wide distribution later.


    I left the golem with a scrying mirror to reach out to me if he needed something, then teleported back to Derro¡¯s underground. I¡¯d explored it thoroughly and located the mysteel pillars, but Querit had been hidden behind a panel that had only opened when I¡¯d gotten too close, presumably because it would allow him to jump out and ambush me. It was surprising that it had even had enough mana left in it to do that much, and there was no telling how many other hidden panels I¡¯d missed.


    If possible, I¡¯d like to find his research frame to speed up his work, but the golem¡¯s instructions on where he¡¯d left it were based on a city that had been half-destroyed a thousand years ago, then buried in the sand and left to crumble. Where I¡¯d been told to go hunting wasn¡¯t a place I¡¯d found in my first pass, which almost certainly meant I¡¯d be digging again to find what I was looking for.


    Those damn worms were going to be all over me the entire time.


    Before I even got that far, the divination tied into my own scrying mirror started tugging at my mind. I pulled the mirror out of my phantom space, expecting to see Querit on the other end. Instead, I found my sister staring at me. ¡°Senica?¡± I asked. ¡°Is something wrong?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°I just¡­ When are you coming back home again?¡±


    ¡°Probably not for a few more weeks at least, unless there¡¯s some reason I need to?¡±


    ¡°Well. It¡¯s just that I kind of need your help with a thing. But it¡¯s not important. I can wait.¡±


    I¡¯d never seen her act this nervous about anything. If I wasn¡¯t seeing it now, I would have said it just wasn¡¯t part of Senica¡¯s personality. She was brash, overconfident, overeager, and very much still immature, not that I blamed a teenager for any of that, but never nervous or hesitant.


    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± I asked.


    ¡°You know how you paid me in mana to take care of your greenhouses?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, so?¡±


    ¡°Well, I used it to finish making my lattice.¡±


    I froze in place. Senica had been working on the project for a few years now, but it was slow going and required a lot of experimentation. I hadn¡¯t really encouraged her to sink a lot of resources into it because the size of the mana core expanded as people grew. Until she was an adult, any lattice she built would need to be modified later on. I hadn¡¯t followed that route, of course, but I also hadn¡¯t needed to do any experimentation. I¡¯d long since perfected a modular design prior to my reincarnation.


    ¡°You¡¯re sure? It¡¯s ready?¡±


    ¡°I think so,¡± she said hesitantly. ¡°Probably. I was kind of hoping to get you to look at it first and maybe help me set it up.¡±


    ¡°Of course I¡¯ll come help with that,¡± I said. ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t I?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s just, you¡¯re busy saving the world now and it¡¯s really not a big deal.¡±


    ¡°Senica, it¡¯s a big deal. You¡¯re my sister. Are you ready now?¡±


    ¡°Uh¡­ Yes?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll be there in a minute,¡± I told her.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I cut the flow of mana going into the mirror and shoved it back into my storage space while I scrambled to the teleportation platform I¡¯d set up down here. I¡¯d had no idea she¡¯d been spending so much time and energy working on her lattice, but I supposed it made sense. After experiencing the mana saturation outside of Ammun¡¯s tower back when it was still the Sanctum of Light, she¡¯d wanted to increase her mana generation. Advancing her core was the only way to do that.


    I skipped the town¡¯s platform and teleported directly to the beacon in my room, then found my sister sitting in the garden with our baby brother. He was crawling between the plants, sticking things in his mouth that weren¡¯t especially edible, mostly leaves. I raised an eyebrow when I saw it, but Senica just shrugged and said, ¡°Mom said you used to do the same thing and you turned out fine.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­ a bit of a different situation,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t think Nailu¡¯s going to awaken the memories from his past life.¡±


    ¡°Spirts save us if he does. One of you is enough.¡±


    I squinted at her and said, ¡°Didn¡¯t you ask me to come do you a favor?¡±


    Senica was saved from answering by Nailu picking up a rock and throwing it at us. I casually caught it with some telekinesis, then grabbed a few more and set them to spinning in the air to his delighted giggles.


    ¡°He¡¯ll be walking any day now,¡± she said fondly.


    ¡°So soon?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s over a year old already.¡±


    ¡°I suppose so. I don¡¯t have a lot of experience with babies.¡±


    ¡°Something you don¡¯t know?¡± Senica gasped. ¡°Impossible.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t need to snark so hard. I am well aware of my shortcomings.¡± I turned my attention from Nailu to my sister and peered into her mana core. She¡¯d shrouded it as thoroughly as she could, which was significantly better than most mages, but a shroud wasn¡¯t as good as actually shielding a core from detection. It was just easier by a wide margin.


    It meant I could see into her core without much issue, and it didn¡¯t take me long to scan all of the individual lattice pieces she had floating around. Each one was a form of hardened mana, one that would adhere to the inner wall of her core in a specific pattern designed to help increase her core¡¯s contact with the Astral Realm. If she did it right, she could expect her mana to generate at up to three times her previous speeds.


    ¡°You¡¯re aware that you¡¯re going to need to maintain this for the next half a decade or so, aren¡¯t you?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I know,¡± she said, following the shift in our conversation easily. ¡°I¡¯ve got plans for that.¡±


    ¡°Did you map out how it¡¯s all going to fit together?¡±


    ¡°Right here.¡± Senica pulled out a thick sheet of paper from her pocket and handed it to me. I unfolded it and skimmed the contents. Each piece fit together like an elaborate puzzle, a sort of pseudo-rune construct inside her core. One by one, I matched them against the pieces hovering inside her, waiting for her to will them all into place.


    ¡°This¡­ looks good,¡± I said finally.


    Tension drained out of her as I said that. ¡°That¡¯s a relief. I was afraid I was going to have to dissolve parts of it and rebuild them. I¡¯m low on mana now.¡±


    ¡°No, I think you¡¯re ready to assemble the lattice. Did you want to start now?¡±


    ¡°Do you have time to watch and make sure I do it right?¡± she asked.


    ¡°For a few hours, yes. This isn¡¯t really the best environment to work in, though, especially not with a baby needing your supervision.¡±


    She followed my eyes back to Nailu, who¡¯d grabbed hold of the spinning pebbles and was now being lifted several inches in the air before he lost his grip and fell onto his butt, only to unsteadily rise back to his feet to try again a few seconds later. He was determined, I¡¯d give him that much.


    ¡°Mom and Dad won¡¯t be home until dinner,¡± she said.


    ¡°Oh, what are they doing?¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t ask too many questions. Hopefully not making another baby.¡±


    I snorted. ¡°Just get to work. I¡¯ll keep Nailu out of trouble.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure?¡±


    ¡°I think I can handle it, Senica.¡±


    Although, truth be told, I couldn¡¯t remember the last time I¡¯d taken care of a child. I¡¯d been an only child in my past life and far too focused on survival to worry about anyone else. This time around, I¡¯d been the younger sibling until Nailu had come along, and I¡¯d been too busy with my own life to spend much time with him.


    There was also the fact that most of my fondness for my family came from the Gravin part of me. I¡¯d been almost three years old before awakening my former memories, and his love for our parents and our sister had strongly influenced my own feelings for them. That wasn¡¯t the case with Nailu. If I was going to love my little brother, that would come entirely from me.


    I wasn¡¯t sure I was capable of it. It was hard to relate to people, to empathize with their petty problems, to not feel superior in every way to them. I was in a world surrounded by strangers, even the strongest of whom were essentially children to me. There was literally only one person from my past life still walking around, and he was doing his best to kill me. Although, in his defense, I¡¯d tried to kill him first.


    As far as Nailu was concerned, I didn¡¯t feel the connection to him that I did to the rest of my family. I frowned down at him as he caught me looking his way and started laughing. Maybe today would be a good opportunity to spend some time with this baby and see if I could encourage those feelings to grow, or if I really was nothing but a black-hearted bastard incapable of doing more than assessing every person around me for what they were worth and treating every interaction with cold calculations.


    Maybe it was only the Gravin part of me buried deep down that allowed me to care even for my own family. If I¡¯d awakened immediately like I was supposed to instead of taking years to gather the mana needed to trigger my soul invocations, I probably wouldn¡¯t even have that.


    ¡°Alright,¡± I said, cutting that line of thought short. ¡°Go ahead and start putting the pieces together. I¡¯ll keep an eye on you and let you know if I see anything go wrong.¡±


    At my side, my sister closed her eyes and started manipulating the mana inside her core.

 Book 4, Chapter 23

    Nailu clung to my leg and stared up at me with big, blue eyes. He wanted something, but I wasn¡¯t sure what it was. I was afraid it was for me to pick him up or play with him, neither of which I wanted to do, but I didn¡¯t know.


    Would our parents be upset if I cast a mind reading spell on him? Would it even work on a child with such an undeveloped mind? I glanced at Senica, who was sitting with her eyes closed, mentally shifting around the pieces of her lattice as she tried to line everything up. She was too busy to advise me with this, and I¡¯d told her I could handle it.


    That meant I¡¯d have to muddle through it on my own. To do that, I needed more information. Divinations were the obvious answer, and it wasn¡¯t like I was going to hurt my little brother. I was just going to find out what he wanted and determine whether it was appropriate to give it to him.


    Besides, I couldn¡¯t deny being a little bit curious about what I¡¯d find. It had never occurred to me to study the mind of a baby, an oversight in my own preparations for reincarnation. I¡¯d simply taken for granted that my consciousness would overwrite whatever fumbling thoughts my new body might have. Admittedly, that was more or less what had happened, so it wasn¡¯t like I was exactly wrong, but I hadn¡¯t taken any steps to mitigate the potential disaster.


    How foolish and overconfident I¡¯d been in my own abilities. So many things had gone wrong in my reincarnation plan, and it was only looking back on it now that I realized just how much my mind had begun to degrade at the end of my previous life. When I truly went over how I¡¯d spent the last few decades, the decisions I¡¯d made and the contingencies I¡¯d put in place, I realized how poorly I¡¯d actually prepared for my reincarnation. I was lucky it had worked at all.


    Nailu¡¯s mind was both simple and strange. He had some thoughts, but they weren¡¯t structured in a way that made it easy to read them. Instead, he operated mostly on impulses and desires. Right now, he wanted me to pick him up. Why did he want that? Because he liked being picked up and so he could get a good look at my face.


    That was simple enough. I wrapped him in a cocoon of telekinesis to support his weight and brought him up to eye level while he giggled as happiness surged through his brain. That desire to look at my face immediately morphed into a desire to touch my face, which I was less inclined to play along with.


    So far, he seemed like a typical baby to me. It wasn¡¯t that I was expecting anything else, but I wondered what he¡¯d be like in the future, and if I could see any signs of it now. Senica, for example, was a gifted apprentice, especially considering her humble origins. She wasn¡¯t the best I¡¯d ever seen, but she was in the upper echelons of students.


    Nailu didn¡¯t exhibit anything that made me think he¡¯d follow in her footsteps. Maybe it would just take a few more years to develop, or maybe it never would. While I studied the stream of information passing through his mind, the focus of which changed by the second, I tried to tease out anything that might indicate an aptitude for magic. Letting a bit of mana out into the air around him didn¡¯t seem to catch his attention in any way, but I couldn¡¯t determine if he didn¡¯t notice it or if he saw and just didn¡¯t care.


    While I experimented with my little brother, I also watched over Senica¡¯s work. A lattice could be put together in as little as a few minutes if the mage doing it was experienced in that sort of work, but Senica wasn¡¯t. She was going to take an hour, assuming she made no mistakes, which was still a fraction of the time it had taken me to put together my lattice the first time around. And hers was going to be at least twice as efficient as mine had been, too.


    It probably wouldn¡¯t come close to touching the lattice I¡¯d used in this life, however. I¡¯d done something unconventional and made mine into a sort of spider web that stretched across the inside of my core instead of merely a mosaic of treated mana clinging to the walls. I hadn¡¯t ever let Senica see it, nor had I hinted at the possibility. It was an insane level of over-optimization for a stage two core that would have required her to put in decades of mana control exercises in order to pull it off.


    Nailu got bored of me soon enough and went back to exploring the garden. He had a whole corner that had been separated for his use, which contained nothing but sand, a few wooden toys, and a trowel that I was almost positive had been Mother¡¯s when I was a baby. He was more than happy to wield it now, however inexpert his technique might be, and soon, sand was flying through the air.


    I briefly considered the logistics of making him some sort of minor shield ward to protect him when he almost accidentally smacked himself in the face with the blade of his trowel, but decided to just manually keep him from gouging an eye out for the time being. I¡¯d talk to my parents about it later.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Around the same time Senica hit the halfway point, my nose crinkled as an unpleasant aroma hit it and I caught a spike of discomfort in Nailu¡¯s mind. I glanced over to see him looking back at me with pure, innocent, guileless eyes, as if he had no clue what had caused the problem. But I knew, and so did he. He could pretend otherwise, but I was in his head. He knew what he¡¯d done, and now he wanted me to fix it for him.


    ¡°Lucky for you,¡± I told the baby, ¡°I happen to know a spell for this.¡±


    Well, it wasn¡¯t exactly for this, but any mage who¡¯d spent any amount of time fighting quickly sought out and mastered spells designed to pull blood and guts out of clothing and hair. The best spells could do it instantly, leaving no stains or residue behind, without even taking the soiled garments off. The current predicament wasn¡¯t exactly a mess of monster viscera, but it was close enough.


    A few seconds later, my little brother was clean and fresh again, something that amused and confused him in equal amounts. Not being given to copious amounts of introspection, he quickly forgot the experience and crawled back off to play.


    * * *


    I¡¯d overestimated Senica¡¯s abilities slightly. It actually took her an hour and a half to finish, but she did it on her first attempt. The last piece slotted into place and the whole lattice lit up in my senses. She gasped and her eyes snapped open.


    ¡°I did it?¡± she said aloud, though not to me. ¡°I¡­ I think I did. I did it!¡±


    ¡°You are officially the first mage I¡¯ve tutored to reach stage two, to the best of my knowledge. To be considered a mage in the old world, you had to advance your core and be able to cast intermediate spells in at least three disciplines,¡± I said.


    ¡°I can do that,¡± Senica interrupted.


    ¡°I know. That¡¯s why I said it. Do you mind?¡±


    ¡°Sorry.¡±


    I took a breath, then continued. ¡°That you made it this far with the handicap of having so little mana compared to the apprentices of my time is a testament to your intelligence and your dedication. And perhaps you also had a really good teacher.¡±


    I pretended not to see her roll her eyes. She¡¯d worked hard to get to this point. ¡°Unfortunately, there is no organization to recognize your achievement. There is no school to graduate from. But in my eyes, you are a mage. Congratulations.¡±


    ¡°Thanks, Gravin,¡± she said. Her voice was solemn, but her eyes twinkled with restrained mirth.


    ¡°However,¡± I said, raising the volume of my voice slightly. ¡°Do not think for a moment that you¡¯re anywhere near the end of your path. I have many, many more spells left to teach you, and you have years of mana controlling exercises ahead. That having been said, it¡¯s time for me to take a step back in guiding you. You¡¯ve learned enough to pursue your own interests. I¡¯ll always be here to advise you when you want, but from now on, you¡¯ll decide what to study and how to do it.¡±


    Senica waited a moment to make sure I was done, then said, ¡°I don¡¯t know what to say. I didn¡¯t really expect you to just cut me loose like that.¡±


    I gave her a wolfish grin and said, ¡°Oh, I¡¯m not letting you go just yet. We¡¯re riding the same wagon; I¡¯m just giving you the reins. I still expect you to work hard.¡±


    If anything, I thought my sister looked a bit relieved. Perhaps she¡¯d thought I was abandoning her for a moment. If so, she¡¯d quickly banished such a foolish idea. She was family, and that meant she was stuck with me. I expected her to live at minimum another four or five centuries, and to do that, she¡¯d need to get vastly better at magic.


    Those were milestones far off in the future, though. Today, I wanted to recognize her progress in an official capacity. She was only fourteen and already, she¡¯d met the technical qualifications to be considered a full mage. Whether any magical institution would have actually passed her was questionable, as they generally demanded a wider breadth of spells mastered before they considered an apprentice to have graduated, but all things considered, she¡¯d done extraordinarily well.


    ¡°So, what would you like to do next?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Hmm.¡± She tapped a finger against her lips. ¡°What do I want to do? What¡­ do¡­ I¡­ want?¡±


    After a moment of her silently pondering, I leaned back and let myself fall into a net of telekinesis to keep me from falling over. Nailu, seeing me floating in the air, crawled over and pulled himself upright using my dangling leg. Then he started making grabbing motions with his hands. I lifted him to float in the air next to me and we both watched Senica think.


    ¡°Take your time,¡± I told her.


    ¡°It¡¯s an important decision. I need to consider my options from every angle. Maybe¡­ more fire magic.¡±


    I stared up at the clouds drifting by and kept my mouth shut.


    ¡°On the other hand, I¡¯ve got a lot of weak spots that could be filled in,¡± she said. ¡°Maybe that would be better.¡±


    I ignored her musings and kept my eyes on the clouds. Next to me, Nailu gurgled and flipped himself upside down. He blinked at me in surprise, perhaps uncertain why I¡¯d failed to keep him upright as he squirmed.


    ¡°Maybe I should just take a vacation for a bit. It¡¯s a long run; I¡¯ve got to pace myself.¡±


    When she saw that she wasn¡¯t going to get a response out of me, she dropped the act and turned to face me directly. I glanced over and raised an eyebrow. ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°What do you think?¡±


    ¡°I think¡­ You don¡¯t need to decide right now,¡± I said. ¡°Look, this is an important day. I¡¯m proud of you. But you¡¯ve still got centuries of life left if you continue to learn more magecraft. It¡¯s fine if you take a day or two to think through your options. It¡¯s fine if you make a decision and then change your mind a week later. It¡¯s fine if you devote yourself to solidifying your current skill set before you start learning something new.¡±


    Senica huffed out a sigh. ¡°Gravin, I still want your advice.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± I asked. ¡°Seriously, this is the part of your career as a mage where you get some independence.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure.¡±


    ¡°Well¡­ Let¡¯s see¡­¡±

 Not a Chapter, Amazon Announcement

    Hello!


    Book 3 is officially available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0CW1JW41T</a>


    The audiobook has been delayed by a few weeks and should be out sometime in October. As of the time I''m typing this, I don''t have the exact day, yet. I''ll update this with the date/link when I have one.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Thank you for your support for for reading this far.


    Behold: the cover art!

 Book 4, Chapter 24

    Querit had been my guest for a week now while I attended other business. During that time, he¡¯d been perfectly reasonable in all ways but one, and that was that he was the most mana-hungry creature I¡¯d ever seen. His golem core drank mana at a rate of three or more master-tier spells a day, more than I could even have produced at stage two or three. Fortunately, stage six didn¡¯t have such feeble limitations. It was costing me dearly to host the golem, but not to the point of ruin.


    I spent that time trying to find more frames for him to use, specifically his research frame. The whole setup made a kind of roundabout sense to me when I thought about it, but it still seemed inefficient to build a single golem that could take on multiple different roles when it would have been just as easy to create multiple golems instead. This Professor Velder person must have been desperately lonely to build himself a companion.


    His work, unfortunately, was buried deep, deep underground. My efforts to unearth anything for Querit¡¯s use had been completely unsuccessful, and though he never complained about it, Querit made me very aware that he was limited in his efforts without the tools his research frame gave him.


    ¡°That¡¯s not to say I¡¯m not making progress!¡± he assured me one day when we were discussing it. ¡°This method of cycling mana back into the core is rather ingenious. I¡¯ve managed to apply the technique to a few beginner spells already, and it¡¯s only a matter of time until I can refine my abilities.¡±


    ¡°So quickly?¡± It had taken me much longer. Perhaps he just had a better teacher than I did. Surely, that was the case. I definitely wasn¡¯t competing with a sapient research golem.


    ¡°From what I understand of how things work, I have a few ideas on why you¡¯ve been having difficulty adapting it to free-standing spells, but I think I might be able to make it work. I just need to progress my own skills enough to begin testing,¡± he said. He was so earnest and eager about it that I just shook my head and laughed.


    ¡°I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll get it figured out in no time,¡± I said. ¡°In the meantime, I¡¯ll try digging through the next section today. I¡¯m almost positive someone collected and moved your frames somewhere else. They might not even be in the city anymore.¡±


    I was afraid I¡¯d be asking Keeper to do more research for me. Worse, I was afraid the answer she¡¯d find was that they were all locked up in the Hierophant¡¯s treasury, covered in dust and their true purpose long forgotten. Anything I was interested in was automatically valuable to those people, even if they had no idea what it did themselves. Just the fact that I wanted it made it a point of leverage to be used against me, which was one of the big reasons I did my best not to associate with them.


    Stealing the frames was always an option, but I didn¡¯t even know if they existed. I could be breaking into the royal treasury for nothing. It wouldn¡¯t hurt to take a look around, I supposed. It wasn¡¯t like their wards could stop me from at least scrying in there to see if the frames had been collected and stored away hundreds and hundreds of years ago.


    It did require a quick teleportation out in that direction. Derro was far enough away from my demesne that it would present an extra layer of difficulty to pierce the wards remotely, so I spent the mana to go address them in person. Luckily for me, no one other than Keeper, Zara, and a few palace officials I¡¯d had to deal with when I¡¯d repaid my mana debt to the city really knew what I looked like anymore, so it was practically impossible to run into anyone who¡¯d want some of my attention here.


    At least, that was the plan.


    I wasn¡¯t three seconds off the platform before I heard someone say, ¡°Hey! Wait!¡±


    Since I was the only person there¡ªand since I could see the woman pointing at me through one of my area scrying spells, I stopped and turned around. I honestly couldn¡¯t place her appearance, but a quick brush of her mind filled me in. She worked for the Actalus family and had seen me when Keeper and I had gone there to try to negotiate access to their catacombs. Right. I¡¯d forgotten about that meeting.


    I regarded her as politely as I could manage and waited for her to cross the plaza from where she¡¯d been sitting in the shade. ¡°You¡¯re him,¡± she said. ¡°The archmage.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m afraid you¡¯ve mistaken me for someone else,¡± I told her.


    ¡°No I didn¡¯t. I remember you.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re mistaken, and even if you weren¡¯t, would it really be a good idea to accost someone with that much power in the middle of the street?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not¡­ accosting.¡±


    ¡°Then what are you doing?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I just wanted to say hi to someone I recognized.¡±


    ¡°Very well. You¡¯ve done so.¡± I turned to leave.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    ¡°Wait! Wait.¡±


    ¡°I really am very busy,¡± I told the girl while I internally debated the merits of flying out of this conversation. It would draw eyes to me, but it might be worth it.


    ¡°Look, I¡¯m sorry. I don¡¯t mean to be a pest-¡±


    ¡°And yet you¡¯re doing it so well.¡±


    ¡°-but Lady Actalus has people watching all over the city to track your movements,¡± the girl finished in a rush.


    I paused again and frowned. ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°She doesn¡¯t share her reasons with the servants,¡± the girl said.


    ¡°That¡¯s not what I meant. Why are you telling me this?¡±


    ¡°You spared my sister a few years ago.¡±


    I had? It was possible, I supposed. I hadn¡¯t gone out of my way to kill too many people outside the Wolf Pack itself. The Enforcers suffered the most damage from my rampage, but considering that they¡¯d been working directly for the Wolf pack, I¡¯d considered them enemy combatants. I couldn¡¯t think of any I¡¯d spared, though.


    ¡°Her name is Lyxana,¡± the girl continued. ¡°She worked for Blue Rat¡¯s crew.¡±


    I vaguely remembered someone of that name. I¡¯d only met her once after cutting through the street gang to find their leader. She¡¯d been working security at the building he¡¯d been using as a base to try to hunt me down at Roenark Actalus¡¯s orders. She¡¯d been personable and friendly, and had made a few judgment calls that had kept a lot of other people from dying by attempting to ambush me.


    ¡°She was smart enough to stay out of trouble,¡± I said. ¡°I didn¡¯t spare her.¡±


    ¡°So you are Keiran!¡± the woman said, her finger pointed at me like she¡¯d managed to trick me into confessing my guilt.


    ¡°Thanks for the warning,¡± I said. ¡°Consider us even if you¡¯d like. I need to get going.¡±


    ¡°But what about the people looking for you?¡±


    I shrugged. ¡°I won¡¯t be here long. If they¡¯re smart, they¡¯ll stay away from me.¡±


    ¡°Please don¡¯t hurt them,¡± the girl said. ¡°We don¡¯t have a choice. The nobles made us do this.¡±


    I waited a moment to be sure she was done, then firmly said, ¡°Thanks again. Goodbye.¡±


    * * *


    Keeper probably knew what was going on. Despite how much of a hermit she was, she valued knowledge too much not to have an informant network. I¡¯d never proven it, but I suspected she¡¯d run the Wolf Pack¡¯s spy network under the moniker ¡®Sibilant,¡¯ a persona that hadn¡¯t even existed despite many people being completely convinced they¡¯d dealt with the man personally. There was no reason to think that she¡¯d cut those contacts loose just because the Wolf Pack had broken apart. If there was one thing Keeper would freely spend resources on, it was acquiring new knowledge.


    If it became an issue, I¡¯d talk to her about it. For now, I wanted to be in and out of town as quickly as possible. If the frames were in the royal vaults and I had to steal them, it¡¯d be better to do so at a time when no one realized I was around. I planned on doing nothing but some light spying today.


    Cloaking myself in invisibility and lifting up into the air, I skimmed across the rooftops until I reached the Hierophant¡¯s palace. They¡¯d long since repaired the damage I¡¯d done breaking in years ago, but with the loss of mana as a currency, they¡¯d had to downgrade their wards.


    That was good for me. It made my job easier. I was able to perch on top of one of the watchtowers on the outer wall, two oblivious guards not ten feet beneath my feet, while I probed the remaining wards for weaknesses.


    I didn¡¯t know exactly where the treasury was, but I felt it was a safe bet that it¡¯d be somewhere the wards still covered. I could cross the royal suites off my list immediately. I¡¯d already mapped those out years ago. The prison was also warded, oddly enough. I supposed with the Enforcers¡¯ collective fall from grace once the Wolf Pack lost control of the city, the Hierophant had opted to house his criminals elsewhere. I wouldn¡¯t have thought it would be in his own palace, however.


    Maybe they were important prisoners. Either way, the dungeon was another place I didn¡¯t expect to find treasure vaults. I stretched my scrying spells out in multiple directions, hoping to run across something through sheer overwhelming magic, but I quickly grew tangled up in multiple wards and was forced to narrow my scope back down.


    Then I found it, barely a thousand feet from the Hierophant¡¯s personal quarters. The hallway was patrolled, and the door was manned by four different palace guards in front. It was locked and warded, and when my divinations squirmed their way through, I found a golem construct on the inside in the shape of a decorative stone statue. It depicted a four-armed man, each hand holding a curving sword, but the magic imbued into it would allow it to come to life and attack anyone who lacked proper clearance.


    That included me, of course. But the wards would need to detect me first. I wasn¡¯t even physically there, so I wasn¡¯t worried about triggering that particular defense. My magic glided past the construct and into the main vault, where I took a quick glance around.


    There were a few lock boxes and chests full of the city¡¯s new currency, though not as many as I would have expected to find in the treasury of its ruler. Perhaps they were still making the notes. Its very strength, that it wasn¡¯t replicable with easy transmutation magic, also made it difficult to produce large quantities of it.


    Other than that, there were a few stands with various odds and ends. I saw examples of inscribed objects, nothing terribly complex, and a few enchanted pieces that had somehow survived intact despite being in storage for what I could only assume was many, many years. Those weren¡¯t what I was interested in.


    After that came the magical armaments, including a set of draw stone shields I¡¯d had the misfortune to have to fight against years ago. Those had been a giant pain to deal with then, though these days I had so many options available to me that it would be trivially easy to work around the defense.


    Beyond those was a heaping pile of leech stones, the former currency of the city. Those had fallen out of favor once the knowledge on how to ignite mana cores had started spreading and mana became much more freely available. Someone had been thorough about cleaning every last bit of mana out of the stones before they¡¯d been tossed into bins and left to collect dust.


    And that was it. There were plenty of things of dubious value, but not the things I was looking for. It had been a longshot, anyway. The chances of someone recognizing the armors for what they were and stowing them away were almost none in this day and age.


    That was when I realized that I had also fallen into the same trap. I¡¯d already seen a frame. It just wasn¡¯t in the treasury. It was standing on a pedestal, held upright and used as a bit of decoration in the corner of one of the dining rooms, polished to a shine and otherwise ignored.


    At least it¡¯d be easy to steal.

 Book 4, Chapter 25

    Three hours later, I¡¯d finally finished checking every single piece of decorative armor I could find. The good news was that none of the ones I was planning to steal were secure in any way. The bad news was that there were only three of them, and of those three, one was missing the bottom half. That one actually wasn¡¯t on display, but was in some workshop attached to the library. Someone had made copies of all the runes they could see and was apparently in the midst of trying to decipher their meaning.


    I kind of felt bad about disrupting their research. Maybe I¡¯d find out who it was and give them some help later. For the moment, however, I had a greater need for these pieces than anyone else. Or rather, Querit did. I wasn¡¯t going to give him any of them until I determined what their capabilities were, but I was hoping that at least one would be his research frame. I was having a hard time picturing what it would even look like, as I couldn¡¯t imagine working in a seven-foot-tall suit of armor would be easy.


    Once I¡¯d successfully extracted my ill-gotten gains from the clutches of Derro¡¯s royalty, I teleported myself back to my demesne and got to work on getting a look inside. The busted one was easy enough. It was basically a metal jacket with attached gloves at this point, but I suspected it wouldn¡¯t work at all. It had been sheared at the waist, cutting the runes there apart and breaking the structure. It was possible that I could repair it with Querit¡¯s help, but I was going to go over the rest of it before I let him anywhere near it.


    The other two were more of a challenge. I already knew I could cut them open with a mysteel saw, but getting them unlocked without damaging them might just be impossible. Querit had confirmed that there was no way to manually open one of his combat frames from the outside, especially not if there was no mana on the interior. Giving an enemy a way to eject him from his frame was obviously a terrible idea, so it hadn¡¯t been built that way. His other frames, things like research, alchemy, metal shaping, and travel, those could be opened from the outside.


    Of course, I was making an assumption that these suits of armor were combat frames. It made sense to me; they were suits of armor, after all. Why else make them that way? There had to be a way to open them from the outside if no one was inside though. Otherwise, these were sealed closed and worthless, and I couldn¡¯t see someone spending a thousand hours engraving runes all over the inside of them only to fail to add a way to actually let Querit inside.


    After a bit of tinkering, I found it. The mana intake was exactly the same as the one he¡¯d been wearing, except this time when I ran mana through it, it actually had a reaction. Unfortunately, it wasn¡¯t the reaction I¡¯d hoped for. I pulled out my scrying mirror and reached out to the one I¡¯d mounted in the golem¡¯s workshop. A moment later, his face appeared.


    ¡°Yes?¡± he asked.


    ¡°I recovered a few of your frames from Derro,¡± I said.


    ¡°You did? Amazing. I was starting to suspect it was a lost cause. Which ones did you find?¡±


    ¡°Suits of armor. They were set up around the palace as decorations on stands,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m trying to open them, but the mana intake is rejecting me. I¡¯m thinking there¡¯s a trick to key it in.¡±


    ¡°Oh, yes. It¡¯s designed to accept mana that¡¯s been passed through my core. I can come over and unlock them for you if you¡¯d like.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s okay. I thought it would be something like that. I just wanted to confirm it before I wasted time duplicating the wrong key.¡±


    ¡°You¡­ You¡¯re going to duplicate my mana signature?¡±


    ¡°Sure. Why not?¡± It was artificial, anyway. If he¡¯d been a human, it would have been a challenge, but I¡¯d already done a full workup on his golem core. I just needed to fabricate the specific rune construct in his core that was responsible for molding his outgoing mana.


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t it be easier if I just¡­?¡±


    I waved away his question. ¡°It¡¯s fine. I¡¯m sorry for interrupting your work. Thanks for the help.¡±


    Querit wasn¡¯t convinced of my sincerity, which was good. He shouldn¡¯t be. He knew why I was keeping him away from these frames, but if he was hurt by my lack of trust, he didn¡¯t show it. ¡°If you¡¯re sure,¡± he said slowly. ¡°Let me know if you need anything else.¡±


    Then the mirror went blank again and I stowed it back in my phantom space. It took me a moment to locate a chunk of metal and transmute its shape. Slowly, the runes resolved themselves out of the steel, raised up instead of carved. It was more difficult to shape that way, but that was how the golem core had done this particular section, so that¡¯s how I duplicated it.


    When it was finished, I gave it a once over before channeling my mana through it. The runes started glowing softly for a moment, and the mana that came back out was distinctly different from mine. These kinds of devices only altered the shape for a short period of time, but that was all I needed.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    The intake accepted the altered mana and, with a soft scraping sound, previously invisible seams appeared all over. The whole thing unfolded, still upright and somehow staying balanced. I followed the mana as it circulated through the metal and noted the runes on the feet drawing a bit more power than I would have expected. No doubt they were some sort of balancing magic, useful for fighting and for getting dressed.


    Now we were getting somewhere. The interior of this frame was just as densely packed as the one I¡¯d cut Querit out of, but I quickly determined the magic was completely different. That frame had focused on strength, containment, and defense. It was a brawler, big and brawny, made to take a hit and dish one back out.


    This was different. It was a skirmisher, light and fast, with flight and scouting capabilities. I could easily picture Querit buzzing an enemy camp, raking lines of tents with fire beams before disappearing into the sky behind a cloak of invisibility. I could also see him getting hold of this suit and fleeing the valley, leaving me with nothing for my troubles and out a great deal of mana.


    Of course, if he did that, he¡¯d almost certainly shut back down within a few days. No matter how much extra mana his core was stockpiling, there was no way he¡¯d last a week. As long as that was true, I held a strong measure of leverage over him. The irony that I had him working on a way to solve his own mana issues was not lost on me.


    The second full suit of armor was similar to the skirmisher, but even more heavily devoted to scouting and hiding. It also had magic designed to do extremely high amounts of damage to soft targets without drawing a lot of attention. In short, it was an assassin¡¯s kit. That was kind of hard to square with Querit¡¯s personality, and it forced me to consider again that I knew very, very little about the golem.


    Finally, the partial suit of armor was too mangled to get a clear picture of its purpose. The chest piece was most of what was intact, and those were the same across all the different frames. The runes there were what allowed Querit to interface with the magic to begin with, to move the frames as extensions of his own body, and to draw mana both in and out of the suit. What little was left in the arms and head made me suspect that its primary purpose might be some sort of spell defense, possible for a small area, but I could only speculate with over half the frame gone.


    None of these were tools I wanted to give my reluctant new ally right now. However, they did give me enough examples of how the frames were set up that I just might be able to make one of my own, something with no combat capabilities but which could nonetheless help him to help me. I did still need someone to help me control the eight bombing golems I was going to build to sabotage Ammun¡¯s project.


    I started drafting my preliminary plans. The interface part of the rune structure was practically flawless, so there was very little to change there, but since Querit wouldn¡¯t actually be fighting, it didn¡¯t need to be an overly large suit of armor. Perhaps some sort of vest or coat would be sufficient. It wasn¡¯t like the golem actually needed his arms or legs to control the frames. Those were nothing but morphic simulated flesh anyway.


    I grabbed another slab of metal out of my phantom space and started reshaping it. I wanted it thin enough to be flexible, which required a bit of alloying, but not so thin that it would distort the runes once I¡¯d added them.


    Once I was satisfied with my base material, I took it over to my crucible and got to work. I had plenty of room and a few thousand runes to add.


    * * *


    Querit looked blankly at the vest I¡¯d presented him. ¡°What is it?¡± he finally asked.


    ¡°Let¡¯s call it a controller frame,¡± I said. ¡°I made it myself.¡±


    His expression brightened and he reached out to take it. ¡°You made this?¡±


    The golem studied the rune structures intently. ¡°Linkage runes are properly aligned. Mana capacity is a bit lower than usual, but it¡¯s a lot smaller, so it should work. Lots of divination constructs¡­ Huh, mostly based around mind linking. This¡­¡±


    He stopped and looked back at me, surprised. ¡°I just said it was a controller frame,¡± I told him.


    ¡°I¡¯m¡­ not really comfortable with something like this,¡± he said, offering it back to me.


    ¡°I think you¡¯ve got the wrong idea. It¡¯s not for using on people. It¡¯s to control other golems ¨C non-sapient ones, of course.¡±


    ¡°Oh! Yes, I see it now. That¡¯s very clever. I guess my question would have to be why you made this. What purpose does it serve?¡±


    ¡°You remember how I told you about my former apprentice causing the cataclysm that broke the world core?¡±


    ¡°Yes, the lich. Quite irresponsible of him.¡±


    ¡°And how he¡¯s awake and active again?¡±


    ¡°Ah, I see now. You¡¯re recruiting me to fight against him.¡±


    ¡°Something like that. He¡¯s building something. I haven¡¯t had a chance to figure out what it is, yet, but I¡¯m reasonably confident that destroying it would be a good idea. I¡¯m going to build some golems to infiltrate the various facilities he¡¯s constructing. Their job will be to perform a simultaneous strike on all eight locations so that none of them can warn the others or get reinforcements.¡±


    ¡°But surely you don¡¯t need my help to control them,¡± Querit objected.


    ¡°Well, there are two problems. First, the facilities are so far apart that I don¡¯t think I could keep all the golems in range of the control connection without being in the very center, which would put me in Ammun¡¯s demesne. Second, the facilities I personally investigated are very, very well defended. An extra mind helping me control the golems will drastically increase my chances of getting them in undetected.¡±


    Querit was silent for a long moment. Then his expression firmed and he nodded. ¡°I owe you my life. Every day, the only reason I can still walk around is because of you. And I think I have no moral objections to stopping an archmage whose actions resulted in indirectly destroying my entire world from further compounding his errors. I will help you.¡±


    ¡°Good to hear,¡± I said, not that I¡¯d ever doubted. Still, I was glad I hadn¡¯t had to coerce him into cooperating. ¡°Now, let¡¯s talk golem designs.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 26

    I had far too much to do, and not nearly enough time to get it all done. I¡¯d made my modifications to the mysteel pillars I¡¯d relocated from beneath Derro, but I still hadn¡¯t gotten a chance to test them. With Querit here, my demesne¡¯s mana reserves were under immense strain, and I wasn¡¯t eager to tax them any further.


    I also needed to confirm the location of Ammun¡¯s remaining facilities and, if possible, make sure there weren¡¯t any other locations outside the ring I¡¯d already discovered. I needed to finish seeding Ralvost with teleportation and scrying beacons, and hide them well enough to keep the legion of diviners constantly scrying the entire empire from locating them. I had eight golems to build, all of which needed to be sturdy enough to survive a fight with mages capable of casting advanced spells.


    There were other ongoing concerns, like the hunters searching for me, constructing an artificial mana resonance point, and locating Querit¡¯s remaining frames. At least Querit himself was handling his introduction into lossless casting with minimal supervision. I only wished I could say the same for Senica and Juby. They were doing their best, but neither were druids.


    I mentally added figuring out where Hyago had gotten off to back to my list again. That was a task that continued to get pushed down as more urgent problems kept cropping up, but one I wanted to take care of soon. My sister¡¯s reagents weren¡¯t really of the quality that I¡¯d grown accustomed to, and I just didn¡¯t have time to educate her in proper greenhouse tending.


    Ideally, I¡¯d make the golems while Querit figured out how to sustain himself indefinitely without needing far more mana than he could reasonably carry around with him. Then I¡¯d seed the beacons so as to reduce the risk of discovery before use, and then we¡¯d go ruin all of Ammun¡¯s plans. Unfortunately, I had no way to keep track of their progress building whatever it was they were building thousands of miles away, and for all I knew, the mages there could be slotting the very last piece into place at this very moment.


    So I shuffled my plans around and teleported myself several times to return to Ralvost, where I immediately shrouded myself in every reasonable divination countermeasure I could think of and flew to the facility I¡¯d already explored once. Thankfully, the hole in its defenses hadn¡¯t been fixed. I infiltrated it a second time in air elemental form and made my way to the main floor.


    The device the mages here were building floated in the same place it had been last time I¡¯d seen it, but it was significantly larger now. Either a second caravan had come through to drop off materials while I was busy elsewhere, or they¡¯d had a much larger store of parts on-site than I¡¯d expected and had been very busy indeed.


    Neither possibility was good for me. This thing was practically completed, as far as I could tell. Without that stage five master mage overseeing the work this time, I was able to more freely examine it, which finally allowed me to confirm the answer to another question I¡¯d been wondering about: why hadn¡¯t Ammun just used portals to bring the supplies here? It couldn¡¯t only be a security concern.


    The simple answer was that he couldn¡¯t ¨C not for this cargo. Even in its incomplete form, the device was emitting some spatial warping properties, and the enchantments on them were so sensitive that being teleported or passed through a portal would twist them to uselessness. I marked that down as a potential method to wrecking Ammun¡¯s plans, though just corrupting the enchantments would be a temporary setback at best.


    If that was the case, then I was missing something about how they got transported down from the warehouses up on the surface. I hadn¡¯t seen it in action before, only skimmed part of the process from someone else¡¯s memory, but now I was guessing it wasn¡¯t a teleportation effect after all. Instead, it had to be some sort of massive version of phantasmal step literally pulling the wagons through the ground. That might actually be even more expensive than a teleportation spell to cover an area that size.


    While I was there, I took some time to map out the site¡¯s layout so I could determine the best way to sneak a golem in. I¡¯d be making something small, no larger than a cat, but I¡¯d need a different way inside in order to make it work. That meant getting a better handle on the wards and defenses, but with my new understanding of how supplies were making it in, I had a few ideas on where to exploit weaknesses in the wards. I just needed to do some testing to confirm them.


    I made my way over to the unloading bay, ironically not that far from where I¡¯d originally entered the facility. As I¡¯d suspected, the wards were thinner here. They were still present, of course, and if I attempted to pass through, they¡¯d sound the alarm, though I didn¡¯t think they¡¯d stop me from exiting. However, it was obvious this spot was meant to be exempted on command, that it hadn¡¯t been possible for them to figure out the exact composition of everything that would enter the unloading bay, which meant that my original plan to sneak in with the supplies would have actually worked so long as I could have avoided being spotted.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    It didn¡¯t give me an easy way into the facility, but it did give me a point of attack. The whole ward structure was designed to not need this portion. If something were to disrupt it in such a way that the rest of the ward couldn¡¯t detect it, nothing else would feel the effect. In short, I could be aggressive about pushing through it, and as long as the damage was kept localized and I avoided any sort of tattler wards, I could punch through undetected.


    As long as the rest of the facilities were set up the same way, I¡¯d found my infiltration point.


    * * *


    ¡°You¡¯re in a good mood,¡± Querit commented through the scrying mirror during our daily check in.


    ¡°I¡¯ve been doing some reconnaissance and finalizing some plans,¡± I said. ¡°I just need to build the golems and get us both out there. Everything else is ready to go.¡±


    ¡°Then soon you¡¯ll just be waiting on me,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I don¡¯t have an estimate on how long it¡¯ll take me to adapt lossless mana usage to powering my golem core.¡±


    ¡°If we have to, I¡¯ll eat the loss in mana and load you with a huge storage crystal. It¡¯s better than delaying.¡±


    ¡°That could work for a temporary outing,¡± Querit conceded, but I could tell he was uneasy about it. If something went wrong, he¡¯d be stranded out there until I could rescue him, and he wasn¡¯t sure that I¡¯d do that. His usefulness would curtail sharply once we¡¯d completed this mission.


    ¡°Even if there¡¯s a problem, you¡¯ll be in the best possible place to handle it. Ralvost is the only place on the planet with ambient mana. It might be too thin to keep you fully operational outside of the tower itself, but you should maintain limited capabilities if the storage crystal is completely drained.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a relief to hear, but I would still prefer not to be stranded in the demesne of a hostile lich.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s an entirely reasonable stance to take,¡± I agreed. ¡°I could put together a recall device for you, something to pull you back here if there¡¯s an emergency.¡±


    Such safeguards weren¡¯t foolproof, of course. If Ammun confronted Querit directly, it was entirely possible that he¡¯d recognize the device and take steps to block it from working. But the offer did dispel the golem¡¯s fears, or at least alleviate them.


    ¡°I¡¯ll keep working on adapting lossless casting while you create the golems,¡± he said. ¡°How are you planning on having them work?¡±


    ¡°They¡¯ll be small and spider-like,¡± I said. ¡°The internal power reservoir is only going to be good for an hour¡¯s operation time, less with invisibility and attention-deflecting spells active, but that should be more than enough time to get them into position. I¡¯m thinking a spatial annihilation field is the best way to attack. The machines we¡¯re targeting are vulnerable to spatial warping, so even if the spell fails to completely destroy them, it should at least corrupt the enchantments enough that Ammun will need to have the parts sent back to him to be reworked.¡±


    ¡°Have you mapped out the local wards for possible interference?¡±


    ¡°Partially. I focused most heavily on the area around the machines and the infiltration point. There are some spatial suppression fields near the machines, but I¡¯m confident I can overpower them with a quick burst using a dual-layer explosion to disrupt the wards before releasing the spatial annihilation field.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a lot of mana,¡± Querit said. ¡°And you want to do this for eight different locations? Are you sure that¡¯s necessary?¡±


    ¡°No, but I¡¯d rather waste the mana than let Ammun pull off whatever he¡¯s trying to do.¡±


    ¡°You hate the man that much?¡±


    I frowned and looked up from the outer shell plate I was shaping. ¡°I don¡¯t hate Ammun,¡± I said. ¡°Where¡¯d you get that idea?¡±


    ¡°Oh. I just thought¡­ You¡¯re enemies, and all¡­¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re only enemies because he¡¯s standing in the way of me fixing the damage he did to the world core,¡± I said. ¡°Which I get. I need to remove his tower, which would likely result in his almost immediate demise without that source of mana. I don¡¯t begrudge him trying to save his own existence.¡±


    ¡°Why not try to reach a compromise? Perhaps there¡¯s some way to fix the world core that doesn¡¯t involve breaking apart his demesne?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°He already tried, for decades. He¡¯d rather let the world exist as a wasteland so long as he survives. We both know it¡¯s not possible. He¡¯s an obstacle to my goal. That¡¯s why I¡¯m going to destroy him.¡±


    Querit shook his head and laughed. ¡°I don¡¯t think I could be so casual about confronting what is probably the most powerful creature on the planet.¡±


    ¡°I beat him in a fight once already back when I was stage five. I have no doubt I¡¯ll do it again.¡± I paused. ¡°Though I¡¯ll admit, I haven¡¯t made much progress in finding a mana resonance point. They probably don¡¯t exist anymore.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll make an artificial one?¡± Querit asked.


    ¡°As soon as I have time to figure out how,¡± I said. I gestured to the golem parts I was shaping. ¡°There¡¯s always something else keeping me busy.¡±


    The golem regarded me silently for a second, then said, ¡°I know how.¡±


    I whipped around to face the mirror fully. ¡°What was that?¡±


    ¡°I know how to manufacture a mana resonance point. It¡¯s not easy, and definitely not cheap, but I can show you how to do it.¡±


    For a golem that consumed several master-tier spell¡¯s worth of mana a day, if he was saying it wasn¡¯t cheap, the expenditure had to be massive. Even if his method wasn¡¯t the most efficient, it would probably still cost less in the long run if I didn¡¯t have to waste a bunch of resources experimenting.


    ¡°And¡­ what would you want in return?¡± I asked.


    ¡°That¡¯s simple,¡± he said. ¡°I understand why you¡¯re doing all this ¨C the caution, the secrets. It¡¯s smart. It¡¯s safe. It keeps you insulated from me and cuts down the chances of me causing you any problems. That¡¯s why you¡¯ve got three combat frames stowed away where I can¡¯t access them.¡±


    ¡°And you want them back,¡± I reasoned.


    ¡°No. It¡¯s not that. What I want is for you to trust me. I¡¯m not a schemer. I¡¯m not a master manipulator. I¡¯m a research assistant, and even though I¡¯m not human, my core is complicated enough that I feel like one. I don¡¯t want to be isolated and kept in a box for the rest of my life, wondering if and when I¡¯ll be starved back into shutting down.


    ¡°Keiran, I want to help you. I want your help, too. I want us to be friends, or at least colleagues.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 27

    Querit and I walked through the petrified forest together. He brushed a hand across the stone trunks, still textured like bark years later. ¡°Amazing,¡± he said.


    ¡°I can¡¯t take all the credit. I figured out how to make it work, but it was someone else¡¯s idea initially.¡±


    ¡°Merging living stone and draw stone together to create¡­¡± Querit trailed off and gestured around at the forest. ¡°All of this, in a matter of only a few years. This is a momentous achievement.¡±


    ¡°Yes, well, that¡¯s not what we¡¯re here to talk about. You wanted some trust.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m glad you decided I was worth investing in,¡± the golem said. ¡°I know that we don¡¯t know each other all that well yet, but I won¡¯t let you down.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not out anything yet,¡± I said, only partially lying. I was out a lot of mana already, but it would be worth it if Querit could help me stop Ammun¡¯s plan.


    ¡°We both know that¡¯s not true. But let¡¯s talk about something else. You¡¯re trying to reach stage seven, but you need to find a mana resonance point.¡±


    ¡°Yes, except I don¡¯t think there are any left in the world.¡±


    ¡°From what you¡¯ve told me, I would say that¡¯s probably a good guess,¡± Querit said. ¡°It¡¯s hard to have a resonance without any mana in the first place. A place like this could form one naturally, but it would take decades at least, and not at all as long as you¡¯re claiming it as your demesne.¡±


    ¡°Could we fabricate an artificial one here?¡± I asked.


    ¡°It shouldn¡¯t be an issue to have it inside your demesne. If anything, it might be better.¡± The golem looked thoughtful as he considered that idea. ¡°Greater control over the mana would eliminate the need for at least a few assistants.¡±


    ¡°Finding capable assistants could be a problem. I don¡¯t know a single mage past stage two who isn¡¯t hostile toward me.¡±


    Though perhaps I could rope a few brakvaw into helping. They might not be technically proficient in advanced- or master-tier spells, but they were used to handling huge amounts of mana for extended time frames. Then again, other than Grandfather ¨C who couldn¡¯t leave Eyrie Peak ¨C only their elders were good at any sort of spell work. And they all hated me, mostly because I¡¯d killed a bunch of them.


    ¡°It may not be an issue at all,¡± Querit said. ¡°You¡¯ll see once I draw up the spell form. It¡¯s¡­ a lot for one person, but for an archmage¡­ I think we could probably manage it with just the two of us.¡±


    ¡°Walk me through the principles. I don¡¯t think anyone ever researched artificial mana resonance points back in my previous life. We just had some well-documented naturally formed ones to use when needed, which wasn¡¯t all that often.¡±


    ¡°No, I can¡¯t imagine too many mages reached stage seven, even during the Age of Wonders. Or, I guess, before the Age of Wonders.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re making me feel old,¡± I groused.


    ¡°You are old.¡±


    ¡°Older, then.¡±


    Querit snorted and stopped walking. ¡°I guess I¡¯m also old now. A thousand years. It still doesn¡¯t feel real.¡±


    ¡°Took me a while to wrap my head around it, too. I didn¡¯t want to believe it at first. How could my magic have gone so wrong? But the proof just kept mounting up until it became inescapable.¡±


    ¡°I wonder how many other people have been cast adrift through time,¡± he mused.


    ¡°There¡¯s Ammun,¡± I pointed out. ¡°He managed to live for half a millennium, transformed himself into a lich for another half, then went into hibernation for another thousand years after that.¡±


    ¡°Given what he¡¯s responsible for, I don¡¯t think I could conduct myself in a civil manner if we ever came face to face.¡±


    ¡°I would pay to see that fight,¡± I said.


    ¡°Give me my mage-breaker frame, and it¡¯d be worth the money.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think we¡¯re likely to find too many more. You¡¯ll be building your next one from scratch.¡±


    Querit nodded glumly. ¡°So much has been lost.¡±


    We started walking again, not heading in any particular direction, just touring the valley. Petrifying the forest had destroyed the ecosystem here. Without anything green and alive, all of the animals had quickly abandoned the place, which left things eerily quiet. It was wholly depressing when I compared it to my memories of the Night Vale, but I was centuries away from recreating a place like that, if I ever did.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    While we walked, Querit outlined the broad strokes of how he planned to create an artificial mana resonance point. Or rather, he outlined how he planned to have me do it. Essentially, it involved a series of highly technical divinations designed specifically to peer into the Astral Realm to get a template of the mana pattern there followed by a massive group ritual to massage the ambient mana back in our world into the same shape.


    It sounded simple, in theory, but the spells Querit was describing weren¡¯t any I¡¯d ever heard of. They didn¡¯t feel like they were beyond my reach, individually, but there was a reason dozens of mages combined their efforts to perform the ritual as the golem described it. There was no way I¡¯d be able to do it all by myself. Querit could help, but it wouldn¡¯t be nearly enough.


    ¡°We¡¯re going to have to fabricate a lot of tools in a very short time span,¡± I said.


    ¡°Yes. I have the scripts recorded in my core. I¡¯ll show you how to make the blanks. We can imprint the specific patterns on them once we have the template designed.¡±


    ¡°The way you described it, I suspect each mage used no more than one or two pieces to anchor the part of the template they were responsible for maintaining. We¡¯re talking about fifty or more, all of which need to be calibrated fast enough to perform the ritual before the Astral Realm shifts and renders the template inviable.¡±


    ¡°Which, if we¡¯re lucky, we¡¯ll have at most six hours to complete,¡± Querit said. ¡°And that¡¯s including the time for the ritual itself.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think we can make it work ¨C not like this. We¡¯d need to find some way to lock down the section of the Astral Realm to give us time to work.¡±


    ¡°An enchantment on the Astral Realm itself?¡± Querit asked. ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s possible.¡±


    ¡°No, it is. I¡¯ve done it before, but not on this scale. Come with me.¡±


    ¡°Where are we going?¡±


    ¡°To my workshop,¡± I said. ¡°This is going to require some careful planning.¡±


    * * *


    As tempting as it was to push everything else to the side to focus on my own advancement to stage seven, I couldn¡¯t afford to ignore Ammun any longer than I had to. While Querit worked on adapting the designs for a ritual that required three dozen people to something that could be performed by two, I finished putting the rest of the golems together.


    There were eight of them, as I¡¯d planned. Each one was heavily enchanted for both stealth and ward penetration. I¡¯d put the majority of my effort into those enchantments, all of which were wrapped around a single pulsing black stone installed in each of the lizard-golems¡¯ chest cavities. A thin plate of copper was placed overtop of that.


    ¡°Done,¡± I announced.


    Querit looked up from the desk I¡¯d provided him and examined my handiwork. ¡°You¡¯re sure the range on these is going to be enough? It¡¯s a lot of miles.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure. Put the resonance project on hold for the night so you can get some practice operating four golems at once. I need to finish charging the spatial distortion fields before tonight.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re going in so soon?¡±


    ¡°No reason to wait,¡± I told him. ¡°The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get back to other things.¡±


    ¡°Right. It just feels sudden, is all.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve delayed long enough setting everything up,¡± I said. ¡°Too many distractions. This is a priority and it needs to get done immediately.¡±


    ¡°Got it. I¡¯ll go grab the controller frame and get it ready. When are we leaving?¡±


    ¡°Two hours, at most. I¡¯ll have the spells fully powered in the next twenty minutes, then I¡¯ve got to check over the beacons I¡¯ve placed and make sure nothing¡¯s changed since my last scouting session.¡±


    * * *


    It took a full hour to get everything into position, mostly because I had to teleport each golem to an individual location and confirm with Querit that everything was working on his end. We had a set of small scrying mirrors to keep in contact, but we were limited to essential communications only. I didn¡¯t think Ammun¡¯s divination squad would catch us unless we got spectacularly unlucky, but this was no time to take unnecessary risks.


    We both started piloting our assigned golems remotely, slipping them through the wards protecting the facilities with slow caution. This was going to be what was simultaneously the least difficult and most risky part. Either I¡¯d designed the ward-cracking enchantments correctly, or I hadn¡¯t. There¡¯d been no way to field test that part without running the risk of alerting the facility, so we were about to find out if I¡¯d pulled it off.


    I held my breath as the golem slipped through the unloading bay wards and into the facility. It passed through the ground, courtesy of a modified phantasmal step spell that definitely wouldn¡¯t have worked if the golem had been flesh and blood. As it was, it put a ton of strain on its metal shell, so much so that I was briefly concerned I¡¯d underestimated the distance the spell would have to travel. Three of my golems made it through with nothing but some stress fractures, but the fourth had a leg joint get mangled partway down.


    It could still function on three legs, thankfully. The mission wasn¡¯t sunk just yet. I¡¯d just need to focus more heavily on that one to ensure it made it to its destination undetected. Fortunately, the layouts of all eight facilities were identical. At this point, we only needed to worry about the randomness of the human element. It hadn¡¯t been feasible to spy on eight different locations to try to find a pattern that would allow us to sneak the bomb golems through, so we¡¯d be improvising our approach.


    I got two golems in without any issues. They clung to the top of the machines, nestled into crannies between the unfinished sections and waiting for my final order to deliver their payload. The other two had more problems, one because it was damaged and moving slower, and the other because when I got to the assembly room, there were eight people in there working to process some new parts that had apparently just come in.


    ¡°All four in place,¡± Querit¡¯s voice whispered out from the mirror sitting next to me.


    ¡°Two in, two to go,¡± I replied. ¡°One damaged during infiltration. One encountered a late shift working on the machine.¡±


    ¡°Understood. Standing by.¡±


    I worked in tense silence for another few minutes, eventually guiding the damaged golem to where I needed it to be. For the fourth and final one, however, I couldn¡¯t get a good opening. Too many people were coming in and out of the room or were working on the machine directly. In the end, I decided to have the golem scale the walls and crawl across the ceiling under its camouflaging magic. Once it was in position directly overtop of the machine, I readied the other three to drop their spatial bombs.


    ¡°Ready to go,¡± I said into the mirror.


    ¡°Confirmed. Ready as well,¡± Querit said back.


    ¡°Going in three¡­ two¡­ one.¡±


    I ordered the golem to drop when I reached two, and all four to blow as soon as I said one. At precisely the same time, Querit¡¯s panicked voice came to me. ¡°Someone¡¯s here! They know where I am!¡±


    ¡°Blow the golems and trigger your recall,¡± I ordered harshly as my own golems ripped apart Ammun¡¯s machines.


    There was no reply through the mirror.

 Book 4, Chapter 28

    The connection to Querit¡¯s scrying mirror snapped abruptly, meaning he¡¯d either cut the mana feed or the mirror itself had been broken. I quickly cast my own scrying spell on the area I¡¯d dropped him in, some seventy miles southwest of Ammun¡¯s tower in a thick copse of trees.


    The first thing I saw was a bunch of corpses all over the place ¨C not people, but monsters of various flavors. A pack of them must have stumbled upon him, but Querit had killed them without even bothering to mention it. In all likelihood, though, that was what had drawn the diviners¡¯ attention to him. As fast as we¡¯d been, it hadn¡¯t been quick enough to complete the job before they caught up to him.


    What I didn¡¯t see was the golem himself or any of his attackers. Either they¡¯d struck like lightning and captured him, or the fight had moved away from the area. Neither would surprise me, and finding out wasn¡¯t my priority. I needed to determine if the golems that Querit was in charge of had successfully detonated Ammun¡¯s machines before anything else, but they were too far out of range to check.


    Three minutes later, my teleportation spell took hold and whisked me away to Querit¡¯s operation site. I spent a few precious seconds sweeping the nearby area and spotted Querit fighting a group of five mages about a mile away. He was holding his own for the moment, mostly thanks to the fact that his body was practically immune to injury. Any damage done to him was instantly regenerated, and all he needed to keep that up was enough mana. I¡¯d given him a generous supply, and we were close enough to Ammun¡¯s tower that he could pull even more from the environment.


    He¡¯d be fine.


    I turned my attention to the golems he was supposed to be controlling. All four of them were still active, waiting for their final inputs. Three of them were still in place, and I triggered them immediately. The final one had been discovered by some technician onsite and was being hauled off for containment. Without Querit to control it, it offered no resistance and sat docilely in the man¡¯s hands.


    My goal was all but accomplished at this point. I¡¯d confirmed seven of eight sites sabotaged, which had probably set Ammun back by at least a year. Unfortunately, since I¡¯d never been able to get a good look at what exactly he was doing, I couldn¡¯t know for sure whether all eight sites were necessary or if they¡¯d been a set of massive redundancies whose loss would only slow him down, not stop him.


    Finishing the job was the highest priority, especially since it was entirely possible that reinforcements would be swarming the one intact site any moment now. Unlike the machine components, there was nothing stopping enemy mages from teleporting themselves in. I needed my bomber golem back in position and ready to scrap that machine out.


    It thrashed in place, startling the man holding it and causing him to drop it to the floor. Immediately, it scrambled to the nearest wall and scurried up it. The mage yelled out a warning to draw attention, bringing two other people running. Even as they sprinted down the hallway, the mage started chanting the words to a spell, then unleashed a bolt of fire on the golem.


    He¡¯d need to do better than a basic-tier conjuration to hurt it, but unfortunately for me, he and his two companions would have plenty of time. With the golem already discovered, most of its camouflaging enchantments weren¡¯t available, and even turning it invisible wouldn¡¯t allow it to escape if the mages had any sort of aptitude for sensing mana.


    Thankfully, I didn¡¯t need stealth, just speed. The golem skittered up the wall and onto the ceiling, where it ran at full tilt back to the main hall while being pursued by a storm of fire and ice. It wasn¡¯t until one of the mages cast a greater telekinesis spell to snatch the fleeing golem that I ran into a problem.


    The spell slid off the golem¡¯s body, but it caught well enough that even if my creation wasn¡¯t captured by the magic, it still loosened it enough that it lost its grip and plummeted to the floor below. The golem bounced off the stone, unharmed, but now within physical reach of the pursuing mages.


    I sent it charging away at top speed. The mages pounded down the hallway after it, one of them easily outstripping the other two as he empowered himself with an invocation. My mobile bomb was still thirty feet away from its target when the mage pounced on it.


    That wasn¡¯t ideal, but it didn¡¯t look like I was going to get any closer. The spell had a radius of twenty feet, but I could remotely reconfigure it to project outward in one direction, amplifying the distance it could encompass at the cost of losing the effect behind it. The switch took me two seconds to complete. Then I detonated the bomb.


    The mage holding my golem down was immediately crushed. Spatial distortions ripped through his body, snapping bones and sending fountains of blood gushing out into the air, where they twisted and writhed as they were caught in the effect of a master-tier conjuration. The golem itself was also crushed, but the scrying spell held on just long enough for me to see pieces of the machine rip themselves apart.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    I didn¡¯t get the whole thing ¨C not even close. The bottom half was trashed, and I¡¯d have to hope that the proximity of the spatial distortions would render the remaining pieces unusable. That was as much as I could do, and it would just have to be enough. I stopped fighting to hold the scry connection open against the failing beacon enchantment and devoted my full attention to Querit¡¯s fight.


    It had moved another mile away from me, closer to Ammun¡¯s tower. Querit was starting to look desperate now as he fended off repeated force spells from one mage and dodged creeping ice trying to ensnare him from another. I took a moment to examine my new ally¡¯s defensive spells and shook my head. It was pathetically obvious that he was completely reliant on his combat frames to see him through a fight.


    I started flying to the battle while I studied the mage hunter team. Much like the one I¡¯d encountered, there was a pair devoted to helping keep track of Querit while hiding their group from his senses, but instead of having a heavy hitter like Seven leading the charge, they had three mages who looked to be around stage three coordinating to keep the pressure on with a salvo of intermediate-tier spells. Maybe if there¡¯d only been two, the golem might have been able to counter, but he was barely holding himself together against the full group.


    I swooped in from above and unleashed killing blasts of razor-sharp force-cleave spells, killing both the reserve mages. If the situation hadn¡¯t been so desperate, I would have gone for a capture technique, but this fight had gone on for far too long already and if reinforcements weren¡¯t already on their way, they would be now that I¡¯d shown up.


    Of the three conjuration specialists, I targeted the one who was all offense, no defense. A spike of pure force penetrated the back of his skull, killing him instantly and sending his body careening into the ground as his flight magic was left uncontrolled and quickly ran out of mana. The other two started panicking and shrieking about the loss of their support. Their lack of coordination told me that neither were the brains of the group.


    Querit switched to offense immediately, but his spell selection was too weak to do any real damage. That was irrelevant, since it distracted one of the two remaining mages long enough for me to conjure up four shimmering spikes of ice that slammed into the other one¡¯s chest, a poetic end to a mage who had been wielding ice magic herself.


    With only one mage left and no reinforcements in sight, I reconsidered my decision to kill them all. None of them were strong, but they were all risking their lives out here, which meant they were unimportant. The final living mage probably wouldn¡¯t know anything useful, and I¡¯d need to relocate him somewhere else to interrogate him. That ran the risk of Ammun¡¯s diviners scrying him directly unless I spent even more mana to shield our location, unlikely as that was, or following in his temporal wake, which was slightly more possible.


    It wasn¡¯t worth the risk. I wove a force spell around the mage, one that clamped down on his skull and squeezed until bone cracked and brain matter burst out. The mage¡¯s corpse hung limp in the air for a few seconds, then my spell ended and he fell away to the ground. Querit cursed and leaped to the side to avoid the gory missile, then scowled up at me.


    ¡°Thank you,¡± he said. ¡°I wasn¡¯t able to finish destroying the machines. If you can keep watch for a minute, I¡¯ll take care of that.¡±


    ¡°I already did it,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s probably best if we flee now, just in case more of them show up.¡±


    ¡°Agreed,¡± Querit replied. ¡°Should I use this recall charm you gave me?¡±


    ¡°Just keep some divinations running while I manually cast a teleport spell. We¡¯ll be out of here in a few minutes,¡± I ordered.


    With my companion watching skyward for any mages about to attack us, I got to work building a two-person teleportation spell.


    * * *


    ¡°That was more excitement than I generally prefer in my life,¡± Querit said once we¡¯d hopped a few more beacons and arrived back at my demesne. ¡°But the job got done. I¡¯m sorry I was not able to accomplish my half of the work.¡±


    ¡°It happens. I should have provided you with one of your combat frames, but I thought we¡¯d be able to get in and out without anyone noticing us.¡±


    I¡¯d had too much faith in Querit¡¯s ability to avoid divinations. Even with the extra precautions I¡¯d taken on our return trip, I was concerned that Ammun would follow the trail back. He certainly could, if he was willing to leave his tower to do it. Against any of the weaker mages he commanded, I was confident we¡¯d escaped, but the old lich himself was a different matter.


    ¡°I need to reinforce the valley¡¯s defenses,¡± I said.


    ¡°Do you have any thoughts on how you¡¯ll go about doing that?¡± Querit asked.


    ¡°I do, in fact.¡± He wanted me to trust him. I supposed letting him know that I¡¯d looted his former home¡¯s city-wide defensive system was a good way to do that. ¡°Actually, it¡¯s something that I think you¡¯re quite familiar with. I¡¯ve been repurposing it, but I haven¡¯t had a chance to test it out yet. Come with me. We¡¯ll turn it on together.¡±


    ¡°Something that I¡¯m familiar with?¡± he echoed. ¡°What could¡­ Oh! You didn¡¯t! No. That¡¯s impossible.¡±


    ¡°Extract those pillars from the underground network I found you in? You bet I did.¡±


    The golem shook his head. ¡°It won¡¯t work. There are runes etched into the inner layers of the pillars that would need to be changed if you wanted to move them. It¡¯d be nearly impossible to even get to them, and the pillars themselves are made of mysteel. You¡¯d practically destroy them just trying to adjust them.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t mind admitting that it was a tricky piece of work, but I did all that already.¡±


    I walked away, leaving Querit¡¯s jaw gaping open at my back. He sputtered something unintelligible, then hurried after me. ¡°Wait, wait! You can¡¯t just¡­ I need to inspect these first. What if they malfunction and destroy the whole valley?¡±


    ¡°Why do you think I want you to come with me?¡± I asked. ¡°Let¡¯s hurry. I have a feeling we¡¯re going to need these things operational sooner rather than later. If Ammun was only half-heartedly searching for me before, I¡¯m sure he¡¯ll be spending a lot more time on it now.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 29

    Querit took the news that I¡¯d plundered his homeland¡¯s most valuable artifacts better than I¡¯d expected him to, if only because my modifying the rune scheme through multiple layers of mysteel without damaging any other part was overshadowing any offense he might take. What remained to be seen was whether those modifications had worked.


    Querit scrambled all over the pillar, even climbing to sit on top of it at one point, as he cast a series of divinations to peer inside. ¡°I would say this was impossible if I wasn¡¯t standing in front of it,¡± he said when he was done. ¡°These aren¡¯t supposed to be movable. Just the act of relocating them alone should have turned them into scrap metal. To pull that off for not just one pillar, but the entire network, and then to hunt down and modify the location-dependent portions of the script¡­ I cannot wait to see if they work.¡±


    ¡°It all looks right to you?¡± I asked.


    ¡°It does, but I feel like I need to tell you that I wasn¡¯t involved in their creation. Professor Velder worked as part of a team of a hundred master mages building this whole system, and that was all done before he created me.¡±


    ¡°But you¡¯re familiar with his methodology,¡± I said.


    ¡°I am,¡± Querit agreed. ¡°And this all looks right, according to everything I know.¡±


    ¡°What if it¡¯s not? What are the risks of feeding this network enough mana to activate it?¡±


    ¡°Minimal. There are plenty of safety redundancies built in. If something goes wrong, the mana will be wasted, but I don¡¯t foresee any explosions or feedback issues, if that¡¯s what you¡¯re worried about.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s always a risk when this much mana gets concentrated into this small of a space,¡± I said. ¡°Even if it¡¯s held in mysteel.¡±


    ¡°For the central pillar, I can confirm the safety runes are still intact,¡± Querit said. He jumped down from overhead, landing with a hard thump that would have required a bit of mana to handle without getting injured for a normal person. His morphic body just took the shock without so much as flinching. ¡°Let¡¯s go look at the others?¡±


    We flew through the forest, not because it was a long trip, but because it gave Querit a chance to practice lossless casting while I observed him. His technique was still shaky, but he was starting to figure things out. About a quarter of the mana he used got pulled back in, and he compensated with an ambient mana draw that only worked here in my demesne.


    ¡°I¡¯ve been focusing more on adapting the technique to enchantments at the moment,¡± he admitted when I remarked on his progress. ¡°So far, I¡¯ve been able to get an enchantment to recycle about ten percent of the mana used, but in a different way. It¡¯s kind of like how we¡¯d build part of the enchantment to make it self-sustaining through the environmental mana it could harvest, except it¡¯s sort of harvesting from itself as the mana cycles through it.¡±


    ¡°Sort of an efficiency upgrade,¡± I said.


    ¡°Kind of the same principles, except it¡¯s not scaling down the mana being used, just reclaiming it before it can disappear.¡±


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t that increase the total amount of mana the enchantment needs to function in the first place?¡± I asked.


    Querit nodded eagerly. ¡°Exactly! It¡¯s reclaiming about half the mana used, but it costs so much more to begin with that the actual net savings is only a fraction of that. I¡¯m trying to figure out a way to boost the reclamation amount now.¡±


    ¡°Because if we can get it to one hundred percent, then it won¡¯t really matter how much it costs to do it,¡± I finished for him.


    ¡°Assuming the initial cost doesn¡¯t become prohibitive, yes.¡±


    ¡°I like it. It¡¯s a good line of reasoning. Have you started trying to apply the process to inscriptions or alchemical work yet?¡±


    ¡°Not yet. I considered enchantments to be the most viable discipline for experimentation, and also the most useful.¡±


    ¡°Inscription is better now,¡± I said. ¡°Without ambient mana, enchantments run a risk of starving and breaking easily.¡±


    ¡°Hmm, yes. I hadn¡¯t thought of that,¡± Querit said with a thoughtful frown. ¡°Still, I think the same principles should work, and enchantments are easier to work with. Once the process has been refined, I can draft a rune script to do the same thing and start testing how to integrate it.¡±


    ¡°How much faster would this all go if you had your research frame?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Immensely,¡± the golem told me. ¡°I¡¯ve been making some simple tools by hand, but it¡¯s a tedious process and it doesn¡¯t give me even a fraction of the versatility a full frame would.¡±


    I debated whether or not to introduce Querit to my crucible. If there was anyone who could learn to use it quickly, it¡¯d be a golem designed to be a lab assistant. It would be useful, no doubt, perhaps even to the point that it allowed him to recreate some of his frames if we could find the right material.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    It came down to a matter of trust. Querit had asked for it, and so far, he¡¯d done nothing to abuse what little I¡¯d given him. If anything, he seemed eager to please. But I¡¯d learned from bitter experience that a person could act perfectly trustworthy for months or years until they finally wormed their way into a position to properly betray me.


    As soon as he figured out lossless casting to the point where he could operate indefinitely outside the petrified forest, I¡¯d lose a massive amount of leverage over him. That was probably the point where I¡¯d find out how trustworthy he really was. If he disappeared in the night, well, I¡¯d have my answer. I doubted he¡¯d try to destroy anything on his way out, but not being able to use any sort of mental magic to read his thoughts did make it harder to predict his motivations and plans.


    How much damage could Querit actually do? He could betray the location of my demesne to Ammun¡¯s forces and possibly sabotage the mysteel defensive array on his way out. He didn¡¯t know about New Alkerist or my family there, so they were safe for the moment. My private workshops and labs were still unknown to him, and my wards would have alerted me if he¡¯d been snooping around looking for them.


    If I gave him access to the crucible, that was something valuable that could easily be broken. He probably already suspected its existence, given how quickly I¡¯d fabricated that controller frame for him to use, but he didn¡¯t know where it was, which made it safe. However, if it turned out that Querit was a long-term ally that I didn¡¯t need to worry about betraying me, the sooner he was able to make the tools he needed, the sooner he¡¯d produce the results I needed.


    I wasn¡¯t the kind of person who liked to take unnecessary risks, but then, this wasn¡¯t really unnecessary. I was competing against Ammun and an entire tower of resources and staff. What he¡¯d almost accomplished in those eight facilities would have taken me a decade to do if I¡¯d devoted my time to nothing but manufacturing those pieces. He¡¯d managed it in barely two years, and there was no telling what else he was also working on at the same time.


    The simple truth of it was that I was never going to be able to keep up, and if I was going to fight against Ammun and win, I needed to advance my core to stage nine as quickly as possible. Querit could help me do that, at least for the moment. Right now, gaining access to a mana resonance point was the bottleneck. That was what I needed to focus on, and the sooner Querit fixed his own issues, the sooner he could work on mine.


    ¡°I can help with your tool issue,¡± I said. ¡°After we¡¯re done here, I¡¯ve got something to show you.¡±


    ¡°Oh? Do you have some cache of ancient tools you also recovered when you found me?¡±


    ¡°Not exactly.¡±


    The golem gave me an inquisitive look, but I ignored him and landed at the next pillar. ¡°We¡¯ll talk about it later,¡± I said. ¡°One project at a time.¡±


    * * *


    ¡°Ah! A crucible. And¡­ not the most advanced I¡¯ve ever seen, but it should work for what I need,¡± Querit said as he circled around the rune-covered pillars. ¡°Where did you find this?¡±


    ¡°I made it about six years ago, then transported it here after I settled in this valley.¡±


    ¡°You really do have all the best toys,¡± Querit told me. ¡°I cannot wait to see your alchemy equipment.¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s see what you can do with this first,¡± I said. ¡°What kind of raw materials do you need to start fabricating your tools?¡±


    ¡°Can this thing cut steel?¡±


    ¡°Easily.¡±


    ¡°Then lots of that. Maybe a bit of copper spooled as wire.¡± Querit paused to think. ¡°Tin sticks. I imagine those will be easy to transmute. I wouldn¡¯t mind a bit of living stone to experiment with, but I understand if you don¡¯t want your demesne damaged.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll see what I can do,¡± I said. ¡°In the meantime, I¡¯m going to give the mysteel system a test run. You should probably be on standby to assist with that in case anything goes wrong.¡±


    ¡°I can do that. I¡¯ll just start sketching out the rune scripts for a few of the tools I need while I wait.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d love to see those when you¡¯re done,¡± I told the golem.


    Perhaps he was na?ve, or perhaps he was just putting on an act, but he nodded eagerly. If total transparency in his work was his play to keep me trusting him, it was a good one. It would be harder to sneak anything potentially disruptive into his crucible work if I oversaw everything he did.


    ¡°Alright, get ready for the test run,¡± I said as I left the room.


    I activated the pillars, allowing each to pull mana from my demesne. They took far more than any simple ward stone could hope to match, so much so that the ambient mana grew thin and I briefly wondered if I¡¯d find Querit a lifeless doll on the floor. But then they reached minimum capacity and started up. A divination field extended out over the valley, one designed to give the system an early warning and conserve mana until it was needed.


    I spent the rest of the day measuring the mana draw before powering the system down. Even functioning at bare minimum, it was just too expensive to keep running indefinitely. If I knew an attack was incoming, I could reactivate it as a defensive measure, which was better than nothing, but not what I¡¯d been trying to achieve.


    No matter how much my capabilities grew, I never had enough mana to do everything I wanted. Hopefully, Querit¡¯s experiments would prove successful, and I could streamline the enchantments on the valley to completely negate the load on the ember blooms powering them. Even that would only be a step in the right direction, but I¡¯d long since given up turning the valley into a new Night Vale. I couldn¡¯t even get the original ember bloom to drop any sort of seeds so that I could make an attempt to grow more of them, though I suspected that was at least in part because this really wasn¡¯t the environment it was supposed to grow in. The cuttings I¡¯d taken had worked as a substitute, but they weren¡¯t exactly healthy and robust.


    With my experiments concluded for the moment, I spent the next week working closely with Querit to speed up his own progress. At no point did he ever do anything suspicious or have an explanation for his actions that didn¡¯t make sense. It seemed more and more foolish to continue to distrust him, but I couldn¡¯t make myself let go of that feeling, and he could tell.


    Neither of us brought it up, however. We just kept working, every step bringing us closer to a complete solution to his mana issues. Then, one day, almost by accident, we figured it out, and Querit was able to exist indefinitely on a set amount of mana.


    ¡°What will you do now?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Well, about that¡­¡± he began. ¡°How would you feel about helping me out with something?¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 30

    ¡°I don¡¯t want to commit to anything,¡± I said. ¡°There¡¯s a lot going on right now, and it¡¯s all kind of time-sensitive.¡±


    ¡°I understand, but hear me out.¡±


    Querit cast a quick illusion spell, and a cityscape appeared between us right at waist level. ¡°This is Derro as I remember it,¡± he explained. ¡°From what I can tell, the aboveground portion is mostly the same layout, though it¡¯s in bad shape. Below that is the city sewers, and below that is the sub-plate that the real infrastructure sits on.¡±


    As he spoke, the illusion divided itself into three pieces, with the aboveground and sewer sections rising up out of the way to leave the sub-plate. It was an impressively complete map, detailing what was probably a thousand miles of tunnels and chambers bored out of the bedrock beneath the city.


    ¡°Here is where the central city pillar sat, the room you found me in,¡± Querit said.


    ¡°Yes, I remember. You showed me this when I went digging for your frames.¡±


    ¡°Right, and you checked the places I pointed you to where my other frames were stored, but as I understand it, you didn¡¯t look anywhere else?¡±


    ¡°I had other concerns,¡± I said. ¡°Why, where do you want to look now?¡±


    Twenty different spots lit up on the map, one after another, all of them scattered in every direction. ¡°These are places I think could hold something valuable. Some of them held mana banks of various types. Some were workshops full of delicate and valuable equipment. A few were libraries and archives which are hopefully preserved well enough that they¡¯re still intact.¡±


    ¡°Those could all justify the time and expense of an expedition,¡± I said, ¡°but is any of it truly necessary right now?¡±


    ¡°Just one spot,¡± Querit told me. ¡°This one, here. This was Professor Velder¡¯s private quarters. Tucked away in his personal library are all his notes on creating artificial mana resonance points.¡±


    I frowned. ¡°I thought you already knew everything there was to know on the subject.¡±


    ¡°I know everything the professor taught me. That does not mean I know everything he knew, and to be honest, we¡¯re adapting the spells to fit this new environment anyway. It¡¯s likely we¡¯ll hit a few stumbling blocks along the way, and the research left behind here might provide us with valuable insights on how to navigate those problems.¡±


    That was a dubious claim to me. Querit had explained how the project would advance, and I¡¯d already accounted for several spots that would need to be adapted for a mana-starved environment. It was possible we¡¯d run into problems I hadn¡¯t foreseen, but it seemed like it would be better to proceed until we were stymied, and only then go looking for outside help.


    There was also the fact that the golem claimed they¡¯d managed to manufacture several resonance points back in his time, which meant that the process worked from start to finish. The only issue should be adapting it to our modern environment, which meant that his fake father¡¯s notes probably wouldn¡¯t provide solutions to any of the problems we¡¯d run into.


    ¡°Do you honestly think we need these notes, or do you just want an excuse to find out what happened to everyone when the moon fell out of the sky and destroyed the city?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I¡­¡± Querit trailed off and let out a heavy sigh. ¡°Maybe we can figure it out on our own, but it wouldn¡¯t hurt to go check, would it? And yes, I¡¯m hoping to find some answers to my own mysteries. What¡¯s so wrong about that?¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s nothing wrong with that,¡± I said. ¡°I did something similar when I reincarnated into this body. But I really don¡¯t have the time to run fool¡¯s errands right now.¡±


    ¡°I helped you break Ammun¡¯s machines,¡± Querit pointed out. ¡°You said that¡¯d give you at least a year. You can¡¯t spare a few days out of a whole year?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I told him bluntly. ¡°Maybe I can. Maybe I can¡¯t. All I can do is prepare as best I can and hope that I do it well enough that when Ammun does make his move, he doesn¡¯t destroy me.¡±


    ¡°And you¡¯ll do it faster if I¡¯m helping you. Just think of how much time you¡¯ll save with me working for you over the next year. It¡¯s way more than you¡¯ll spend helping me do this one thing right now.¡±


    He had a point, and it wasn¡¯t like taking a few days to help him dig was going to halt my demesne¡¯s mana generation. I¡¯d be out some research time, but ultimately, making enough mana to forge the resonance point was going to be the longest part of the project.


    ¡°Fine, fine. You win.¡± I held up my hands in surrender. ¡°Give me a day to get things set up here, and we¡¯ll go digging in the sand.¡±Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    ¡°Thank you!¡± Querit said. ¡°I promise, we¡¯ll find plenty of useful stuff. You won¡¯t be disappointed.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t make promises you can¡¯t keep. You have no idea what¡¯s still left down there or what condition it¡¯s in.¡±


    ¡°Well that¡¯s just not true. I¡¯ve been scrying the area quite extensively.¡±


    ¡°And what have you found?¡±


    ¡°Mostly a lot of sand worms,¡± the golem admitted. ¡°Actually, a rather disturbing amount. I¡¯ve got some speculations that the moon chunk that wrecked the city might have also cracked the foundation it was built on, which let in a whole underground ecosystem.¡±


    ¡°Good theory,¡± I offered. ¡°And another time, I might be interested in discussing it, but if we¡¯re going to do this, I have work to take care of.¡±


    ¡°Right. Of course. I understand. I should get my own affairs in order,¡± Querit said. ¡°I¡¯ll leave you to it, then.¡±


    He rushed off, leaving me standing by myself as his illusion started to dissolve into motes of light. I sighed and shook my head, then teleported back to my own workshops. I needed to use up some of the mana building in my demesne if I was going to be gone for so many days in a row, and I had a hundred different projects I could spend it on.


    * * *


    ¡°Where are we?¡± Querit asked when the teleport ended. ¡°I don¡¯t recognize this room.¡±


    ¡°One of the smaller pillars was here,¡± I said. ¡°This was as close as I could get to where you think your professor¡¯s personal rooms were.¡±


    The room was partially collapsed, the entire north half filled with sand held back by a wall of stone I¡¯d transmuted to keep it out of the way. In the center of the room was a pit six feet deep left over from my excavation of the mysteel pillar that had formerly graced the chamber with its presence.


    ¡°There should be a tunnel leading out of here behind all that sand,¡± Querit said.


    ¡°The only thing behind the sand is more sand,¡± I told him. ¡°You¡¯re going to be digging the whole way through.¡±


    ¡°I think you mean we¡¯ll be digging.¡±


    ¡°No, I don¡¯t. You¡¯ll be digging. I¡¯ll be keeping the monsters from eating you.¡±


    ¡°Oh¡­¡± Querit eyed the huge retaining wall holding back the sand and sighed. ¡°That¡¯s probably a good division of labor.¡±


    ¡°How are you planning on doing it?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Force spells, mostly.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°You¡¯re going to bury us alive. I thought you knew about architecture.¡±


    ¡°What? Why would you think that?¡±


    ¡°You know so much about the city and how it¡¯s built.¡±


    ¡°I know where things were built, not the techniques used in their construction.¡±


    I considered the golem gravely and wondered what the odds were of him getting me killed down here. I was going to have to show him how to properly excavate at least the first tunnel to make sure he did the rest right.


    ¡°Okay, there are two steps. First is material removal, then structural reinforcement. Transmutations are safest for both, since you can turn the loose dirt and sand into retaining walls and support beams. It¡¯s slow going, but it¡¯s the only safe way to do it.¡±


    ¡°What if something attacks us?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Then you let me handle it. I can kill anything down here without bringing the tunnel down on our heads. You know how to cast sand to granite?¡±


    ¡°Yes, of course.¡±


    I nodded. ¡°Let¡¯s start there then. We¡¯ll float up to the top of the room and I¡¯ll split this wall. Gravity can take some of the sand out of our way before we start working.¡±


    The two of us levitated up to the ceiling and I broke down the wall. Tons of sand and dirt spilled out, filling in the hole I¡¯d left from removing the mysteel pillar and half of the rest of the room on top of it. I created giant scoops of force and started digging, and after a moment¡¯s hesitation, Querit joined me.


    ¡°I thought you said we¡¯d be transmuting to dig,¡± he said.


    ¡°As soon as we¡¯re in the tunnel. This room is a big stone box. It¡¯s already stable.¡±


    After a few minutes of work, we dug out enough sand to see the entrance to what had at one time been a hallway. Now it was just hard-packed dirt and sand. ¡°There¡¯s no point in following the old floor plan,¡± I said. ¡°Figure out a straight line to where we want to go and we¡¯ll dig directly to it.¡±


    Querit didn¡¯t need to summon a map to get the correct angle, and within a minute he was chaining transmutation spells one after another. I joined him, mostly to ensure that everything was being done properly and to help speed things up. Once I picked up the first worm coming in with earth sense, though, I had to shift priorities.


    ¡°Take two steps back,¡± I ordered.


    ¡°What? Why?¡± he asked, looking back over his shoulder at me.


    I reached out and hauled on his collar, dragged him back out of the way just in time to avoid having one of the sand worms come up and bite down on his leg. A quick force cleave spell split it apart before it could dive back underground.


    ¡°That¡¯s why.¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± he said with a nervous laugh. ¡°That was a lot bigger than I was expecting it to be.¡±


    ¡°Really?¡± I asked. It seemed about average from what I¡¯d seen of the breed.


    ¡°They¡¯re usually a quarter that size.¡±


    I thought he said he¡¯d been scrying this area. Whatever he was using must not have been very good if he was surprised by how big the worms were.


    ¡°Take a few more steps back behind me,¡± I said. ¡°There are a few more coming in now.¡±


    I slaughtered them one after another while Querit watched, slack-jawed. ¡°Why are they all so big?¡± he demanded, as if I had the answer.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. They just are. I don¡¯t sense anything else coming our way, so get back to work.¡±


    ¡°There must be a reason for it,¡± he murmured. ¡°Some sort of mutation in their past, maybe? Perhaps the moon fragment caused it.¡±


    ¡°I already recovered the piece of moon that dropped onto Derro,¡± I said. ¡°It doesn¡¯t have any mana coming off it now, and it probably never did.¡±


    ¡°Oh no, I remember when we detected it coming down on us. It was only a few weeks back for me. It was ablaze with mana, all hundred feet of it.¡±


    ¡°Hundred? It¡¯s not even a tenth of that.¡±


    Maybe it had shattered on impact and the other pieces had been taken away. Perhaps they¡¯d left the chunk I¡¯d found because, without any mana in it, the survivors had never discovered it. No, it had been very conspicuously located at the bottom of its own crater, what was now a huge underground lake.


    Maybe the locals hadn¡¯t carted off the chunks of moon core that could still make mana. Maybe something else had, some monster from the deep, a sand worm progenitor. If that chunk of moon rock was still buried underground and making enough mana to cause thousands and thousands of sand worms to grow to colossal sizes, it might be worth digging to see if I could find it.


    ¡°I think mucking around down here could pay off after all,¡± I said.


    Querit paused in his work to peer at me, then muttered, ¡°Why does that make me so nervous all of a sudden?¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 31

    Querit agreed with my theory after I explained it, though he didn¡¯t seem all that excited about it. Considering that I¡¯d potentially gain a huge source of mana generation and kill a whole hell of a lot of the sand worms plaguing the area that he was actively digging through, I¡¯d expected him to care a bit more.


    ¡°Oh, it¡¯s not because I think you¡¯re wrong,¡± the golem said. ¡°It¡¯s because you¡¯ll never find it. These monsters could dig very, very deep back when they were normal sized. Now that they¡¯re all huge like this, I don¡¯t even want to consider how far under the surface they¡¯ve gone. And the smaller ones always end up closest to the open air. It¡¯s more than likely that if you go down another mile or two, you¡¯ll find some big enough to swallow you whole.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not worried about fighting them, no matter how big they get, but you¡¯ve got a point on the locating problem. Still, if there is a huge chunk of moon core buried somewhere down here, it should be emitting mana, which should make it a lot easier to find.¡±


    ¡°Unless some enormous sand worm has wrapped itself around the thing and is eating the mana as fast as it can,¡± Querit pointed out. ¡°Or worse, eaten it.¡±


    ¡°Eaten it?¡± I asked. ¡°You said this chunk of moon was a hundred feet wide. How big are these damn worms?¡±


    The golem just shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m merely speculating on the possibilities.¡±


    ¡°No one¡¯s saying it¡¯s going to be easy, but I think it¡¯s worth a little effort to determine the viability.¡±


    ¡°I won¡¯t try to stand in your way, but I would appreciate if you stuck around long enough for me to reach the professor¡¯s old chambers.¡±


    I wondered exactly how much would be left of them at this point. Thousands of tons of sand filling every hallway and room in this underground complex was hard on the furnishings, and having enormous worm monsters roaming around wasn¡¯t doing anyone any favors. Even if there had been some enchantments protecting things, they¡¯d surely have failed by now.


    Then again, the civilization that had built all of this did have a tendency to build things to last. Even after a thousand years, there were still a few wisps of mana here or there, which was surprising since the worms should have gotten into those remaining enchantments a long time ago. Only the durability of the construction of certain rooms had kept them out. Perhaps Professor Velder¡¯s suite had been given the same treatment.


    It took us four hours of work to finally reach it, lengthened only slightly when Querit realized we¡¯d accidentally passed underneath the room and had to calculate the correct exit a few hundred feet back. Eventually, we ran into a steel wall, a sight which pleased the golem to no end.


    ¡°Now we just need to cut through this and we¡¯re in,¡± he said happily.


    ¡°Should be easy enough as long as there are no lingering wards, which I¡¯m not sensing.¡±


    ¡°It is six inches thick, though.¡±


    ¡°Really? Why?¡±


    Querit just shrugged. ¡°I didn¡¯t build it. This¡¯ll probably take me a few minutes to make a door. Would you mind watching for monsters?¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± I said. I settled back to wait while Querit worked, my mind split between keeping track of earth sense and the other divinations I was running and considering the best place to look for a chunk of stolen moon core.


    The original impact site was the underground lake. I¡¯d already confirmed that by diving down to the bottom years ago and recovering the chunk of moon rock there. If there¡¯d been more at the time, and presumably not underwater, then it would have been taken from there.


    As far as I could tell, the sand worms couldn¡¯t easily dig through rock. If they couldn¡¯t do it now, they certainly wouldn¡¯t have been able to back when they were all relatively tiny. Depending on the ground composition, I might be able to trace a trail downward from the bottom of the impact site to wherever the worm¡¯s main colony was.


    That wouldn¡¯t necessarily lead me to the moon core, however. At best, it would lead me to where the worms used to live a thousand years ago. If I managed to find that spot, there was every possibility that they¡¯d have long since moved on, and I¡¯d just have to hope I could keep following a century-old trail.


    That plan wasn¡¯t going to work. It relied on too many assumptions, and the odds of it failing at any given step were far too high. I needed something cleverer, and I thought I knew exactly what that something was.


    ¡°Scrying beacons,¡± I announced, surprising Querit and causing him to look back at me.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°What about them?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll build a few steel balls with scrying beacons sealed inside and a coating of mana on the outside. Then I¡¯ll feed them to the worms around here so I can track where they go. Most of them will end up wasted, but I can keep track and, sooner or later, one of them will lead me to the rest of the colony where the moon core is.¡±


    ¡°Huh. Well, it could work, I suppose. Do you have a way of preventing the monsters from eating the mana right out of the beacons and destroying them?¡±


    ¡°I have a few ideas. I¡¯ll need to experiment.¡±


    I might also need to figure out how long a giant sand worm¡¯s digestive tract was, though that might end up being a nonissue. As long as they still had mana in them, there was every possibility the worm would simply eat it again after shitting it out. The real challenge would be keeping the beacon intact.


    I scooped up a chunk of steel Querit had discarded from the wall as he slowly forced his way through and transmuted it into a perfect hollow sphere four inches wide, then split it open. Inscriptions on the inside would probably be the best way to physically protect the beacon from being destroyed by the rigors of a sand worm¡¯s intestines.


    For the actual beacon itself, I could hide it with an aura of untraceability, though that would only last for a day or so unless I made some serious effort to extend it. The problem there was that the spell had harsh diminishing returns, requiring more than double the mana just to get a few extra hours out of it.


    I shook my head and smiled. It wasn¡¯t even that expensive of a spell to begin with. I could afford the inefficiency. Then I bit back a sigh. I could afford the inefficiency on one unit, but I was planning on making hundreds of them. If this plan didn¡¯t work, I¡¯d be out a significant chunk of mana, multiple master-tier spells¡¯ worth.


    There was no point in worrying about it before I¡¯d even tested it. Using a transmutation spell, I carved away steel from the inner curve, adjusting the rune shape to account for the fact that I wasn¡¯t working on a flat surface. Once I was done, I fused both halves back together and used a minor divination to confirm everything was lined up properly inside. Then I powered the inscription, threw an aura of untraceability over it, and infused mana into the outside of the orb.


    Querit paused in his own work again and said, ¡°Clever. How long will it last?¡±


    ¡°A single day,¡± I told him. ¡°I want to make sure it works at all before I waste time and mana manufacturing hundreds of them.¡±


    I gave the sphere an underhand throw that sent it a hundred feet down the tunnel. It rolled out of sight, following the downward slope we¡¯d accidentally made, and waited for a worm to come along and eat it. I¡¯d killed everything in the immediate area already, but it wouldn¡¯t take long before something new showed up.


    ¡°I¡¯ve got a small opening carved into this wall,¡± Querit told me. ¡°It should only take another ten minutes or so.¡±


    I waved a hand and slashed through the steel with force magic in the outline of an eight-foot door frame, then pulled the steel into my phantom space to be recycled later. Querit gaped at me for a second, then annoyance flashed across his face.


    ¡°You could have saved me some work!¡±


    ¡°I was busy with something else. I thought you¡¯d get through it on your own faster than you did.¡±


    I cast a light spell and sent the orb into the newly-revealed room. There wasn¡¯t much to see at first, not with all the dust in the air, but that was easy enough to filter out. Once I¡¯d cleaned the place up, I got my first look inside.


    Old, faded carpets covered the floor, possibly a vibrant red once upon a time, but now more the color of dried, sun-bleached blood. A bed dominated the room, far too large for a single person to need. The sheets, now threadbare and rotted, had been kicked down to the bottom, and pillows were strewn haphazardly about the room, with only a handful still on the bed itself.


    There was a writing desk in one corner with stacks of yellowed parchment and a few ink wells that had long since dried out. More papers were scattered across the floor, along with the nibs of dozens of quills.


    ¡°Your professor was a bit disorganized,¡± I remarked.


    ¡°He was a slob,¡± Querit corrected, his lips pursed as he surveyed the mess. ¡°Every few days, I¡¯d have to come in and clean the place up. Obviously, I didn¡¯t get to it before¡­ everything.¡±


    ¡°I hope he was more diligent with his research than he was with his personal quarters.¡± He¡¯d almost have to be to have built a golem like Querit.


    ¡°That I kept strictly organized. Come on, it¡¯s just through that door on the far side.¡±


    We stepped into the room and I noted the golem had done an excellent job of placing our makeshift entrance between furniture. A few feet in either direction and I¡¯d have been knocking over either a wardrobe or a standing shelf to make room. I eyed the shelf up, noting the various curios scattered across it.


    ¡°The professor was a collector?¡± I asked, gesturing to my left.


    ¡°Something like that, though it¡¯s probably not what you think. He was known to become fascinated with random things, especially objects with rich history that he could divine. Those are bribes from politicians trying to swing his vote on city policy that he kept as tokens to laugh about later. None of them were what he considered to be interesting.¡±


    ¡°Politics.¡± I practically spat the word out.


    ¡°Necessary bureaucracy,¡± Querit corrected.


    It wasn¡¯t worth the argument, especially not over a culture that had mostly died out a thousand years ago. Their descendants were pale imitations of the greats of Querit¡¯s time, not even able to fathom the works the ancient mages had achieved, let alone replicate them.


    I followed the golem through the mess of Velder¡¯s bedroom and through a slightly cleaner receiving room, though that too needed the dust cleared from the air. After that, we came to the library, which was happily just as organized as Querit had claimed it would be.


    Keeper would have choked with envy if she¡¯d known such a trove of information was under her feet this whole time. Even I was interested in what magical secrets might be hidden in these books. It was obvious that knowledge had advanced in the thousand years between my demise and Ammun¡¯s foolish actions, and I was eager to catch up on what I¡¯d missed.


    Before I could dive into that, something else caught my attention. ¡°Ah, we¡¯re in luck,¡± I said. ¡°Something picked up my scrying beacon. It¡¯s moving to the east and holding strong. Looks like I¡¯ll be making more of them and hoping they lead me to a broken moon core.¡±


    Querit just shook his head and went back to looking through the brittle old tomes.

 Book 4, Chapter 32

    Sand worms weren¡¯t that smart ¨C something I¡¯d known intellectually but hadn¡¯t really internalized until I¡¯d wasted two hours following my scrying beacon around as the worm crawled through the sand and dirt in great circles, accomplishing absolutely nothing as far as I could tell.


    It did confirm for me that they definitely had a mana source somewhere, else they¡¯d have all starved to death given how little sustenance there actually was in the desert sands over a mile below the surface. It was either that or I¡¯d been mistaken about classifying them as monsters. The line between monster and magical animal could get quite blurry, but the way they¡¯d attacked me in suicidal droves when they¡¯d sensed mana coming from me had indicated that the species fell firmly on the monster side of things.


    ¡°I might need to seed some of these beacons deeper into the ground,¡± I mused. ¡°That or I just got unlucky with an exceptionally stupid worm.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re worms. What were you expecting?¡± Querit asked. He dropped another stack of books on the table I was sitting at. ¡°These ones, too.¡±


    I swept them up into my phantom space and said, ¡°You know I¡¯ve got enough room to take this entire library, right? And I know they look like worms, but I was expecting something this big to be a bit smarter. There¡¯s more to them than a wriggly, mobile stomach, isn¡¯t there?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. They weren¡¯t a problem before the moon fell. There was a thick layer of bedrock beneath the city that must have protected us from them. You had to go fifty miles out into the desert to even have a chance of running into something like that.¡±


    Oddly, I hadn¡¯t encountered anything like these sand worms anywhere other than deep under Derro. The closest I¡¯d gotten were their rock worm cousins up in the mountains. Admittedly, I hadn¡¯t gone digging in random spots in the wastes for them, but I¡¯d used plenty of mana. Maybe they didn¡¯t come to the surface anywhere now, or maybe they¡¯d all been drawn to this particular area to feed on the moon core chunk.


    Anything that hadn¡¯t or couldn¡¯t make it here in time might have starved and died off centuries ago. It was only a theory, but it made sense. More importantly, if I was right, it was yet more evidence that the sand worms fell firmly into the ¡®monster¡¯ category, and that they¡¯d only survived because there was a powerful source of mana buried somewhere down here.


    While I waited for Querit to sort through the books to decide what he wanted and what was irrelevant, a chore he insisted on doing right here and now, I idly built a second beacon and stored it away in my phantom space. When that didn¡¯t kill enough time, I made a third and a fourth one. Eventually, I ran out of patience.


    ¡°It¡¯s time to wrap this up,¡± I announced. ¡°Anything you haven¡¯t gotten around to sorting through yet can come with us.¡±


    ¡°But-¡±


    ¡°Give me just one good reason why this needs to be done in this dusty old chamber,¡± I said. ¡°A good reason, mind you, not something like nostalgia or honoring your sort-of-father¡¯s memory.¡±


    ¡°I just wanted to leave his home as intact as I could,¡± Querit said. ¡°What¡¯s so wrong about that?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m heading back to the valley to make more of these scrying beacons. If you need more time to sort through things, then you can stay here and I¡¯ll pick you up when I come back.¡±


    ¡°But what about the worms? They could attack me.¡±


    ¡°You can¡¯t defend yourself?¡± I asked.


    ¡°From one or two, but I don¡¯t regenerate mana like a human.¡±


    ¡°I thought you¡¯d mastered lossless casting.¡±


    ¡°Not for advanced spells! And you know that,¡± Querit said.


    ¡°Fine, I¡¯ll seal up the hole we made and teleport straight back here tonight after I¡¯m done with my worm bait project. You¡¯ll be as safe in these rooms as everything else that¡¯s been locked away in here for centuries.¡±


    Querit reluctantly agreed to that, though it was obvious he wasn¡¯t happy with the idea. I made a mental note to teach him how to build a phantom space so he could shove his various combat frames into it. If I had to babysit him every time he left my demesne, his usefulness was going to drop sharply. What was really surprising to me was how timid he¡¯d turned out to be. He¡¯d held his own against five other mages long enough for me to get there and help; I wouldn¡¯t have thought a bunch of stupid sand worms would have scared him so much.


    ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, I know you could handle a couple sand worms,¡± I said. ¡°You fought worse not that long ago.¡±


    ¡°I appreciate your confidence in my skills, but I¡¯m not a battle mage.¡±If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    ¡°I know that you can cast spells that don¡¯t have the runes carved into your core,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re able to freely manipulate mana into any spell you like. You have a memory that beats any human¡¯s. There¡¯s nothing stopping you from becoming an archmage in your own right.¡±


    Querit appeared startled by the idea, as if it had never occurred to him to learn anything outside of what someone else had told him to. Maybe it hadn¡¯t. His thinking was driven by an extraordinarily complex sequence of rune structures that did an incredible job of mimicking human behavior, but in the end, he was still a golem.


    Treating him like a person may have been the wrong tactic, but it was difficult not to when he looked and acted like one most of the time. Because he was already capable of casting advanced-tier spells, which made him a better mage than just about anyone else on this whole island, it was also easy to treat him as a contemporary, someone I could rely on when I needed an assistant.


    ¡°The mana cost¡ª¡± Querit began.


    ¡°¡ªWill be irrelevant once you fully master lossless casting,¡± I finished for him.


    ¡°You haven¡¯t even mastered it!¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll work on it together, but later. I have something else to take care of right now.¡±


    I left then, a new teleportation beacon hidden in the suite and the steel wall reshaped to fill in the gap. It was an inch thinner, but that would still be plenty to protect Querit. After I was done, I tossed the new scrying beacon orbs out for the worms, then teleported myself back to my demesne.


    I went to my crucible immediately and started manufacturing the orbs as quickly as I could. I also put together a special tank filled with liquid mana, one that I connected to the many, many orbs and which could track their positions, including depth. After sealing that closed, I stashed everything in my storage space and teleported back.


    Querit jumped to his feet immediately upon my return, like an excited puppy eager to greet its owner. ¡°You¡¯re back!¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± I said, frowning at him. ¡°I was only gone for a few hours. You got the rest of the books sorted?¡±


    ¡°This pile here is coming with us,¡± he told me, gesturing to a small mountain of books as tall as he was. I eyed it up speculatively, then turned my attention to the rest of the library. About half the shelves were empty now.


    ¡°Hardly seems worth sorting them if you¡¯re going to take that much,¡± I said. It took me a few minutes to pull the books in, each one being its own individual object, then I opened the steel wall back up. ¡°I¡¯m going for a walk around the area to distribute trackers.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll come with you,¡± Querit said quickly.


    ¡°Sure, if that¡¯ll make you happy. Do you mind if I leave this tank of liquid mana here?¡± I asked.


    I pulled out the tank, a five-foot square glass construction reinforced with magic. The liquid mana on the inside was enchanted to take the shape of the tunnels, based on my own experience scrying them, and it had already found the tracking orbs I¡¯d left for the worms. They existed as little pinpricks of light, moving around in the mana.


    ¡°Fascinating,¡± Querit muttered as he studied it. ¡°A sympathetic connection?¡±


    ¡°More like an automated scryer with a heavy-duty output device. It¡¯s not foolproof, but I don¡¯t suspect the worms will make any attempt to shield the trackers from being detected.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I see. That¡¯s a remarkably efficient and easy solution, though I can¡¯t imagine that much liquid mana was a cheap medium to use.¡±


    ¡°I had it in storage for alchemy work, and I¡¯ll reclaim it when I¡¯m done with this project, so it¡¯s no real loss,¡± I explained.


    We left the room, something that seemed to cheer Querit up immediately, and started our lap around the tunnels. Every thirty or forty feet, I¡¯d toss another tracker orb out, and occasionally I¡¯d have to kill a few dozen worms that were more interested in us than in the bait.


    ¡°So what¡¯s going on with you today?¡± I asked as I casually dissected a sand worm with a force cleave spell.


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°You look kind of depressed. Something in your master¡¯s suite?¡±


    ¡°Nothing in particular. It just kind of reinforced that everything from my time is gone. I knew it already, but that wasn¡¯t the same as seeing it.¡±


    The personality matrix in Querit truly was a work of art, but I couldn¡¯t say I would have made the same. Professor Velder had gone through a great amount of effort to build something that was as close to a person as it was possible to get, which was fascinating, but not really a desirable quality in a research golem.


    ¡°I do also feel like I need to remind you that I am unable to cast a teleportation spell myself,¡± Querit said. ¡°It was a bit anxiety-inducing to be left behind like that ¨C not that I ever lost faith that you¡¯d return, of course.¡±


    ¡°I see. You know the recall bracelet I made for you could have pulled you out if absolutely necessary?¡±


    ¡°I thought that only worked in the area where we did that sabotage job.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°No, I modified it to be a bit smarter about selecting teleportation beacons based on where you are. At this distance, it would just take you straight back to the valley in a single jump.¡±


    I¡¯d thought he¡¯d known that already. The runes were plain as day on it, and he should have been able to read them. Admittedly, they were sandwiched between two layers of copper so that the outside appeared plain and unadorned, but that wouldn¡¯t stop Querit¡¯s divinations.


    After another half an hour of spreading around the bait, we returned to the tracking tank to confirm everything was working. Hundreds of little dots roamed around, none converging on anything just yet or going much deeper than we already were.


    ¡°It would have been nice to get immediate results,¡± Querit lamented as he studied the tank with me.


    ¡°It would have, but I¡¯m not surprised. I put in a recording spell so I can review everything whenever I have time. There are no worries about missing something crucial because I wasn¡¯t paying attention. Everything should run for about two days before the orbs lose too much mana; hopefully we¡¯ll have an answer by then.¡±


    ¡°And if not?¡±


    ¡°Then it¡¯s on to the next plan. I¡¯m convinced there¡¯s a moon core buried deep underground here. Getting my hands on it would help immensely with getting the mana needed to form the resonance.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t sure if Querit really agreed with me, but he nodded anyway. I sealed up the entrance again and considered installing some hinges and a lock there for future convenience, then started casting the teleportation spell that would take us home. After a brief, unhappy glance around the last remnants of his creator¡¯s life, Querit joined me.

 Book 4, Chapter 33

    It was a matter of efficiency that I had to leave the orb tracker in the area. If it were only a single connection, it wouldn¡¯t have made much of a difference, but with hundreds of links between the tank of liquid mana and all the orbs being ferried around by sand worms, it just wasn¡¯t feasible to scry all of that from hundreds of miles away.


    My workaround was to leave the tracker in Velder¡¯s old rooms and scry that area so I could physically see the tank. It wasn¡¯t as good as being there to experience the full breadth of the divinations I¡¯d built into it, but it was good enough to leave up on my scrying mirror while I worked on other projects.


    I¡¯d known this was a bit of a longshot to begin with, that there was almost no chance of it leading me to the moon core, but I was hoping that it would at least point me in the right direction. If I assumed the prize was buried somewhere within three miles of Derro, and that tracking the sand worms could eliminate all but a sliver of that area, I¡¯d have a much better chance of finding it when I started digging.


    So far, that did not appear to be the case. I knew the worms weren¡¯t surviving on the mana they could find digging through the sand a mile under the city. They had to go back to the source sooner or later. The problem was that I¡¯d put too much mana into the bait, and now the scrying beacons were going to break before their unwitting carriers got hungry enough to go back home.


    I was almost certainly going to have to repeat this experiment with less enticing bait and hope that I struck the right balance between putting in enough mana to attract a worm but not so much that it could subsist off it for a long period of time. I was already building a small test batch that kept the beacon active for a week while having only the slightest hint of mana. The plan was to toss them out for sand worms to snatch up while using myself as bait to draw them in.


    If it worked, the worms that survived would ingest the scrying orbs immediately while gaining next to no mana from them. The downside was that they cost almost twenty times as much mana to make, so I was only doing fifteen in this batch. If Querit was able to fully crack lossless enchanting and inscription, then this would all be a moot concern, and I¡¯d have beacons that lasted practically forever at no real cost.


    That hadn¡¯t happened yet, and I couldn¡¯t afford to delay my plans indefinitely in the hopes that he figured it out eventually. If things went so poorly that I still hadn¡¯t found the moon core by the time he finished his research, I¡¯d have bigger problems to worry about.


    Something flickered across the divination ward surrounding the valley, so brief that I couldn¡¯t tell what it was. I turned my attention away from the steel I¡¯d been shaping in my crucible to focus fully on my wards and quickly spotted what had gotten my attention.


    It was a large group of people, the exact number hidden from me by their own defensive spells. Someone had screwed up and gotten too far out of formation, just for a second, but that was all it took for my wards to recognize that there was a mana source up in the sky a few miles northwest of my demesne. It also told me that whoever was up there was competent enough to study my own wards and figure out exactly how close they could get with the defenses they had before I noticed.


    Unfortunately for them, now that I had noticed them, they were well inside my range. I just needed to start looking manually to lock onto their position. My mysteel pillar defense was a mere thought away from activation, but I wanted them to get just a little bit closer so I could prevent them from escaping once I counter-ambushed them.


    ¡°Querit,¡± I said as I opened a new scrying channel to the workshop he¡¯d taken over. ¡°We have uninvited guests. I sincerely doubt they¡¯re here for any good reason, so now would be a good time to climb into one of your combat frames.¡±


    ¡°You know that I don¡¯t really have any experience actually using those, right?¡± he asked with a slight quaver. Apparently, that scuffle with those mages outside of Ammun¡¯s tower had killed any confidence he had in his own abilities.


    ¡°I¡¯m not expecting you to fight. The frame is just to protect you from any stray shots that might go in your direction. You should get as deep underground as you can. Take anything valuable and portable with you.¡±


    While we were talking, I finished my own scrying and located a distortion in the light near where my wards had detected the clumsy mage. ¡°Found them,¡± I muttered. At that range, it would be difficult to pull them all in, but it looked like they were taking their time up there, possibly setting up some sort of massive ritualized group attack.


    One of the nice things about defending a demesne was that it was very easy and somewhat cheap to teleport around inside of it. In a blink, I was gone from my crucible and standing at the very edge of the valley, now invisible and undetectable. The genius loci that had formed when I¡¯d bonded the stretch of land to me could only rise so far from the ground, but it was more than enough to get me close to the interlopers.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Though they themselves remained outside my demesne, they¡¯d made too many mistakes that I could capitalize on, the biggest one being not repositioning themselves after one of their number had slipped up. By the same token, keeping a master-tier spell hidden until it was finished was almost impossible to do under normal conditions.


    This particular spell, however, was very quick to cast. It took only three seconds to put it together, and another five to select the location to detonate it, then a mass dispel went off in the middle of their formation. Their camouflaging barrier was stripped away instantly, along with their levitation spells. As one, they started falling from the sky.


    Some of them panicked. They accomplished nothing productive for the first few seconds of their unanticipated dive, flailing their arms and legs wildly as the wind streamed past them. Others were smarter, reflexively casting the spells they¡¯d need to save their lives almost before they started to fall. And three of them were so powerful that they didn¡¯t budge from their positions in the sky, their spells so strong that the mass dispel wasn¡¯t able to break them.


    The ones that fell below were immediately trapped as I mentally activated my defense pillars. The magic pulled them the rest of the way down to the ground, where my demesne was waiting for them. Twelve of my attackers were instantly transported to prison cells I¡¯d made, boxes of solid draw stone that would fight their occupants to take every last scrap of mana. They wouldn¡¯t be very effective against a good mage, but they¡¯d hinder an amateur enough to hold them for at least a few minutes.


    Five mages managed to save themselves from my ambush by casting flying spells and keeping out of range of my demesne, but I ignored those for the moment. The mysteel pillars were completely visible now, and their automated defensive spells were busy shooting blasts of elemental energy with surprising accuracy given how fast their targets were moving.


    The three remaining mages ignored the fight going on below them to focus on me. None of them were fooled by my own invisibility or divination blockers, which was no real surprise at the distance we were working at. It was nearly impossible to hide from a competent diviner who knew I was there at such a short range.


    The same was true for them, and now that the battle was starting, I got my first good look at the trio. I vaguely recognized one of them as an elite who¡¯d fought against me when Ammun first woke up, the one with the strong defensive magic. The other two were unknown, but presumably were equally powerful. One or both of the remaining mages were probably specialized into conjurations. It seemed to be how their cells operated.


    This fight wasn¡¯t like the last one. I was in my demesne here. I¡¯d had plenty of time to prepare, so much so that almost their entire group was losing just to my automated defenses. When the barrier specialist raised a hand to create a sphere of force magic around the trio, sneering the whole time, I simply smiled back and summoned a hundred force lances to surround the sphere from every angle.


    The lances launched themselves with outrageous speed all at the same time. Within moments, the barrier shattered, and if it took eighty or ninety lances to do that, it didn¡¯t matter. There were plenty left to skewer the mages who¡¯d thought they could shelter inside. The barrier mage managed to raise a secondary defense that flashed in and out of existence in less than a second, but it stopped all but two of the remaining lances. Those sliced through flesh, ripping out skin and muscle while trailing streamers of blood.


    The one who¡¯d gotten lucky and avoided being skewered, a tall, skinny man whose head was wrapped in some kind of scarf that left only his eyes visible, started loudly chanting as he waved his hands dramatically. I couldn¡¯t help but gawk in surprise as he audibly called out the runes he was putting together to make his spell. That was just asking to be countered.


    Was it some kind of diversion? Did he need me focused on him so that someone else could pull something off? Surely, he couldn¡¯t be this incompetent? Nothing I was seeing suggested this was anything other than what it appeared to be: a clumsy attempt to harm me while his companions did their best to recover from the wounds they¡¯d just taken.


    I sent a tendril of mana out to break the spell anyway, then followed it with multiple blasts of fire. The barrier mage saw what I was doing and fought through the pain of his injury to put up new defenses, a heat ward to keep their whole group safe and a kinetic shield to block the concussive force of my spells.


    While he was doing that, I started casting a master-tier spell, one I hadn¡¯t had occasion to use in years. Fancifully named Chill of the Infinite Void, it was the opposite of a fireball. Its primary effect was to pull every last scrap of heat out of an area, which could flash freeze anyone caught inside it. Given the properties of the heat ward my enemies were surrounded in, it would be even more effective than usual.


    Ice formed in the air in great clumps and started raining down below, where a stray projectile caught one of the mages busy dodging my mysteel pillars¡¯ energy attacks. The mage was caught completely unaware and started spinning out of control as he spiraled down to the ground. That was a nice little bonus to my attack, but not something I had intended.


    Up above me, the three master mages¡ªor possibly just two, all things considered¡ªwere fully caught in the attack. Blabbermouth succumbed to it immediately, but the barrier mage had some reactive measures on his person that were fighting to keep him alive. Instead of being a person-shaped ice sculpture, he was merely entombed in a huge block of it, one which was perhaps too heavy for his flight spell to hold up.


    The third mage was probably the smartest of the group. Whether it was the surge of mana as I built the spell that tipped him off or something else, he fled using a short distance instant teleport that took him about a mile away from the fight. Rather than stop there, he continued flying north as fast as his magic could carry him.


    Part of me wanted to chase him down, but I had far too many captives that, given sufficient time, could break free of their prisons. Fortunately, I had a solution. I cast a simple divination spell and reached out a few hundred miles to the north.


    ¡°Grandfather,¡± I spoke through my magic, ¡°I was wondering if I could get you to send one of your people out on an errand for me.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 34

    Interrogating all my new prisoners was a waste of time. Other than sorting out the ones who were there voluntarily from the ones who¡¯d been coerced into it, I learned absolutely nothing of any value. For the six I didn¡¯t kill once I was done with them, I sent them to the same place I¡¯d banished Laphlin to.


    The two powerhouse mages who¡¯d survived, the barrier mage and the smart one who¡¯d fled, probably knew lots of useful information, but getting it out of them was a different matter. Both were master mages, and a mage specializing in defensive spells was a difficult nut to crack. The brakvaw had caught the runner for me, but I¡¯d delayed picking him up until I finished with the group I already had, which meant finding a way to secure this guy before I did anything else.


    With everyone else dealt with, I turned to face the reinforced block of ice I¡¯d trapped the man in. It was riddled with cracks, held in place only by my own force magic. The mage had dispelled the ice six times now, only to trigger a trap ward that recast it each time. Fortunately, he hadn¡¯t been able to sort through the trap¡¯s weave to drain it.


    There was a reason it was dangerous to overspecialize. He might have archmage-level defenses, but he was barely competent at everything else. It worked out well for me, however, in that he was still trapped and ready to be interrogated.


    ¡°Let¡¯s start with something simple,¡± I said, knowing he could hear me through the ice. I didn¡¯t bother to dispel it, not when keeping himself from freezing was a distraction to his own spellcasting and a constant drain on his mana. ¡°How about you tell me your name?¡±


    Unfortunately, my mind reading spells weren¡¯t getting through his own mental defenses. At best, I could barely pick up thoughts he was actively directing at me, and he knew it. I got back a string of curses from him and nothing else. Trying to press deeper resulted in being blocked completely as he flexed his countermeasures to push me back.


    ¡°I think we¡¯ve firmly established that I¡¯m not getting any information out of your brain by force,¡± I told him. ¡°Which means there are really only two options left here: either we come to some sort of agreement that we can both walk away from, or I just cut my losses and kill you. So let¡¯s try again. What¡¯s your name?¡±


    ¡®Hebrem,¡¯ he thought. Somehow even his thought managed to convey the idea that he sneered at me while he said it.


    ¡°There we go. Progress. So, Hebrem, let¡¯s talk about what you want. Am I right in assuming you¡¯re not some sort of religious zealot interested in dying for the cause? I mean, you specialize in defensive magic, which clearly shows a strong interest in self-preservation to me.¡±


    ¡®You¡¯re going to kill me anyway. Why should I help you first?¡¯


    ¡°There¡¯s not really much reason to. You¡¯re not a threat to me,¡± I said. ¡°You could be useful if you know something about Ammun¡¯s plans that I don¡¯t, and I¡¯m perfectly happy to trade your life for that information.¡±


    There was nowhere I could dump Hebrem that he couldn¡¯t escape from. Barely competent he might be, that was still enough for him to fly out of any local village or town. More importantly, Ammun¡¯s hunters had figured out where my demesne was, which meant this was only the first attack unless I did something to stop them.


    ¡®The lich will crush you like a bug the next time the two of you face off. We saw your last battle. You barely scraped a victory, and that was against an opponent with almost no mana who¡¯d just come out of a thousand-year hibernation. Betraying him to you seems like a bad idea.¡¯


    ¡°Sure, I get where you¡¯d think that. It makes sense from your point of view. Counter argument: he¡¯s not here. I am. Do you think Ammun is going to fly a few thousand miles to rescue you before we reach the end of this conversation?¡±


    Hebrem didn¡¯t answer with words, but I did get a vague sense of frustration, unease, and anger all mixed together. Either he was good at controlling his emotions or, more likely, he firmed up his mental defenses quickly, because the feeling cut out after barely a second.


    ¡®Let me out of this ice prison first.¡¯


    ¡°Why would I do that?¡± I asked. ¡°It¡¯s keeping you occupied, and we¡¯re still enemies.¡±


    ¡®Let me out and we can talk.¡¯


    In all fairness, being trapped in a block of ice would normally be fatal, even to a fully-trained mage. It took some fairly specific countermeasures to survive something like that, which was why Hebrem was alive and one of his other companions was not. It wasn¡¯t a master-tier spell for no reason.


    ¡°That doesn¡¯t sound like a good idea to me. We can talk just fine like this.¡±This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡®I can barely hear half of what you¡¯re saying. I¡¯m extremely cold. It¡¯s hard to think while maintaining this spell. And besides,¡¯ Hebrem thought to me, ¡®You¡¯ve proven I can¡¯t beat you. There¡¯s no way I¡¯m going to escape. This is just pointless torture.¡¯


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t call it pointless if it¡¯s softening you up to do what I want,¡± I said. The mana costs to maintain the cold around Hebrem¡¯s icy prison weren¡¯t negligible, but with lossless casting and us being inside my demesne, I could keep him trapped indefinitely. ¡°But I¡¯ll meet you halfway here. I¡¯ll let you out of the ice, then you¡¯ll answer some questions. Or you won¡¯t, and I¡¯ll kill you.¡±


    There was no mistaking the surge of hatred coming from Hebrem there. Surprisingly, there was no fear in the man. I wasn¡¯t sure if it was sheer arrogance making him believe he¡¯d find a way out of his predicament or if he just truly wasn¡¯t afraid to die, but either way, it was unusual.


    Did he know something I didn¡¯t? Was that why he wasn¡¯t worried? Or was he actually terrified, but too good and controlling his mental shields to let it slip out? If that was the case, then every emotion I felt coming from him was calculated, though I couldn¡¯t guess what he was trying to accomplish.


    My wards were fully charged and my divinations were actively scanning the area for threats. Any attempts by anyone other than me to scry or teleport into or out of the area would be contested by my defenses, and short of Ammun himself showing up, I was confident the defenses would win.


    I relaxed the spells holding Hebrem¡¯s ice prison together. About ten seconds later, the first chunk broke free and crashed to the floor, where it scattered into a hundred tiny shards of ice. Within a few seconds of that, the rest of the prison collapsed, leaving a shivering, red-faced, wet-haired Hebrem standing there glaring at me.


    ¡°Y-y-you,¡± he started to say, but stopped to gain control over his chattering.


    I watched, one eyebrow raised, and waited patiently for him to compose himself.


    Hebrem took a minute to cast a spell to dry himself off. Perhaps he knew that I¡¯d watch him like a hawk to ensure no other magic snuck its way into that casting, or perhaps he simply cared so much about his comfort that he couldn¡¯t help himself. Either way, it truly was simple, basic magic that did nothing more than clean him up and dry his hair.


    ¡°You,¡± he said again when he was done, this time with a finger jabbed in my direction for extra emphasis, ¡°are thoroughly insufferable.¡±


    ¡°You know, for a guy who could very well end up dead in the next ten seconds, you sure are bold,¡± I pointed out.


    ¡°You¡¯re not going to kill me,¡± Hebrem said.


    ¡°Why¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°Because you attacked Ammun¡¯s secret project, set him back on it. But you don¡¯t know what it is, or you wouldn¡¯t have given up after your first assault.¡±


    ¡°What makes you think I¡¯ve given up?¡± I asked.


    ¡°There¡¯s a whole legion of diviners focused on finding you if you go anywhere near those things,¡± Hebrem told me. ¡°We know you haven¡¯t been back to make sure the damage was thorough.¡±


    That was true. ¡°So what is it, then? And how far back did I set production?¡±


    ¡°Lord Ammun isn¡¯t telling anyone, but he¡¯s got a lot of us involved in crafting specific pieces to his specifications. We¡¯ve compared notes.¡±


    ¡°And?¡± I prompted. Hebrem was starting to annoy me now.


    ¡°And if I tell you, you have to let me go.¡±


    ¡°No. I¡¯ve got a hundred more questions to get through. I want to know who¡¯s on this team that¡¯s specifically hunting for me. I want to know what the inside of the tower looks like now that most of the inhabitants have been kicked out. What else has Ammun been up to? You¡¯re going to tell me everything if you want to walk away from this.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d never be able to hide that I betrayed a lich lord if I gave you that much information! I¡¯ll tell you one thing only.¡±


    ¡°No deal,¡± I said. ¡°Do you have a preference in how you die? I¡¯m assuming you¡¯d prefer quick and painless.¡±


    For all his blustering, Hebrem was right about one thing ¨C I wasn¡¯t actually going to kill him, not yet. One way or another, I was going to get answers to my questions. It would be better for him if he gave them voluntarily, and it would save me a lot of time having to break down his mental defenses and trawl through his mind, something I didn¡¯t want to do anyway since there was every chance I¡¯d miss important information.


    ¡°Damn you, negotiate with me!¡± Hebrem snapped. ¡°You can¡¯t just expect me to hand over every bit of leverage I have before we even get started.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I see the issue,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re misunderstanding what¡¯s happening here. This isn¡¯t a negotiation. I¡¯m going to get what I want, freely given, or you¡¯re going to die. You get to choose which option you¡¯d prefer.¡±


    ¡°Everything is a negotiation,¡± he said. ¡°That¡¯s what makes the world function. If you don¡¯t see that¡ª¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s because I am a very old, very dangerous, and very impatient monster,¡± I finished for him. ¡°Negotiations are for people too weak to just take what they want.¡±


    Something must have finally clicked for him, because for the first time, a sharp spike of fear surged through him. It hadn¡¯t been some kind of act or deception, after all. The idiot truly just thought he was safe from harm for some reason. He was just now finally realizing that I wasn¡¯t trying some sort of tactic or scam on him.


    ¡°Now, let¡¯s start again. What exactly is Ammun building, and when will it be completed?¡±


    ¡°We think it¡¯s some sort of tether,¡± Hebrem blurted out, his nerve failing him. ¡°It¡¯ll connect him to something, probably the Sanctum itself.¡±


    ¡°To let him draw mana from it directly, even if he¡¯s not there,¡± I said.


    Hebrem nodded. ¡°Exactly! The components are extremely delicate to spatial distortions. It must be because the setup has to cross great distances.¡±


    If Ammun completed it, he¡¯d be able to roam anywhere inside the circle of those eight sites with full access to his mana. I could see why he¡¯d put so much effort into something like that. He was effectively trapped in the tower right now, the massive amounts of mana he needed to keep his body from crumbling too much to allow him to travel more than an hour or two away at a time, not unless he wanted to bring his phylactery with him everywhere he went. Even then, it wouldn¡¯t increase his radius enough to justify the risk.


    That would make assaulting the tower all the more difficult if Ammun could leave to defend it, but it all felt underwhelming to me. There had to be more to it than just that.


    ¡°Tell me everything you can about the pieces you helped build,¡± I ordered. ¡°I want to know exactly how these machines work.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 35

    I ended up with an entire notebook of sketches from Hebrem, who grew crankier and crankier about the work I was forcing on him with each passing minute. His mental defenses remained solidly in place throughout the entire questioning, which did make it harder for me to trust him, but I thought the information was probably genuine.


    There was definitely more going on with those machines than just creating a tether to the tower. They were far more advanced than they needed to be, and also far more delicate. There was no reason to overengineer them to the point of introducing unnecessary vulnerabilities into the system, and I knew Ammun was smarter than that. It was obvious that he hadn¡¯t told his followers everything.


    My best guess was that they were vastly underestimating the range of freedom Ammun planned to claim with these devices. Just from the pieces I knew about, they seemed to scale an enormous amount, enough to cover the entire globe and then some. It just didn¡¯t make sense, though. Why would he need that? Was it just because he could, or did it do something else besides tether him to his source of mana?


    I just didn¡¯t have enough pieces of the puzzle to come up with anything definitive. All I knew for sure was that the machines weren¡¯t only designed to let him roam his reestablished empire freely. There was more to them, and I would likely find it much more difficult to sabotage his plans next time.


    Frustrated with this line of questioning, I decided to move on. ¡°What¡¯s the point of this expansion operation? Killing people, taking their homes, driving refugees out? Why not integrate these towns into Ralvost if Ammun is that determined to revive the empire?¡±


    Hebrem hesitated on that, not because he didn¡¯t know the answer, but because he thought I wouldn¡¯t like it. Either Ammun was doing something that was amassing him power and I needed to be worried, or Hebrem had misread the direction my moral compass pointed in.


    ¡°He¡­ This isn¡¯t an opinion shared by everybody, mind you. Lord Ammun¡¯s people sheltered in the tower after Ralvost was broken. The dirt people who lived in the towns and villages outside the Sanctum¡­ they are foreigners who came to Ralvost and took over the land.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t know Ammun was so¡­ patriotic,¡± I said. ¡°So it¡¯s really as simple as not wanting anyone he considers an outsider to be part of his empire. Does he know what the word ¡®empire¡¯ even means?¡±


    Unexpectedly, Hebrem laughed. ¡°Several of my former colleagues made a similar argument, though worded with a bit more civility. I say former because they are no longer among the living.¡±


    I was not surprised to find out that Ammun styled himself a God-Emperor, one with absolute and unquestionable authority. Even as an apprentice, he¡¯d hated taking orders from anyone else. It had made him a chore to teach, but his family had been in control of a region rife with rare alchemical ingredients and had strong enough political ties that I hadn¡¯t been willing to deal with the headache of having an entire nation declare war against me if I just took what I wanted.


    ¡°And the tower dwellers being forced out into those lands is more of the same?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Perhaps. Lord Ammun certainly said as much. We all suspect that he determined having thousands of mages living there had a significant impact on the amount of mana available for him to use, however. That may have motivated the decision more strongly than any feelings of patriotism you believe he has.¡±


    I doubted that was the reason. For the moment, at least, his demesne produced more mana than he could possibly use. Perhaps he expected to strain his resources when he turned on his new machines and was preemptively relocating his forces away from his center of power, but that didn¡¯t feel right, either. I knew how much mana the tower pulled from the world core, and I knew how much he needed to survive. It was barely a fraction of what he had available to him, and powering a few machines wouldn¡¯t change that.


    Finally, I¡¯d finished asking all my questions. I got some answers I suspected were deliberate lies, and more answers that were admittedly guesswork, but I ended the interrogation with a much, much better understanding of what Ammun was up to. There was just one remaining detail to figure out.


    ¡°What should I do with you?¡± I mused out loud.


    ¡°The deal was that you would release me!¡±


    ¡°It certainly wasn¡¯t. The deal was that you would answer my questions or I would kill you. There was no mention of what would happen once I was done asking those questions.¡±


    Hebrem¡¯s face reddened and he scowled. I could sense him start to pull mana from his core, even through his admittedly excellent shroud. ¡°Don¡¯t,¡± I warned.


    ¡°You treacherous bastard,¡± he hissed. ¡°We had a deal, and now you¡¯re going back on it?¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    ¡°I have an alternative to killing you,¡± I said. ¡°But it requires your cooperation, and you¡¯re not going to like it.¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°You really don¡¯t want to be saying that.¡±


    ¡°Whatever you¡¯re thinking of doing to me, I¡¯m not going to let you.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s the only way you¡¯re getting out of here alive.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not going to let me leave alive. I was an idiot to trust you.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°I will, but not as a threat to go back to my enemy and continue supporting him.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s no way to guarantee that,¡± Hebrem argued. ¡°What oath could I possibly swear that you¡¯d believe?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re correct. Nothing you can say would convince me. However, there is something that I can do to ensure you¡¯re physically incapable of helping Ammun further.¡±


    Hebrem¡¯s eyes widened and he took a step back. ¡°No, absolutely not. I¡¯m not letting you break my mana core.¡±


    ¡°Either your life as a mage ends today, or just your life,¡± I told him.


    Hebrem unleashed the spell he¡¯d been secretly building up, but offensive conjurations weren¡¯t his specialty. Not only did I not need any special defenses beyond my standard shield ward to protect myself, it was easy to foul up the spell just as he cast it. With a little less than ten feet between us, my counterspell was instant.


    His attack, some sort of paralyzing enchantment, fizzled out. I shook my head and said, ¡°I understand why you¡¯d choose death over life without magic.¡±


    Then I mentally activated the enchantments I¡¯d placed in the room long before I¡¯d brought Hebrem here, and everything that wasn¡¯t me was instantly vaporized in a flash of heat and pressure. There was nothing left of the man but a single lump of polished black stone, the compressed matter of his entire body, now small enough to hold in the palm of my hand.


    ¡°I did say I¡¯d make it quick and painless,¡± I told the lump.


    * * *


    ¡°Can you look these over and give me your thoughts?¡± I asked Querit as I dropped the notebook Hebrem had scribbled designs in onto a table. ¡°I can¡¯t vouch for the accuracy of everything in here, so it¡¯s best to assume there could be some errors, intentional or otherwise.¡±


    The golem was sitting in an underground bunker connected to his workshop inside one of his two combat frames. It was hard to tell with him hidden inside the shell, but I thought I might have surprised him with my entrance. He certainly flinched hard enough to make me suspect he hadn¡¯t realized I was there.


    ¡°Intra-demesne teleportation,¡± he muttered, his voice strangely modulated from inside his frame.


    ¡°Quick, easy, and cheap,¡± I confirmed. ¡°But also, I¡¯ve been standing here for the last minute, flipping through this thing myself. I just didn¡¯t say anything. You¡¯re unobservant.¡±


    ¡°So the professor always told me,¡± he said dryly. ¡°What¡¯s this?¡±


    ¡°Extracted information on the machines we busted up. They¡¯re too complex for what my prisoner thought they were used for, which was a link between Ammun and the tower that would let him roam the countryside freely. I suspect the machines have other functions he¡¯s kept hidden from his underlings. It would be a good idea to figure out what those functions are just in case any of them threaten us.¡±


    ¡°Right. Uh, where¡¯s the guy who drew all this in case I have any questions?¡±


    I pulled the black stone out of my phantom space and set it on the table. ¡°I don¡¯t think he¡¯ll be much in the mood to answer, but you¡¯re welcome to try.¡±


    ¡°You killed him? Why?! I thought he answered your questions.¡±


    ¡°He did,¡± I said, ¡°and then he tried to attack me and escape once he found out I wasn¡¯t going to let him leave with his mana core intact. There was no way I was going to let a mage with archmage-level defensive magics return to Ammun with information about what the inside of my demesne looks like.¡±


    ¡°I understand, but¡­¡± Querit cut himself off and shook his head. ¡°No, it was the right decision.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m glad you agree. I need to go pick up my other prisoner that the brakvaw captured for me and interrogate him. I¡¯ll try to get some corroborating information about what these machines actually do so we can cross-reference these rune structures.¡±


    Querit glanced over at the glossy black rock that used to be a human being and shuddered so hard his entire combat frame rattled. ¡°I suppose there¡¯s no need for me to be inside this thing anymore,¡± he said. The seams on the armor opened up, and a childlike Querit of no more than four feet in height stepped out. His body shifted, and he immediately shot up to something closer to six feet.


    ¡°I suggest you do some thinking about building a new frame designed for aerial skirmishing, because this isn¡¯t going to be the last attack. Ammun has an undead dragon minion, and if he figures out how to get that over here, we¡¯re going to be in for a hell of a fight.¡±


    ¡°So much to do,¡± Querit said. ¡°Now a combat frame on top of that?¡±


    ¡°Prioritize these notes. Figuring out what Ammun¡¯s making will help point us to the right preparations to defend against it. After that, any progress you can make on adapting lossless casting for enchantments and inscriptions would be the biggest help. If we get to the point where I need your help in a spell duel with Ammun¡¯s forces, we¡¯ve probably already lost anyway.¡±


    ¡°Then why do you want me making an aerial frame?¡± he asked.


    ¡°In case you need to run away.¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± he said quietly. Maybe it hadn¡¯t occurred to him that I might lose next time a group of hostile mages appeared. I hadn¡¯t told him how much worse this attack could have been if not for that one mage who¡¯d set off my divination wards by straying too far from their formation.


    ¡°I¡¯ll leave you to it. I¡¯ve got plenty of other projects of my own to deal with,¡± I told the golem. ¡°Expect to hear from me again in a few hours.¡±


    I teleported back across the valley to my outbound teleportation platform. Thankfully, the brakvaw had allowed me to set up a platform on Eyrie Peak, so it wouldn¡¯t take me long to go fetch my prisoner. I wondered what Grandfather would ask for in exchange, and whether he¡¯d want it immediately or if he¡¯d bank the favor for later.


    I also needed to see my family soon. Other than a quick scry of New Alkerist to confirm the attack had been localized to just my demesne, I hadn¡¯t made any sort of contact with the farm town. Now that I knew Ammun had located me, I needed to take additional measures to ensure I could quickly defend both my home and theirs.


    ¡°So much to do is exactly right,¡± I muttered. The real question was how much time I had left to do it.

 Book 4, Chapter 36

    Eyrie Peak was the largest mountain in the range by a mile. In fact, it was one of the largest I¡¯d ever seen, its height dwarfed only by Ammun¡¯s tower thousands of miles northwest of here. The peak of the mountain had been ripped off, leaving a relatively shallow¡ªcompared to the rest of the mountain¡ªdepression in the top. That chunk of stone was a few thousand feet overhead, floating up beyond the clouds and full of the interred bodies of dead brakvaw.


    I¡¯d never gotten an accurate count of the living brakvaw, especially not after they¡¯d had a bit of a civil war a few years back once their leader had finally managed to come down from their floating graveyard to oversee the mountain personally. His elder council hadn¡¯t liked that one bit since it meant they were no longer free to flout his commands and run things as they saw fit.


    Things had gotten messy, and I¡¯d have been content to stay out of it except for the fact that some of the splinter factions had started targeting human settlements. That had dragged me into the middle of the problems and resulted in me assassinating four of their elders and opening a portal to another continent to expand their hunting grounds so as to keep them all from starving when they returned to Eyrie Peak.


    Of course, that portal had to be shut down once Ammun woke up, and I¡¯d been obliged to make a whole new network of sixteen portals to unleash the scourge of giant carnivorous corvids on wildlife all over the world. I¡¯d been well-compensated for that work, so I couldn¡¯t complain.


    For all of that, though, our alliance was tenuous. Most of the brakvaw didn¡¯t like me, and some of them for good reason, but Grandfather wasn¡¯t in that camp, and he kept the rest of his people from attacking me on sight. It was with only a nominal amount of caution that I appeared on the teleportation platform I¡¯d left at Eyrie Peak. I wasn¡¯t expecting to be attacked, but I was ready to respond if I was.


    To my surprise, the platform was unguarded. That didn¡¯t usually happen, not that the brakvaw stood over it like a human soldier might, but there was always one or two of them in the area to notice someone showing up. Today¡­ nothing.


    Tendrils of scrying magic extended in every direction to give me a better picture of what was going on, only to reveal more of the same. The mountain seemed to be abandoned, something that hadn¡¯t happened even when two-thirds of their population had moved to other hunting grounds. And I¡¯d just spoken with Grandfather a few hours ago, which would have been the perfect opportunity for him to warn me if something big was going on.


    Did this have something to do with Ammun¡¯s mage hunters? Individually, I doubted any of them were a match for an adult brakvaw. But they certainly had the numbers to swarm the entire colony if they wanted. It was just hard to imagine what the point would be. Portal networks weren¡¯t unique, and they were well inside Ammun¡¯s expertise to create himself. They weren¡¯t even that expensive to maintain.


    I took to the skies while I hunted for signs of brakvaw. At first, I was only mildly curious, but when three minutes of scrying confirmed for me that there were none anywhere on Eyrie Peak, I started to get concerned.


    Everyone else might be gone, but Grandfather physically couldn¡¯t leave. He was permanently tethered to the bowl at the top of the mountain so that he could channel the spell that kept their floating graveyard aloft. Even in his sleep, he cycled mana through the massive construct. The only way he was moving was if Querit was able to figure out lossless enchanting, or he died.


    Given that I didn¡¯t see the wreckage of a floating island strewn across the top of the mountain, it seemed safe to assume that Grandfather would still be there. When I flew closer, however, I didn¡¯t see the enormous grayfeather perched in his customary nest. Knowing how little he could actually move from there was the hint I needed.


    I was trapped in some sort of enchantment, probably triggered the instant I had arrived at the Eyrie Peak teleportation platform, which meant that the mysterious third master mage who¡¯d fled was far, far more dangerous than I¡¯d given him credit for.


    Now that I knew what to look for, I could sense the ethereal threads of the enchantment surrounding me. The formation wasn¡¯t one I was familiar with, but all enchantments shared the same weaknesses. If they ran out of mana, they starved and broke. All I had to do was start pulling, and things would unravel on their own.


    ¡°Lord Ammun did warn me that you¡¯d be more formidable than anyone else I¡¯d ever faced,¡± a voice said from nowhere. ¡°But it appears I underestimated you. I thought I¡¯d have more time to work. No matter. Just becoming aware of the dream net doesn¡¯t mean you can escape its clutches.¡±


    The enchantment shifted around me, its threads slipping through my grasp as it did. Laughter echoed through empty air, and Eyrie Peak faded away. Instead of the familiar mountain, I stood in a fog-filled forest, greener than anything I¡¯d seen since being reborn. I wondered briefly if the illusion was based on some real place the masked mage had actually seen, or if it was wholly imagined.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The one thing I was sure of was that my attacker hadn¡¯t managed anything deeper than a surface-level enchantment on my mind. Even that was surprising; my shield ward should have at least alerted me to a hostile action. Whoever this mage was, he was archmage-level good at enchanting. Was this Ammun¡¯s plan then? If he couldn¡¯t field an actual archmage against me, he¡¯d form teams with individual skill sets that picked up each other¡¯s slack?


    It wasn¡¯t the worst idea I¡¯d ever heard, but it lacked the kind of synergy having all that knowledge and skill in one person gave. That was how I kept picking them off, by finding the gaps in their techniques and exploiting them. This guy was very, very good at what he did, but I knew all about enchanting, too. More than that, I knew the weakness to this kind of attack.


    He couldn¡¯t be very far away if he was actively manipulating it, possibly so close that he was touching me. He was hijacking my senses and motor functions, essentially keeping me paralyzed, blinded, and deafened. I couldn¡¯t move my mouth to chant the runes of a spell, but I didn¡¯t need to. I just needed to understand that the spells I thought I¡¯d been casting hadn¡¯t been real, and burrow past that to tap into my true mana core.


    I hoped there were no brakvaw nearby.


    Even trapped in this enchantment, I¡¯d maintained the shield around my core that made it invisible to others. And the master-tier spell known as inferno took no time at all to cast. Usually, the pre-spell setup was for creating the wards needed to prevent the spell from cooking me alongside everything else, since I would by necessity of design be at the exact center of it.


    I¡¯d just have to trust my shield ward to keep me safe. No doubt the enchanter was attacking it right now, trying to overcome it by draining its mana so he could kill me. If he did a good enough job, I was in trouble. If not, I¡¯d walk away unharmed.


    I couldn¡¯t see the light or feel the heat, but fire washed out of me in every direction, swirling around and around. Anything and everything nearby was scoured down to the bare stone. At first, nothing changed, but then the enchantment started to waver. I latched onto it instantly and ripped the mana out of it.


    The illusion surrounding me faded away, revealing the teleportation platform at Eyrie Peak. There were no brakvaw near me, thankfully, but there was one very blackened corpse about three feet away. It was facedown, turned away from me as if it had been running away when the flames caught it. Smoke rolled off its twisted and distorted limbs.


    I wouldn¡¯t be asking him too many questions, not unless I wanted to delve back into necromancy and pull his soul back from beyond the veil. But no, I¡¯d sworn off that power. Never again would I bring back the dead. It only caused more problems.


    No less than six brakvaw were winging toward me from different directions, probably attracted by the burst of light and heat my spell had caused. If I had to guess, my attacker had probably woven some sort of magic to trick the normal watchers into leaving the platform unguarded so that he could ambush me the instant I came through, when I was most vulnerable.


    I took a moment to recharge my shield ward, now almost completely drained, while the brakvaw closed in. Luckily, I recognized a few of them. When they landed, I just said, ¡°I¡¯ll need to speak to Grandfather right away. This shouldn¡¯t have happened.¡±


    I used telekinesis to shake down the corpse, hoping to find something that would clue me in to how the mage had escaped custody and set up a trap. I had some theories, but I wanted evidence before I spoke to Grandfather. My spell had been a bit too thorough, however. It was hard to feel too bad about it when I¡¯d been facing an unknown, invisible attacker. Better to kill him than to let him escape, or worse, break through my defenses.


    Theories would have to do. Grandfather and I had a strong working relationship. He¡¯d listen to me.


    My examination of the corpse complete, I flew up into the air and let two of the brakvaw accompany me up the side of the mountain. This time, there were plenty of giant birds perched on their nests, and even more of them flying through the sky. I gazed down at the wall of portals I¡¯d built for them and wondered which ones I¡¯d be breaking. Hopefully the brakvaw had a better idea than me.


    Grandfather¡¯s projection appeared in the sky next to me as we flew past the portals. ¡°Keiran,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯m afraid the intruder managed to escape and fled.¡±


    ¡°He didn¡¯t go far, just down to the teleportation platform, where he used powerful illusions and enchantments to hide,¡± I said. ¡°I was forced to kill him to save myself, which leaves me in a bit of a quandary.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°Originally, I thought the force that found my home came overland, flying or teleporting the whole way. Then the one that got away was waiting to ambush me here instead of fleeing. Why here, of all places? How could they know that I¡¯d come here?¡±


    Grandfather followed my eyes down to the portals. ¡°You said it was impossible for anyone who wasn¡¯t keyed in to use the portals.¡±


    ¡°It is,¡± I said. ¡°What¡¯s not impossible is someone else keying more people in, and this group showed a surprising amount of skill.¡±


    ¡°But we would have seen a few humans coming through.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°Maybe, but the one that nearly got me was sitting on your teleportation platform for what I assume was several hours, completely undetected. He even managed to drive away the brakvaw who should have been watching it. It¡¯s entirely possible that they had a teleportation specialist who managed to key them into the portal to go along with the enchantment specialist who allowed them to pass through undetected.¡±


    ¡°These portals aren¡¯t safe then,¡± Grandfather said.


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°But we need access to the hunting grounds.¡±


    ¡°I know. Talk to your people. Find out which portals lead to places with human activity. Maybe I can shut down a single portal for now. In the meantime, I¡¯m going to add some heavy detection wards, independent of the portals themselves, which will hopefully prevent anyone who does manage to come through from hiding. At the very least, you¡¯ll know about future intruders.¡±


    Our plans laid, Grandfather and I separated. I cast a few temporal divinations to try to discover which portal had been infiltrated, but got nothing in return. Still, I didn¡¯t think I was wrong. Just in case I was, though, I needed to secure my parents¡¯ home as well.


    One problem at a time.

 Book 4, Chapter 37

    Based on some testimonies from a few of the flock¡¯s primary hunters, we eventually narrowed Ammun¡¯s mages¡¯ entry point down to three possible portals. I gave all three a thorough examination and found evidence that one had been subverted to include an extra twenty-some people onto its registry.


    ¡°There¡¯s proof, then,¡± I muttered to myself while I decided what to do about it.


    The best thing from my perspective was to shut them all down. There was still a chance the actual location of the island hadn¡¯t been discovered, though if the portal expert who¡¯d modified my designs had taken the time to check, he could have figured things out. I could easily envision a scenario where they sent information back to the tower to let Ammun know what they¡¯d discovered before venturing across the portal¡¯s threshold.


    I had to assume more attacks would be coming whether I closed the portals down or not ¨C they just might take a few extra weeks to arrive if I cut off the shortcut into the island. That might not be enough time to forge a resonance point and bring my mana core up to stage seven, but it would certainly let me generate a nice chunk of much-needed mana to power my defenses.


    I flagged that portal to break in exactly eight hours when it ran out of mana, and also made it only work in one direction. That way, any brakvaw on the other side would have time to return instead of being stranded. Then I considered the other portals. The best I could do was to alter the inscriptions to blow themselves up if anyone tried to modify the registry, which would allow the brakvaw to still use them now, but no new ones to be added. It also ran the risk of locking them out of the eyrie if someone else tampered with the portal while they were on the other side.


    ¡®I need you to make some decisions,¡¯ I telepathically sent to Grandfather. ¡®I can rig the portals to collapse if anyone tries to tamper with them like the group that got through did, but it means no new brakvaw can be added to them. It also means that if any brakvaw is out hunting when they collapse, we¡¯ll have to manually fetch them.¡¯


    A moment later, I got his reply. ¡®I¡¯ll discuss this with the council and get you an answer shortly. We¡¯re already in session.¡¯


    Damn it. I had other things to do and I didn¡¯t want to come back. Minutes passed while I sat there, waiting and watching brakvaw fly around. None approached the portals, presumably on orders from the elders. Until we determined exactly what I¡¯d be doing to them, it was best not to let anyone else go through.


    With nothing better to do, I scried on my orb tracker vat back below Derro, hoping to see something interesting going on. I couldn¡¯t manipulate the device¡¯s fine controls from this distance, but I could tell it to show me what had happened over the last few hours. It was, sadly, about what I had expected. The experiment would need another round, this time with the tracking orbs seeded deeper under the surface. Hopefully my test batch would be enough to get the job done ¨C once I had time to go dump them.


    There was nothing else to see there, and I still hadn¡¯t gotten a response from Grandfather, so I turned my divinations to their council meeting. It wasn¡¯t hard to find; Grandfather couldn¡¯t physically go anywhere, leaving only his location as the place for the brakvaw to meet in person.


    One of their strange innate magics allowed them to shrink their bodies, though from what I understood, it was a skill to be mastered like any other. Some of them were incredibly adept at it, able to reduce themselves down to a man-sized bird instead of a two-story-house-sized bird. Others struggled to shrink their physical forms down by more than a tiny fraction.


    The elders and Grandfather were the best mages among their species, and that meant all of them had mastered their innate abilities. I found them gathered around Grandfather, who himself remained his true size in order to continue channeling the spell that held their floating graveyard up. It made them look like a gaggle of school children being minded by their teacher.


    ¡°-can¡¯t shut down the Green Plains portal,¡± one of the elders said in their ear-splitting screech of a language. Figuring out how to translate that into Enotian had been a chore and a half. ¡°Almost a third of our food is coming from that area alone.¡±


    ¡°Only because we can send so many of our hunters to one location. The other areas will pick up the slack once we reallocate resources to them,¡± a different elder argued.


    ¡°They won¡¯t bring back the same volume,¡± the first one said. ¡°And they certainly won¡¯t find any more of those little green and brown things with the shells. You know, the crunchy ones.¡±


    Why that should be an argument to leave such a massive security risk open was beyond me, but for some reason, the elder¡¯s words seemed to sway the others. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt and hoped it was the amount of food being brought back that they cared about, not the loss of some particular brakvaw delicacy.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Either way, it didn¡¯t matter. I was shutting the portal down. Their debate needed to be on what to do with the rest of them. With a sigh of disgust, I let the scrying spell go.


    ¡®I¡¯m leaving in five minutes if I don¡¯t have an answer,¡¯ I sent to Grandfather. ¡®Get your council off the topic of the portal I already destroyed and onto whether they want to keep the rest of them unchanged.¡¯


    ¡®You are too impatient,¡¯ Grandfather sent back.


    ¡®At my age, you would be too.¡¯


    I was well past the point in my life where I waited in audience halls to petition others for favors, and being reincarnated had done nothing to change my stance on that. It really wasn¡¯t much of a stretch to say that other than Ammun himself, there probably wasn¡¯t a single person on the planet who had a prayer of making me do anything I didn¡¯t want to.


    Except my family. Somehow, I always ended up doing what they wanted. It was hard to complain, though; without them, I would never have encountered the brakvaw and learned lossless casting. The giant birds might be a bit of a headache now, but they¡¯d basically given me access to unlimited mana for any spell I might want to cast below master-tier, and even that was something I was getting closer to.


    Three minutes later, Grandfather projected his human shape to me. He looked like an old man, his head full of hair the same steel gray as his real plumage. ¡°We¡¯ve reached a decision,¡± he told me.


    ¡°We?¡±


    ¡°Fine. I¡¯ve reached a decision, and I¡¯ve forced my bickering children into agreement. Are you happy now?¡±


    ¡°That depends on what the decision is,¡± I said.


    It was kind of funny how many bird-like mannerisms showed through, even in his human shape. I could practically see his ruffled feathers in the set of his shoulders, but he pushed his annoyance down and said, ¡°We¡¯d like the remaining portals restricted for now. Our hope is to open the Green Plains back up after this whole dispute you have going on with that lich is resolved. In the meantime, we¡¯d like to have a different portal opened somewhere else to offset losing a hunting ground.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t ask for much, do you?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m aware of how much work it¡¯ll be. I¡¯d planned on slowly bringing my council around to just closing Green Plains and restricting the rest, but someone got impatient and forced me into an action before the time was right.¡±


    I shrugged. ¡°I just fended off a hostile assault on my home earlier today. I have other things to do besides securing these portals. I¡¯ll do the registry restrictions now, but then I¡¯m leaving. Your flock will need to figure out how to survive with just fifteen portals.¡±


    I took Grandfather¡¯s silence as agreement and got to work while he watched. ¡°What are you going to do about the lich?¡± he asked after I finished the first portal.


    ¡°Finish rebuilding my mana core. Find him. Destroy him,¡± I said. ¡°Assuming I have enough time, which is looking less and less likely.¡±


    ¡°And if you don¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°Then I guess I¡¯ll need to get clever.¡± Running wasn¡¯t a good option, but it might be my only choice if Ammun managed to get his tethering device working. His flunkies were one thing, but I wasn¡¯t even confident I could battle his bone dragon right now, let alone Ammun himself.


    Breaking the tower would go a long way toward killing Ammun, and he knew that. That was a big reason I suspected he never left it, not even to travel the short distance he could get away with. He knew I was spying on Ralvost and probably worried that I¡¯d find some way to sabotage his demesne if he left it unguarded, and who else besides him could protect it from me?


    If only I hadn¡¯t shown Averin the door that led to the lich¡¯s tomb. That tower would have crumbled around his phylactery, burying him fifty miles under the surface, and I wouldn¡¯t be in this situation. It was funny how one small mistake could turn into such a disaster.


    ¡°Liches aren¡¯t invincible,¡± I said. ¡°If he showed up at my demesne, just him, I might beat him in a straight fight. The problem is that it won¡¯t be a straight fight, and even if I win, all I¡¯m doing is banishing him back to his phylactery for a few hours, maybe a day at most. If I really want to end it, I need to be strong enough to get back into the tower to hunt down whatever rock he¡¯s got his soul bound to.¡±


    ¡°That seems impossible, from what I understand,¡± Grandfather remarked.


    ¡°That¡¯s about how it seems to me, too,¡± I admitted. ¡°I¡¯m working on some alternatives, but all of that is just to catch up to a target that I know isn¡¯t standing still and waiting for me. It¡¯s not going to be easy, especially if he finds a way to keep pushing me without this portal.¡±


    I left unsaid my suspicions that more of his agents would arrive on the island to establish their own portals soon enough. They¡¯d probably build a base camp somewhere in the mountains surrounding my valley, nowhere near the brakvaw and not their problem. My bigger concern was them realizing the connection I had to New Alkerist.


    I needed Querit to finish modifying lossless casting to work with enchantments so I could set up proper defenses for the village, and I needed it done a week ago. Stopgap measures would have to suffice today, but I didn¡¯t want to think of someone in my family dying because I couldn¡¯t get there fast enough to save them.


    ¡°I know that my children have not always been friendly to you and yours,¡± Grandfather said, ¡°but please count us as allies if you need us.¡±


    ¡°I need mana,¡± I said immediately. ¡°As much of it as I can possibly get. If you¡¯re serious about an offer to help, I¡¯ll drop a whole bank of storage crystals here for your flock to fill.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t promise how quickly we can fill them, or how many will come to your aid, but I will do my best to see that you receive what you ask for.¡±


    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said. A knot of tension started to unravel in the back of my neck. Brakvaw were big, and they had a lot of mana. It probably wasn¡¯t enough to ignite an artificial mana resonance, but it would be a huge step in the right direction.


    I paused for a second in my work as a thought occurred to me. Maybe I could do them a good turn as well. ¡°Say¡­ how do brakvaw feel about sand worms?¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 38

    I stopped back home to use my crucible and let Querit know what happened to the mage I¡¯d gone to collect. Without the planned second set of notes, it was going to be far more difficult to confirm which parts of the rune structures were accurate, but I had faith in the golem¡¯s research ability. He¡¯d literally been created to be a lab assistant and had all the tools he needed built directly into his golem core.


    He was less than impressed with my faith in his abilities, or maybe he was just feeling the pressure to succeed. I wasn¡¯t sure what his old life had been like, but it probably hadn¡¯t involved speedy research into pioneering new techniques to fend off the predations of a powerful archmage lich. In all fairness, that was a lot for anyone to handle.


    Once I¡¯d passed on the update, I stashed my trinkets into my phantom space and teleported to the tunnels below Derro to seed my new and improved scrying beacons as far underground as possible. Unfortunately, that was not a particularly quick or easy task. Just opening a dozen holes wide enough to drop the orbs a few hundred feet down took me hours to accomplish, hindered by the fact that hundreds upon hundreds of sand worms were drawn to the mana I was using to transmute the sand and stone.


    That did take care of the other part of my plan. Every corpse got tossed into a special box I¡¯d made. It was a two-foot cube with an open top that opened into a pit fifty times that size. Everything inside went into stasis, essentially keeping it fresh forever. By the time I was done, it was over half full with sand worm corpses, which ought to keep a few brakvaw fed for a week or two.


    It was kind of a pain to use, though. For one thing, I had to be far more deliberate in my use of force magic to kill the worms so I had more than just shredded corpses. For another, I needed to make sure the worms were actually dead, something which took a surprisingly long time, else shoving a decapitated-but-still-living worm into the spatially expanded storage box would cause it to tear itself to pieces. Spatial expansion and live creatures did not mix well together.


    The final problem was that no less than three of the worms who¡¯d taken the bait at previous drop shafts followed me over and tried to attack me while I was making new ones. Killing them necessitated retrieving the scry beacons from their stomachs, a particularly gruesome job that I could thankfully perform with force magic and telekinesis.


    With any luck, this plan would pay out soon. I¡¯d been running the numbers for adapting the artificial resonance creation ritual, and things did not look good. It would take months of uninterrupted mana generation at minimum ¨C time I didn¡¯t have. A nice, fat chunk of moon core to ease my mana burdens might actually be the only way to pull this off unless the brakvaw proved to be exceptionally generous.


    Maybe I could sell them the next batch of worm food. Did their societal model even have concepts for bartering and trade?


    Eventually, I ran out of work to do, which meant I was also out of excuses to put off the next task on my list: talking to my family. It wasn¡¯t that I didn¡¯t want to see them, it was that they weren¡¯t going to like what I wanted to do. I could already picture the arguments, the good reasons they¡¯d have to reject my suggestions. If I couldn¡¯t convince them, I might have to override their autonomy in order to protect them.


    I placed the lid on my stasis cube and shrunk it down so that it would fit in my hand. It was still made of solid stone and weighed more than two hundred pounds, but weight reduction enchantments had been easy enough to weave into its construction. The whole thing was a bit more mana hungry than I liked, reminding me once again how much I¡¯d benefit from Querit figuring out how to apply lossless casting to enchantments and inscriptions.


    Then I returned to the platform I¡¯d installed down here and reached out mentally to feel the dozens of other platforms I¡¯d scattered across the island in various towns and villages. Most of them weren¡¯t hidden ¨C they couldn¡¯t be, since they were designed for other people to use them with only minimal understanding of how they functioned. New Alkerist had that type of platform, which was part of the problem. It¡¯d be easy to find by anyone who could cast a teleportation spell manually, or just by locating any of the other platforms it was linked to.


    I selected my destination and let the platforms bridge the connection, saving me the time and hassle of having to do it manually. With the spell ingrained into the stone via the complicated rune patterns carved there, it was so easy to teleport across a few hundred miles that a reasonably competent child could do it. The ones in town even had mana emitters built into the base for easy charging.


    I appeared in New Alkerist right around sunset. Someone had tossed a few globes of light up in the fields, and I could see a steady stream of farmers making their way towards town. Somewhere out there was my father, presumably. I sharpened my eyes with a quick invocation to help me pick out details from the shadows while I scanned the fields, but didn¡¯t see him.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Maybe he¡¯d quit early today, or maybe he was working on the other side of town. It was easy enough to find him with a few divinations, which tracked him down at town hall. He looked equal parts frustrated and annoyed as he listened to two men argue, both of them attempting to drown the other¡¯s words out by shouting over one another.


    It seemed I¡¯d arrived at the perfect time. A meeting with New Alkerist¡¯s council was just what I needed, and it was a happy coincidence that it was happening on the night I showed up. Almost everybody I needed to talk to was already in one place, saving me the effort of tracking them down and dragging them all into one room. I quickly set off in that direction.


    Every building in New Alkerist was built in the same style: smooth, solid stone magically transmuted and shaped by me. Its streets were smooth, wide, and dry. Enchantments worked to keep everything clean, including the water. Buildings were cooled to comfortable levels against the desert heat, and magical lighting, indoor plumbing, and cooking stoves were fixtures of every home.


    Quite a bit of planning had gone into its construction to accommodate its need to grow as more and more people flocked to what was the most magically advanced society on the island ¨C which, again, was the problem. New Alkerist had a bigger school than anywhere else, one that included mana control classes for adults to train them for their ignition rituals and casting novice- and basic-tier spells. Nowhere else was really doing anything like that.


    It drew attention. Ammun¡¯s followers had found me, but where would they go when the next group realized they couldn¡¯t break the defenses surrounding my demesne? It wasn¡¯t a huge leap of logic to assume that the magical center of the island would be connected to me in some way, that attacking it might draw me out, or at least give them some valuable hostages.


    I walked into town hall to find six people looking at me from the councilman¡¯s table and two men so engrossed in continuing their argument that they didn¡¯t notice my arrival. My eyes were drawn to Father¡¯s face, to that crease he got on his forehead when he was worried. He knew I avoided politics if possible, that this particular building was the last place in town I wanted to be. He probably thought I was here for him specifically, which meant he thought I had an urgent family issue.


    In a way, he was right. My interest in protecting New Alkerist was based on my interest in protecting my family. If I could convince them to take a vacation in a hidden location for a few years until I got this whole Ammun thing sorted out, I wouldn¡¯t care so much if the town got destroyed. It¡¯d cost me some of my investments, but nothing irreplaceable.


    Of course, my parents and siblings would be devastated that all of their friends were dead, so there were some drawbacks to any plan that involved abducting my family and abandoning everyone else to their fates. I¡¯d call that my plan of last resort for now and start by proposing some less drastic solutions.


    The two arguing farmers still hadn¡¯t noticed that nobody was paying attention to them anymore. I took a moment to listen to the conversation¡ªnothing more than an argument over property lines because one of them wanted to build a fence¡ªthen tossed a sphere of silence over them. The barrier effectively split sound so that they could continue fighting each other without bothering the rest of the room, while we could talk without having to shout to be heard over them.


    ¡°Praise the ancestors,¡± one of the councilmen said with a chuckle. He obviously hadn¡¯t realized the seriousness of my presence here yet. ¡°I know what spell I¡¯ll be learning next.¡±


    That got a few laughs around the table, but not from Father. If anything, his expression had grown even graver. ¡°What happened?¡± he asked.


    ¡°My sanctum was attacked. Twenty-two enemy mages, including at least two who were capable of casting master-tier spells in their specific fields. I captured and interrogated one. They were sent by Ammun Nescect. I believe they found me by way of gathering rumors and information from local communities until they narrowed the location of the valley down.¡±


    The two farmers realized nobody was listening to them at that point, or perhaps just that they couldn¡¯t hear anything outside the bubble. One of them must have had enough of an ability to sense mana to realize there was a spell cast around them, because he burst out and started trying to yell, only to be stopped again by more targeted magic. This time a wave of paralysis hit him, causing him to slump down to the ground when his muscles grew too weak to hold him upright.


    ¡°What¡­ What happened to the other mages?¡± the councilman at the far end of the table asked, ignoring the attempted interruption and looking faintly ill.


    I gave him a flat stare and ignored the question. ¡°I¡¯ve sealed off the portal the intruders reached the island from, but that will only delay the next assault.¡±


    ¡°You think they¡¯ll come here?¡± Father asked. Alarm rippled across the table, with half of them shooting anxious looks at me and the rest staring off into the distance with horror on their faces.


    Six people governed New Alkerist. None of them were at stage two. That didn¡¯t mean there weren¡¯t a few more powerful mages floating around, but it reflected just how unprepared the town was to fight off a cabal of hostile mages. That was partially my fault, I supposed. They¡¯d had years to prepare, to train and learn, and I could have shepherded them along that path. I¡¯d devoted my time and energy elsewhere, leaving them vulnerable.


    ¡°There are too many signs pointing in this direction,¡± I said. ¡°At some point, they¡¯ll realize there are softer targets than attacking an archmage in his own demesne. When that happens, it won¡¯t be hard to figure out where to go instead. New Alkerist is almost certainly going to be attacked by a hostile force of powerful mages in the near future.¡±


    There was a second of stunned silence, then everyone broke out yelling at once.

 Book 4, Chapter 39

    Once things calmed down, the pair of arguing farmers were kicked out. They protested in booming voices, somehow still caught up in their struggle to shout over each other. One of the councilmen muttered a spell under his breath, and a burst of telekinesis picked both of them up to hurl them through the open doors and into the street.


    I hadn¡¯t realized intermediate-tier spells had become common in New Alkerist, but then again, I¡¯d paid very little attention to what was going on here. It was enough that I¡¯d gotten things moving a few years back. I could occasionally come around to give people a push through their current bottleneck, but otherwise, I ignored their progress.


    ¡°Now then,¡± the councilman said, ¡°I¡¯m assuming you have some ideas on how to keep a hostile force of mages from showing up and taking over the town.¡±


    ¡°I do have a few thoughts, yes. For starters, we need to remove the teleportation platforms. All of them, I mean, from every location on the island.¡±


    One of the other councilmen sputtered out a protest. ¡°Too many places are relying on them! Trade would grind to a halt. Some villages would starve without food.¡±


    I nodded. ¡°And yet, every teleportation platform is a beacon drawing Ammun¡¯s forces to it. Given enough time, they¡¯ll eventually invade the entire island using our own infrastructure to move around.¡±


    ¡°We all got by without the platforms before,¡± a different councilman argued. ¡°We can do it again.¡±


    It wouldn¡¯t hurt to go through the effort of learning some names here, if only to help me keep track of who was who, so I discreetly forged a telepathic connection with my father. ¡®Who are these people?¡¯


    He flinched at the sudden voice in his head, but it was small enough that I didn¡¯t think anyone else noticed. ¡®Fribl is the one with the gray hair. City Maintenance,¡¯ he sent back. That was the one on the end who¡¯d laughed at me silencing the two farmers. ¡®Verik is next to me, trade and economics; then Celd with the beard, city planning; Oramo has the braids, law enforcement; and Lishav is the one who used telekinesis, education.¡¯


    ¡®Thanks,¡¯ I sent. I waited a moment to make sure there wasn¡¯t a return message, then cut the connection.


    The two arguing over my proposal to remove the teleporters were Verik¡ªagainst the idea¡ªand Celd¡ªfor it. My brief aside with Father hadn¡¯t slowed them down in the least, but it wasn¡¯t that hard to keep track of two conversations at once.


    ¡°We can, but a lot of towns are reliant on it now. If we could give them warning, even a month, to start adjusting, it would be hard, but they could do it. The villages that couldn¡¯t gather enough food and supplies on their own could be helped. But to just walk up and take them now? It would be a disaster.¡±


    ¡°Do we have a month?¡± Celd asked. The whole council turned to look at me.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know, and I doubt I¡¯ll be able to find out. Scrying into Ammun¡¯s territory is risky and difficult. There are thousands of square miles of land they could use as a staging ground to launch attacks from. A chain of three or four teleports at most would get them here. If they wanted to invest the resources into making their own portals, it would be even easier and quicker.¡±


    ¡°So they could be here tomorrow,¡± Oramo said. His braids had tiny rings woven into them that clinked together as he spoke.


    ¡°Theoretically? They could arrive right now. Practically speaking, I expect we have a week or two. They need to establish a new way to reach the island first, and I expect their opening strike will be against my sanctum directly. It will only be after that fails that they¡¯ll spread across the island, looking for new ways to attack me or draw me out.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re saying this is really all your fault,¡± Fribl said, jabbing his finger in my direction. ¡°Without you, these invaders would have no reason to come here.¡±


    ¡°Essentially correct,¡± I agreed.


    ¡°Calm down,¡± Father said. ¡°You all know how much good my son has done for not just this town, but the entire island.¡±


    ¡°All good he could have done if he¡¯d just left well enough alone and stayed here instead of going off on a lark to stir up problems on the other side of the world,¡± Oramo argued.


    ¡°I¡¯m not here to argue with you about how much I¡¯m to blame,¡± I told them. ¡°I understand that trouble followed me home. I¡¯m here to talk about what I¡¯m going to do about it.¡±


    Father winced at that. None of the other councilmen seemed pleased by that statement, either, and it only took a second to figure out why. They were used to locals coming to petition for something, and they held the ultimate decision in the matter. I wasn¡¯t asking for permission; I was informing them of what was going to happen.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    I hated bureaucracy. People who had true power never bothered with the rules and regulations. They¡ªwe¡ªdid whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. It was for lesser men to get out of our way or be crushed underfoot. It looked like that was a lesson I was about to deliver yet again.


    Fribl leaped from his seat, an outraged scowl on his face, only to be dragged back down by Verik. The two exchanged intense but silent glares with each other before the former subsided. No one looked too happy with me, but the rest of the council refrained from leaping over the table in a misguided attempt to throttle me.


    ¡°As I was saying, the teleportation platforms will tell the invading mages where to find people, where they can do the most damage for the least amount of work. I don¡¯t believe that will be their first objective, but I know how Ammun thinks, and if he can¡¯t pry me out of my demesne with force, he¡¯ll start looking into what¡¯s going on everywhere else.¡±


    ¡°Why, though? Other than being connected by your teleportation network, the rest of the island has nothing to do with you. Your family is here, but as far as I¡¯m aware, you don¡¯t have any real interaction with anyone else,¡± Celd pointed out.


    ¡°True, but they don¡¯t know that. I doubt Ammun will expect me to have a family at all, but he¡¯ll be looking for towns that supply me with food and other necessities, anywhere with a connection for me. If he razes a few dozen to the ground in pursuit of that knowledge, I doubt he¡¯ll lose any sleep over it. This is the man who broke the world¡¯s mana core in an attempt to hold onto his own power and status during the Age of Wonders.¡±


    ¡°Can we even fight against someone like that?¡± Oramo asked.


    By ¡®we,¡¯ he meant ¡®me.¡¯ Everyone in the room knew that the whole town combined couldn¡¯t fight off a single mage capable of casting master-tier spells, let alone an entire army led by a two-thousand-year-old lich. The lich himself probably wouldn¡¯t be here, not unless he got his little project fixed far quicker than I expected, but he¡¯d hardly be necessary to devastate the island.


    ¡°Yes,¡± I said. ¡°We need to make a lot of preparations in a very short amount of time, and that includes limiting where the invaders are likely to strike so that we can build ways to counter their assaults. I can¡¯t protect every village and town on the island personally. All I can do is take away the platforms so they¡¯re less likely to be targeted.¡±


    ¡°For how long?¡± Verik asked. ¡°Tell me you don¡¯t mean permanently.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°It might be a few years, but eventually we should be able to reestablish the network.¡±


    ¡°A few years might as well be permanent for a lot of those places. Everyone there will starve to death before help can arrive.¡±


    ¡°We could send some overland caravans,¡± Father offered. ¡°The wastelands are dangerous, but with so many mages among our numbers now, it¡¯s not impossible to reach other towns.¡±


    That idea seemed to calm Verik down. ¡°That¡¯s¡­ certainly a possibility.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll leave you guys to coordinate that later,¡± I said. ¡°In addition to ripping out all the teleportation platforms, I¡¯m also going to be adding some automated defenses here. Your ward stones are going to be completely overhauled and will alert me directly if and when they detect any attacks. If needed, the ward stones will draw on the mana stored in your homes¡¯ batteries to power the defenses until I can arrive to manually take control of the situation.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what? That¡¯s our own personal mana we¡¯ve put into those batteries. You can¡¯t just take it!¡± Fribl snarled, half-rising out of his chair again before Verik clamped a hand on his arm.


    ¡°Control yourself, man,¡± the councilman hissed.


    ¡°I¡¯m prioritizing protecting the town over air cooling, running water, and lights,¡± I said.


    I understood that as the man in charge of keeping New Alkerist in working order, I was creating a massive headache for him to deal with if I had to drain the town¡¯s mana supply. I¡¯d just thought that he would understand that if a master-tier spell hit the town uncontested, there¡¯d be no buildings left to maintain. Maybe my problem was that I was talking to a bunch of idiots who didn¡¯t understand what kind of damage magic that powerful could do.


    ¡°Let me show you something,¡± I said. I cast an illusory map of the town with the adjoining fields into the air between us. ¡°This is New Alkerist, agreed?¡±


    The councilmen leaned forward to study the map before nodding to each other. ¡°It looks accurate to me,¡± Celd said.


    I waved a hand at the map, purely for the theatrics of it, and a massive orb of fire descended on the town, engulfing two thirds of it before it detonated. Stone and debris went up, then rained down on what was left, leaving thousands of craters in the field and destroying the crops as well as most of what was still standing in the town itself.


    ¡°This is what would happen if a single master-tier spell hit the town,¡± I told them. All six, Father included, stared down at the illusory wreckage in horror. ¡°I will be hooking your home batteries to the ward stones because if someone starts hurling master-tier magic at you, that extra mana might stop one or two of them, which might give me an extra minute to find whoever is casting those spells and murder them.¡±


    I waited a moment to let them finish absorbing that demonstration, then I dismissed the illusion. ¡°I will also personally be donating as much mana as this entire town makes in a week to the defenses, and I have ten transmission stones that can send messages to me directly as long as I¡¯m within a thousand miles to distribute to people who need them, just in case the attackers manage to disable my divination wards without me noticing.¡±


    There were no arguments at this point. Good. My little demonstration had done exactly what I needed. The only response I got was from Verik. ¡°How long can you give us to get our traders back from whatever villages they¡¯re currently in and help prepare the smaller ones to survive without us selling them food?¡±


    ¡°How long do you need?¡± I asked.


    ¡°At minimum¡­ three days?¡±


    That was a risk, but if I was right, I¡¯d have the early warning of an attack on my own demesne to let me know Ammun¡¯s people were back. I¡¯d have to move quickly to collect all the platforms at that point. Actually, it would be faster to have the villagers pull the emitters out of them and take hammers to the stone.


    ¡°We can try, but if the invaders show up before then, we¡¯ll have to destroy the platforms instead of collecting them,¡± I warned. When no one objected, I continued. ¡°In addition to the enhanced wards, I¡¯ll also be setting up some offensive measures throughout the town¡­¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 40

    I left two transmission stones with the council to be given to whoever they saw fit. One was immediately claimed by Oramo, which I supposed made sense. The man in charge of keeping the town safe would probably be the best person to react in the event of an attack. The rest argued over who should take the other stone, but I tuned that out.


    While they were arguing, the councilman at the far-right end of the table, the one who¡¯d thrown out the two farmers with magic, stood up and walked over to me. ¡°Gravin,¡± he said with a bow of his head. ¡°My name is Lishav. I oversee the school and training halls for our students in town.¡±


    ¡°An important job,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve noticed you haven¡¯t had much to add to this discussion.¡±


    He chuckled softly and shook his head. ¡°No, I¡¯m afraid it¡¯s all outside my area of expertise. I actually wanted to talk to you about something else.¡±


    ¡°Something involving magic, I¡¯m assuming.¡±


    ¡°Yes. I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m quite predictable in that manner.¡±


    ¡°Most people looking for my help usually have problems of a magical nature,¡± I said.


    I left unsaid that the magical problems people in this life had were so basic that any standard academy instructor from my previous life could have solved them immediately. The idea of bothering an archmage for help¡­ Well, it didn¡¯t matter anymore. That time was long past, and it¡¯d be another generation or two after I got the world core fixed before civilization even approached the level I¡¯d known.


    ¡°It¡¯s two things, really. Your sister donated some of the books you gave her after she was done with them, and we¡¯ve had copies made for instructing new mages, but there are some things in there none of us can quite figure out, and Senica is¡­ How to put this delicately¡­ She does not have the temperament to go into education.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t help myself. I started laughing so hard that it interrupted the argument the other councilmen were having, one which my father was struggling and failing to referee. ¡°That¡¯s a nice way of saying she¡¯s impatient and reckless to a fault. I imagine the fact that she¡¯s so smart fools people at first, but as soon as you get to know her, you realize the truth.¡±


    ¡°Something like that,¡± Lishav said with a sickly smile. ¡°This isn¡¯t a pressing issue, of course. If things take a turn for the worse, I suppose it won¡¯t matter at all, but since this is the first opportunity I¡¯ve had to speak with you personally, I wanted to bring the matter up and see if you would be willing to help.¡±


    ¡°Give a few guest lectures? I can¡¯t promise when I¡¯ll have time, but I¡¯m not against the idea.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s delightful to hear. If you could get a message to me when you have time, after this whole¡­¡± Lishav waved a hand vaguely in the air. ¡°This whole everything is resolved.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure I can find a way,¡± I said dryly. ¡°What was the second thing?¡±


    ¡°Yes, that! I noticed that when you were outlining plans for defending New Alkerist, you didn¡¯t include any sort of shelter for the children. I was hoping I could convince you to convert the school¡¯s basement into a place like that.¡±


    I hadn¡¯t thought to for a very simple reason: if the attackers overpowered the ward stone before I arrived to personally fend them off, the whole town was going to die. Though, if I was able to repel Ammun¡¯s forces, that didn¡¯t mean that they¡¯d do no damage at all. It couldn¡¯t hurt to get the children out from underfoot, not unless some unscrupulous mage decided to target them while they were all grouped together.


    ¡°I think I can do something to help with that,¡± I mused aloud, my mind whirling with plans. Just warding a stone box in the ground wasn¡¯t going to be enough. It would be best if it had sensitive wards that would teleport the whole room to a hidden location should anyone breach the basement. I could stock it with supplies to last a week or two so that I could fetch them after the fighting died down.


    It couldn¡¯t be in my demesne. That might give some attacker a way to bypass my own defenses. Nor should it be anywhere nearby, not when there was every possibility that Ammun¡¯s forces would continue to besiege the valley. Still, it was a big island with a lot of mountains. I could find some inconspicuous location.


    ¡°Alright, I¡¯ve got a few ideas,¡± I told Lishav. ¡°I¡¯ll need to do some prep work, but when I come back to deactivate the teleportation platforms, I¡¯ll do the work for your school as well. Clear out anything you might have stored in there beforehand and clean the place as best you can.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, Gravin. You can¡¯t know how much it warms my heart to see you care.¡±


    I did my best to fake a smile, but didn¡¯t reply. I didn¡¯t so much care about individual kids as I felt they shouldn¡¯t be the victims of the battles between adults. It was worth going out of my way to help them if it meant keeping a few six-year-olds alive.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    After Lishav resumed his seat at the table, I grabbed Father and said, ¡°I¡¯m going to get started on the work around here. I¡¯ll be home in a few hours to discuss things further with you and Mother. Here, take one of the transmission stones for the house. Use it immediately if you even think there¡¯s a problem.¡±


    ¡°Gravin¡­¡± Father began. He hesitated and shook his head. ¡°Be safe, son.¡±


    * * *


    Most of my work on New Alkerist was just setting up the various things I¡¯d made in my crucible earlier and making sure they were ready to connect to the new ward stones I was putting in. Swapping those out took more time than anything else, but when I was done, the town had far more robust barriers and wards than anywhere else on the island, not including my own demesne. It also had a number of tall, thin pillars that appeared blank on the outside, but which had thousands of runes inscribed in their hollow cores. Those were tied in with the wards to target hostile mages, a tricky and demanding task since I had to make sure they didn¡¯t accidentally kill one of the locals.


    Nothing was going to match the mysteel pillars I¡¯d scavenged and modified. I doubted even Ammun¡¯s tower had reactive defenses that good. Of course, being an unaging, unsleeping lich who couldn¡¯t leave the tower meant he didn¡¯t really need reactive defenses. He could just take care of any issues personally.


    Unfortunately, the pillars had been built in a world full of mana, and using them to their full capacity wasn¡¯t really feasible, so I¡¯d do my work quickly, prepare my family for what was to come, and get back to my demesne as soon as possible. I had plenty of work to do on my own, and the best thing I could do right now was get back to gathering as much mana as possible. Either it would power my defenses and keep me alive, or it would be used to forge a resonance point so I could move my core to stage seven.


    By the time I was done, the sun was fully down, and anyone still working was doing so by the light of three moons. I flew across New Alkerist to land in the backyard, where I found Mother and Nailu sitting in their garden. Well, Mother was sitting. Nailu was doing laps around a row of tomato plants while slapping the leaves with an open hand and trying not to stumble over his own feet. Senica hadn¡¯t been kidding when she¡¯d said he¡¯d be walking any day now.


    Mother jumped to her feet when I landed, and I saw mana stirring inside her. Then she realized who I was, and the tension left her. ¡°Gravin! You gave me a scare. With the news¡­ I thought you might be one of those mages from far away come to abduct us.¡±


    ¡°Someone might actually try that. It probably won¡¯t be for a few weeks at the earliest, but it¡¯s best to watch for trouble. That¡¯s actually why I¡¯m here. I have some stuff to¡ª¡±


    Nailu crashed into my leg, or rather, into the shield ward around my leg, in an attempt to hug me. I quickly let him through before the magic sent him flying away, and he latched onto me. ¡°Grah-vuhn,¡± he gurgled.


    ¡°Close, sweetie,¡± Mother said.


    ¡°You know, nobody calls me that outside of New Alkerist,¡± I commented.


    ¡°I know. I don¡¯t care. We named you Gravin. That¡¯s your name.¡±


    ¡°Grah-vuhn!¡± Nailu said again, this time more insistently.


    ¡°Alright, I suppose that¡¯s fair.¡± I lifted Nailu up with telekinesis and he started giggling as he kicked and squirmed his way through the air. ¡°I¡¯m assuming Father and Senica are inside.¡±


    ¡°Senica is¡­ somewhere,¡± Mother said with a sigh. ¡°She¡¯s at that age.¡±


    ¡°The age where she¡¯s starting to become an adult and make her own decisions about where to go, what to do, and who to be with?¡±


    ¡°Yes. That age. The age where she gets into trouble thinking she knows better than all those stupid, out-of-touch adults, but then when something blows up in her face, she comes running to her parents to help her out.¡±


    That age had been around nine for me in my first life, except for the part where I had parents to help me out. I couldn¡¯t help but wonder how my life would have turned out back when I¡¯d been Keiran if I¡¯d had a family like my current one. I¡¯d probably have been happier, but a lot of my early drive to excel had been caused by negative emotions ¨C revenge, bitterness, spite.


    Maybe I still would have made it to archmage, just as a more well-adjusted individual who didn¡¯t indulge in necromancy, mind control, arson, and mass murder. There had been many, many stories casting me as the villain when I was young. Most of them were more-or-less accurate, too.


    ¡°I do need to speak to all of you,¡± I said. Nailu spun around, flipping over and over while he laughed and tried to grab at me with each rotation. ¡°Yes, even you.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think Nailu¡¯s going to be able to help much just yet,¡± Mother said.


    I shook my head. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter. This isn¡¯t about getting help from you. It¡¯s about keeping you safe. I don¡¯t really have time to be waiting for Senica to come back on her own, but I¡¯m sure I can find her and bring her back home.¡±


    It didn¡¯t take more than a minute to locate her. And Juby. And then I immediately killed that scrying spell. ¡°You know what? Let¡¯s actually wait half an hour or so,¡± I said quickly. ¡°That should be fine.¡±


    Mother quirked an eyebrow at me. ¡°What¡­ Uh, what¡¯s going on there? See something interesting?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re not going to talk about it,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re not going to mention it. It never happened. There is no ¡®it.¡¯¡±


    Hopefully, Senica had taken the time to practice the spells in that book I¡¯d given her a few years ago. It seemed like she was going to need them.


    ¡°Speaking of ¡®it,¡¯ when are you going to bring home a special someone for us to meet?¡± Mother asked.


    I did my best not to wince. My last relationship had ended on such a sour note that in all the centuries I¡¯d lived after it, I¡¯d never formed a serious bond with another person again. The stronger I¡¯d gotten, the harder it had been to even entertain the idea. The power disparity was so stark that it felt shallow and pointless.


    Things weren¡¯t looking any better in my new life. ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s likely to happen,¡± I said.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s too bad. Nobody deserves to be lonely their whole lives.¡±


    ¡°I can think of a few people who definitely do.¡±


    Our conversation ended right then and there, interrupted by my baby brother, who started urinating wildly as he spun in the air like a top. I immediately regretted my decision to let him through my shield ward.

 Book 4, Chapter 41

    Three transmission stones sat on the table: one for Senica, and one for each of my parents. Nothing against Nailu, but he needed to learn to talk in person before I gave him a magic rock to talk into my brain from a thousand miles away. Unless he also was secretly a reincarnated archmage that was going to awaken his lost memories in the next six months or so, it¡¯d be another half a decade or more before he even started learning mana control. And I trusted that he was no secret archmage.


    When Senica arrived home, it was to find all of us staring at her. She froze in the doorway, nonplussed, and her face started turning red. ¡°What?¡± she asked.


    ¡°Page thirty-two,¡± was all I had to say on the subject.


    Forget turning red. She looked like she¡¯d gotten a bad sunburn from a week of field labor with no invocations to protect her. Her jaw dropped open and she tried to stutter out some sort of rebuttal, but I ignored her and started explaining what was going on with Ammun¡¯s minions.


    ¡°And so,¡± I said at the end of the explanation, ¡°I made these for you. The transmission stones are functionally identical to the scrying mirror on your end. They¡¯re designed to reach directly to me and will transmit your thoughts into my mind. I need you to keep these on you at all times so you can contact me if enemy mages assault the town.¡±


    Next to them were four amulets made of polished black quartz strung on fine steel chains. ¡°These are shield wards, as strong as I can make them. They won¡¯t take a shot from a master-tier spell, but anything weaker than that shouldn¡¯t break them in one go.¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡± Senica asked, frowning as she picked one up to examine it. ¡°I¡¯ve seen your own shield wards take that kind of punishment.¡±


    ¡°Simple. Do you remember the emergency recall teleportation orb I made for you a few years ago?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I¡¯ve still got it in my closet even though it¡¯s worthless here.¡±


    ¡°Same concept. If activated, one time only, this amulet will take you and one other person that you¡¯re touching to the valley. If you try to take more than one person, the spell will fail. If you are trying to flee and someone grabs you at the last moment, the spell will not take them with you. It has to be one single person that you unequivocally want to teleport with you, someone like Nailu, or¡­ ahem¡­ Juby.¡±


    The amulets were a fraction of the size of the orb, mostly because I¡¯d eliminated the need for multiple jump points. That made them both cheaper and easier to produce, and it was good for my family to have some emergency equipment anyway. Truthfully, I should have made stuff like this a long time ago, but they¡¯d been relatively safe for years now.


    ¡°I thought you needed the mana for your resonator thing,¡± Mother pointed out. ¡°You said it would take months and months to build up enough. Aren¡¯t these expensive?¡±


    Relative to what the town was used to working with, they were. For me, it had taken longer to build them than to generate the mana. My parents didn¡¯t really understand the quantities of mana I worked with these days, a fact I hadn¡¯t gone out of my way to educate them on.


    ¡°They weren¡¯t too bad, and some peace of mind that you¡¯re going to be alright was worth the price,¡± I said. ¡°Unless I can convince you all to move somewhere else that¡¯s hidden and safe.¡±


    Father laughed. ¡°We did that once, but then you kicked us out a few years later, remember?¡±


    ¡°Hey, you were all looking to leave anyway!¡±


    ¡°Not all of us,¡± Mother said. ¡°Don¡¯t get me wrong, the amount of effort you put into building this town went a long way toward soothing some ruffled feathers. But still, there were a few people who weren¡¯t happy about being evicted from Sanctuary.¡±


    I hadn¡¯t realized. Nor did I care.


    ¡°Regardless of any hard feelings, I can¡¯t actually guarantee your safety if you stay here. I doubt it will be hard for Ammun¡¯s spies to figure out that my family lives here. You¡¯ll be targets.¡±


    Father nodded along. ¡°And that¡¯s all reasonable and makes sense to me, but son, we can¡¯t just put our lives on hold every time you¡¯ve got a new problem.¡±


    ¡°Besides, what was the point of all the magic you¡¯ve woven around New Alkerist if not to keep us safe?¡± Mother added. ¡°I think we know you well enough to know it was done to protect us, not everyone else.¡±


    ¡°Only because I knew you¡¯d refuse to leave,¡± I muttered. ¡°You¡¯re predictable, that way.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re supposed to know your family, Gravin,¡± Mother said. She reached down to pick Nailu up and cooed, ¡°Isn¡¯t that right? You have to learn all about us so you¡¯ll know how much we love you.¡±The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    ¡°Besides, how will I fight off the invaders if we leave?¡± Senica asked, ignoring Nailu¡¯s laugh as Mother tossed him up into the air and caught him.


    ¡°You will be doing nothing of the sort,¡± I said. ¡°You are far from ready to fight on the front lines against someone capable of casting advanced-tier spells, let alone a few dozen mages that strong all at once. Nobody living in this town has the slightest chance of fending off an assault. Leave that to the reactive wards.¡±


    ¡°I think you¡¯re underestimating how good I am,¡± she said, her jaw set in a stubborn clench.


    ¡°No, I¡¯m not. You¡¯re underestimating how strong your enemy is. People aren¡¯t like monsters.¡±


    ¡°I know that! But I¡¯m the undisputed champion of mage duels in town. There is literally no one better than me living here.¡±


    I actually hadn¡¯t known that. I wasn¡¯t even aware that the schools were doing mage duels. No one had asked me for help setting up wards to keep the participants safe, which made me wonder just what they¡¯d cooked up on their own. I made a mental note to check on that when I went to the school to build their basement shelter.


    ¡°There¡¯s a difference between being the best in a small town of a few hundred people, and being good enough to compete on the world stage,¡± I said, perhaps a bit more harshly than I¡¯d intended. But this was serious. I needed Senica to understand that challenging one of the mages Ammun sent here could very well mean her death.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you have any faith in me?¡± she demanded.


    ¡°Senica,¡± Mother reprimanded, but my sister didn¡¯t back down.


    ¡°Because you¡¯re fourteen,¡± I told her bluntly. ¡°Not only are you fourteen, but we live in a world with no ambient mana. Your training time is limited. Your resources are limited. Your education is limited. These mages aren¡¯t like that. They¡¯re going to be adults with a decade or more of experience, all spent in a tower with practically unlimited mana for them to use. This isn¡¯t a gap you can overcome by being stubborn.¡±


    ¡°Easy for you to say. When was the last time you had to work at learning magic? Do you even remember what that feels like?¡±


    My eyebrows shot up, and I looked over Senica¡¯s head to our parents, who appeared equally as baffled by the outburst. Whatever her problem was, it was something that had been eating at her for a while now. Perhaps if I¡¯d spent more time at home, I¡¯d have noticed it before it got to this point.


    She kept ranting, ¡°All I do is study and train. I spend every scrap of mana practicing spells, and I¡¯ve gotten so good. I swear I have! But you don¡¯t believe in me at all. What could your loser sister possibly do to help? She¡¯s just a burden you have to carry along, keep her safe, stick her in a box. I hate it.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not true,¡± I said.


    ¡°Yes, it is! Every time trouble comes along, you hide me away and forbid me from helping.¡±


    She wasn¡¯t wrong, but did she really not understand why she wasn¡¯t ready for this yet? I knew my sister wasn¡¯t stupid. Given another decade, she would almost assuredly make it to stage four, with or without my help. She might even manage to reach stage five if I provided her the instruction and mana.


    But the threat wasn¡¯t a decade away. It was weeks, maybe months if we were lucky.


    ¡°Look, I¡¯m sorry, but you¡¯re not ready for this. Don¡¯t take it personally. I wouldn¡¯t ask Tetrin or Hyago to fight against these people, and you know how many projects they¡¯ve handled for me. Most of the mages coming this way would easily defeat anyone from the Wolf Pack, and they were strong enough that they took over almost the entire island. You¡¯ll get there someday, but you need more time.¡±


    Senica¡¯s only answer was to throw the transmission stone she was holding at me, then storm off to her room. The stone bounced off my shield ward, then slowed to a halt midair as I caught it with a minor telekinesis spell. With a sigh, I set it back down on the table.


    ¡°I never was very good with children,¡± I told my parents. ¡°Do you think you could talk to her?¡±


    My parents exchanged looks. ¡°We can,¡± Mother said slowly, ¡°but it might be better coming from you.¡±


    ¡°Me? Why?¡±


    Father shook his head. ¡°You do have your blind spots, don¡¯t you, son?¡±


    ¡°What are you talking about?¡±


    ¡°Your sister¡­ she kind of had a hard time with her little brother outgrowing her, you know? That¡¯s an odd situation for anyone, let alone a child that young. You were physically older than her by the time she was ten. But she took it in stride, decided she¡¯d just have to work harder to keep up.¡±


    ¡°And then I tell her that all her hard work isn¡¯t enough, not even close,¡± I said.


    ¡°You can see where that might hurt someone¡¯s feelings, telling them they¡¯ve wasted half their life chasing after you.¡±


    Well, that explained why she was upset, but it didn¡¯t change the reality of the situation. I was surprised our parents weren¡¯t agreeing with me. They couldn¡¯t possibly believe Senica could face adult mages who¡¯d grown up in a mana-rich environment and had access to spells Senica could only dream of.


    ¡°I¡¯m not saying she¡¯s right,¡± Father said, almost like he¡¯d read my mind. ¡°We all know she¡¯s outmatched. She knows it, too. She¡¯s just frustrated.¡±


    ¡°So what am I supposed to do about it? She¡¯s got to accept reality or she¡¯s going to die.¡±


    ¡°You could try encouraging her,¡± Mother suggested. ¡°Not to fight, I mean, but to keep practicing, keep learning. She wants to know you approve of her and all the work she¡¯s done.¡±


    ¡°I do approve of her,¡± I said.


    ¡°Go tell her that.¡±


    I glanced at the bedroom door, then sighed and shook my head. ¡°I should have gotten back an hour ago.¡±


    But I made no move to leave the room. My parents watched me silently for a moment. With a sigh, I asked, ¡°You think I should go do that now or wait for her to calm down?¡±


    A thump came from the Senica¡¯s door, followed by a crash as whatever she¡¯d thrown hit the ground. Father sighed and muttered something under his breath. I wasn¡¯t entirely certain what he¡¯d said, but it sounded like a disappointed, ¡°Teenagers.¡±


    Louder, he said, ¡°Gravin, you are my son and I love you, but sometimes, you are an idiot.¡±


    He¡¯d get no argument from me there. I could freely admit that my social skills had languished during my long centuries of isolation. A mere decade or so of being among the living again had done nothing to fix that deficiency. If I was being honest about it, I hadn¡¯t been that good with people when I¡¯d been young the first time, either.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to go now. I¡¯ll be back tomorrow or the next day.¡±


    ¡°Bye bye, Grah-vin,¡± Nailu said. ¡°Hug?¡±


    ¡°Bye, little brother.¡± I gave him a quick hug, then walked out the door.

 Book 4, Chapter 42

    The next morning, a niggling sensation in my mind prompted me to pull out my scrying mirror. I was expecting someone from New Alkerist, probably my family since the transmission stones should have projected the user¡¯s voice directly into my thoughts, but it turned out to be Querit.


    He beamed at me through the mirror¡¯s surface after I finished the connection to allow him to see me. ¡°I have excellent news!¡±


    ¡°How excellent are we talking?¡± I asked.


    ¡°My latest test results show about a thirty percent reduction in mana expenditure for all enchantments,¡± he announced. That was good news, but not necessarily something I could act on. Before I could say anything, he continued speaking. ¡°Additionally, I¡¯d put together a little cluster of runes you can simply integrate into currently-existing enchantments to recycle about ten percent of the mana they use. So far, I haven¡¯t found an enchantment too complicated to modify this way.¡±


    The enchants around my demesne used an enormous amount of mana. Even getting back just a tenth of that would be a huge boon. If Querit was right, it would be well worth taking a day to update everything. ¡°What about inscriptions?¡± I asked, excited now too.


    ¡°Very little progress to speak of, unfortunately. And I probably won¡¯t ever have anything like this enchantment cluster, given the nature of physical mediums.¡±


    That made perfect sense to me. All too often, an inscribed object used all the available space to achieve its function. If there was extra space leftover, that just meant the next version could be smaller, or have additional functionality added to it. My own inscriptions had undergone so many rounds of refinement over the centuries that there was no way to add additional runes to them without reworking the entire design.


    ¡°Probably true. Still¡­ it¡¯s unfortunate. Those defense pillars I scavenged from Derro are fantastic at their job, but they demand so much mana that I just can¡¯t afford to use them to their full potential.¡±


    ¡°Those are too delicate to modify,¡± Querit said. ¡°Then again, I suppose you already did exactly that already. Perhaps if I can come up with a version of the rune clusters that work when physically carved into an object, we can find a way to modify them. It would have to be a secondary object connected to the pillars in some way since there¡¯s no room otherwise.¡±


    Connecting two objects with their own inscriptions was always a difficult procedure, and for something as complicated as the mysteel pillars with all their internal layers of additional runes, I had my doubts that it could work. That whole system was incredibly delicate.


    ¡°You should focus on the enchanting modifications first,¡± I said. ¡°Even a ten percent savings is huge, but if you can get that higher, it might solve our mana problems completely. We could forget about salvaging the moon core from under Derro.¡±


    Though I¡¯d probably still try to do that anyway, it wouldn¡¯t be a priority anymore. Once I got to stage seven, I would only need a week or so to reach stage eight, then stage nine was all about technique and skill. It was just this one last resource hurdle between my current state and regaining all my former power.


    ¡°Maybe you should come review what I¡¯ve come up with,¡± Querit suggested.


    ¡°I have a lot to take care of preparing for the next assault,¡± I said.


    ¡°Yes, but, well¡­ You¡¯re applying this technique to master-tier spells now. It¡¯s possible that an hour of your time could save me weeks of experimentation and research.¡±


    He wasn¡¯t wrong, but I hadn¡¯t been lying, either. I had about two days before I was due to reclaim every teleportation platform on the island, and I needed a full day to build the shelter I¡¯d be placing under New Alkerist¡¯s school and scry out a fallback location for the teleportation contingency to transport everyone too. That location would also need at least some wards to keep it secure and the children who ended up there alive.


    Still¡­ if that hour of time resulted in even a five percent increase in efficiency, it would be worth it. I wanted all the gains I could reasonably expect from this line of research before I started updating the valley¡¯s enchantments, that way I didn¡¯t have to do them a second time.


    ¡°Fine, you¡¯re right. I¡¯ll be right there,¡± I said.


    * * *


    Querit¡¯s solution was rather simple. He¡¯d essentially created a set of runes that ¡®fuzzed¡¯ the lines of the enchantment in the same way we did it manually. The problem was that it couldn¡¯t interpret the feedback, so the mana it recycled back into itself was more or less grabbed at random.


    One hour of work turned into sixteen, which I honestly should have known better than to let happen. But I¡¯d always been a researcher first. Handing this project off to someone else hadn¡¯t been a desire to offload the work, but a necessity born of my lack of time. And Querit had been completely right. I did have a lot of insights into what he was trying to do. Our collaborative effort had paid dividends.


    We¡¯d refined the rune cluster he¡¯d pioneered down to half its original size and increased its efficacy another twenty percent. I was convinced that we¡¯d plucked all the low-hanging fruit in this project, but Querit wanted another day to work on it before we started upgrading anything. He had a few ideas he wanted to try out, and since I was now entirely behind on my own workload, I was happy for the excuse to delay servicing any of the many, many enchantments I¡¯d placed on my home.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    I idly scried my vat back beneath Derro while I mentally reorganized my schedule. The orbs moved around as the worms burrowed and scavenged, but my idea to drop them at a significantly lower depth seemed to be working. There were six of them all near the same location now, and two other ones traveling on paths that could have conceivably taken them near it.


    Now why would so many of them be in one spot? Was there something down there worth eating, or was that where they retreated to rest? I shifted the focus of my scrying spell from my vat to the actual beacons themselves, which resulted in nothing but darkness coming back to me despite the modifiers to allow the spell to amplify any little scrap of light. The worms were truly deep underground if I got absolutely nothing from the spell.


    No matter. I had other ways to go about solving this problem. A few seconds later, the spell shifted to give me feedback more akin to how earth sense functioned, which limited my range, but also let me feel out everything in every direction around me.


    And what I felt was worms, worms, and more worms. They squirmed around each other, surprisingly placid for carnivorous monsters. I supposed they didn¡¯t eat their own kind, which was actually not that surprising. Cannibalism seemed like it should run rampant in monsters, and in some species, it did, but the majority of them didn¡¯t go after their own kind ¨C not as food, at least.


    I swept the spell¡¯s sensory array around me and made my next big discovery ¨C ¡®big¡¯ being the operative word. Apparently, the worms I¡¯d been dealing with up near the surface were the smallest, youngest, and weakest of the bunch. Despite Querit¡¯s surprise at their size, they had nothing on the other worms down there. Some of those monsters were over fifty feet long and five or six feet thick!


    I felt a grin stretch across my lips. Monsters that size needed a lot of mana to survive. With that many of them down there, they had to have an abundant source of food. I just needed to go digging and find it.


    The grin faded. I needed to find the time to go digging first. Where did this expedition, no matter how likely it was to pay off, fall on my list of priorities? It was certainly behind keeping my family safe, which meant I still needed to collect the teleportation platforms, and it was probably behind building a shelter for the children of New Alkerist. But everything else? That could wait a day or two.


    Priorities reshuffled, I started gathering the supplies I needed while I scoured the mountains for a private retreat I could shape to fit my needs.


    * * *


    ¡°I admit, I wasn¡¯t expecting to see you until tomorrow,¡± Councilman Lishav said.


    ¡°The safety of the children was a priority to me,¡± I told him. ¡°I wanted to make sure I got this job done before events outpaced me. Can you show me to the room you want to use for your shelter?¡±


    We were standing in his office on the third floor of what had become the largest building in town. I wasn¡¯t actually sure who¡¯d built it other than that I¡¯d personally had no hand in its construction. The school I¡¯d built had been two stories, four rooms on each floor, and was on the other side of town. They¡¯d apparently outgrown it and somehow built this monstrosity, which I was doing my best not to cringe over as I examined it.


    It wasn¡¯t their fault. They rarely built anything more than a single story high. There was so much space that it wasn¡¯t necessary to build up instead of out in most situations. But here, they¡¯d established their fields, and New Alkerist had quickly grown beyond their initial expectations. And so, people who had no idea what they were doing had built a clunky box with walls that were way too thick on the assumption that that would keep things from falling over.


    Admittedly, it wasn¡¯t the worst construction idea I¡¯d ever seen, but when this was all over, the school needed to be rebuilt in a way that made it far, far less likely it would collapse on itself, killing several dozen small children in the process.


    I followed Lishav down to the basement, which was divided into two rooms. At least they¡¯d gotten a proper supporting wall running the length of the school and some evenly-spaced pillars, though it was more the thickness of them than the placement that was keeping the basement from filling in with the rubble of the building above it.


    ¡°We moved all the supplies in storage to the back room,¡± Lishav explained. ¡°It seemed easier to only have to organize getting everyone down the stairs rather than have them spread across two rooms.¡±


    ¡°Sound logic,¡± I said, trying to make it sound like every part of this school didn¡¯t strike me as ill-conceived. ¡°I¡¯ll get started laying down some wards. This place will have its own mana battery you¡¯ll want to keep fully charged. I won¡¯t be using a ward stone so as to avoid drawing attention to the non-detection wards that will help hide the shelter.¡±


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t that risk weakening the wards without an adequate source of mana?¡± Lishav asked.


    And this guy was the dean, or headmaster, or whatever, of the school. I made a mental note to take a more active hand in the magical education of New Alkerist once I was done dealing with Ammun. If this place was going to be the center of magical culture in the new world, its standards needed to go way up.


    ¡°No, a ward stone doesn¡¯t provide a stronger source of mana. It just provides structure so that the wards can be powered by anyone who pours mana into them and makes them impossible to attack individually. They¡¯re great for quick activation, but they don¡¯t do anything that a set of enchantment wards can¡¯t replicate. The big drawback is that the wards are always active this way, and if the mana runs out completely, they¡¯ll break and need to be rebuilt, but this is only meant for a single use if and when the town is attacked, so it¡¯s fine.¡±


    ¡°I see,¡± Lishav said. ¡°But what about¡ª¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t mind answering questions, but I do need to get started,¡± I said. ¡°As long as you can keep out of my way, feel free to hang around.¡±


    ¡°Of course, of course. Just tell me where I should stand,¡± the councilman agreed.


    ¡°Right there is fine. I¡¯ll answer your questions when I can, but I won¡¯t be able to stand here and hold a conversation.¡±


    Now that the ground rules were laid down, I started moving around the room and anchoring the enchantments to various spots while explaining the methodology behind my work in as simple of terms as I could. Lishav peppered me with questions, so many that I briefly wondered if he was any relation to a woman named Shel from Old Alkerist who used to do the same thing.


    I got the work done in a few hours while he watched, which actually ended up working out well for me since it meant I could explain the defenses and his part in them in real time as I set them up. Finally, the wards were set and I departed back to my home.


    I had some worm hunting to prepare for.

 Book 4, Chapter 43

    With just about everything else on my list of immediate tasks finished, I began searching for my entry point into the deep tunnels and caves under Derro. Worst case, I knew where to dig straight down from, but, if possible, I¡¯d prefer to teleport past that and save myself a few thousand feet of excavation.


    ¡°You¡¯re sure you want to do this now?¡± Querit asked. ¡°Even if you come back with the moon core tonight, it¡¯s not going to generate so much mana that it makes a significant difference in the next few weeks. You could spend that time updating your demesne¡¯s enchantments instead. It would be a safer bet.¡±


    ¡°I could,¡± I admitted, ¡°and that will likely be my next project. But you said you wanted another day to eke out every possible efficiency before finalizing the new design, and this seems like the best use of my time until then.¡±


    ¡°And if the enemy mages show up again while you¡¯re gone?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve made contingencies,¡± I said.


    I wouldn¡¯t be taking much with me for my underground expedition. Any enchanted item I brought would only duplicate spells I could cast directly, often fully reclaiming the spent mana in the process. For all of that, there were two new additions to my arsenal.


    The first was my own emergency recall bracelet, forged not because I suspected I¡¯d encounter some sort of problem that forced me to retreat, but so that I could return home quickly in the event that Ammun¡¯s forces arrived while I was busy. It was far too expensive to be used for casual teleportation, which was why the official plan was just to drop a platform down there when I was ready to leave if I didn¡¯t have what I¡¯d come for.


    The second piece of gear I¡¯d fashioned was a little garden trowel I¡¯d somewhat whimsically created to serve as the base for a set of transmutation inscriptions that probably wouldn¡¯t be necessary, but which could buy me some time in the event the ground collapsed on me. I wasn¡¯t a fan of the idea of being buried alive, especially not at that depth and surrounded by giant flesh-eating worms. The trowel was designed to let me compact any sort of dirt and stone in a five-foot radius around it, theoretically leaving me inside a sphere of rock that I could then teleport out of.


    Querit still didn¡¯t know about New Alkerist, though I was sure he was keeping track of my comings and goings as best he could, so he knew I was going somewhere. I wouldn¡¯t be the least bit surprised if he¡¯d correctly speculated on what I¡¯d been spending my time on, but as long as he didn¡¯t know where the town was, that was good enough.


    Even if he tried to examine my personal teleportation platform, all he¡¯d find was that it wasn¡¯t linked to anywhere else, and that I¡¯d removed all the markers that would help scry my destination from the stone. I trusted him more now than I had a few weeks ago, but not enough to put my family in danger.


    ¡°Just keep doing what you¡¯ve been doing,¡± I said. ¡°You know how best to spend your time. I should be back in a few hours, but don¡¯t hesitate to use the transmission stone if you think anything weird is going on.¡±


    ¡°Oh, don¡¯t worry. I will.¡±


    My scrying mirror focused on a narrow tunnel that was almost completely vertical. Most of the paths the worms ate through the sand and dirt collapsed behind them, but this one hadn¡¯t. That was probably a combination of a slab of stone above it and gravity carrying what sand had fallen in there away. ¡°This will be my entrance,¡± I said.


    Querit peered over my shoulder at the tunnel. ¡°Four feet wide. How far under the surface is that?¡±


    ¡°Not quite two miles,¡± I said.


    ¡°You¡¯ll have a hard time breathing down there,¡± he warned.


    ¡°I have spells for that. If the sand worms can do it, so can I.¡±


    Finally, Querit was out of arguments. He¡¯d made it clear that he thought I was wasting my time, and I¡¯d decided to go anyway. There was no point in trying to talk me out of it. I wasn¡¯t really sure why he¡¯d fought so hard anyway. Maybe he was afraid I¡¯d die and leave him all alone in this new world.


    I left his workshop ten minutes later via intra-demesne teleportation and jumped across the island to the spot I¡¯d picked out with my scrying mirror from my platform. I appeared in complete darkness in the vertical shaft dug out by a worm that could swallow me whole. It was surprisingly warm down there, even by desert wasteland standards.


    The first thing I did was cast an earth sense spell to get a feel for what might be lurking in the sand around me. The burst of mana from my teleportation spell was contained, but anything close enough might sense it. As if to prove my fears true, something rumbled through the ground.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    The tunnel next to me burst open, spraying my shield ward with sand and rock. A moment later, a truly gargantuan worm appeared at the edge of my earth sense. It crossed the distance, pushing what sand it didn¡¯t consume in front of it like a ship¡¯s prow parting the waves, and I got an instant¡¯s look at a cavernous maw ringed with row upon row of teeth before I was inside the monster.


    I summoned my staff from inside my phantom space and drew mana through it. Great, jagged pillars of ice exploded outward in every direction, carving apart the worm¡¯s guts and piercing its thick skin from the inside-out. The worm convulsed, silent but for the grinding of dirt around it, but it could no more spit me out than it could swallow me deeper. I was a caltrop in its throat, stuck fast and slicing it further apart with every move it made.


    Blood dribbled from the wounds I¡¯d dealt the monster. I watched it run down the edges of my conjured ice for a long moment while I held myself in place with grand telekinesis. The worm was probably strong enough to contest even a master-tier spell, but it was in no condition to leverage its body. It didn¡¯t matter either way. The only muscle it could bring to bear against me was the inside of its own body, so either it cut itself apart thrashing in pain or it cut itself apart trying to dislodge me.


    It died after a minute¡¯s struggle, and I sliced my way free.


    The brakvaw would have loved to have this thing, but it was too big to fit into my storage box without chopping it up. Besides that, all its squirming had completely destroyed the tunnel I¡¯d arrived in, leaving me no choice but to start digging. Once again, I extended earth sense and tried to get a feel for what was going on around me.


    The brief scuffle had attracted attention, but they were lesser worms that were far easier to deal with. The biggest trouble I had was keeping myself from being buried alive as their attacks collapsed the tunnel I was in. That did nothing to stop them¡ªburrowing through the ground was how they spent every second of their lives¡ªbut it was a nuisance for me. My little trowel turned out to be a very good pick, though the rock shell it created around me was too brittle to stop the sand worms from breaking through it.


    I¡¯d expected to have a network of semi-solid tunnels to follow downward, the literal passage of the giant worms roaming around down here, but I hadn¡¯t been able to find one with my extremely limited scrying capabilities. Truthfully, I was lucky to have found the relatively narrow passage that I¡¯d teleported into from so far away. Now that I was here, however, I could feel my scrying beacons moving around.


    That gave me a direction to start in, and I set about building my own tunnel into the depths, one that was properly reinforced to handle worm attacks without dropping a thousand tons of dirt on my head. It was every bit as slow a task as it had been back up below Derro, but other than my rough start, things went according to plan. Worms showed up; I killed them. I went back to digging. Occasionally I left one of my beacon orbs behind.


    Two hours later, I found what I was looking for: a round tunnel in the sand ten feet wide with walls that were hard packed and relatively stable. Even better, it was going in roughly the right direction to reach the knot of scrying orbs that had initially drawn my attention down here.


    I walked through the darkness, completely reliant on a single wavering speck of a light orb, no bigger than a grain of sand and so faint that without invocations enhancing my night vision, I still would have been blind. The goal was not to attract any new worms, especially not the big ones. I didn¡¯t want them breaking this tunnel apart now that I finally had a place to walk without having to fight for every inch of progress.


    The tunnel didn¡¯t take me straight there, but even following its wandering course got me to my goal quicker than any other option. I wasn¡¯t actually sure where I was in relation to the surface anymore, but at this point, it hardly mattered. All I cared about was finding the bottom of this nest.


    The ground became less sand and more dirt and stone as I descended lower until I finally reached a point where the tunnel I was following started to curve back up. Apparently, the sand layer only went so deep, and this particular monster¡¯s magic wasn¡¯t sufficient for cutting through hundreds or thousands of feet of stone.


    I considered following the tunnel I was currently in back up in the hopes that it would loop around the pocket of stone I¡¯d found, but the more I stretched earth sense out, the more I became convinced I¡¯d bumped into an underground wall, one that there was no way around. If that was the case, then I¡¯d have to go through it. Unlike a sand worm, my magic could cut through stone just as easily as anything else.


    One good thing about traveling so far below the surface was that the smaller, weaker worms avoided the area. I wasn¡¯t sure if that was because they physically couldn¡¯t get down here or if there was some other reason, but the larger worms were comparatively rare, and that meant I could cast spells with less risk of them finding me.


    Less risk wasn¡¯t the same as no risk, as a burrowing sand worm even bigger than the one that had initially attacked me proved. I ruptured its mana core and stole the mana from its body, not because I needed it, but because I didn¡¯t want anything else nearby that might notice the free meal to show up and partake. I still had plenty of space for extra mana in my mana crystal, so I harvested everything I could get before returning to work.


    And then I finished excavating a hole two feet wide and thirty feet deep through the wall. The last chunks of stone fell away into a vast nothingness so big that no echo of them crashing to the ground below reached my ears. Curious, I flew forward into the void myself and sent my scrying spells out into the dark to see just how big this cavern truly was.


    I didn¡¯t detect any kind of life living down here, which wasn¡¯t terribly surprising given the lack of water or light plants needed to grow. Without that, there was nothing to base an ecosystem off of, and since there was no ambient mana radiating out from the world core anymore, there would be no monsters that could live without food, either.


    Which was why I was terribly surprised when something big, fast, and invisible crashed into me and slammed me into the wall.

 Book 4, Chapter 44

    My shield ward flared to life, protecting me from the impact ¨C but not the pin. Whatever had smacked into me, I still couldn¡¯t see or sense anything at all. I scrunched my eyes closed, wove mana together, and took advantage of the universal weakness of practically all subterranean creatures.


    Light bloomed in the air around me, prompting a startled and pained cry from a¡­ thing. I¡¯d never seen anything quite like it. Its whole body was transparent, only visible now because of the light reflecting off its skin in scintillating patterns as it flailed about. It was a giant, easily twenty feet tall, with mitts the size of my chest.


    The monster pulled away from me, releasing me from the wall and letting me fall away from it. That was great, since gravity allowed me to put some distance between us, but at the same time, my light orb dropped with me. As soon as the monster was outside its radius, it became completely invisible again. I halted my descent and forced the orb back up, but the thing was already gone.


    Something slammed into me from behind and sent me spinning away, but it was gone again before the light could reveal it. I had a simple solution to that: more light. Six more orbs flashed into existence around me, illuminating everything within a hundred feet, but no monster.


    The light stung my eyes, but a bit of magic fixed that up. I sent out the orbs to scour the open air, but whatever the thing was, it was quick enough to get away. The orbs spun around me in an ever-expanding circle, not revealing anything, but not letting it get close enough to hit me again, either.


    If it wasn¡¯t going to come back into the light, I¡¯d just have to hunt it down. Just because I couldn¡¯t see it with my eyes or sense its mana didn¡¯t mean it could hide from my divinations. There were dozens of ways to detect monsters, everything from vibrations in the ground to shifting air currents to sensing blood or even the presence of life itself. Something was going to show me where this creature was; I just had to figure out what.


    Actually, now that I thought about it, there was no real reason to do this the hard way. Light spells were cheap, even without lossless casting. How big could this hole under the ground possibly be?


    The lights flared as I poured more and more mana into them. When that failed to illuminate the whole cavern, I added more lights and set them to flying about randomly as they expanded.


    The creature, whatever it was, was fast, I¡¯d give it that. Three different times I caught light reflecting off parts of its body as it dodged around. Each time, I concentrated more magic into that area, only to find that it was gone again. Frowning, I started trying to calculate just how quick it could move and whether I was actually leaving it avenues to escape through in the darkness. Based on my initial assessment of its size, I should have already fenced it in.


    Even if I wasn¡¯t catching it directly with the light, just the mere presence of the orbs should have been enough to blind it, but the creature didn¡¯t seem to be hindered at all. Perhaps it had some sort of short-range teleportation ability, though if so, its core shielding was so strong that I still couldn¡¯t sense it at all. If not that, then it had to be some sort of shape shifter.


    Or I was mistaken about how many opponents I was fighting. There was no reason to assume only one of the creatures existed.


    More surprisingly, despite being up to twenty light orbs all shining at four times their normal strength, I still couldn''t find the ends of this cavern. Despite the many, many stories saying otherwise, our world was not riddled with endless underground caverns and tunnels. It barely even had the worm-eaten tunnels I¡¯d been following, and those were only temporary. Not even the rock worms plaguing the mountains around my valley dug caverns like this.


    A simple novice-tier spell obviously wasn¡¯t appropriate for this situation anymore. Fortunately, light was a very common side effect of many conjurations, and trying to hunt down my attacker¡ªand failing¡ªI was plenty annoyed.


    A line of fire cut through the darkness, stretching out a thousand feet, then two, before finally splashing against the stone. It was joined by a dozen more streaking away from me in every direction, all filling the cavern with the light of day. When that still wasn¡¯t enough, I cast explosive blasts into the air all around me, each one a burst of brilliant white fire that sent waves of heat rolling into my shield ward. Without my magic to protect me, my lungs would have been seared by my own spells.


    And there, finally, was the thing that had attacked me. It was vaguely humanoid but with too-long arms and a hunched appearance. It had no real neck to speak of, just a head that sat directly on its chest. A long tail curled around its feet, and it took me a moment to realize that there was some sort of skin flap connecting its torso and arms together to form something approximating wings.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    That was all the detail I could get, since even in bright light, it was still nothing more than a shimmering outline. It could have fur or scales or be completely naked flesh for all I knew. What was important was that I had eyes on it. The next flame lance I cast was aimed directly at the monster.


    It shrieked in agony and tried to flee, but I kept the light on it. It was fast, but not to the speed I¡¯d expected, which likely meant it needed the darkness to freely shift around using some spell similar to shadow step. Given its sheer size, it probably had the mana reserves to use a spell that cheap a hundred times, even with a dormant core. Since I had no proof that its core was dormant, I had to assume its movement was unlimited as long as it was in the darkness.


    It was the perfect predator for its environment, but once it was exposed in the light, there was nothing it could do to fight back.


    At least, that was what I thought, until it ripped up a chunk of stone out of the floor with its bare hands and threw it several hundred feet in my direction with startling accuracy. I caught the stone with greater telekinesis and redirected it back to the monster, though just barely. I wouldn¡¯t have been able to stop the missile¡¯s momentum with an intermediate-tier spell, not at that weight and speed.


    The stone crashed into the monster and sent it sprawling, leaving it wide open to be struck by a few more flame lances. Less than a minute later, its shrieks ended and it stopped thrashing. Its body flickered into true visibility once its mind no longer shaped its mana, which I could now feel draining out of its corpse.


    It had pale, colorless scales, sickly white like so many other creatures that lived in lightless environments. Really, it was the perfect ambush predator for this giant cave I¡¯d found myself in. The strange part was that there didn¡¯t seem to be much of anything else here for it to actually eat. Admittedly, I still hadn¡¯t found the walls on this place, but I had to have covered a fair amount of its interior just trying to hunt down my attacker.


    This was all a distraction, in the end. I wasn¡¯t here to go spelunking or fight off unfriendly wildlife. I was here to find a shortcut to the worm nest my scrying beacons had alerted me to. Whatever this monster was, whatever it hunted to feed itself, and however good it was at doing that were not details that were relevant to my goals.


    I cast out scrying spells in every direction while I flew west and kept myself in a wide area of bright light just in case there were any more of the camouflaged beasts roaming around. I was unlikely to see them outside the sphere of light centered on me, but as long as they didn¡¯t attack me, their presence remained nothing more than a curiosity.


    My scrying quickly revealed the presence of no less than six tunnels leading away from the cavern. Four went in completely the wrong direction, going east and south at least far enough to not make it worth the time to explore them in the hopes that they¡¯d turn back farther in. Of the remaining two, both went generally westward, but one sloped down and the other remained level. Since I needed to descend deeper under the surface, it was an obvious choice which way to go.


    Still, I sent scrying spells down both of them to make sure they continued in their general directions. After a few thousand feet, I started to reconsider my initial choice. The downward sloping tunnel was dropping at such a sharp rate that I suspected I¡¯d end up having to burrow back up to get to the worms. It might be better to just keep going west until I came out the other side of this chunk of stone and got back into sand. Then I could try to find new worm-bored tunnels to follow.


    Unfortunately, scrying through hundreds of feet of solid ground just wasn¡¯t feasible. No matter which choice I made, it would ultimately be a guess. After considering the path both tunnels took, I decided I¡¯d be more likely to find the edge of the stone by going straight, and started down the appropriate tunnel.


    I¡¯d only gone a thousand feet before I slowed my flight and came to a halt. Scrying spells could sense mana, but it wasn¡¯t nearly as easy to feel it out as when I was there in person. There was a mass of mana down there, though, something big enough to be noticeable and entirely stationary. It probably wasn¡¯t a chunk of moon core, but it was worth investigating.


    I turned back and started down the other tunnel instead. A few minutes later, it turned into a straight chute that narrowed too much for me to get through without altering it, but a simple stone shape spell got me past that bottleneck and gave me access to another cave.


    Unlike the first one I¡¯d entered, this one was only about two hundred feet wide. Its walls were a smooth and glassy black, like volcanic glass, and its floor was wavy like the sea on a windy day, only frozen in place. In the middle of all that was the source of the mana I¡¯d sensed down here, and it definitely wasn¡¯t a chunk of Amodir¡¯s moon core.


    It was a stone tree, for lack of a better word. There were no leaves, and the branches were too evenly spaced and symmetrical to be anything but purposefully designed. The trunk was thirty feet tall and five feet wide, smooth black stone just like the rest of the chamber. Strangest of all, there were millions of tiny holes in it, just big enough for some ant-like creatures to crawl in and out of.


    Much like the monster I¡¯d killed up above, each one was transparent, seemingly made from the purest living glass. That was where the similarities ended. They had no reaction to the encroaching light of my magic at all, not a single one of them.


    It took only a moment¡¯s examination for me to realize that they had no eyes to see with. No amount of light would matter to them, because as far as these creatures were concerned, there was no such thing. If I remained motionless and silent, would they be able to sense me at all?


    ¡®It has been thousands of generations since we were last threatened by the devourers,¡¯ a voice calmly announced in my head. ¡®But do not make the mistake of thinking that we have forgotten the old ways. Take this as your one and only warning to turn back now, while you can still leave under your own power.¡¯

 Book 4, Chapter 45

    ¡°That¡¯s unexpected,¡± I murmured as I settled into a sitting position in the air next to the ¡®tree.¡¯ ¡°Sapient creatures.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t find a singular mind to connect with to return its telepathic communications. Clearly, this was some sort of gestalt entity, not unusual for a hive species that specialized in divination magic. If it came down to a fight, its strength could be overwhelming until I thinned its numbers.


    Before I crushed the entire colony, I¡¯d try communicating first. As unlikely as it was that this entity would know anything useful, it wouldn¡¯t hurt to ask questions. If it turned hostile, I¡¯d crush it. If it was merely uncooperative, I could just leave now that I understood the source of the mana I¡¯d scried.


    ¡°Can you hear me?¡± I asked. Hopefully it could, since I wasn¡¯t eager to blindly broadcast my thoughts so that anything nearby could hear them.


    ¡®We hear,¡¯ the entity responded.


    Good. That made this a bit easier. ¡°I¡¯m not here to fight you. I¡¯m looking for an immense source of mana buried deep underground somewhere near here.¡±


    The gestalt didn¡¯t respond.


    ¡°I know you¡¯re not what I came down here to find,¡± I added. ¡°Your mana network is impressive, but I¡¯m looking for something else. Could you point me in the right direction?¡±


    ¡®Why would we help you?¡¯ the gestalt asked. ¡®What claim do you have to this mana source? Why is your need greater than whoever currently owns it?¡¯


    ¡°Does that mean you know where it is?¡±


    ¡®Perhaps. If we refuse to tell you, will you bend the light of the Astral Realm to your will to scour us from existence?¡¯


    It certainly wouldn¡¯t have been the first time I¡¯d destroyed something that had gotten in my way, but there was no gain to crushing a somewhat unique lifeform that couldn¡¯t possibly cause me any problems.


    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°There¡¯s no point. An entity like yourself can¡¯t be compelled to give information it doesn¡¯t want to. Even if I could destroy you, it would change nothing.¡±


    ¡®It¡¯s not that your morals or ethics are holding you back. It is a matter of practicality.¡¯


    ¡°Yes,¡± I agreed. ¡°I¡¯m not given to sentimentalities.¡±


    ¡®We have no answers for you.¡¯


    ¡°I don¡¯t think I believe that,¡± I said. ¡°I think you know where the thing I¡¯m looking for is. And if that¡¯s the case, then there¡¯s no reason we can¡¯t come to an agreement. You know what I want; what can I do for you? Knowledge? Enchantments? Some sort of raw material to build with?¡±


    ¡®Our goals are our own. We neither require nor want an outsider¡¯s help.¡¯


    My magic showed me more of the ant-creatures crawling out of the walls of the cavern, hundreds of thousands of them at least. The black-glass tree might have been the core of their home, but it wasn¡¯t the sum of it. Its roots went deep into the stone, deeper than I could feel out with earth sense. Perfect.


    ¡°How many of you are there?¡± I asked. ¡°A million? Two? More?¡±


    ¡®Are you reconsidering the use of force?¡¯


    ¡°The opposite.¡± I needed to keep this conversation going for another two minutes. ¡°This far from the surface, it must be hard to find prey. The only other creature I¡¯ve seen down here is a master of stealth, and huge besides.¡±


    ¡®We shall survive, just as we always have.¡¯


    ¡°I¡¯m sure you will. How much of your population dies when times get lean?¡±


    ¡®Irrelevant. We are a collective. No individual physical body matters.¡¯


    ¡°So you say, and yet there are so many of you. There exists some desire to continue to expand in there, which means your physical bodies need sustenance.¡±


    I pulled a piece of fruit from my phantom space and dropped it to the glass floor below. It rolled a few times before settling into the dip between two of the waves. Hundreds of crystalline, translucent ants immediately crawled all over it.


    ¡®Your offer is noted and rejected,¡¯ the gestalt sent. ¡®Such a trivial amount of food means nothing.¡¯


    The fruit started to float back up to me, undamaged despite being buried in ants for a few seconds. ¡°That¡¯s a sample,¡± I said, making no move to reclaim it. ¡°I can give you a thousand thousand times more food than that.¡±


    The first chunk of my invisible assailant floated down from the hole in the ceiling. I¡¯d cut it apart with remote force magic and brought it down here with telekinesis. It would take another few minutes to butcher the entire corpse, and even longer to transport the meat down here, but I¡¯d carved off enough to make my offer.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    ¡®You claim to offer food that was already destined to sustain our physical bodies.¡¯


    ¡°How so? This is meat from my kill, freely offered. I would be happy to trade the rest for information about the mana source I¡¯m looking for.¡±


    ¡®No. This kill was abandoned.¡¯


    Pressure mounted in my head as I fended off the gestalt¡¯s thoughts. Anger bled into its words, either because it was unable to regulate the mental connection it had forged, or because it did not care to. Whatever the reason, the gestalt was starting to stress my wards, but I didn¡¯t let it show on my face. A bit of mana to reinforce them guaranteed my continued safety, not to mention keeping it from reading my own thoughts.


    If the gestalt realized that I was growing annoyed enough to consider filling this entire room with fire, it probably wouldn¡¯t be willing to negotiate with me. It would be a shame if I¡¯d wasted all this time and effort only to walk away no better off than when I¡¯d started.


    I let the slab of meat drop to the ground. ¡°It was still my kill. I can easily take it with me, but I¡¯d be happy to trade it to you. I¡¯ll even transport the rest of it down here. All I want to know is where to find the mana source in the area.¡±


    Ants swarmed over the meat, so many that even though I could see through them, they covered the food with a sort of blurry haze not unlike looking through a poorly constructed camouflage spell. It took seconds for them to carve up the meat into a thousand pieces small enough to be carried away, a not-so-subtle reminder of what they could do to me if I wasn¡¯t careful.


    ¡®This is not enough,¡¯ the gestalt sent. ¡®What you ask for will cause the death of millions. Providing us with sustenance today means nothing if we trade it for starvation tomorrow.¡¯


    It had a point there. If I removed the moon core, which I was planning on doing once I found it, the worms that dominated the sands below Derro would most likely die. Monsters needed mana to live, and it was the rare specimen that could generate enough mana to survive without an outside source. Some could, of course, but usually only small and weak monsters.


    It was impossible to predict the impact removing the moon core would have on the local ecosystem. The worms appeared to be the apex predators to me, but I¡¯d done very little in the way of exploration. I didn¡¯t even know what other monsters lived down here, let alone how many of them relied on the worms in some way. This colony of ants seemed contained to this relatively small area, but there was no telling how deep they¡¯d burrowed through this stone to reach food sources.


    Maybe I could solve two problems here. ¡°I have a proposal. How willing would you be to relocate to a new home near the surface where regular food could be provided?¡±


    ¡®Unnecessary.¡¯ The gestalt almost sounded confused. ¡®We have everything we need here.¡¯


    ¡°For now,¡± I said. ¡°But rest assured, I¡¯m not going to give up my search just because you decide not to help me. If you¡¯re concerned about your food supply disappearing were you to give me the location of that giant, mana-producing rock, that will still be a concern for you in the future.¡±


    ¡®Then it seems that the proper course of action to ensure our continued survival is to stop you from ever leaving this place,¡¯ the gestalt said.


    ¡°You could try,¡± I said with a shrug. ¡°You won¡¯t succeed, not unless your ability to attack my mind is much, much stronger than you¡¯ve led me to believe.¡±


    ¡®Perhaps it is time to find out.¡¯


    The gestalt lashed out at me with all the strength its collective millions upon millions of members could muster. I floated there, unperturbed, a veritable rock at sea withstanding the beating of the waves on it. The difference here was that the ocean would continue to slam against that rock endlessly, slowly and inevitably wearing it down. The gestalt couldn¡¯t, and unlike the rock, I could fight back.


    It was by no means weak, but my mental defenses were solid years before I¡¯d ventured into this place, and I¡¯d used the last few minutes to reinforce my passive abilities with a few choice barriers specifically designed to resist the constant deluge of pressure this particular type of entity was known for outputting.


    The gestalt¡¯s attacks were primarily mental, but it did have millions upon millions of bodies, several thousand of which poured out of holes in the black-glass ceiling to rain down on me, only to strike my shield ward and bounce off or slide away. There was no purchase to be found there, and rather than cling to me, they were scattered across the floor.


    I was content to let the two-pronged offense go on for a few minutes, just to prove my point, but the gestalt wasn¡¯t stupid. It quickly realized the futility of the fight and ceased its assault. ¡®We have no desire to leave our home, but it seems you leave us with little choice, assuming you haven¡¯t decided to obliterate us now.¡¯


    ¡°If you¡¯re ready to listen to my offer now, I¡¯m still willing to give it out.¡±


    ¡®We will listen.¡¯


    I¡¯d expected it would. Most gestalts were beings of logic and reasoning. They had to be in order to form a gestalt. Strong emotions could break the union and tear the entity apart. Besides, they were ants. It wasn¡¯t like they were known for their tempers.


    ¡°There is a place full of portals to far off lands,¡± I said. ¡°The portals are used by a flock of enormous birds, so big that they would have difficulty fitting in this chamber. The amount of food they consume daily is so great that to feed all of your vessels wouldn¡¯t even be a snack to them. They would have no issue providing you with all the sustenance you need to multiply your numbers several times over.¡±


    ¡®What would they want in return?¡¯ the entity asked.


    ¡°Invaders came through the portals recently. They were killed or driven off, but there are more that could arrive at any moment. I propose that you reestablish your colony in the rock face that the cliffs are built into. It would be trivial for you to keep watch over the portals and sound the alarm if more invaders come through.¡±


    ¡®That is all you would require? A simple warning?¡¯


    ¡°Yes. If you wanted to subdue and interrogate any intruders, you¡¯d be welcome to keep them when you were done, but you wouldn¡¯t have to.¡±


    ¡®And in return, you will claim the mana stone here using the knowledge we give you, irreparably altering the world forever and likely causing everything that lives here to starve.¡¯


    ¡°Something like that,¡± I agreed. I wasn¡¯t about to feel sorry for a bunch of simple-minded worms that had vastly overgrown their place in the food chain because their ancestors had lucked into stumbling across a source of unlimited mana a thousand years ago.


    The gestalt didn¡¯t say anything. Long seconds stretched on while it thought, likely an eternity to it considering the way its collective consciousness worked. Then, suddenly, I was bombarded with a mental map of everything within a few miles of the colony¡¯s home, including the moon core buried under a mile or more of sand beneath me.


    ¡°It seems we have a deal,¡± I said with a smile. ¡°Let¡¯s talk logistics.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 46

    The biggest sticking point was that the gestalt, for some inscrutable reason, wanted to bring its entire room of black-glass stone with it. It wasn¡¯t impossible, but it was an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. I countered with an offer to relocate the ¡®tree¡¯ itself and all of the floor within twenty feet, which was about the biggest section my phantom space could hold now.


    The gestalt wasn¡¯t convinced, but gave up when I countered with transporting slabs of the walls if it was willing to cut them into sections small enough to move. When it admitted it didn¡¯t have the power, we went with my original plan. The ants cleared out of the tree and surrounding area, and I used a modified stone shape spell to cut out a foot-thick stretch of the floor to stash in my phantom space.


    The tree resisted entering, probably due to the connection the gestalt had with it. Closing my phantom space might sever that, so I held off on stashing it for now. While the ants gathered, I created a temporary portal to Eyrie Peak. ¡°Ready?¡± I asked.


    ¡®As we can be for such a momentous change,¡¯ came the answer.


    The portal finished unfolding and the ants began streaming through. I pulled the tree into my phantom space, holding the connection open for just a second while I stepped through the portal myself. I immediately ejected the tree back out, allowing my phantom space to snap closed and the gestalt to reaffirm its link.


    ¡®We are exposed here,¡¯ the gestalt said.


    ¡°We¡¯ll burrow into the cliff face,¡± I told it. ¡°It¡¯ll take a few hours, plus I¡¯ll need to inform the brakvaw of your presence and introduce you. Incidentally, are you able to cast audible illusions?¡±


    ¡®To mimic speech? This is within our capabilities.¡¯


    ¡°Good. The brakvaw leader is tied down to a physical location and will almost certainly speak to you via a projection spell. You may find it difficult to reach his mind over such a vast distance.¡±


    ¡®We will find a way,¡¯ the gestalt said. I got the feeling it was including me in that ¡®we¡¯ this time, which was fair. I was the architect of this plan, and it was my responsibility to overcome any problems that cropped up.


    Briefly, I wondered how it would go if I introduced Querit to the gestalt. Being a living golem with no actual mind, it was an existence completely outside the gestalt¡¯s understanding of reality. Would the colony of psychically connected ants be able to comprehend Querit?


    That was a fascinating question, but it was too low on my list of priorities to be answered any time soon. Of more immediate concern were the trio of brakvaw winging their way toward me. Considering we¡¯d been standing here for about half a minute now, their response time left something to be desired. If enemy mages had come through any of the portals, they would have had plenty of time to flee.


    Grandfather¡¯s projection appeared in front of me in his typical human shape. ¡°Keiran,¡± he said. Warily, he peered past me at the transparent ant swarm rolling out of the open portal, then up at the stone tree behind me. ¡°An explanation, if you please?¡±


    ¡°I have discovered a gestalt entity in need of a new home and food source,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ve agreed to provide transportation in exchange for the entity keeping an eye on the portal networks on our behalf. It will require¡­ Hmm¡­¡±


    I trailed off and eyed the swarm. How much meat did a single ant need in a day? And how many of them were there? I had no doubt I hadn¡¯t seen even a fraction of the gestalt¡¯s total numbers, even with them being as exposed as they currently were here.


    ¡°Fifty pounds of meat a day?¡± I asked.


    Mana danced through the ant swarm like a constellation of stars, and a soft, almost feminine voice said out of nowhere, ¡°Double that. Part of this promise was room and resources for us to expand the colony.¡±


    ¡°There you go,¡± I said. ¡°One new neighbor with a vested interest in keeping the brakvaw safe in exchange for one afternoon snack a day.¡±


    Grandfather pondered that for a few seconds, then glanced at the empty portal ring on the cliff face. ¡°Does that mean you¡¯ll be opening the Green Plains portal again?¡±


    ¡°Not for another few weeks,¡± I said. ¡°Once Ammun¡¯s forces establish their own path to the island, there won¡¯t be much point in keeping it closed. Until then, I¡¯d like to avoid giving them any shortcuts. I know where the moon core is now, thanks to our new friends; it should take less than a day to retrieve it.¡±


    ¡°You will be staying here to assist with our relocation first,¡± the gestalt said firmly. ¡°It would not even be needed if not for your interference.¡±A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    I shrugged. ¡°You were free to refuse my offer.¡±


    ¡°And be left to starve,¡± the gestalt pointed out.


    ¡°Keiran, did you strong-arm a powerful mind-magic wielding entity into living in the middle of my flock?¡± Grandfather asked, his voice tight.


    I thought about that for a second, then nodded. ¡°Pretty much, yes. Really, though, this is for the best. All of us are going to benefit from this.¡±


    ¡°You could have at least discussed it with me first,¡± the old bird said.


    ¡°I¡¯m under a bit of a time crunch right now. It was faster to just go ahead and convince you after we got here. Now, I¡¯m assuming you want this tree back underground?¡± I directed that question to the gestalt.


    ¡°Correct.¡±


    ¡°Any caves under this plateau?¡± I asked Grandfather. Not waiting for his answer, I sent scrying spells sweeping down the side of the mountain to find out for myself, and cast a quick earth sense spell to get a better look at exactly what I¡¯d be working with.


    ¡°I do not believe so,¡± he said, confirming what I¡¯d already determined for myself.


    ¡°Perfect. This should be close enough to the portals. Hmm, unless you¡¯d prefer to take over the wall behind the portals? You¡¯d need to be careful about opening micro-tunnels to the surface,¡± I told the gestalt. ¡°The rune structures are delicate enough that too many tunnels could break them.¡±


    ¡°Fifty feet straight down from here is sufficient,¡± the gestalt said. ¡°We are able to sense your weavings from here.¡±


    I started opening the ground while a flock of agitated brakvaw circled overhead. Grandfather scowled at me, but I ignored that. He¡¯d forgive me, or he wouldn¡¯t. Either way, life would go on. Unless the gestalt tried to take over the brakvaw and claim the whole eyrie, this was a win for everybody. And if it did do that, I¡¯d just kill it. A few explosive fire blasts would do in the majority of its bodies, and I had some more targeted spells to clean up the remnants.


    It took well over an hour to plant the black-glass tree in its new underground home, which was only a fraction the size of its old one. The gestalt complained about the reduction in size, loudly, but I just reminded it how much more food it was about to have available. It would be doubling in size quickly and could regain lost ground easily enough.


    With the transplant complete, I moved to step through the portal leading back underground, but Grandfather stopped me. ¡°I would like a word,¡± he said. ¡°In private.¡±


    ¡°Of course,¡± I said. ¡°Shall I meet you at the roost?¡±


    ¡°Please.¡±


    The projection vanished, and I spent a moment seriously considering walking back through the portal instead before I reluctantly flew up to the top of the mountain. Grandfather was there, as always, his immense bulk in the middle of the eternal stream of mana holding up the brakvaw graveyard high above the clouds.


    ¡°What were you thinking?¡± he demanded as I landed nearby. ¡°Inviting something like that here! It¡¯s a threat to all of us.¡±


    ¡°What? No it¡¯s not,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s a gestalt made out of an ant colony. Even with millions of members, it¡¯s barely got human-level intelligence.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s what it is today, but what about in a year? How big will it grow before it decides it doesn¡¯t need us to deliver food when it could just eat us instead?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re worried about nothing. Even if it decides to try that, any brakvaw, even a freshly-hatched chick, can defeat it. Did you notice the crystalline body structure? Its bodies are vulnerable to sonic attacks. A loud enough screech will scramble their internals and fracture their exoskeletons.¡±


    ¡°All well and good, unless they start by attacking our minds.¡±


    ¡°A possibility,¡± I acknowledged. ¡°And if it does that, I¡¯ll destroy it. All you have to do is let me know. That reminds me, I have a transmission stone for you to reach out to me with. This is for emergency use only. I¡¯ll hear your words directly into my mind no matter what I¡¯m doing, so use it responsibly.¡±


    I produced one of the stones from my phantom space and tossed it to Grandfather, who caught it in his magic and brought it up to his eye to examine it. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, the stone zipped off into the interior of his roost.


    ¡°I¡¯m not happy, Keiran,¡± he announced. ¡°You don¡¯t own the brakvaw. You don¡¯t run our home. You don¡¯t get to make decisions like this without even so much as consulting me. Don¡¯t get me wrong; I am grateful for all the assistance you¡¯ve given my flock and me personally, but this was a step too far.¡±


    ¡°And if I had more time, I would have spoken to you first,¡± I said. ¡°Unfortunately, I do not. This meeting is a courtesy to assuage any fears you might have. I have to get back to work, unless you have anything else to talk about.¡±


    I was aware of the effect I had on people. Dozens of rulers over the centuries had looked at me with the exact same frustration Grandfather felt right now. It was hard for them to accept that some people were beyond their control. Sometimes they got angry and tried to prove that no one had more authority than them. That never ended well for them.


    Usually, logic and sense prevailed, and they bowed to the inevitable. That was the case with Grandfather. He might have thought that he could prevail if it came to an open conflict, and truth be told, if the entire flock descended on me, I¡¯d be forced to flee. But he knew the cost that would come with that: no more portals, renewed violence between humans and brakvaw resulting in deaths on both sides, me razing their civilization to the ground to eliminate a threat and harvest their mana.


    It was better for both of us to remain cooperative, just so long as he understood that we weren¡¯t equals.


    ¡°No,¡± Grandfather all but snarled. ¡°That was everything.¡±


    ¡°Then I¡¯ll be on my way.¡± I started to fly away, but paused and turned back. ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, I truly believe the gestalt¡¯s presence has a positive effect on the security of the portals, and not just for my own sake, either. If an army of mages comes through here, there¡¯s every possibility that the brakvaw will come under attack as well.¡±


    ¡°That thing won¡¯t give us more than a few seconds of warning. How much good could it possibly do?¡±


    ¡°You are misunderstanding its nature,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s going to spread through the portals to the other side. As long as they remain open, it will be able to monitor both sides and the surrounding area. You¡¯ll know well before anything comes through. Trust me, for the price of a deer carcass a day, you¡¯re getting the better end of the deal.


    ¡°And if it decides to act against you, I¡¯ll annihilate it. On that, you have my word.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 47

    With the gestalt¡¯s map in my head, it was easy to plan my route. Ants were naturally burrowing creatures; that combined with human-level intelligence and access to mana allowed them to thoroughly map out the underground for miles in every direction. Even dying did nothing to slow them down, not when the gestalt knew everything each individual ant discovered right up until the moment of its death.


    There were small tunnels leading out from the main cavern where I¡¯d been attacked by that invisible creature, almost all of them too narrow to allow it to escape. It seemed to have been primarily subsisting on nothing but mana and the occasional sand worm when it felt like digging through the sand pits at the very end of the tunnel I¡¯d been exploring before I discovered the gestalt.


    I ignored that route myself, since it wasn¡¯t really any faster to dig through sand with transmutation than it was to go through solid rock. It probably wasn¡¯t a coincidence that the closest spot to the moon core was actually the gestalt¡¯s home, which worked well for me since it cut down on the backtracking I needed to do.


    Two miles of dirt, stone, and sand were all that separated me from my goal. A few hours of work would see me there, probably with an extra hour or more to deal with interference from any curious and hungry sand worms that happened to be in the area. As long as Ammun¡¯s forces didn¡¯t pick today to make their move, I could finish this job up.


    I started digging at the same steady and careful pace I always used, a few feet at a time as I chained transmutation spells one after another after another. After about ten minutes, I made it to the outside edge of the rock layer and pushed back into sand, where things began to slow down both because of my need to ensure I''d properly reinforced the tunnel and because all the mana I''d been spending had apparently drawn in a crowd.


    No less than six different sand worms, all of them big enough to swallow me whole, attacked me within a few minutes of burrowing out into their territory. Fortunately, all of them had enough mana that it was easy to feel their approach and ready myself. I even went so far as to butcher the corpses and stuff them into the spatial box in my pocket. Hopefully, it would soothe some of Grandfather¡¯s ruffled feathers.


    After the first hour of digging and fighting, I took a break to consult the mental map the gestalt had given me to determine if I needed to make any adjustments. Everything seemed to be on course, but without being able to scry through a mile of sand, I had no way to know for sure. The best I could do was keep digging and hope nothing went wrong.


    By the end of the second hour, I was pleased to find that I could feel subtle pulses of mana up ahead. Those only got stronger as I dug, and I took the fact that I¡¯d fended off several dozen massive sand worms as a good sign. I started stretching earth sense ahead of me, hoping to pick up the moon core on a sweep. It would be incredibly easy to tunnel right past it, missing it by a hundred feet or less.


    Then, finally, my divinations found something. Or rather, earth sense picked up a hole in the ground. It didn¡¯t make sense, either. There was nothing but sand around it, no supporting structures inside the void and no rock shell to explain the absence of material. There was plenty of mana, presumably from the moon core itself, but I didn¡¯t sense any sort of active spell.


    The void shifted, pushing the walls of sand back a foot before settling back into place. Sand poured down from above, filling the empty space within seconds.


    ¡°That¡¯s impossible,¡± I said aloud.


    Earth sense wasn¡¯t going to cut it here, and normal scrying would struggle to pierce walls thicker than a foot or two, but if the void was what I thought it was, I had other options. A quick spell later confirmed my fears. The void was a creature buried underground, a creature so absolutely massive that I couldn¡¯t even get the whole of its shape.


    Could a sand worm live and grow indefinitely, given a big enough source of mana? How large would one be if it had a thousand years of exposure to something like a fragment of moon core? And, most importantly, how difficult would it be to take that moon core away? It would be a death sentence for a monster so massive that it couldn¡¯t live without an unlimited mana budget.


    The last layer of sand fell away before my eyes, revealing a leathery brown wall. If I hadn¡¯t already figured out what I was seeing, I¡¯d never have guessed I was looking at the monster¡¯s body. I could feel the mana from the massive worm radiating out, so heavy that I wasn¡¯t even sure there was a moon core somewhere past it.


    Maybe I could dig around the worm and come at the moon core from another angle, but I had a suspicion that it was wrapped entirely around the stone. No matter which direction I approached from, I¡¯d have a guardian monster to deal with. To that end, I needed to get some space to fight in, otherwise I was liable to be smeared across the sand the first time it shifted.Stolen novel; please report.


    If there was ever a time to put a master-tier transmutation called abyssal maw to good use, this was it. The problem was that I wasn¡¯t sure the chasm it ripped open would be big enough. Also, it was entirely likely that if I used the spell down here, it would cause the roof of the newly opened pit to pour down and crush me.


    What I needed was a combination of spells to keep me safe while dislodging the worm from around the moon core so that I could steal it. And if that didn¡¯t work, killing it was an acceptable alternative. A plan started to come together in my head, one that I spent a few minutes turning around to look at from every angle.


    Once I was confident that it would work, I set about pulling it off.


    * * *


    The trickiest part of the abyssal maw spell was that it was designed to split the ground open directly underneath me. Casting it out in front of me required some off-the-cuff modifications, always a tricky proposition when dealing with spells at this level of complexity. The spell went off without a hitch, however, and a chasm ripped open beneath the worm¡¯s body as sand was transmuted into air and¡ªon the outer edges¡ªstone.


    As I¡¯d suspected, the worm¡¯s bulk was so massive that even with that spell, it barely budged. What the spell did do was get the monster¡¯s attention. Thankfully, there was so much mana permeating the area that it couldn¡¯t sense me. I¡¯d used elemental form to shift myself into an earth elemental, which wasn¡¯t generally all that useful since earth wasn¡¯t really known for moving, so the spell more or less locked me into one position.


    But it made me indistinguishable from the rest of the sand around here, and that was the important part. Other than by sensing the mana from the spells I was casting, it was practically impossible to find me.


    Core rupture was the next step in my plan. Every living creature, whether it was a fifty-ton worm or a single transparent ant, had a mana core, and in this case, the worm had the largest one I¡¯d ever encountered. I wasn¡¯t sure a single core rupture would actually slow it down, not in the short-term.


    Unfortunately for the worm, I was well past the point where I had to worry about conserving my mana. I had enough in my body alone to cast all the master-tier spells I needed, not even considering my mana crystal, which held easily fifty times as much mana as I was capable of.


    Another thing about core rupture: it was a combat spell, which meant it was designed to be cast quickly. Three of them hit the sand worm in the space of a second, and if abyssal maw woke it up, having its core carved up got it moving.


    The ground started vibrating as it thrashed in agony, mana bleeding from it in explosive bursts. I drank in what I could, but even at stage six, my mana core simply couldn¡¯t pull mana from the environment at the speed the worm was losing it.


    A coil of the worm¡¯s body swept through the sand that made up my elemental form, scattering me across a span of twenty feet or so. It wasn¡¯t an attack so much as random flailing, but it dislodged the monster and caused part of its body to slip into the open abyssal maw beneath it. That was all it took to start the chain reaction, and soon the entire worm was slipping out of place. Unfortunately, that wasn¡¯t enough to make it let go of the moon core it had wrapped itself around, and that fell a thousand feet with it. Fresh sand poured down on top of us, reburying the monster in place.


    I could only imagine what the surface looked like right now. We were so far down that it was possible it was undisturbed, but I doubted it. Between the worm crashing against the sand, sending vibrations rolling through it, and the sudden loss of tons and tons of earth, there had to be some sign of something going on.


    If there hadn¡¯t been already, there definitely would be in the next few minutes. I cast a second abyssal maw, this time directly above the worm. The new void immediately started filling in with sand, literally dumping an incalculable amount of weight down on the monster.


    Burrowing through sand was one thing, but giving it a thousand feet to fall before it slammed down on top of a living creature was something else. Honestly, I wasn¡¯t confident that even this would seriously be enough to injure it, but it was my first backup plan if the drop didn¡¯t cause the monster to lose its grip on the moon core.


    I learned two things at that point. First: the worm wasn¡¯t too big to shrug off getting slammed with that kind of weight. Second: it was big enough to fight through it. I was essentially fighting blind underground with only extremely limited scrying to show me anything at all, but earth sense told me the behemoth was starting to uncoil its body and lunging straight up, no doubt hunting whatever had attacked it.


    As an earth elemental, there was practically no way I could be injured. Even if the worm scattered the motes of sand that made up my current body, I¡¯d just pull my consciousness back together into a unified whole again. So I wasn¡¯t particularly concerned about being killed right now so much as I was that the worm would wriggle its way through a few miles of sand, necessitating I track it down and start the fight all over again.


    I needn¡¯t have worried. It went straight up, its body so massive that when the part near me I could actually sense began moving, I was pulled up along with it. I spared a moment to consider what exactly was on the surface above me and hoped we weren¡¯t about to come up directly beneath some poor farming village on the outskirts of Derro, but it was a passing concern. The odds were astronomically low, anyway.


    The worm surged upward, still carrying the moon core along with it, as it searched for its unknown assailant. What had taken me hours and hours of digging took it no more than a minute before it breached the surface and kept rising, a thousand feet straight into the air. That was when I was thrown free of the ground as part of a continuous geyser of sand.


    Fresh scrying spells flashed into existence as I finally got my first good look at this thing. It was at least two hundred feet thick and already a quarter mile into the sky with an unknown portion of its body still underground supporting it. Despite the damage I¡¯d done to it, it hardly looked hurt at all.


    Well then, I¡¯d just have to do a whole lot more.

 Book 4, Chapter 48

    I resumed my human shape somewhat reluctantly. With as spread out as I¡¯d gotten, it was difficult to fight as a scattered pile of sand, and besides, I needed hands to hold my staff. The worm, somewhat surprisingly, noticed me immediately. I wasn¡¯t entirely sure what kind of senses it had, but I¡¯d assumed flying into the air would go a long way towards hiding myself from it.


    Apparently, just getting off the ground wasn¡¯t going to be enough to keep me safe. Also apparently, and somewhat unsurprisingly, this particular sand worm had extremely powerful terrakinesis. Pillars of sand exploded into the air as I slipped around them, the sheer weight of it all outstripping anything I could manage through telekinesis. Even specialized sand-moving spells wouldn¡¯t come close, no matter how much mana put into them.


    Well, it was no surprise. For something that big to move underground, it would almost have to have these kinds of capabilities. I¡¯d expected to be dealing with something like this, though I¡¯d hoped it would let go of the moon core long enough for me to stuff it into my phantom space. That hadn¡¯t gone as planned.


    As powerful as the sand worm was, it had its limits. Its terrakinesis could only throw sand so high, and I could fly much, much higher than that. My shield ward was protecting me from loose sand for now, though it was a steady drain on my mana reserves, and I used that time to pepper the worm with a few more rupture core spells as I ascended into the sky.


    Mana bled out of it in immense waves, infusing the ground and air so thickly that it pained me to let it all go to waste. I reminded myself that the moon core was the real prize, not whatever I could scavenge from the corpse of this titanic beast. Those would be one-time gains; I needed a power source that would deliver for the next few decades.


    Between the sand worm¡¯s massive size and the amount of mana it was bleeding out, I couldn¡¯t actually sense the moon core down there. I wasn¡¯t seeing it through any of my scrying spells, either, which meant I was likely in for a long clean up and excavation once I killed this thing.


    Once I was out of the immediate threat range, I switched to more offensive attacks. The worm had no mind to speak of, so mental attacks were out. I hit it with a variety of force spells, but its hide was so thick that those did nothing but scratch it. Master-tier spells like inferno and Chill of the Infinite Void scarred its hide, but the damn thing¡¯s size protected it.


    The whole time, the sand worm thrashed around either in pain or rage, or maybe both, and did its best to kill me. Whatever instincts drove it were good enough for it to switch tactics once I got outside the range of its explosive sand pillars, and I soon found myself dodging rocks being launched from the ground at massive speeds. Some of them were thrown so hard that I couldn¡¯t see where they landed miles away.


    The image of some poor farmer looking up just in time to be crushed under a massive quarter-ton stone came to mind. It was a distinct possibility, too. The sand worm had surfaced out in the middle of the wastes, but from my vantage point, I could see no less than three villages within thirty miles of here. No doubt, those people were staring back at us, probably wondering what in the hell that monster was, and whether they were all about to die.


    However tough it might have been, the worm wasn¡¯t immortal. Blood dripped from its many wounds, just not enough for this fight to end any time soon. I needed to switch tactics again, this time to a style of conjurations that worked particularly well against armored opponents.


    While I was putting the spell together, the worm¡¯s mouth swung around to face me. I was treated to the view of circular rings of teeth all bigger than I was and the black cavern that was its undulating throat behind them. Then something flexed, and greenish-brown fluids shot out.


    It was an unbelievably fast attack, easily traversing the thousand feet that separated us. Acid splashed against my shield ward, eating away at it almost instantly. Desperate, I flooded it with more mana to try to stabilize my defense, but it was a losing game. The acid dribbled down through the air, fast enough that I mentally calculated I¡¯d only need to hold the shield ward for another few seconds before it fell away.


    I had to revise those calculations a moment later when another stream of acid shot out of the worm¡¯s open mouth.


    This time, I got a force wall up between me and the attack, though it cost me the master-tier spell I¡¯d been building to keep my shield ward up while the acid from the first blast rolled off of me. I¡¯d underestimated this worm, thinking of it as nothing but a scaled-up version of the ones I¡¯d been slaughtering with ease ¨C something that I¡¯d have to put a bit more mana into to kill, but not a real challenge.


    Maybe all sand worms had been like this a thousand years ago, but this one was the only one that had survived the entire time. It was possible the younger sand worms had lost the ability to spit acid at their enemies because it hadn¡¯t been necessary after all the other monsters had starved. I¡¯d seen more unusual changes between generations in monsters before.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Whatever the reason, this thing was a true monstrosity. I restarted the spell I¡¯d need to kill it, weaving it together as fast as I could while flying evasive patterns and occasionally tossing out other spells to repel the sand worm¡¯s attacks.


    Hopefully, it wouldn¡¯t unveil any new tricks in the next sixty seconds. Hopefully, it would die shortly after that. Hopefully, the moon core would be close to the surface and wouldn¡¯t have a giant worm land on top of it.


    I never had been all that lucky, so three hopes in a row seemed like too much to bank on.


    One last force wall appeared between me and another acid shot, then I completed the spell. An orb of phantasmal energy twenty feet across appeared between us and immediately launched itself at the worm. Somehow¡ªand I still hadn¡¯t figured out this thing¡¯s suite of sensory organs yet¡ªthe monster knew something was coming. Four different boulders were flung through the air to pass through it, one of which came close enough to me that I had to dodge out of the way to avoid being clipped.


    And then the orb passed into the worm, about two hundred feet below its head and right near what I was mentally thinking of as its throat, though really just about the entire thing was a throat. It pulsed brightly in my mana sense, just once, before triggering.


    The spell was called phantasmal shrapnel bomb, and it was what most archmages casually referred to as a siege breaker. Its primary purpose was to murder several hundred to a thousand tightly-packed and heavily-armored individuals. It did exactly what the name implied.


    Huge shards of phantasmal energy exploded out of the orb in every direction, not just once, but in repeated waves as the spell slowly expended its energy over the next ten seconds. The effect on the sand worm was instantaneous, starting with the ground shaking for miles in every direction as a kind of localized earthquake.


    That was quickly followed by an eruption of blood and viscera through the worm¡¯s mouth, and finally by the yard-thick leather skin in the area I¡¯d detonated the bomb ripping to pieces, and the top few hundred feet of the worm being ripped off the body to fly through the air. It landed with a crash powerful enough to knock a house down and flung sand a mile into the sky.


    The rest of the worm toppled over, all but burying itself in the sand just from the sheer weight of its body. I watched it warily for a moment ¨C not because I expected it to start moving again, but because I wasn¡¯t going to get anywhere near it until I was absolutely sure that it wouldn¡¯t.


    While I waited, I did my best to harvest as much of the monster¡¯s mana as I could. I¡¯d used more in this fight than I had in my spell duel against Ammun himself a few years ago, and it¡¯d be irresponsible not to salvage as much as I could from the sand worm.


    ¡®We¡¯re under attack!¡¯ a voice screamed into my head.


    I blinked in surprise and spun to face New Alkerist a few hundred miles in the distance. As I was doing that, a second voice yelled, ¡®Enemy mages have launched some sort of unknown spell on the town.¡¯


    Both were members of the town¡¯s council, though I struggled to put names to their voices. Before I could think to answer either, my father¡¯s voice came through. ¡®Gravin, something is happening. The ground started shaking for a few seconds, but it¡¯s stopped now. Also, a boulder flew through the air and smacked into the mountains about a minute ago, but we weren¡¯t able to figure out the source of it.¡¯


    I almost started laughing right there. ¡®It¡¯s fine,¡¯ I replied. ¡®I know what happened. It¡¯s not an attack from Ammun¡¯s mages. I can explain it all later if you want.¡¯


    ¡®You¡¯re certain?¡¯ Father asked.


    ¡®Positive. Will you tell the rest of the council to stop bothering me?¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯ll try to phrase it a bit more politely.¡¯


    ¡®Thanks,¡¯ I projected.


    I¡¯d gotten lucky twice, first in not having to fend off any more surprises, and second in completing a lethal spell to kill the monster. Unfortunately, my luck had run out there. The sand worm¡¯s residual mana was rapidly fading¡ªthough the fact that it took whole minutes to disperse was astounding in and of itself¡ªand without its interference, I should have been able to feel the moon core.


    But I couldn¡¯t, which almost certainly meant I needed to go digging for it. If it was just sand, I wouldn¡¯t have minded, but excavating the corpse on top of it was going to be more difficult, more expensive, more time consuming, and definitely far, far messier. The worst part of it was that I didn¡¯t know how far down I needed to go. I didn¡¯t even know how big the moon core was, though I was hoping it was a decent size.


    The sand worm¡¯s sheer size supported that hypothesis, but even a small shard of moon core could grow something massive given an entire millennium to do so. I spent a few minutes making and discarding plans before I decided the best approach was to dig out thin scrying tunnels next to the worm in the hopes that the moon core¡¯s mana output would be detectable if I got a divination within ten or twenty feet of it.


    If that didn¡¯t work, I¡¯d open a new portal to the gestalt and see if I could convince it to help me look. Such a creature was far more suited to finding something buried in the sand than I was, anyway. I gave myself three hours of digging to see if I could locate it, with my plans to be reassessed at that point if I turned up nothing.


    Before I could even get started, the first scavenger showed up. I regarded the monster, some sort of hyena or jackal, blandly for a moment. Seeing that it had no interest in me and that it was content to stay a thousand feet away where it could tear at the exposed meat from the decapitation I¡¯d given the worm, I ignored it and hoped that any other scavengers would be equally inclined to gravitate toward that part of the corpse.


    But, as I already knew, I wasn¡¯t that lucky. I¡¯d barely gotten started before a monster interrupted my progress, requiring me to scour it off the face of the planet. I was already reconsidering my timetable.

 Book 4, Chapter 49

    Querit stood in the middle of the petrified forest with me, right on top of the ritual circle I¡¯d constructed to form the valley¡¯s genius loci. Overhead, a slab of sparkling silver stone floated in the air. It was oblong, a hundred feet long and thirty feet at the widest, and nearly as thick. That had been a pleasant surprise, but also an unexpected complication. My phantom space couldn¡¯t hold nearly that much volume, even if I¡¯d been willing to chop it into chunks.


    I¡¯d ended up creating a massive portal on the spot and multicasting two grand telekinesis spells to relocate the moon core after I¡¯d finally pried it out of the coils of the dead behemoth sand worm. It hadn¡¯t been a pretty or clean process, but it was done now.


    ¡°Is¡­ uh¡­ What¡¯s¡­ what¡¯s that thing stuck to the bottom of the core?¡± Querit asked.


    I followed his eyes to where a three-foot-long section of worm muscle had adhered to the stone and frowned in annoyance. A flicker of force magic cut it free, where I directed it into the worm stasis box.


    There, now it was done.


    Querit opened his mouth to say something else, saw the look on my face, and wisely changed his mind. Instead, he just looked around at the clearing and said, ¡°This is a pretty nice setup. How long did it take you to make?¡±


    ¡°Too long,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll be breaking it here momentarily.¡±


    ¡°To put the moon core in its place?¡±


    ¡°Yes. This is relatively close to the center, so the moon core will have the least impact on the mana flows here.¡±


    I¡¯d left the ritual circle intact for two reasons, even though it wasn¡¯t necessary once I¡¯d completed the magic to bind myself to the valley and form its genius loci. First, I hadn¡¯t needed the space for anything else, and second, if for some reason my bond to the valley was broken, I could quickly and easily reestablish it.


    Stone shape did the majority of the work cutting the ritual circle from the ground over the next few minutes. I delegated holding the slabs out of the way to Querit while I started digging. It was a good thing I was back in my demesne, both for the mana recovery that afforded me and because the genius loci could help reshape the ground as I desired. It still took an hour to hollow out the space for the moon core, but we did eventually get the job done and the ritual circle replaced back over top of it.


    A great deal of tension drained out of me with that. One of my big fears over the last few days had been that Ammun¡¯s mage hunters would show up while I was in the middle of this project. That fear had only gotten stronger when I¡¯d discovered and unearthed the moon core. The absolute worst-case scenario would have been losing it to the enemy.


    Now that the moon core was buried in the center of my demesne, it was as safe as I could make it. The valley¡¯s defensive wards would protect it, and the mana regeneration from the petrified forest would help camouflage the core from any invaders who managed to somehow get inside. Short of digging it up, no one besides Querit and myself would ever know it was there.


    On the other hand, plenty of people were going to know that something had happened out in the desert east of Derro. There was no way to hide that, not with that sand worm being multiple miles long. The whole area was going to have trouble with an influx of scavenging monsters in the near future, and they¡¯d need to handle that without the teleportation network until the current crisis had been resolved.


    That reminded me that I still needed to go collect the platforms. That was going to be an expensive project, requiring thirty or so teleportation spells all over the island. Fortunately, by my best estimates, my newly improved valley should produce that much mana in less than a day.


    ¡°Get me a projection of when we¡¯ll have enough mana saved up to start building our resonance point, will you?¡± I asked Querit.


    ¡°We can start the preliminary divinations in the next two weeks or so,¡± he answered immediately. ¡°It¡¯ll be another month after that before we¡¯re ready to actually map out the Astral Realm¡¯s connection to the valley.¡±


    ¡°I can see I underestimated your ability to gauge ambient mana levels,¡± I said.


    ¡°It is a matter of my very survival,¡± the golem told me. After a moment¡¯s thought, he added, ¡°Or it was.¡±


    ¡°Still, something putting out as much mana as the moon core¡­ You¡¯re sure you¡¯ve got a read on it?¡±


    ¡°I am.¡±


    And Querit had been living in the valley long enough that he probably had a better grasp of how much mana each individual tree produced than I did. Certainly he¡¯d spent more time here. If he thought he had the mana production capabilities figured out, well, that was his job, and I was inclined to believe him.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    ¡°How are we doing on the storage crystals?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I¡¯ve got them arranged in an Adenmeiyer array for maximum conductivity. We¡¯re at thirty percent capacity.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what that is,¡± I said. ¡°Is it similar to a Volstigar configuration?¡±


    ¡°Oh, yes! It was created about a hundred years ago¡ªwell, plus another thousand¡ªusing Volstigar¡¯s work as a basis, and the principles of mana harmonics to calculate the optimal mana flow path between crystals.¡±


    I would have loved to get a closer look at that, but I still had an hourglass with an unknown amount of sand in it looming over me. ¡°If that¡¯s what you think is best,¡± I said. ¡°I need to finish recovering my mana reserves, then I¡¯m going to collect the platforms for the teleportation network. After that, I want to test the pillar defenses to confirm they can operate at a higher sustained level of mana output.¡±


    ¡°That reminds me, I¡¯ve finished streamlining the new enchanting rune clusters. When did you want to start updating the wards?¡±


    ¡°What did you get the mana reclamation up to?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Exactly where we expected it to end up. The rune cluster will recycle about a third of the mana used.¡±


    ¡°Okay. Platforms first. Ward upgrades next. Then pillar stress testing.¡±


    Querit nodded along. ¡°I think it¡¯s quite admirable that you¡¯re so dedicated to helping the natives of this island.¡±


    I snorted. ¡°No, you don¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°No, I don¡¯t,¡± he agreed. ¡°Admittedly, I haven¡¯t known you that long, but you¡¯re not that selfless of a person. I assume there¡¯s some tactical reason to prevent any invading forces from gaining the locations of those villages.¡±


    ¡°Something like that,¡± I said. I trusted Querit more every day, but not enough to tell him about my family. That was a weakness I would never reveal to anybody I didn¡¯t have to, especially not a golem as powerful as Querit was. He would understand how vulnerable my family was.


    Unfortunately, I couldn¡¯t stop the rest of the island from talking about New Alkerist¡ªwhich would easily lead any invaders to my family¡ªwithout killing everyone. Genocide was almost never the correct solution, even for a monster as heartless as me. The best I could do was remove the clues pointing out where to look now that I knew I could expect mage s??oldiers showing up in large numbers.


    Whatever Querit¡¯s thoughts on the matter were, he recognized that I wasn¡¯t interested in talking about it and dropped the conversation. We parted ways, him back to work on adapting lossless casting and me to my personal teleportation platform once I finished gathering all the mana I¡¯d need.


    This was not going to be a pleasant task.


    * * *


    ¡°What do you think you¡¯re doing?!¡± a middle-aged woman with hair like straw and a frumpy green robe screeched at me.


    ¡°Removing the platform so that the invading mage army can¡¯t use it to access your village,¡± I said.


    ¡°But we need that! Half our supplies come by teleportation these days!¡±


    ¡°I understand that, and you were given several days to stock up.¡±


    ¡°Please,¡± another villager pleaded. ¡°That¡¯s not nearly enough time. We¡¯re not ready yet.¡±


    ¡°Overland caravans are being organized,¡± I told them as I pulled the last of the emitters out. ¡°With any luck, this will only be a temporary situation.¡±


    A small crowd had gathered around me, some keen to fight, others silent with haggard faces. They knew they were in for hard times, and some of them rightly blamed me for it, even if they didn¡¯t understand exactly why it was my fault.


    Mana burst out of the woman with the green robe in the form of a lick of fire that hurled itself through the air in my general direction. It splashed harmlessly against my shield ward while the villagers gawked at the scene.


    I paused in my work and straightened up to my full height before slowly turning to face her. ¡°That,¡± I said slowly, enunciating the word, ¡°was a mistake.¡±


    I raised a hand and pointed a single finger in her direction. The crowd flinched back, all except for a young man who appeared to be around my age. He threw himself between me and what I assumed was his mother, or perhaps grandmother.


    ¡°Stop,¡± he cried out, too late to actually accomplish anything even if I¡¯d been inclined to listen to him.


    A single thin line of lightning jumped from my finger and crossed the intervening space between us. It easily arced around the man to shock my attacker. She let out a pained howl and jumped back, but there was no escaping my magic. The spell stayed connected to her for a few more seconds despite her defender¡¯s attempts to interpose himself, then I let it fade.


    The woman slumped to the ground with a groan. Ignoring her and the young man, I asked, ¡°Would anyone else like to fight, or can I get on with doing my job now?¡±


    Despite some muttered conversation and a lot of dirty looks, nobody else came forward. Satisfied, I turned my back to them and started disconnecting the rune plate from the base. It would have been easier now to pull the whole thing into my phantom space, but leaving the rest of the platform in place here would make it easier later when I went to put the whole thing back together.


    ¡°You¡¯re an evil, heartless man,¡± the guy who¡¯d tried to stop me from zapping the woman said. ¡°How can you just condemn our entire village to suffer like this?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll survive,¡± I told him. The rune plate came free, and I pulled it into my phantom space. ¡°Or you won¡¯t. I don¡¯t really care. If you do die, though, it won¡¯t be because a dozen mages teleported to your village and burned it to the ground.¡±


    Without waiting for a reply, I took to the air and flew a mile or so out into the desert. I¡¯d gotten similar receptions from every other village I¡¯d visited, though this was the first time anyone had been bold enough to actually throw a spell at me. Usually, I just got a pitiful audience mewling about how much harder their lives would be without the magical conveniences they hadn¡¯t even known existed a few years back.


    I¡¯d learned my lesson about teleporting away inside the village itself. It just gave the people an opportunity to pester me for solutions to their problems, solutions I had no interest in providing. Honestly, it was like no one could think for themselves anymore.


    I heaved a great sigh and crossed another name off my mental list. That was fifteen down, nineteen more to go. Maybe the next village would show a bit more grace about the loss of the teleporter.


    Probably not, though. My spell took hold and I appeared on the platform of my new destination. There was already a crowd waiting for me. ¡°Great,¡± I muttered as they surged forward. ¡°Just great.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 50

    It was impossible for me to narrow down where Ammun¡¯s mages would set up their staging point, but that did not mean I didn¡¯t spend a fair amount of time using the various scrying beacons I¡¯d seeded around Ralvost to snoop for any useful information I could find. And while I did find plenty of interesting things, like a few towns that had managed to ignite all their cores and were busy inventing some basic combat conjurations, I didn¡¯t stumble across what I was looking for.


    I was very deliberately keeping an eye on the caravan routes I¡¯d projected Ammun would send replacement parts for his machines on, hoping to destroy the shipments, but there was nothing. Whether that was because the caravans simply hadn¡¯t departed from the tower yet, or because Ammun had managed to ward them so thoroughly that I couldn¡¯t find them, I couldn¡¯t tell.


    Unfortunately, my assault on the eight facilities had caused someone to go over the security of all of them. They¡¯d discovered the air vent in the trash disposal chamber, which I imagined had probably resulted in at least one execution, and repaired the gap in their defenses. Even if I¡¯d been willing to brute force the wards to get a look inside, Ammun¡¯s designs were so thorough that I couldn¡¯t do it from thousands of miles away through a relay chain of scrying beacons.


    Despite my best efforts, all I could do was wait and prepare. I overhauled the wards. I stockpiled mana. I tested new defenses. I built staves, wands, athames, bracers, amulets, rings, and belts with various spells worked into them, then distributed them to mages in New Alkerist who probably still didn¡¯t have a chance of repelling an assault, but who could at least buy some time now.


    I even helped Querit build a few new frames, including a research frame designed specifically to help map out the Astral Realm near my demesne. It was surprisingly complicated and involved redesigning a section of my crucible to allow for greater flexibility in rune combinations, but we got it done. Preliminary explorations were promising, and Querit was more than satisfied with his new tools.


    The one thing I couldn¡¯t do was stockpile any meaningful amount of potions or salves. I suspected a lot of people would need some amount of healing if and when New Alkerist came under attack, but I just didn¡¯t have the reagents to mass produce anything. And, unfortunately, my tour of damn near every village on the island hadn¡¯t turned up any sign of Hyago. Wherever he¡¯d settled down at, it was apparently out in the middle of nowhere, far away from civilization. Knowing him, he was probably completely self-sufficient already and never going to set foot on a paved street again.


    I also made good on my promise to deliver a few lectures to the New Alkerist magic classes, which went about as well I¡¯d expected they would. Every time I went there, I internally cringed at how bad a shape the building was in despite being less than a year old. I wanted to tear it down and rebuild it, but doing that would be as good as guaranteeing it would be the first place to get flattened if the town actually was attacked, so I reined in the impulse.


    Finally, almost two months after I¡¯d slain the behemoth sand worm and claimed a shard of Amodir¡¯s moon core, something happened.


    * * *


    ¡°It¡¯s ready,¡± Querit told me through the scrying mirror. ¡°How¡¯s the ritual coming along?¡±


    ¡°Twenty minutes,¡± I replied, not looking up from where I was carving runes into a granite pylon thirty feet tall. Three more, identical except for the completed rune structures on them, stood in a row nearby, waiting to be transported to the ridge Sanctuary had been built on before I¡¯d evicted everyone to New Alkerist.


    ¡°Got it. I¡¯ll keep everything updated in real time. I think we¡¯ve got about two hours before the divergence ratio gets too high to continue.¡±


    ¡°Plenty of time,¡± I said.


    The mirror went blank, and I finished carving the rest of the runes into the pylon. I would have preferred to build them ahead of time, but the rune structure was dependent on the current conditions in the Astral Realm¡¯s mana flow. If I¡¯d made them yesterday, they¡¯d have been junk today.


    I pulled all four of them into my phantom space, then teleported across the valley. Hopefully, that wouldn¡¯t disturb the Astral Realm too much, but it was a necessary risk. The crucible was the only way to make the pylons fast enough, and moving it up to the top of the ridge would have placed it too close to the ritual site.


    The pylons went into the ground, into holes I¡¯d already bored in the stone. The bottom ten feet were buried, leaving only the top two-thirds visible. I stone shaped the final runes into the ground in a circle around each pylon, then pulled out my mirror. ¡°I¡¯m good to go here,¡± I told Querit. ¡°Give me the final numbers.¡±


    Images appeared on the mirror, looking somewhat like an elevation map, except one that was constantly shifting. I reached out and mentally activated each pylon, manually manipulating the mana rushing through them to reach out and alter the mana flows to match their counterparts in the Astral Realm.Stolen novel; please report.


    ¡°Not enough mana in section nine,¡± Querit reported.


    ¡°I know. I¡¯m trying to siphon some out of section four without twisting everything between them.¡±


    ¡°Pull it over at once and smooth out the damage after,¡± the golem advised.


    ¡°If I do that, we risk the Astral Realm twisting too far for us to match.¡±


    ¡°If you don¡¯t, there¡¯s no chance at all of getting things lined up before things naturally shift away from the current map.¡±


    As annoying as that was, he was right. His idea was the only way to level out the mana flows properly, even if it was going to cause a bunch of work fixing what I damaged in the process. I was already controlling sixteen different spells at once, with Querit handling another nine from his position a thousand feet away.


    Adding four more spells to the mix taxed me to my limits, both mentally and mana-wise, but I managed to hold it for the thirty seconds I needed to make the changes and fix section nine. ¡°Shit, I¡¯m losing sections one through three,¡± I said.


    ¡°Reinforcing now,¡± Querit answered, and I felt some of the strain ease up as he stepped in to handle that portion of the ritual.


    It was easy to see why this was something that twenty or thirty mages collaborated to do. The construct was absolutely massive, easily on par with my most advanced spells. It was draining a master-tier spell¡¯s worth of mana every few seconds, and we weren¡¯t even trying to recover any of that. The added variables in the enchantments alone would have put the ritual out of our reach, never mind trying to calculate the effect lossless casting might have on the mana flows.


    Slowly, painfully, things started to come together. One piece slotted into the next, and the connections were forged. Mana started flowing according to an infinitely complicated pattern as I made minute adjustments to match Querit¡¯s maps of the Astral Realm.


    With each piece I solidified, the strain on my mind eased just a bit more. It never went away entirely, of course. Even just holding things in place without making further adjustments was difficult, but Querit was able to take over more and more of the ritual once I got everything into position.


    Finally, the last section snapped into place, and the ritual pulsed. ¡°We¡¯re going to lose it!¡± Querit yelled.


    I pushed mana into the pylons and snarled, ¡°No we¡¯re not!¡±


    A second pulse rippled through the delicate mana flows, threatening to destabilize the whole thing and cause it to collapse. ¡°Sections seventeen through twenty-one are diverging. We took too long to get everything put together,¡± Querit said.


    ¡°Update the flow maps,¡± I demanded. ¡°I¡¯ll fix them in real time.¡±


    The golem didn¡¯t say anything, but he did what I wanted. I spun out new spells to twist the mana flows and started working backwards, fixing each piece to resync it to the Astral Realm and making new connections to the other sections.


    ¡°Seven and eight are diverging now.¡±


    The hell they were. Two more spells went through the pylons. ¡°Hold onto the framework,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m losing it.¡±


    Querit¡¯s mana shifted to reinforce the part I¡¯d directed him to, giving me just enough leeway to finish fixing section seventeen and turn my attention to the two new problems. For a moment, I was worried that my assistant was right, that the failing sections were going to cascade out of control, but when I finished reweaving seven and eight, everything held stable.


    ¡°Resonance forming!¡± Querit yelled. ¡°Get ready for the pressure wave.¡±


    Despite everything we¡¯d done already, this was the part of the ritual with the highest chance of failure. The very act of forming a resonance point had a large chance to alter the mana flows and rip the entire ritual apart. At this point, there was nothing to do but hold everything in place through sheer willpower, something that would have been a lot easier to do with a dozen more assistants.


    Mana flashed through the pylon, coming down the wrong way from the emerging resonance. As the mage at the back end of those pylons, there was nowhere else for the mana to end up but in my core. I desperately pushed it out into my body and gritted my teeth against the pain. I just needed to hold on for a few more seconds, then I¡¯d discharge the mana into my demesne without fear of altering the mana flows at the last second.


    An explosion of mana ripped through the air as the resonance point fully manifested in the sky fifty feet overhead, spaced perfectly in the center of the four pylons. With that, the ritual shattered. I was too exhausted to hold it together even if I¡¯d wanted to, but I didn¡¯t think it was necessary.


    ¡°Keiran?¡± Querit asked. When I didn¡¯t answer, he added some urgency to his voice. ¡°Keiran! Are you alright?¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± I croaked as I slumped down to a seated position. ¡°Things¡­ hurt.¡±


    ¡°I imagine so,¡± the golem said. He displayed some tact there and didn¡¯t remind me that he was incapable of feeling pain, even from mana overload. Still, I imagined he¡¯d be repairing some stuff over the next few days, too. ¡°The resonance point appears stable.¡±


    ¡°It does,¡± I agreed. I flopped onto my back and stared up at it. Completely invisible to normal senses, I could nevertheless feel it as a sort of knot of mana, half from the physical world and half from the Astral Realm, all twisted up on itself and forming a bridge between its two sources.


    ¡°How¡¯d we do on mana usage?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Um¡­¡± Querit paused. ¡°Not as bad as we projected, honestly. Not great, but the ritual only took twelve minutes.¡±


    ¡°Twice as long as it was supposed to,¡± I said.


    ¡°If we had a full ritual circle, yes. It shouldn¡¯t be possible at all with just the two of us.¡±


    I grunted and didn¡¯t reply. However much it had cost us, it was complete. And that meant I¡¯d be advancing my core to stage seven as soon as I recovered. The next step was to use the resonance point to form an astral body that would mirror me from the Astral Realm, which would drastically increase not only my ability to store mana, but how fast I could channel it. What I¡¯d just done would have only been half as difficult if my astral body had already been formed.


    ¡°I¡¯m exhausted,¡± I told Querit. ¡°Give me six hours to recover and we¡¯ll move on to the core advancement.¡±


    As soon as I said that, the valley¡¯s wards flared to life, and an explosion of light and fire filled the sky.

 Book 4, Chapter 51

    Whether it was a coincidence or deliberate, the attacking mages couldn¡¯t have picked a better time to launch their assault. Whoever was in charge was better about keeping their forces safely hidden than the last bunch, too. Even now, with the sky burning above my wards, my divinations didn¡¯t detect anyone out there. That was going to make it hard to counterattack, but there was some small consolation in knowing that they were likely expending a great deal of excess mana to fire at such a long range.


    The mysteel pillars lit up in my mind, thankfully only because I was connected to them and not because of the amount of mana they were pulling. Any defensive system that highlighted its weakness wouldn¡¯t be very good, after all. Unfortunately, without an enemy nearby, they couldn¡¯t do much besides defend against the next attack.


    More explosive conjurations painted the sky, but those were just a distraction. I was sure the enemy was prepared to take advantage of the situation if something managed to shatter my wards, but the true danger was the sappers trying to subvert or undermine the ward schema so that it would unravel on its own. Failing that, they would try to weaken my defenses enough to smash through.


    It was too bad for them that in an effort to dodge my divination wards, they¡¯d given themselves a huge handicap with the distance they¡¯d launched their assault from. While my valley did have twenty ward stones spread across it to help regulate and power my defenses, all of them funneled feedback through my genius loci and back to me. As long as I was in my demesne, I could feel every probing attempt the enemy made, and it was no strain at all to capture the mana they tried to inject into my wards to break them.


    It also revealed close to thirty mages working on just ward-breaking, plus however many more were slamming conjurations against the wards directly or using counter-divinations to block my attempts to find their group. ¡°Querit, can you focus on locating the enemy mages while I block their attempts to undermine the wards?¡±


    Golems didn¡¯t get tired like people did, and despite what we¡¯d just gone through creating the resonance point, all Querit really needed was to pull in more mana to get back into fighting shape. He might not be at full strength, but he¡¯d be a lot closer than I could get in the next few minutes.


    ¡°I¡¯m already searching for them,¡± he replied. ¡°The conjurations are originating from a location two miles west of us on the slope of the mountain, but I can¡¯t find anyone there. It¡¯s possible they¡¯re even farther back and using remote casting techniques to place the origin points of their spells away from their actual position.¡±


    ¡°The simple fact that those conjurations are traveling over a mile to reach the barrier and still have that much strength behind them means the enemy is using master-tier quality spells,¡± I said.


    ¡°Or ritual conjurations to compensate for the lack of power.¡±


    I nodded. That was a possibility as well. Most likely, it was a mixture of both. They¡¯d have one or two heavy hitters to anchor their offense while the rest operated in groups of five to ten. They¡¯d probably timed their ritual conjurations to keep up a steady pressure against the wards.


    Ammun¡¯s forces weren¡¯t the only ones who¡¯d been preparing, though. The mysteel pillars would hold for hours, even with the loss of all the mana that had gone into the resonance point project. That was plenty of time for us to find and eliminate our attackers, as long as I could stop the saboteurs from subverting my wards enough to allow anyone through.


    On the other hand, maybe it wasn¡¯t the worst idea to deliberately let a few mages in. If they were stupid enough to walk into an archmage¡¯s demesne, they deserved their fates. But no, tempting as it was to see if they¡¯d take the bait, giving them a foothold in the wards could result in them spreading their reach to the more sensitive portions where they could do real damage. That would just be a waste of mana refreshing them when I could easily prevent that damage in the first place.


    I wanted to leave the valley¡¯s defenses to the mysteel pillars and fly out there to take the fight to the enemy. Sitting here letting them wear me down was no way to win, and even if they gave up, it did nothing to stop them from attacking villages and towns all over the island instead.


    But leaving my demesne would be the worst strategy right now, simply because I lacked the strength to scour the mountains trying to find them. Once Querit got a fix on their location, it¡¯d be a different story, but even then, I had enough energy in me for one good strike. I needed to make sure I caught as many enemies as possible in it, since anyone who survived and fled was almost certain to get away.


    Minutes rolled by while I waited for Querit to finish his search and did my best to recover my spent strength. Lightning bolts, fiery explosions, spears of stone and steel, and more crashed into the barrier my wards wove over the valley in hundreds of different locations, all hunting for a weakness to exploit.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    There was a pause in the bombardment, followed by a sound of satisfaction from Querit. ¡°They¡¯re trying to block me,¡± he announced through the mirror. ¡°I¡¯ve got their position narrowed down, and their divination blockers can¡¯t do more than scatter the signal a little bit to keep me from getting an exact read.¡±


    The enemy force must have pulled their artillery team off of the attack to help shore up their divination wards ¨C that or whatever master mages they had among their ranks had switched tasks and had been doing far more of the heavy lifting than I¡¯d given them credit for.


    My mana core was full now; it was just a matter of mustering the willpower to wield it. I teleported across my demesne to the platform and waited for Querit¡¯s word, or rather for the image he was projecting into the scrying mirror to tighten down from the thousand-foot stretch it was searching through.


    ¡°Their ward breakers must be getting tired,¡± I said. ¡°Attacks against the ward schema directly are starting to fall off, too. If this is their big offensive push after months of gathering resources, I¡¯m not impressed.¡±


    The problem was that I didn¡¯t think either of us believed they were throwing everything they had at us. This was a probing strike, or maybe at best an opening blitz to see if they could overwhelm us before we solidified the valley¡¯s defenses. It wasn¡¯t unreasonable to assume that such a huge tract of land couldn¡¯t be warded from end to end, however wrong that assumption happened to be.


    ¡°Found them,¡± Querit reported. A spot on the map flashed red for a moment, then the scene shifted to an unassuming stretch of sky a few thousand feet up above the slope of the mountain. ¡°Think you can hit it from here?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I said.


    ¡°What? I thought¡ª¡±


    I missed whatever Querit was about to say as my teleportation magic took hold, bringing me to a spot a few hundred feet above our attackers. I was invisible and warded against divinations, which did not mean they wouldn¡¯t be able to see me, just that it would hopefully take a few more seconds before they noticed I was there.


    I only needed one to unleash the master-tier spell I¡¯d been holding.


    I¡¯d created a great many of the spells in my repertoire myself, either researching them from scratch or by adapting inferior versions I¡¯d found throughout my many years. Occasionally, though, I had raided some lost trove or found a forgotten research lab and came across something so good that all I needed to do was learn how to cast it.


    Falling stars was one such spell. It wasn¡¯t terribly useful because it had an extremely long cast time, was prohibitively expensive, and had a limited range, making situations where I could effectively use it fairly rare. In this case, however, it was perfect.


    Brilliant orbs of fiery white liquid appeared out of nowhere and began raining down through the sky. Any single one was close to ten feet wide, and I dropped eight of them down on the enemy mages.


    As soon as the first one popped into existence, they noticed it, of course. Panicked defenses were quickly raised in the first second, only to be abandoned in the next when they realized their wards and force walls wouldn¡¯t be strong enough. The third second was spent trying to use instant-cast short range teleportation to escape, and the fourth was when the first orb reached them and exploded.


    Liquid fire coated everything within a hundred feet of its detonation point and started dribbling out of the sky. The wards already in place took the brunt of the impact, but even that was enough to drain a massive amount of their reserves.


    Their resistance collapsed completely when the second and then third orbs hit their ward screen. Dozens of mages died in that instant, their bodies vaporized under a deluge of liquid fire, but thirty more scattered in every direction. Any attempt at remaining hidden was forgotten as they flew off, teleported away, and in the case of one particularly heartless mage, spatial-swapped positions with someone else who¡¯d already fled the splash radius.


    Exhaustion swept through me as I unleashed the spell. Even keeping my flight spell going was straining my mind, so much so that I didn¡¯t think I had it in me to teleport back to my demesne. I started flying back at a fraction of my normal speed while I watched those few mages who¡¯d managed to survive my surprise counterattack flee. No doubt they¡¯d regroup miles from here to plan their next strategy.


    I regretted that I wasn¡¯t in any condition to chase them down, but breaking their attack would have to suffice for today. If Querit was a bit more bloodthirsty, he could probably pick off at least a few more of them using his aerial skirmisher frame, but the golem¡¯s taste for battle had died when he¡¯d been ambushed near Ammun¡¯s tower.


    As soon as I crossed the ward threshold back into my demesne, I pulled myself through space to the teleportation platform where I¡¯d left the scrying mirror. ¡°How many got away?¡± I asked wearily.


    ¡°Twenty-two,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m tracking all but four of them right now, but only because they¡¯re grouping back up at a rendezvous point deeper into the mountains. What do you want to do about it?¡±


    ¡°Nothing,¡± I said. ¡°Two hours ago, I would have gone out there and hunted them down. Right now, I just want to sleep.¡±


    ¡°Is there any backup you can call in to help?¡± Querit asked. ¡°I know you haven¡¯t been too keen on introducing me to your social circle, but¡ª¡±


    ¡°No. It¡¯s not that. I don¡¯t really have a social circle, and nobody that does any work for me is above stage three. Most of them aren¡¯t even at stage two. It¡¯s just you and me, unless you¡¯d like to cut your losses and escape. I won¡¯t hold it against you.¡±


    ¡°That would be supremely ungrateful of me after everything you¡¯ve done to help me acclimate to this new world.¡±


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t be the first time someone decided to look out for themselves,¡± I said. ¡°Won¡¯t be the last. That¡¯s just how people are.¡±


    A portal unfolded in the sky above my demesne, drawing my attention immediately. ¡°Now what are they planning with that?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Initial divinations are putting the origin point at what I believe to be the lich¡¯s tower,¡± Querit said.


    ¡°Reinforcements? Their timing is a bit off.¡±


    But it wasn¡¯t a stream of fresh mages ready to continue the fight that poured out. No, it was one mage wearing a dark purple robe and holding a staff made out of bleached bone. His hood flapped back in the wind, revealing the grinning skull of his face.


    Ammun had taken to the field.

 Book 4, Chapter 52

    ¡°Impossible,¡± I breathed out. ¡°The mana costs¡­¡±


    I couldn¡¯t even calculate how much mana Ammun was burning every second to be that far away from his phylactery. Had he brought it with him? No, that would be the height of foolishness. There was no reason to take that kind of risk, not even to kill me. What, then?


    A brilliant orb of white light appeared in front of him and fell to crash into my wards, where it splattered into liquid fire. A second and third followed it, each one putting an unbelievable amount of strain on the mysteel pillar network.


    By the time the falling stars were striking my wards, Ammun had already stepped back through the portal, then a hundred new mages flowed out. They spread out overhead and watched their boss¡¯s spell devastate my mana reserves while I silently seethed.


    ¡°Isn¡¯t that the same spell you just used?¡± Querit asked.


    ¡°Yes,¡± I said shortly. ¡°Why bother to be original when you can just copy the master?¡±


    The sixth orb was the one that finally broke the wards, leaving the seventh and eighth to land unimpeded in the petrified forest. Stone didn¡¯t burn, but it could melt. I scowled at the sight of the damaged trees, but there was nothing I could do to counteract the magic, not when all my resources were tied up in manually repairing the wards.


    Mages swept down in formation, spread out enough to avoid being taken out by a single spell but still close enough to share overlapping defenses. ¡°Querit, it¡¯s time for you to go into hiding,¡± I said. ¡°They¡¯re inside the valley now.¡±


    Before he could reply, I stuffed the mirror into my phantom space and summoned my staff. Bursts of force magic streamed through the sky, striking the invading mages and breaking on their wards, or, in some cases, cutting through to slice open my targets. The attack did little to slow them down, especially since I was focused on the ones in the middle of the pack.


    The leading mages were going to get in; there was no question of that. Even as the wards wove themselves back together, I knew it wouldn¡¯t be fast enough to keep them out. The ones at the back of the line were too far out and too slow to matter. They wouldn¡¯t be a factor in the next stage of this battle. It was the ones in the middle who¡¯d get past the wards before they could reestablish themselves if I didn¡¯t act to slow them down.


    Force magic was just the start. My next spell was a huge elemental blast of air to counteract their flight spells and throw them away from the valley. The magic only caught and blew three of them off course, but it slowed down another dozen or so. The ones who had wards strong enough to keep their flight paths stable were my next targets.


    Waves of dispelling magic rippled up through the air, the first ones splashing uselessly against the mages leading the charge, but more and more magic passed through the group, and the weaker mages with fragile or partially-drained wards couldn¡¯t compensate for my spells. A few more lost their focus and tumbled from the sky, their controlled descents transforming into panicked, screaming free falls.


    It wasn¡¯t enough. I had time for one more spell, but there was nothing I could do right now that would stop nearly thirty mages from making it through. I¡¯d already used force walls, popping them up directly in front of mages. Some of them weren¡¯t quick enough to prevent an impact, but even the ones who¡¯d gotten hit rolled away and shook off the crash to resume flying moments later. Creating a bigger one as my final, desperate act wasn¡¯t going to accomplish anything.


    If I couldn¡¯t stop them from entering, maybe I could deter them from trying. I waved my staff from left to right, and a massive rubbery black ball appeared in the air. Tendrils thicker around than my waist stretched out hundreds of feet to grab at the approaching mages, most of whom had the basic sense to swerve away. Those that were too stubborn or too slow were quickly snared in my construct¡¯s grasp.


    Their wards were enough to stop the tendrils from crushing them, but not enough to keep them from being caught in the first place. A few of them got clever with force spells¡ªand in one case, conjuring up a stone egg to force the tendril out, then squeezing through an opening in the top before the stone could be crushed¡ªthat allowed them to escape, but my only goal was to stall them.


    The construct broke apart, its physical matter decaying into mana over the span of a second and releasing all of the mages it had snared, but by then it didn¡¯t matter. The wards finished knitting themselves back together, blocking out the majority of the mages who¡¯d come through Ammun¡¯s portal but still leaving twenty inside the barrier for me to contend with.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    They were, unfortunately, the twenty fastest, smartest, and best equipped to cause problems. Whatever their plan was, they¡¯d obviously laid it out well before the attack started, because they immediately scattered to start hurling various conjurations at the petrified trees. Six of them banded together to come straight at me, a storm of force blades, fire blasts, and stone spears leading the way. Less obvious, one of them sent mind spikes at me in an attempt to shake my concentration and even tried to slip in some sort of blinding hex in the wake of his attacks.


    ¡°Now this is just insulting,¡± I said. Sure, I was tired, but to just come at me head-on like that was either unbridled arrogance or unfathomable stupidity.


    If they wanted to give me easy targets, I wouldn¡¯t waste any more time complaining. Targeted dispels were so much more powerful than area magics, and they were making it easy to aim. The first dispel ray shot out of the tip of my staff and stripped the lead mage of both his protections and his flight magic. The impact of him hitting the ground at such high speed was probably enough to kill him by itself, but just to be safe, I cast a stone jaws spell where he landed, causing the earth to rise up around him and snap shut.


    The second mage dodged my next dispel ray, but the one right behind him didn¡¯t. He met a similar fate to the lead mage, but that still left four more of them close enough to begin a new round of their own attacks now. They scattered to circle around me, all of them sending out a barrage of conjurations, offensive divinations, and, surprisingly, one bottle of silver liquid that shattered when it got near me and filled the area with choking white smoke.


    A simple gust of air would clear that away, but if the attackers thought taking away my sight was going to help them, I was eager to show them how mistaken they were. My shield ward was keeping me safe from inhaling the smoke, and my mana sense told me exactly where they were. I was more than used to dealing with the background mana from my forest, and it was especially low right now after so much mana had been used anyway.


    A beam of light pierced the smoke and turned into a diffuse cloud before it struck me. I snorted as the spell fizzled. These idiots weren¡¯t so coordinated after all, not if their attacks were going to trip over each other like that.


    Then I realized that my shield ward was draining rapidly and pumped some more mana into it. What was causing ¨C Oh, I saw it. It wasn¡¯t a mistake. The light was a form of mana drain, and scattering it like that had caused it to attack a significantly wider swath of my shield ward.


    I dismissed the shield ward for a fraction of a second and resummoned it, causing the mana drain to lose purchase and fizzle out. Damn, I really was too tired right now to be dealing with this. It was embarrassing that I¡¯d missed that.


    With a sigh, I shook my head and sent out a retaliatory explosive blast, purposely targeting it off course so that the mage flying into it could dodge to the left. The spell was all flash and no substance, so weak that it wouldn¡¯t have done more than redden the mage¡¯s skin even if she¡¯d flown right through it unprotected.


    What it did do was get the woman to skim the outer layer of the smoke cloud, which then contorted into solid ropes that tangled her up and dragged her to the ground. If my enemies wanted to leave the smoke uncontested, I was happy to send my own mana through it and animate it.


    Ammun had timed this attack perfectly, but he¡¯d given his minions too much credit. They never would have breached the outer wards without his intervention¡ªand I was still boggling at the absolutely massive mana expenditure he¡¯d paid to move his physical body close to three thousand miles from his phylactery¡ªand now that they were inside, they were cut off from any sort of reinforcements.


    The defensive pillars were wreaking havoc on the saboteurs who hadn¡¯t engaged me directly. I¡¯d still need to hunt them down to put an early stop to their rampage across the forest, but they weren¡¯t inflicting even a fraction of the damage they could if they didn¡¯t have to contend with my wards.


    Gravity twisted around me, slamming me down to one knee. The smoke flattened with me, leaving me revealed in a circle of open air and showing me two new mages who¡¯d worked together a few hundred feet overhead to create a ritual spell.


    ¡°Good try,¡± I grunted as mana flooded my limbs in the shape of a strengthening invocation. At the same time, I reached out to my genius loci and let it pull me through my demesne to appear in the sky next to the two mages.


    ¡°Light protect us!¡± one of them yelped in terror, right before I sent twin bolts of black lightning raking across his shield ward. The spell easily overloaded the mage¡¯s meager protection and proceeded to rip through his body, leaving him floating in the air, dead. His partner screamed and hurled an enormous force cleave spell at me from point-blank range.


    I countered with my own force spell, an angled wall that caught the cleave spell and redirected it to slide past me, then repeated my twin lightning spell on her. Then I looked down and frowned. Where had the other four mages I was fighting gotten off to? None of them were circling the smoke cloud, nor were they flying up to meet me in the sky.


    My gaze snapped up to the mana resonance point still floating in the air at the south edge of the valley. It was an obvious target, one that had only been spared so far because it was so far away from the center of my demesne where Ammun had shattered my barrier ward.


    Sure enough, the four of them were flying that way. They¡¯d even picked up three more mages who were focusing on deflecting the mana beams the defense pillars were firing at them and cutting through the snare spells. They were seconds away from getting in range of their target.


    I slid through my demesne again and appeared next to the resonance. Apparently, these interlopers still hadn¡¯t learned their lesson. But as I raised my staff again to channel more mana through it, my arms quivered with unexpected weakness.


    ¡°No,¡± I growled. I wasn¡¯t done, not yet. I still had plenty of mana.


    With my hand clamped down so hard on my staff that my knuckles were white, I forced another spell to form.

 Book 4, Chapter 53

    The timing of this attack was too perfect to be a coincidence. It had come mere moments after we¡¯d finished stabilizing the resonance point. I was the weakest I¡¯d been in years right now, weaker than when I¡¯d fought Ammun personally back when my core was still stage five. Somehow, they were watching through all my divination-blocking wards. It shouldn¡¯t have been possible, especially not from three thousand miles away.


    Unless they had a mole on the inside.


    I didn¡¯t have time to figure out if that made sense right now. Querit had helped hunt down the first wave of attackers, but it wasn¡¯t that unheard of a strategy to kill off some pawns in order to get the victim to trust someone ¨C all the better to betray them later when it really counted. I¡¯d sort through things after I addressed the immediate problems.


    There were fourteen enemy mages still inside my demesne, and probably something like sixty or seventy outside the barrier. As much as I would have liked to get rid of them, I¡¯d settle for killing the ones trying to destroy the valley and letting the rest flee for now.


    The pylons that formed the corners of the ritual were no longer necessary, nor were they recyclable. They¡¯d been carved to specific patterns to match conditions that had only existed for a handful of minutes, and even if the ritual had failed, I¡¯d have had to make new ones anyway. Since they were essentially just fancy stone poles now, I might as well get some use out of them.


    Grand telekinesis ripped one out of the ground and flung it at the approaching mages while I leaned on my staff and tried not to show any weakness. The stone shattered against shield wards, but the sheer mass and speed of it was enough that two of the mages took solid hits and lost control of their magic.


    Two down, twelve more to go. Five were in front of me, and seven were wreaking havoc elsewhere, slowed only by my demesne¡¯s automated defenses.


    Despite my best efforts, the invaders knew I was tired. They had some sort of telepathic network up to help them coordinate their assault, which was probably how they were managing to keep ahead of the mysteel pillar system well enough to attack it. Fortunately, it was mysteel, and practically indestructible. I was more worried about one of the pillars being shifted out of place than I was about actual damage to it.


    The five mages attacking me circled me like hungry sharks, all of them firing off weak spells from various angles. None of them were dangerous on their own, but that wasn¡¯t the point. They were wearing me down, draining my reserves, pushing me to the brink. Sooner or later my shield ward would fail, and they¡¯d close in for the kill.


    And they weren¡¯t in a hurry to do it. The initial exchanges had been frantic, them trying to find a weakness to exploit or to overwhelm me with numbers and speed. Now that they¡¯d failed, they were adjusting their tactics. Normally, I enjoyed a smart opponent. Right now, I wasn¡¯t in the mood.


    I ripped a second pylon out of the ground and swatted at the flyers with it. One of them fired off some sort of force beam that struck it in the middle, breaking it apart and causing pieces to go flying in every direction as my telekinesis spell lost control of them. I quickly snatched a few of the larger stone fragments out of the air and flung them in the general direction of my enemies, but not quickly enough to hit any of them.


    One of the mages started some sort of transmutation spell, probably something along the lines of earth to mud in hopes of affecting me in a way my shield ward couldn¡¯t block. I let the spell build to its crescendo over the next thirty seconds, then reached out and broke apart the mana just before she could complete it. It was rare to see anyone casting anything so slow that I had the option to simply counterspell it, but everyone made mistakes.


    I realized a moment later that the person who¡¯d made the mistake was me. The transmutation had been a distraction while the rest of the group lined up their shots, and suddenly I had four ultra-hot beams of white fire pouring onto me from every angle. My shield ward kept the heat off me for the moment, but I needed to move before I got cooked.


    Reaching through my demesne was a strain now. Even trying was enough to make my vision blur, but I pushed past that and pulled myself through a teleportation to appear in the air behind the mage I¡¯d mentally marked as the most competent of the bunch. Then I slammed two panes of force magic into him like a pair of giant hands clapping and broke his shield ward. Before he could react, my staff descended on his skull and bashed it in.


    Humans, despite the powerful magic we sometimes wielded, were ultimately very fragile creatures. Whether from a bolt of lightning or a heavy piece of metal to the back of the head, dead was dead.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Something stabbed into my mind at that moment, not a spell from one of the enemy mages, but feedback from my defense system. One of the mages I wasn¡¯t directly engaged with had done something to a pillar. It had responded by detonating a huge chunk of mana into pure kinetic energy, flattening the nearby trees and ripping that mage to shreds, but the damage was already done. The pillars were out of sync now.


    There were still ten mages alive and I¡¯d just lost the bulk of my support. The valley itself was safe, for now, since many of my wards operated independent of my stolen security system. That would serve to keep out the other mages for the time being, more than long enough to fix the positioning on a single pillar.


    I just needed to live long enough to get the job done.


    A swarm of mana bolts came at me, all from one mage who was generating them six at a time. It was an odd choice of attack to use against anyone with better than basic mana control, since each individual bolt had such a low investiture of mana in it that it was easy to take control of them. At first, I thought it was another distraction, but I quickly realized that it was actually an error made because of an emotional reaction.


    The tipping point was the strong resemblance between this mage and the one I¡¯d just killed. It was an easy assumption to make that they were related somehow, perhaps siblings given their apparent ages. Rage or grief had caused the surviving mage to lash out, but he hadn¡¯t chosen a smart attack, just one that he could cast rapidly. I easily suborned the mana bolts and unraveled them.


    It didn¡¯t take me long to realize the rest of the group had lost a lot of their coordination as well, which led me to believe the dead mage had been the one who was running the show. It was even possible they¡¯d lost their mental connection when he¡¯d died.


    Regardless of the reason, it was the break I needed to finally turn this battle around. Without them covering each other and moving in sync, I was quickly able to swat down two more of the mages with the remaining pylons, including the enraged one who hadn¡¯t been smart enough to use a spell that had a prayer of working. The last two broke and ran ¨C not that there was anywhere for them to flee to. They¡¯d quickly learn that my barrier was just as good at holding things in as it was at keeping them out.


    I wanted to start hunting them down immediately, but once the enemy mages broke and fled, I just didn¡¯t have it in me to chase after them. I sat down on a busted chunk of rock and leaned my head against the smooth ember bloom wood of my staff for a few minutes while I tried to think things through.


    Even that was too much effort for me right now. My body was running on almost pure mana and nothing else. I had no energy left to do anything, which I rationally knew was a problem since there were still eight hostile mages in the valley and part of my defense system was down. I couldn¡¯t waste my time just sitting around.


    Slowly, I pushed myself back to my feet and cast my senses out through the genius loci that made up my demesne to figure out where the mages had run off to. Three of them were at the northwest edge, trying and failing to figure out how to escape. I still needed to kill them first, though. They were dangerously close to the ember blooms that anchored the mana containment enchantment I¡¯d cast over the whole valley. Without that, all the mana the petrified forest¡ªand now the buried moon core¡ªemitted would be lost.


    The remaining five were scattered, two trying to dislodge another mysteel pillar and the last three, surprisingly, fighting. It took me a moment to realize that Querit had climbed into one of his combat frames and left the safety of his underground workshop. More than that, he appeared to actually be winning. The frame was practically unharmed, and it was clear that all three mages were desperate to keep themselves away from his spells.


    Did Querit need help? It certainly wouldn¡¯t hurt, but it looked like he had things under control. It would be interesting to see how he handled his opponents once he beat them, too. Would he kill or capture them? Was there any chance this was all part of his cover and he was going to betray me? Even if he wasn¡¯t working for Ammun, I still couldn¡¯t rule out that our interests were only temporarily aligned.


    In the interest of fairness, there was also the possibility that he was completely sincere and had been since the moment we¡¯d met. Some people actually were that way. And even if I couldn¡¯t actually see what he was thinking, I¡¯d spent enough time poking at his golem core to have a good idea of what kind of personality he¡¯d been built with.


    For the moment, I¡¯d trust Querit to handle those mages. My efforts needed to go toward the group trying to break out of the barrier before they turned their attention to the ember blooms. I¡¯d taken enough of a breather to be ready for the next round, anyway.


    I teleported across my demesne to appear behind the three mages. They were so focused on their work that they didn¡¯t even notice me. Only one of them had a shield ward up, probably because the pillars had drained the ones held by the other two. That would make this easy, then. Twin force lances shattered their spines and ripped through their chests, painting the otherwise-invisible barrier wall red.


    I conjured up a lethal barrage of spells to quickly overpower the third mage, killing him almost before he could even spin around to face me, let alone fight back. Even that much magic was enough to make me long to sit down and take another break, but the work wasn¡¯t done yet. This last part was going to be difficult, though.


    Querit could kill the trio he was fighting ¨C of that, I was sure. That meant if I wanted anyone to question, it would have to be the two would-be saboteurs working to dislodge another pillar. Hopefully they¡¯d be just as tired as I was, because ¡®capture¡¯ was always harder than ¡®kill.¡¯


    I gave myself another minute to gather my strength, then teleported to the branch of a tree near the pillar the pair was working on. Unlike the three I¡¯d just killed, these ones noticed my arrival. I deflected a pair of force spells and got to work subduing them.

 Writathon Story Announcement

    Hello!


    This was a spur of the moment idea. I haven''t done a writathon entry since April of last year, and I''ve been feeling burnt out trying to wrap up Keiran (I''m a little over halfway through the last book), so I decided to take a break to write something else. This will not affect Keiran''s release schedule in any way on either Royal Road or Patreon, but if you''re looking for something new to read, consider checking out my writathon project. I''m anticipating it will be about 100-120k words and should be wrapped up by New Years. I don''t really have a backlog since I just started writing this last week, but I''m working to get more chapters done as quickly as possible for Patreon readers (currently at RR: 12, Patreon: 14, available on all tiers).


    Monsters lurk in the night, but what if something else hunted them?This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    An incident in his childhood left Velik an outcast with a racial subtype that thrives at night and unique class called [The Black Fang], which focuses on just one thing: killing monsters. He¡¯s good at finding them, and he¡¯s good at slaying them. For ten years, he¡¯s been gaining levels and sharpening his skills on the thousands of monsters infesting the wild lands of the frontier. For ten years, he¡¯s kept a lonely stretch of towns safe.


    Despite his efforts, this year has seen an explosion in the monster population, so much that he¡¯s no longer capable of protecting everyone by himself. This draws the interest of another monster hunter, one that¡¯s professionally licensed, but he seems more interested in investigating Velik than anything else. At least with him there, Velik is free to finally explore the mysteries of the deep wood, where he believes the source of all monsters resides.


    Every answer he finds leads to new questions, and not even Velik himself knows the truth of what happened on that fateful day. One thing¡¯s for sure: not even the monsters are safe in the dark.


    https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/97850/duskbound-a-monster-hunter-litrpg</a>

 Book 4, Chapter 54

    ¡°Did they know anything?¡± Querit asked when I appeared in his workshop.


    ¡°Nothing all that useful. Mid-level mages, disposable fodder just strong enough to cooperate with each other. Somehow, Ammun knew about the resonance point project and was keeping tabs on it.¡±


    ¡°Maybe he¡¯s upset about us breaking his toys a few months ago.¡±


    If that was an attempt to deflect suspicion away from himself, it wasn¡¯t a very good one. I¡¯d only known about Ammun¡¯s project because I was personally in Ralvost snooping around. Ammun¡¯s surprise appearance at my demesne aside, there was no way he was roaming the island scrying on me. Had his followers seeded the area with scrying beacons?


    It still shouldn¡¯t have worked for the exact same reasons I wasn¡¯t able to scry the tower directly. And there was no mistaking that Ammun had known the precise moment I was going to be most vulnerable far enough ahead of time to move more than a hundred mages into position for a full-frontal assault. Somehow, he knew. I needed to find out how.


    Unsurprisingly, the disposable mages he¡¯d sent at me in the vain hopes of killing me while I was weakened hadn¡¯t been privy to the details. Other than prying some information about what kind of military forces Ammun had put together¡ªlots of mages at stage two or three who were willing to commit acts of violence in exchange for keeping their places inside the tower¡ªthere hadn¡¯t been much of use in their heads.


    When I didn¡¯t reply, Querit changed the topic. ¡°I think we can fix the displaced pillar without too much effort. I¡¯ll start cataloging the destroyed trees, too, but the invaders only got about ten minutes to do some damage, and living stone is resilient. Even with the ones knocked over or broken, I don¡¯t anticipate any statistically significant loss of mana production.¡±


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t make sense,¡± I said.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°This whole attack. They timed it perfectly. Ammun himself spent an inconceivable amount of mana to show up in person and crack my wards just long enough for a few dozen mages to get inside my demesne. Was that really his whole plan? He didn¡¯t even send in a single elite. What was the point? I would have said it was a cheap probing strike with some disposable soldiers if not for him showing up. Why waste that mana? Why waste the window of vulnerability? What was he trying to accomplish?¡±


    I was sure Ammun would have no complaints if I¡¯d actually died, but it just didn¡¯t feel like that was the goal. Maybe there¡¯d been more to the plan but my defenses had been too robust for him to reach that stage. Or maybe they were trying to sabotage me somehow, destroy some piece of infrastructure or slip something inside my demesne that would come into play later.


    Or maybe it had all been an act to let Querit come to my rescue, to give him a threat to face on my behalf. But why? What benefit was there to that over simply killing me? Did Ammun need me alive for some reason? I couldn¡¯t imagine what benefit he might potentially extract from me as a prisoner or a pawn that would outweigh the very real chance of removing me as an obstacle today.


    ¡°What¡¯s his game?¡± I asked. ¡°What are we missing?¡±


    Querit thought about it for a second, then asked, ¡°You knew him back in your previous life, yes? You trained him at one point. What was he like?¡±


    ¡°Arrogant, but fragile,¡± I said. ¡°He wasn¡¯t nobility, but he was something close to it. His home country had a weird political structure. Ammun had some raw talent and a lot of resources spent on him to nurture it, which gave him an overinflated opinion of his prowess because he never met anyone his own age who could challenge him. He intensely disliked being shown up at anything.


    ¡°I had many apprentices, usually with some overlap. One might be at the end of his apprenticeship, while another was just starting, and there could be two or more somewhere in the middle. Some lessons I taught to classes, and Ammun had the misfortune of coming to me about three years after a pair of twins I took in.


    ¡°They had a lot of potential, but no formal training. Apprenticing them was an act of curiosity on my part, just to see how much I could nurture them. Ammun came in with a solid foundation, and I ended up lecturing all three of them together regularly. At first, he looked down on them both because they were older than him and because they¡¯d had years as my students, yet he was their equal.


    ¡°Then they started to pull ahead of him. That potential, you see. They were both brilliant in different fields. They just needed someone to point them in the right direction and give them the resources they¡¯d lacked. Ammun was¡­ infuriated by what he saw as an unfair situation. He thought I must be cheating somehow, sneaking the twins off for extra lessons. He couldn¡¯t comprehend that they might just be better than him. The idea that I, at the time already a thousand years old, would even care enough to play games just to spite him got so cemented in his head that I had to dismiss him from my care for several years.¡±Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°He came back?¡± Querit asked.


    I nodded. ¡°His family was highly influential and could make gaining legitimate access to certain rare reagents I wanted impossible. It wasn¡¯t worth an open conflict with them. Ammun came back after a period of tutelage with someone else, somewhat more proficient in spellcraft but with the same character flaws he¡¯d always held. He finished up his apprenticeship with me over the next decade and departed. I think both of us were happy to be rid of the other.¡±


    ¡°And you met him again when he woke back up,¡± Querit said. ¡°You spoke with him. Was he the same?¡±


    ¡°Nobody lives for a thousand years without changing, and a single conversation isn¡¯t enough to say whether any of the spoiled child I tutored still remained inside that fleshless skull.¡±


    Querit had a good point, though. Could Ammun¡¯s motivation simply be pettiness and spite? Had he avoided sending in what could have been an overwhelming force just to string me along, to force me to confront how weak I was right now? To be killed by a handful of mages barely deserving of the title was humiliating, but I couldn¡¯t imagine anyone operating at our level of power committing such a massive tactical blunder just out of pride and anger.


    No, it still didn¡¯t make sense. I was missing something. Regardless of whatever plans Ammun might be working on, it didn¡¯t change the fact that he was somehow spying on my demesne. That was a more immediate problem that needed resolving.


    ¡°It might still tell us something,¡± Querit said. ¡°But I have no idea what.¡±


    ¡°Let me know if you figure it out,¡± I said. ¡°In the meantime, we need to know everything every one of those mages did while they were inside the barrier, and we need to find every mage who got trapped on the outside so we can hunt them down.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not really in any shape to do either of those things.¡±


    ¡°I am aware. My agenda only has two things on it today: fix that pillar, and go to sleep.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll help with the first, then take care of the other stuff while you recover,¡± Querit offered.


    I couldn¡¯t see a way Querit could sabotage the pillar system if I was right there working with him, so I agreed to let him help. ¡®Help¡¯ turned out to mean he did the majority of the work while I supervised. It wasn¡¯t lost on him that I stuck around to oversee the restoration, but he didn¡¯t mention it. After an hour of work, the pillar was once again perfectly positioned and the network resynced. A quick test revealed everything was working fine.


    ¡°One problem solved,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯ll handle things for a few hours?¡±


    ¡°I told you I would,¡± he said simply.


    ¡°Good,¡± I said. Just as I was about to teleport back to my quarters, I hesitated and added, ¡°I¡¯m sorry. It¡¯s not that I want to suspect you, but the stakes are too high for me not to consider every angle.¡±


    ¡°I understand. We are still essentially strangers, and I¡¯m not even human. There could be anything in the rune structures of my core, even¡­¡± Querit trailed off, then he leaped into the air and flew away, calling back, ¡°I have to go check something.¡±


    ¡°Dramatic much?¡± I asked his retreating form, but he was too far away to hear me.


    * * *


    It was the middle of the night when I woke up. The very first thing I did was consult with my genius loci to sweep the valley. Everything appeared to be as it should be. The pillars were pulling in mana to recharge. The moon core was undamaged. Most of the petrified forest was filling the air with mana. The valley was still shrouded in a mana containment enchantment.


    The resonance point hung in the air over the southern bluffs, waiting for me to use it to reforge my core and reach stage seven. If everything had gone according to plan, that would be my first stop. Did I have time now? Would I weaken myself too much in the process to take care of everything else if I tried?


    I¡¯d scried New Alkerist before going to sleep and let my family know about the attack. Father had promised to make sure everyone with a transmission stone had it on them at all times so they could immediately report anything even remotely suspicious. Nothing had woken me, so I could only assume the town hadn¡¯t been assaulted.


    Just to be safe, I scried it again, and was relieved to see everything quiet and in one piece. Ammun¡¯s forces hadn¡¯t attacked ¨C not yet. I wondered if Querit had made any progress in tracking them down. Thinking of Querit reminded me of his mysterious exit, and I turned my mind to finding him next. That was easy enough; he was standing in his lab, working furiously on something.


    Feeling refreshed now, I stood up and took a few minutes to feed and clean myself, then teleported to Querit. He barely even looked up when I appeared before going back to his work. ¡°I¡¯ve got good news and bad news,¡± he said.


    ¡°Bad news first.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve tracked down the majority of those mages. They¡¯re all over the island. Eight towns were destroyed while you were sleeping, and a significant number of them are preparing to attack Derro right now.¡±


    So not bad on a personal level, but not great. Any minute now, one of them might appear in New Alkerist, though with the strength those mages possessed, the town¡¯s defenses would keep everyone safe long enough for me to get there.


    ¡°Have any new mages appeared on the island?¡±


    ¡°Not that I can tell, but then, they¡¯ve already proven their ability to get here unnoticed. It¡¯s not like we can keep watch over the entire island.¡±


    I nodded. It wasn¡¯t impossible, but the investment of resources to create an island-wide scrying network was far greater than I was willing to commit to. Even if I had the spare mana, the amount of time needed to finish the work was prohibitive.


    ¡°I¡¯ll get to hunting the mages we know about in a minute,¡± I said. ¡°What¡¯s the good news?¡±


    ¡°You were right,¡± the golem told me. ¡°It¡¯s my fault Ammun was able to spy on you.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s good news?¡±


    ¡°I found out how he did it. He made a mistake.¡±


    ¡°A mistake that lets him spy on us?¡± I asked.


    ¡°No, a mistake that lets us spy on him.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 55

    ¡°A sympathetic scrying connection?¡± I asked.


    There was no way Ammun would make that kind of mistake. But then, maybe it wasn¡¯t his mistake. As far as I was aware, today had been the closest Querit and the lich had ever gotten to each other, but it wasn¡¯t the first time Querit had encountered any of his minions.


    ¡°The fight outside the tower,¡± I said before Querit could answer. ¡°One of them must have tagged you with the enchantment.¡±


    ¡°Not me. My combat frame. And I haven¡¯t used it again since then, so I never noticed.¡±


    That was a disturbingly plausible theory, but there was one hole in it. ¡°We would have noticed active scrying,¡± I said.


    ¡°Not if they did the same thing on their end that I just did on mine. Look.¡±


    Querit pointed to the combat frame in the corner of the room. It looked like nothing so much as a slightly oversized suit of armor on its stand, but when I examined the enchantments on it, I saw what he was saying. Hidden in everything that was supposed to be there was the scrying connection, designed as an open two-way channel, commonly used in paired scrying mirrors.


    Usually, there were other enchantments woven in to help close those connections when they weren¡¯t wanted, either to conserve mana or for the sake of privacy. In this case, only the simplest part was present. There was, however, a second enchantment woven around it like a cage, one that reversed any scrying coming through the enchantment.


    ¡°Clever, but they¡¯ll realize what you did immediately.¡±


    ¡°They will, but no one¡¯s using the link right now, which is why I¡¯ve been using it to gather information on them for the last few hours.¡±


    ¡°Their own reversal enchantment would stop that,¡± I said.


    ¡°Unless you scry through a device like this,¡± Querit told me. He gestured to the mirror he was using, one he¡¯d created himself and that I¡¯d never seen before. ¡°They got too clever for their own good trying to make their magic work.¡±


    Querit was right about all of it. Somehow, we¡¯d gained a window into Ammun¡¯s operations past any and all of his defensive measures. I took a moment to analyze the enchantments and ensure they weren¡¯t harmful or trapped in any way, then peered into the mirror. It revealed an enormous circular room with mirrored walls. At least fifty glass pillars were scattered across the floor, all of them stretching to the ceiling and five feet wide.


    Upon closer inspection, I realized that they were all filled with liquid mana. That was an extremely expensive and wasteful setup, but I supposed Ammun had the mana to waste. The liquid mana would drain as the scrying pillars were used, requiring more to be constantly pumped in. On the other hand, it was possible to scry significantly farther this way.


    The sympathetic scrying link wasn¡¯t on one of the pillars, but at a station on the wall. It was one of the many mirrored panels, but covered in etched runes to shield our side from peering back across the connection. Querit¡¯s mirror neatly countered the effect.


    ¡°You¡¯ve seen this before,¡± I remarked. There was no way he¡¯d spun the enchantment up from nothing and gotten lucky on the first try. That was like taking a blank key and filing it in random places in the hopes that it would fit the lock.


    ¡°I¡¯ve read the theories. They¡¯re in one of the books we took from Professor Velder¡¯s room.¡± He cast a glance over at his bookshelf, then grabbed one with telekinesis and pulled it over to us. ¡°Chapter twenty-one, I believe.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll review it later,¡± I told him. ¡°Has the room been this empty the whole time?¡±


    ¡°There were about twenty mages in there earlier, but they all left an hour ago. Judging on where they were scrying, I believe it¡¯s the middle of the night there.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°Ammun doesn¡¯t sleep, and I don¡¯t believe he¡¯d leave a place like this unmanned just because us mere humans still need to. There should be shifts of diviners working here.¡±


    In fact, I knew that because I¡¯d seen it in Laphlin¡¯s memories when I¡¯d captured him. The diviners never left the room completely unstaffed. Something had to be going on, and what better place to find out than the center of information in Ammun¡¯s tower?


    ¡°Move over,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m going to do some digging.¡±


    Querit gave me a questioning look, which I ignored, and stepped to the side. I took a few seconds to familiarize myself with the enchantments to make sure I wasn¡¯t going to break them, then got to work.


    The first step was to convert the scrying connection into something I could send mana through. That wasn¡¯t hard to do in a very limited capacity, but I needed more finesse if I was going to work the enchantments on the other side of the mirror. ¡°This is going to be expensive,¡± I muttered as I started adding another layer of spells to the mirror.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    After ten minutes of work, I was ready to proceed. Tendrils of mana stretched out through the glass and invaded Ammun¡¯s scrying room. I connected them to the nearest station and cast a spell to show whatever the mirror had last scried. An unremarkable stretch of countryside appeared in the wall, somewhere west of the tower.


    I quickly moved around the room, mostly discovering more of the same, though I did occasionally get a glimpse at a town stuffed with former tower-dwelling mages. There were no signs of the prior occupants, likely all slain or fled by now. I couldn¡¯t imagine a scenario where Ammun¡¯s forces took prisoners.


    There had to be something worth seeing here. These people were the ones feeding him information about everything going on in his empire. Was it really nothing but looking at random stretches of fields and forests?


    On the far side of the room, I finally found something. The image faded into the mirror as I pushed mana into it, and a large bluff just outside the tower appeared. Unlike the majority of places Ammun¡¯s diviners were watching, this one was fully occupied. There had to be thousands of men and women there.


    Almost all of them were dead.


    ¡°Ancestors forbid! What is this?¡± Querit gasped.


    ¡°He¡¯s a lich. What do you think?¡±


    ¡°Necromancy, but¡­ on this scale? It¡¯s an abomination. Where did he even get so many bodies?¡±


    ¡°I guess now we know why Ammun sent mages out to attack all those towns. It wasn¡¯t about reclaiming Ralvost. It was to gather materials for a zombie horde. The better question is, ¡®What is he planning on doing with them?¡¯ And judging by those archways I see at the far end, I think the answer is ¡®flooding somewhere via portal.¡¯¡±


    ¡°Here?¡± Querit asked. ¡°What would be the point? The wards and defense systems would tear them apart.¡±


    ¡°Exactly why it won¡¯t be here.¡±


    The archways had portals glowing in them, fourteen in total. Zombies shuffled through them at the command of living mages, loosely organized into squads of twenty for each handler. Their progress wasn¡¯t swift¡ªzombies weren¡¯t the nimblest variety of undead¡ªbut it was steady. It would probably take hours to finish emptying the bluff, but they wouldn¡¯t be taking breaks.


    ¡°It¡¯s a distraction,¡± I muttered. ¡°A fire for me to focus on putting out while Ammun makes his move somewhere else. That¡¯s what the attack on the valley was, too. He¡¯s giving me problems to keep me busy. Pretty soon we¡¯re going to start hearing about zombies attacking villages.¡±


    But what was Ammun¡¯s true objective? It had to be something big if all his elites were there helping him. He hadn¡¯t even bothered to put anyone truly powerful in charge of the attack on my demesne. ¡°We broke the machines, though. Were they just another distraction? Or did he get them fixed?¡±


    Maybe he didn¡¯t need all eight of them. If he threw all his resources into fixing just one, it might be online now. If that was the case, though, then obviously we¡¯d been wrong about what the machine actually did. It couldn¡¯t be an expansion of Ammun¡¯s radius if he didn¡¯t need the whole ring. If not that, then what?


    ¡°Did you ever figure out anything about those hidden sites we attacked?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I did jot down the schematics of anything I saw,¡± Querit said. ¡°Nothing substantial, just a lot of partial designs.¡±


    ¡°Let me see them.¡±


    A few seconds later, I had thirty loose pages floating in the air in front of me while I scoured them for clues. So many of the rune structures were generic enough that they could have been used in dozens of different constructions, and with huge portions of the overall design missing, it was impossible to put them together.


    There were still some I didn¡¯t recognize, though. Maybe there¡¯d be a hint in there. ¡°This one,¡± I said, shifting a page to Querit. ¡°Have you ever seen anything that uses this design?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± he said immediately. ¡°It has a similar composition to an ultra-long-range scrying design developed about sixty years prior to the breaking of the world, but this section here doesn¡¯t match.¡±


    I studied the rune structure again as I mentally tried to fit in the missing pieces. Now that Querit pointed out what the small cluster of runes might be used for, I could see how it would work with a few modifications. If it was being used for communication, it wouldn¡¯t work as it stood¡ªnot on its own¡ªbut there was plenty of room for additional components outside the piece Querit had copied.


    ¡°This would only go one way,¡± I said. ¡°It doesn¡¯t make sense. There would have to be additional runes between these two sections if the return communication was a separate structure.¡±


    Even the idea that it was a communication device was a stretch, if I was being honest. I was just trying to build off Querit¡¯s initial idea, and besides, he was right. It was complete overkill. There was no reason to power a communication spell this way, not when there were so many simpler and more efficient ways to speak with someone, even on the other side of the planet.


    Unless...


    My blood ran cold.


    "What is it?" Querit asked.


    "Who developed the ultra-long-range scrying design?¡±


    ¡°A small independent research team based in Khashir, I believe.¡±


    ¡°Where¡¯s Khashir located? I mean, back when it existed.¡±


    ¡°The kingdom was called Nephar, but it fell apart well before the world broke. Khashir remained independent as far as I¡¯m aware, though I should add that world politics was not my purview of study.¡±


    ¡°How about world history?¡± I asked. ¡°Do you know anything about the group that enslaved a moon core?¡±


    ¡°Only what you¡¯ve told me,¡± Querit said.


    ¡°Could they have been the same mages who developed the scrying design? Or connected to them in some way?¡± I pressed.


    ¡°I suppose it¡¯s possible. Why do you¡­ No.¡±


    I nodded and brandished the paper. ¡°This isn¡¯t designed to enable a conversation across the planet. Its purpose is to transmit instructions to a celestial body like a moon.¡±


    ¡°But then, why did Ammun need eight of them?¡±


    ¡°Maybe he didn¡¯t. Or maybe he did, but he changed his plans to focus on just getting one of his machines operational.¡±


    ¡°You think he¡¯s trying to destroy another moon? Why? What would that gain him?¡±


    ¡°No, not destroy. I think he¡¯s trying to repeat what his enemies did to him. He¡¯s trying to take control of a moon to turn it into a weapon. Only this time, without an enemy force in possession of a tower like Ammun¡¯s, there will be nobody to fight back against him. He¡¯ll be able to rain destruction down from the skies without fear of anyone being able to stop him.¡±


    ¡°But we know where the facility is. We can attack it,¡± Querit argued.


    ¡°We know. But who else would? And besides, Ammun¡¯s spent an enormous amount of resources providing us with distractions. Where do you think the first place he¡¯s going to target is?¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 56

    Querit stared at me in horror for a long moment before his golem core started processing information again. ¡°But, if he¡¯s hitting you with all the distractions now, that must mean that he¡¯s almost done.¡±


    ¡°Probably,¡± I agreed.


    ¡°What do we do?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d suggest you flee somewhere less likely to be annihilated by a beam of destructive energy coming down on us from the moon. If you want to be useful, maybe track down these zombie invasions and put a stop to a few of them.¡±


    ¡°What will you be doing? I know you too well to believe you¡¯ve given up.¡±


    ¡°Trying to figure out which site Ammun¡¯s got operational so I can attack it,¡± I said.


    ¡°What if Ammun¡¯s there?¡±


    ¡°Then it¡¯s a toss-up whether he can beat me so far away from the tower. That¡¯s assuming he doesn¡¯t have his elites there, which he probably does. There¡¯s no other reason I can think of that they¡¯re not taking care of his other business.¡±


    My guess was the reason his divining room was empty was for the same reason. Establishing a connection to a moon probably required a lot of diviners working in tandem. The ritual for that couldn¡¯t be a simple thing. From my perspective, that was a good thing. It meant there¡¯d be plenty of opportunities to screw things up.


    I dove back into Querit¡¯s mirror to check the rest of the room over. With even a little bit of luck, there¡¯d be something to point me to the ritual site. Querit, meanwhile, opened a cabinet and pulled out another mirror to scry the island. That was surprising. I¡¯d expected him to run for safety even if he wanted to help. It was far more practical to scry from somewhere not likely to be destroyed sometime today.


    Five minutes later, he announced, ¡°I found a village under attack.¡±


    ¡°How are they doing at defending themselves?¡± I asked without looking up.


    ¡°Against the zombies? Fine. Against the mages controlling them? Not very well. The undead are being used as walking shields to soak spells and keep anyone fighting without conjurations from getting near the back line while Ammun¡¯s mages bombard the village. It¡¯s strange, though. They could have burned the place to the ground easily. It¡¯s like they¡¯re deliberately taking their time.¡±


    ¡°They are,¡± I said. ¡°Like I said, it¡¯s a distraction. They¡¯re trying to get me to show up and stop them. Then they throw a bunch of zombies at me, maybe a few specially prepared traps, and they hightail it back through the portals while I deal with everything they left behind.¡±


    ¡°And if we don¡¯t spring the trap, then eventually the town is overwhelmed and everyone dies.¡±


    ¡°Yep.¡±


    ¡°What are you going to do?¡± the golem asked.


    ¡°Keep looking for the ritual site.¡±


    ¡°But your people¡ª¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re not my people. I have watchers among my people who have the tools to contact me. If you¡¯re that worried about them, take a combat frame and go break the siege on their town.¡±


    ¡°I¡­ I think I will.¡±


    I pulled a teleportation platform out of my phantom space and dropped it in the middle of Querit¡¯s lab. It was one of the ones I¡¯d designed to feed off ambient mana a few years ago when I¡¯d been exploring Ammun¡¯s tower and needed easier access to various floors. Unlike the permanent fixtures I¡¯d spread all over the island, this one was primed and ready to go already. If I could have found a way to bring them with me when I teleported, I¡¯d use them all the time. Alas, that was impossible.


    ¡°I¡¯ll adjust the wards to let you in and out. If you¡¯re going to handle this feint, you¡¯re going to need to be able to move quickly between disasters and recharge your mana,¡± I said.


    Why he cared was beyond me. They weren¡¯t his people. He¡¯d never even met them. Hell, he wasn¡¯t even human himself. In the end, what was probably the real reason was that his creator had designed him to care, so he did.


    ¡°Thank you,¡± he said simply before injecting some mana into one of his new combat frames, one designed for fighting mages. I¡¯d been a bit wary upon seeing him complete that one, but it was hard to argue the need for it when I¡¯d considered what we were up against. Watching him shift down in size so that he could nestle himself into the harness inside the frame was somewhat disconcerting, but it only took thirty seconds.


    Then the frame closed itself up and Querit piloted it to the platform. ¡°I¡¯ll be back soon,¡± he told me in a hollow voice, speaking through the magic in his frame instead of with his mouth.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    ¡°Good luck,¡± I said. He nodded back, then teleported out to fight. Part of me was tempted to keep his mirror going so that I could watch his fight, but my own task was too important to split my attention.


    My circuit of the outer wall completed, I moved on to examining the glass pillars. Those were, unfortunately, more complicated to access. I could barely activate them with the amount of mana I could send through the connection, and for the first time, I seriously considered modifying the connection to form a teleportation bridge, a sort of miniature portal.


    That would leave my demesne vulnerable, and if I crossed over, I risked a fight with Ammun in his own tower. Now that he¡¯d had years to regain his strength, there was no way I was beating him there. There was a good chance he wasn¡¯t there, however. Wherever this project was happening, he was likely overseeing it personally. If I could actually find that site, I¡¯d know for sure.


    Perhaps it would be better to stop my attempts at hijacking the divination room and turn to my own scrying mirror instead. I¡¯d placed beacons all over and could chain a connection to the facilities I¡¯d attacked. Maybe there was something obvious to indicate which one Ammun had restored.


    Or maybe there was an entirely new site nowhere near any of the old ones. If that was the case, then exploiting this sympathetic scrying connection was the only chance I had of finding it before Ammun turned the petrified valley into a smoking crater.


    I managed to get the first pillar working ¨C just barely. Manipulating something that complicated with tendrils of mana from thousands of miles away was roughly akin to trying to paint a masterpiece while holding the brush with two forks wielded in either hand as a pair of rough tongs. It was possible, but it would have been a lot easier to do it the proper way.


    Frustratingly, the pillar didn¡¯t show anything interesting. Instead of the countryside, it gave me a view of one of the floors inside the tower. I didn¡¯t recognize it, but that didn¡¯t mean much. I¡¯d spent most of my time in the sublevels investigating the tower¡¯s foundation, not socializing with the people living there. They all had much paler skin and lighter hair than me, anyway. I¡¯d stuck out in the crowd, and considering how xenophobic they were, I would have drawn a lot of attention from the wrong people if I¡¯d attempted to mingle.


    The pillar rapidly cycled through different floors, but never left the tower and didn¡¯t reveal anything I wanted to know. I let it die and adjusted my focus to the next one, then the one after that when it, too, proved to be a dud.


    Querit reappeared twenty minutes later, his frame stained with blood and other, more disgusting fluids. ¡°Do you not know any cleaning spells?¡± I asked. Before he could answer, I added, ¡°That was a rhetorical question. I know that you do.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m a bit busy, and I¡¯ll just be getting dirty again. No need to waste the time or mana,¡± he explained.


    While he went back to his mirror, I shifted my focus to a new pillar. They weren¡¯t all focused exclusively on the tower, but none of them were showing me what I needed, and I was starting to feel like I was running out of time. I could flee my demesne, but I¡¯d leave a huge amount of my power behind if I did. I¡¯d be safe from Ammun¡¯s opening strike, but it would be much more likely that he¡¯d destroy the valley since it would take me ten times longer to finish searching everything.


    Stubbornly, I started checking the next pillar. Querit located a new target and disappeared again, leaving me alone. That cycle repeated two more times, with him growing even filthier each time and me getting more and more frustrated by my lack of progress.


    Then I heard the voice I¡¯d been dreading. ¡®Gravin. Something is going on. Strangers have appeared outside of town, at least a hundred of them.¡¯


    Cursing, I pushed back the chair and stood up. The mirror connecting me to Ammun¡¯s tower went blank for a moment, then returned to its normal reflective surface. ¡®I¡¯m on my way,¡¯ I sent back to my father.


    At least there was a teleportation platform right here, a little low on mana from Querit using it a few minutes ago, but I could fix that. It took twenty seconds to activate it. Then everything went black and I appeared at my chosen destination: an empty patch of sky above New Alkerist.


    A simple invocation sharpened my sight enough to survey the fields and empty desert beyond them. There, half a mile to the west, was an open portal with a steady stream of zombies trudging through it. There were probably five hundred zombies already here, along with thirty or so mages corralling them as they built up numbers to start their assault.


    It took me ten seconds of flight to reach the portal, where I hovered overhead, invisible, and cast a master-tier spell that turned the desert into a wild, raging sea of sand. Huge waves swept across the portal, hurling tons of the stuff through the open doorway before burying it completely. With their retreat cut off, the mages here could do nothing but fight and die.


    I killed methodically with bolts of lightning that arced down from a clear blue sky to strike them one after another. There was no hiding from my magic, no delaying it. These mages were weak, barely even stage two, and in no way prepared for me. Ammun had sent them here to die, sacrificing them to buy a little bit of time.


    I wondered why he¡¯d thought this would work. Other than my family, I wouldn¡¯t go out of my way to save anyone else, and since I¡¯d never mentioned that they so much as existed to Querit, I couldn¡¯t have let their existence slip to Ammun¡¯s watchers. Probably, his agents had questioned people and found out that way, but with the teleportation network destroyed, they¡¯d had no choice but to guess which town to attack.


    If that was the plan, then he was once again wasting an enormous amount of resources to simultaneously attack dozens of locations on the off chance that he found the right one. Then again, I was out here stopping his plan from working instead of interfering with his ritual site, which I had yet to even find.


    Destroying the zombies was easy once their handlers were all dead. I made quick work of them, left the corpses smoldering out in the sands, and teleported back to the valley to resume my frantic search. Hopefully the failure of that attack wouldn¡¯t prompt Ammun¡¯s commanders to throw more forces at New Alkerist now that they¡¯d provoked a response. Querit was wiping them out all over the island; there was no reason to assume that that particular town was any more important than the others.


    But still, the best way to end this was to find Ammun¡¯s project and smash it to pieces. That would buy me the time I needed to exploit the mana resonance point to achieve stage seven. With that, I might just have a chance of standing up to the lich.


    I reestablished the connection, confirmed there was still no one home, and resumed my search.

 Book 4, Chapter 57

    I kept digging for another hour or so, but then mages started to filter in. Bleary-eyed and shuffling, they resumed their posts as the room slowly started filling up. That meant my time spying on their operation was at its end. We wouldn¡¯t be able to hide that we¡¯d discovered their sympathetic link, or that we¡¯d broken through their defenses, not without letting them continue to spy on us.


    Given how little I¡¯d discovered of any use, it wasn¡¯t worth it. Instead, I prepared my final surprise and waited as long as possible to activate it. Every diviner in this room was an asset to Ammun, both to help him keep an eye on his new empire and to assist him with his moon project. My position would be strengthened if he lost those assets.


    Unluckily, they all clumped together at the far side of the room, preventing me from moving forward with my plan even as their presence kept me from going through any more of their scrying devices. It looked like they were starting their shift with some sort of meeting, so I¡¯d now have to wait until it ended in order to trigger the kill spell I¡¯d laced into the mirrored walls all over the room.


    ¡°Okay, everyone,¡± one of the diviners said after enough mages had gathered. ¡°Same as yesterday: rank twos are on wide scans, rank threes are searching for active threats, rank fours are on the special project. We¡¯ve got three hours to go over everything recorded in the last half a day, then it¡¯s our shift at the summit. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who misses that portal is going to be reported.


    ¡°Lord Ammun is taking security on this very, very seriously. Deadly serious. You want to find out if you¡¯re special? Disobey orders and see if you can survive the next day. In case any of you missed the memo or think we¡¯re joking around, well, go take a peek at Floor 87 where Rhengis used to live.¡±


    What was the summit? Presumably, it was the top of a mountain somewhere, but there was an entire range that circled the northern border of Ralvost, and none of the facilities I¡¯d already located were anywhere near it. Was it possible that the project I¡¯d trashed and this one were unrelated? That didn¡¯t seem likely, given that the whole reason I suspected he was trying to replicate the moon core enslavement weapon was the clues I¡¯d gleaned from the rune structures inscribed into the parts of the machine I¡¯d been able to study.


    The diviners had already started to drift away at the fringes of the crowd, something that I could tell annoyed the speaker to no end. The whole group had that weary energy I¡¯d sometimes seen in countries that used slave labor ¨C forced to work far too many hours with nowhere near enough rest, all of it mixed with a thick dose of resentment. Either fewer of these mages were here by choice than Laphlin had led me to believe, or something had happened in between my encounter with him and today.


    One mage rounded a pillar, his eyes dark and angry and his movements jerky. He was muttering something under his breath, too quiet for me to hear, and shooting dirty looks over his shoulder. Unfortunately, his course was going to take him right past the rune-inscribed mirror, where he was certain to recognize that I was looking through it. Killing him without alerting anyone else would be difficult, bordering on impossible, but if I activated my kill spells now, I¡¯d accomplish very little beyond destroying the scrying mirrors.


    He looked up and froze mid-step, eyes wide, and I started casting the spell. I wouldn¡¯t get what I wanted from it, but I¡¯d do what damage I could. Then, instead of calling out, he glanced around carefully to make sure no one else nearby was watching. Seeing that there was nobody within thirty feet of him, he altered his course to walk by the mirror while I watched, curiously, the final part of my spell at the forefront of my mind.


    ¡°You¡¯re the only thing that monster is afraid of,¡± the diviner said in a whisper. ¡°The lengths he goes to just to prevent you from interfering¡­ He truly believes you can stop him. I hope he¡¯s right. Look northeast from the tower, three hundred twenty-two miles. He had a whole platoon transmuting a hollowed-out mountain.¡±


    I tilted my head to one side and studied the diviner. Betrayal wasn¡¯t exactly unexpected, not the way Ammun had treated his new subjects. Life in the tower was a shadow of its former glory, though I expected the people at the very bottom hadn¡¯t seen much of a reduction in quality. Those who¡¯d been deemed useful probably had it the worst.


    The diviner peered back at me as I considered what to do. ¡°Could you¡­ save us? Most of us aren¡¯t here voluntarily. I could tell you which ones would fight against Ammun and which would betray you to him at the first chance.¡±


    I snorted quietly. ¡°What would I even do with you?¡±


    ¡°Just get us out of here. We¡¯ll make our own way.¡±


    ¡°Is Ammun in the tower?¡± I asked.


    The diviner shook his head. ¡°Still at the summit directing his project.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Three hundred miles wasn¡¯t a cheap price to pay, but if this was as important to Ammun as it seemed, that was still within his budget. To oversee it personally and make sure I didn¡¯t interfere again after I¡¯d wrecked his machines before was nowhere near as expensive as walking through a portal three thousand miles to crack my wards, and he¡¯d done that.


    If Ammun wasn¡¯t home, that meant I had an incredibly rare opportunity. I already knew how to teleport through his wards, though I expected he¡¯d probably updated his procedures. Even better, I had a cooperative mage on the other side who was willing to help me. I could open a portal under these circumstances, but I¡¯d need a few minutes to make it happen. Portals didn¡¯t just spring out of nothing.


    ¡°I can help,¡± I decided, ¡°but you¡¯ll have to work with me to anchor the portal on your side to let me through. It¡¯ll take a few minutes. Do you have that much time?¡±


    The diviner grunted and cast a dark look behind him. ¡°That blowhard will go on for at least that long.¡±


    ¡°If you get caught and interrupted before we finish, I won¡¯t be able to save you,¡± I warned, which wasn¡¯t exactly true, but there was no reason to explain all the magic I¡¯d already slipped into the room.


    ¡°It¡¯s worth the risk. What do I need to do?¡±


    Serving as the anchor for a portal was a lot easier than actually making it. I just needed to thread the mana across the sympathetic link to connect to him, which actually sped the process up quite a bit. At the same time, I was lacing the room on my side of the portal with all sorts of trap wards. These were Ammun¡¯s people, after all, and there were some fairly obvious risks to letting them inside my demesne. If I needed to kill them all, I wanted it to be quick enough that they couldn¡¯t cause any damage.


    I really wasn¡¯t expecting such a half-baked plan to work, but the diviner was right about how much the guy running the meeting liked to talk. He really did just go on and on, oftentimes repeating the same points three or even four times. His captive audience grew visibly annoyed, but all the ones who¡¯d been willing to slink away had already gone, and none of them came near where we were forming the portal. Thankfully, those pillars full of liquid mana provided enough of a visual barrier that no one realized what was happening.


    And then the portal solidified and I stepped through. In person, the diviner was smaller than he¡¯d looked. The top of his head barely came up to my chest, and his shoulders were hunched tight. ¡°Stand by the portal,¡± I said as I extended a telepathic connection to him. ¡°I will be killing anyone you point out. If you¡¯re not sure whether someone is willing to betray Ammun, err on the side of caution.¡±


    ¡°But¡­ I don¡¯t know what everyone¡¯s thinking!¡±


    ¡°Let me be clear,¡± I told him in a harsh whisper. ¡°If anyone I rescue here now betrays me, I¡¯ll kill all of you. Only the people you¡¯re absolutely sure will side with you should walk through this portal.¡±


    The telepathic link solidified and I sent him a command. ¡®Point out who you want to save.¡¯


    The nice thing about working with diviners was that they were generally good at divination, which meant that the link between us quickly surpassed the need for words. The diviner scanned the crowd and pointed out who he knew would side against Ammun, then did a second sweep for people he was confident about but would need to be vetted. A third pass gave me the ones who were firmly in Ammun¡¯s camp, people like the speaker who was somehow still lecturing the assembled diviners.


    There were a number of people not tagged one way or another. My accomplice wasn¡¯t willing to make the judgment call to end their life, but either didn¡¯t know enough about them or didn¡¯t trust them enough to believe any claims that they¡¯d turn against Ammun. His attempts at a half measure were pointless. Those mages went onto the kill list.


    ¡°What the¡ª¡± a woman said in surprise as she walked around one of the pillars and saw me standing there with an open portal.


    ¡®Ammun supporter!¡¯ the diviner practically screamed in my head, though it wasn¡¯t so much words as an inarticulate bundle of emotions, mostly panic and hatred.


    Before she could say or do anything else, a force cleave decapitated her. I caught her severed head and slumping body with telekinesis and lowered them silently to the floor, not that it would make much difference. Unlike when I¡¯d made the portal, the spell had unleashed mana into the room, and of course, the diviners were sensitive to it. Already dozens of heads were turning toward us.


    I summoned my staff out of my phantom space and channeled a pair of advanced-tier spells through it. Lightning bolts arced around the pillars and into the crowd, most of whom were ill-prepared to be attacked. Some of them succumbed instantly, but others were either quick enough to raise some form of ward or had prepared them beforehand.


    Those that survived the opening strike were targeted by a barrage of force lances or gripped telekinetically and hurled into the walls, where the master-tier shattering spell I¡¯d laced through the room started going off in sections. Their shield wards were immediately overwhelmed, resulting in a second round of mass death only seconds after the lightning.


    That was all it took for the screaming to start. Roughly half of my targets were dead and the rest were scattered among a crowd that was now fleeing in every direction. I picked off a few more of the priority targets, then deflected a mental attack from the first diviner brave enough to fight back. My information told me he was one of the few that would absolutely turn against Ammun, so I held off on killing him, but I pushed the thought through my mental link that my new partner needed to calm the man down and get him out of here.


    Suddenly, a nine-foot-tall monster of metal and bladed limbs loomed over the scattering diviners. At first glance, it looked like some sort of insectoid golem, though I was fairly certain it was actually a mana construct. It ignored them and charged at me, scythe-arms raised to split me in half.


    I flew backwards and fired off a lightning bolt at it, only to watch the magic ground itself out as the scythe slashed deep into the stone. The construct tugged for a moment, then ripped its limb free and advanced on me again. Behind it, two more identical copies flashed into existence.

 Book 4, Chapter 58

    They weren¡¯t guardian golems summoned into the room, of that I was certain. I¡¯d already gone through the whole place looking for wards and traps. That meant this was the active work of one of the diviners who also had a solid grounding in conjuration, probably one of the three mages with stage four cores who¡¯d survived my opening attacks.


    Unfortunately, just because they were solid mana given a facsimile of life didn¡¯t mean I could just ignore them. The first one had already proven itself to be monstrously strong, easily powerful enough to batter through my shield ward if I let it. I put up a wall of force to delay it, but that would only stall the construct for a few seconds.


    The ceiling was too low to fly over them, and the other two were moving quickly and with intelligent purpose, spreading out in either direction to flank me. If I wanted to get to the mages behind them, I was going to have to go through them.


    Fine. I could do that. I had plenty of mana, and, whatever I spent, I¡¯d replace by stealing it from Ammun¡¯s demesne.


    There were two ways to dispel a construct. The first was to attack its mana matrix directly, which was easy enough when it was unattended but became much more difficult when the summoner was around to actively contest the attack. The second was to use enough physical force to destabilize its body, which a summoner could attempt to mitigate by rebuilding things. That was significantly harder and more mana-intensive than holding the mana matrix together through sheer willpower.


    However, I didn¡¯t have a lot of time, and breaking the mana matrix was by far the faster of the two options, assuming I could overpower the summoner. I had a lot of confidence in myself, and not just because I was an archmage. I had no plans on fighting fairly.


    Explosions started going off behind the constructs, not necessarily the fatal kind, though they absolutely could kill someone caught in one directly, but ones that were deliberately louder and brighter than they needed to be. They made for a very good distraction when I went after the closest construct¡¯s mana matrix. Whoever had summoned it must have been very close to one of those explosions, because it took me less than three seconds to dismantle the construct.


    I didn¡¯t bother with the other two. A pair of quick force walls slowed them down enough that I slipped past them while blocking a set of force bolts four diviners had collaborated on creating. It was more bewildering than anything that they even knew a ritual for such a simple spell. It was a lot of force bolts, I supposed, but still, it was kind of pathetic that they needed to work together to attack with a basic-tier spell.


    Three of them were on my kill list, so I shot off a lightning bolt to arc through their group. The fourth mage was one of the ones that my informant wasn¡¯t sure about, which meant I didn¡¯t take any special care to avoid catching him in the spell.


    Their distraction was almost enough for another one of the scythe-armed constructs to catch up to me, but a blast of sonic energy rippled out across the room when I slammed the end of my staff into the floor, flattening several mages nearby and breaking apart a dozen spells in the process of being created.


    Surprisingly, one of the constructs vanished on its own. Whichever mage was controlling it must have been shaken hard by my last spell. Then the last one sped up and blurred across the room, clueing me into what had actually happened. Both of them had been under the control of the same mage, and they¡¯d sacrificed one to devote their mana and attention to the other.


    It brought its arms down in sweeping slashes at the same time its foot lashed out to catch me in a kick. Any of the attacks could easily be fatal if I let them through, and my shield ward was already dealing with the multitude of weak attacks the diviners who hadn¡¯t run off were throwing at me. It could withstand a hit from this construct, maybe two, but I could do better than that.


    A force wave rolled out in every direction, picking up mages who were too close and hurling them through the air to slam into walls. The construct was far too heavy to suffer the same fate, but with one leg already in the air, it was also too unbalanced to stay upright. It toppled over and, in a remarkable display of agility for something that big, rolled backward to come back up on its feet and lunged back in.


    The second¡¯s delay was all I needed to fly away. I passed through a net seemingly made out of strands of interwoven fire, killed the diviner who¡¯d thrown it at me with a single force bolt of my own, and finally reached the stage four mage that had summoned the construct.


    ¡°Bye,¡± I said.


    Force magic clamped onto the man¡¯s neck and twisted. His wards resisted for a second, then gave out. Humans, even those empowered by invocations, were only able to resist so much pressure. This one wasn¡¯t that strong, and he definitely wasn¡¯t reinforcing himself with magic. My spell tore his head off in a fountain of blood. Behind me, the charging construct collapsed into pure mana.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    The whole battle had taken less than a minute, and throughout my dance with the constructs, I¡¯d kept picking off targets. The only people left in the room were diviners I¡¯d mentally tagged as safe. Of course, they didn¡¯t know that I wasn¡¯t going to kill them, so it wasn¡¯t that unreasonable of a response that they kept attacking me.


    ¡°Enough,¡± I said, my voice magically amplified. ¡°This battle is over. You have two choices. Walk through the portal and be spirited out of Ammun¡¯s reach, or stay here. This choice expires in the next thirty seconds. Decide quickly.¡±


    I didn¡¯t mention that anyone who didn¡¯t take the portal wouldn¡¯t be left alive, but I expected they were smart enough to figure that out on their own. It wasn¡¯t a difficult decision. They filed through, leaving me alone in the enormous scrying room, now pitted, scorched, and littered with bodies.


    I probably had a minute to spare, so I produced a few enormous vats and stole Ammun¡¯s supply of liquid mana before activating the remaining parts of the shattering spell I¡¯d laced the room with and stepping back through my portal.


    * * *


    There wasn¡¯t nearly enough room in Querit¡¯s workshop for the fifty or so diviners still alive, so I¡¯d teleported them to the surface. They were talking among themselves, holding conversations both verbal and mental, and I gave them time to get situated while I refilled my mana reserves and debated what I wanted to do with the group. They certainly weren¡¯t staying here, but they were too dangerous to just let go, and there were far too many to exile them like I¡¯d done with Laphlin.


    The diviner who¡¯d first noticed me wasn¡¯t having a good time of it. From what I¡¯d gathered, he wasn¡¯t well liked by his colleagues, and his decisions about who was trustworthy, or more accurately, who¡¯d lived and who¡¯d died, were heavily criticized. I suspected that he wouldn¡¯t survive much longer if I didn¡¯t intervene.


    While I observed, Querit flew up from his workshop and made his way over to me. ¡°I was only gone for twenty minutes,¡± he said. ¡°What did you do?¡±


    ¡°Found a dissident in Ammun¡¯s ranks. The rest of his diviner corps are dead ¨C all the ones that showed up for the morning shift, at least. How¡¯s it going with the zombie attacks?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve lost at least nine villages completely,¡± he said. ¡°I rescued survivors from them out in the wastes, but the villages themselves are gone. I took them to Derro. They¡¯ve also been under assault, by the way, but they¡¯re easily holding the invaders off. What are you going to do with these people?¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t decided yet. As soon as I¡¯ve recovered from the fight I had with all the ones who stayed loyal to Ammun, I¡¯m going to get all the information they have on his moon project out of them. After that¡­ I¡¯m open to ideas. There are too many to just exile and hope none of them find their way back to Ralvost.¡±


    ¡°Do we have time to wait?¡±


    ¡°I think so,¡± I said, ¡°but just in case, maybe you can do some research for me. Take this one with you and question him.¡±


    I plucked the diviner who¡¯d let me into Ammun¡¯s tower out of the angry crowd with telekinesis and pulled him over to where I stood in the air. ¡°This is my companion,¡± I said to him. Querit, still encased in his gore-stained combat frame, nodded at the diviner. ¡°He¡¯s going to verify your information before your friends down there kill you. You¡¯ll be going with him while I deal with the rest of these people. You can fly, yes?¡±


    The diviner nodded and I released him. He tumbled twenty feet or so before his spell took hold. He drifted back up to us and said, ¡°My name is Ashinder. What¡¯s yours?¡±


    ¡°Querit,¡± the golem said. ¡°Come with me, please.¡±


    The two flew off, and I turned my attention back to the group. They were all looking up at me now, a few of them rising into the air on their own flight spells to approach. I let my magic carry me down closer and studied them.


    ¡°Choose someone to represent your interests,¡± I told the group. ¡°I¡¯ll speak to that person. You have five minutes.¡±


    That time limit was more important than it seemed. Without it, they¡¯d no doubt argue in circles for hours. With it, they¡¯d be pressured into coming to a quick decision. No less than four of them were trying to ignore the order and approach me directly, but they backed off when I turned a glare on them. None of them needed a reminder of the kind of violence I could commit, not when I¡¯d just demonstrated it ten minutes ago.


    Just because I didn¡¯t want to speak to their whole group in an open forum didn¡¯t mean I wasn¡¯t paying attention, and it quickly became obvious that they were essentially divided into two camps. One wanted to help me strike back at Ammun, or at least, that was what they were saying. It was quite possible that I had my own crop of saboteurs looking for ways to disrupt my plans, cause damage, and then escape back to their own faction.


    The other group, I trusted more. They wanted nothing to do with the fight, and they were smart enough to know that as long as Ammun was alive¡ªso to speak¡ªthey weren¡¯t going home. Their arguments were mostly centered on where they could wait out the war.


    The problem was that I¡¯d said I wanted one representative, and the group was split evenly between what they wanted to do. Finally, annoyed with the delay and with their five minutes up, I said, ¡°One representative from each side step forward. We¡¯ll meet here.¡±


    I pointed a finger at a clear section of ground between two enormous petrified trees, and a stone table with a trio of chairs rose out of the ground. I flew over and sat down at one, leaving the open two chairs on the other side of the table for them.


    Two mages quickly separated themselves from the crowd, one a tall man with gray hair and a weathered face who looked vaguely familiar to me. The other was a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with a fierce scowl and eyes that flashed with anger. She sneered at her companion with such contempt that I wondered if I¡¯d be forced to intervene, but they marched side by side and took their chairs.


    ¡°Now,¡± I said, ¡°let¡¯s talk about what¡¯s going to happen next.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 59

    ¡°Introductions, first,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll assume you already know that my name is Keiran, and that you¡¯ve been told a great deal about me by Ammun.¡±


    Both diviners gave nods, and the old man spoke. ¡°Nakra Adylen,¡± he said. ¡°Senior diviner for Great House Adylen.¡±


    ¡°Oslea,¡± the woman said simply as she sneered at her fellow diviner.


    ¡°Does Great House Adylen even still exist?¡± I asked.


    The woman snickered.


    ¡°We certainly do!¡± Nakra said stiffly.


    ¡°The ones willing to stick their tongues up Ammun¡¯s bony ass do, at least,¡± Oslea added.


    ¡°Silence!¡± Nakra snapped. ¡°Lesser mages should know their places.¡±


    ¡°I agree,¡± I said. ¡°And since you¡¯re lesser than me, maybe you should limit yourself to answering my questions, Nakra.¡±


    I could practically hear the old man¡¯s teeth grinding against each other, but he kept his mouth shut and gave me a tight nod.


    ¡°And as for you,¡± I told Oslea, ¡°I¡¯m not interested in whatever this feud you have going on is about. If you can¡¯t stop picking at this guy for ten minutes, I¡¯ll toss you into the side of a mountain and find someone else to speak for your group.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t an idle threat. My tolerance for people was at an all-time low, and it had never been very high to begin with. Ammun¡¯s death weapon loomed overhead, literally, and I needed to know more if I was going to stop it.


    ¡°Let¡¯s start with this secret project of Ammun¡¯s,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m assuming he¡¯s close to finishing it, considering the effort he¡¯s put into keeping me busy. How much longer until it¡¯s operational?¡±


    ¡°We don¡¯t know. That wasn¡¯t really what he had us doing,¡± Nakra said.


    ¡°You set him back quite a bit when you destroyed the collar,¡± Oslea added.


    I shook my head. ¡°No, he¡¯s close to finishing something. Otherwise, he¡¯d just be wasting resources trying to distract me now.¡±


    ¡°The summit project?¡± Oslea asked, looking at Nakra.


    ¡°I can¡¯t imagine that will be done soon,¡± the older diviner said. ¡°We¡¯re still eight hours away from just establishing the relay link.¡±


    ¡°What does that do?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Does what it sounds like,¡± Oslea said, rolling her eyes. ¡°Relays information from the summit up to the moon.¡±


    ¡°Which moon?¡±


    ¡°Yulitar.¡±


    There was some irony there. Yulitar was also known as the corpse moon, an appropriate place for a lich archmage to tie himself to. I doubted that was why Ammun had chosen it, however. Yulitar was also the largest moon, which theoretically meant it had the largest core. It had one of the slower orbits around Manoch, but I was sure Ammun had done the math and determined that the amount of mana he could harvest while it was in the correct part of the sky was greater than a different moon that appeared more frequently but produced less mana.


    ¡°The divination corps have been working in two shifts for over a month to complete the rituals,¡± Oslea said.


    ¡°But that just establishes the link,¡± Nakra said. ¡°At best, it lets Ammun put a beacon on the moon to scry through. Maybe he cobbles together a mana drain, but so what? It¡¯s not like he can weaponize Yulitar overnight.¡±


    That was a good point, but it just told me that Nakra didn¡¯t understand Ammun¡¯s objective. Whatever he was trying to do, he was wrapping it up now. I could safely assume I had half a day at most before he was done unless I interfered, which would involve challenging Ammun directly at the summit. At least he wouldn¡¯t be inside his own demesne there.


    That¡­ did actually give me enough time to utilize my resonance point to reach stage seven, as long as there was nothing else the old lich could throw at me between now and him finishing up. Things had been quiet at New Alkerist for a while now, but other towns were still being attacked by undead controlled by necromancers.


    I spent twenty minutes questioning the two diviners about the summit, Ammun¡¯s plans, and anything and everything they thought was relevant. That got me confirmation of the summit¡¯s location and a near certainty that Ammun was camped out there to ensure I didn¡¯t destroy everything he¡¯d been building like I¡¯d done with the ring of facilities they called the collar. From the name alone, I had a suspicion that its primary purpose was to lock a moon in place so that it would orbit in time with Manoch¡¯s rotation, granting a never-ending source of mana, but they couldn¡¯t confirm that.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    That was more of a long-term problem, however. If Ammun did have a way to unleash mana blasts from Yulitar, he¡¯d only need to fire it once to get rid of me. Rebuilding the collar and keeping the moon leashed in position relative to his tower could be accomplished after I was gone. Apparently, I hadn¡¯t really delayed anything by destroying those machines, at least not anything that would have bought me more time.


    What a fool I¡¯d been to assume I¡¯d slowed him down.


    Once I learned everything I wanted to know, the conversation switched topics. ¡°Your diviners are split into two groups,¡± I said. I gestured toward Nakra and said, ¡°You represent the ones who want to go somewhere far, far away from Ammun and me, where we won¡¯t bother you and you can live your lives.¡±


    ¡°And the rest of us aren¡¯t a bunch of cowards. We want our old lives back,¡± Oslea said.


    ¡°Idiots,¡± Nakra muttered. ¡°No matter what happens or who wins, nothing will be like it was. Don¡¯t you think I¡¯d be fighting for the same thing if there was the slightest chance?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m going to have to agree with Nakra,¡± I said. ¡°Regardless of who wins this conflict, you¡¯re never going back to how things were before Ammun woke up.¡±


    ¡°Is it true, then? You really do want to tear the tower down? I always thought that was a lie Ammun¡¯s followers told to get people to side with him.¡±


    ¡°No, that¡¯s true. The tower is wedged into the shell around the world core and needs to be removed in order to heal the planet. I¡¯ll have to destroy it to restore the balance of mana. You all are free to build a new tower somewhere else if you really want to, but Ammun¡¯s demesne has to go.¡±


    I didn¡¯t know why anybody would want to build a giant tower like that, especially if it wasn¡¯t going to be tapping directly into the world core to monopolize every scrap of mana produced. It had its uses, to be sure, but to this day, I still didn¡¯t understand what had possessed Ammun to start that project. Maybe he¡¯d just done it to prove he could. Maybe he¡¯d been bored. I¡¯d certainly spent years on nonsensical projects just to see if I could pull them off.


    For mortal mages with finite life spans measured in decades or perhaps a pair of centuries at most, building something like that tower was pointless. They could build an entire city from the ground up in a fraction of the time, one that would be more than sufficient to meet their every need. As much empty space as there was in the world these days, it wouldn¡¯t even be hard to find enough room. Almost the entirety of what Ammun had claimed as the Ralvost Empire had been uninhabited by anything but monsters and animals, and that would all be up for grabs soon enough.


    ¡°You¡¯re going to tear down what¡¯s been our whole world for countless generations,¡± Oslea said, slumping back into the chair. ¡°But you¡¯re also going to destroy Ammun?¡±


    ¡°I am,¡± I said.


    ¡°Then I¡¯m with you,¡± she declared, as if that settled things.


    ¡°What makes you think I want you with me?¡± I asked.


    Her jaw fell open, and she cast a bewildered look between Nakra and me. ¡°But¡­ I thought¡­ If you don¡¯t want¡­ Then¡­ But you saved us? You don¡¯t want our help?¡±


    ¡°With fighting Ammun? No, not even a little bit. I don¡¯t have time to individually interview all of you, and I can¡¯t trust that there aren¡¯t loyalists to his cause in your ranks. This meeting is to determine where I¡¯m going to put you all for the foreseeable future to keep you safely out of trouble.¡±


    ¡°Do we get a say in this?¡± Nakra asked.


    ¡°Sure. There wouldn¡¯t be much point in a meeting otherwise. I¡¯d have just announced my decision and sent you on your way if that¡¯s what I wanted to do. I do have some stipulations, however. You won¡¯t be placed anywhere in or near Ralvost, nor will you be allowed into my territory.¡±


    It was weird to think of the island as my territory, but in a way, it kind of was. If that was the case, though, I was a terrible territory lord. I¡¯d mostly just ignored everyone other than to spread some basic knowledge of magic. For all the work I¡¯d done that actually benefited anyone besides me, any enchanter could have done the same. If Tetrin had been willing to teach other people and had the access to the amount of mana I did, he could have done all of this.


    I didn¡¯t feel particularly guilty about that. I had more important things to worry about, and besides, no one was entitled to my time and energy, not even my own family. I¡¯d fix what I wanted, when I wanted, and if people weren¡¯t happy with that, then they could just go on being unhappy.


    ¡°An island would be good,¡± Nakra said. ¡°Something big enough to support life, but uninhabited. We could rebuild there, far away from all of the fighting. If we could retrieve our families¡­¡±


    ¡°Not a bad idea. Getting anyone else from the tower will have to wait, though. I¡¯ve scried out a few islands, but I can¡¯t promise any of them have long-term viability. You¡¯ll have your work cut out for you, especially getting access to enough food to keep you from starving. Do any of you actually know anything about farming?¡±


    The two diviners exchanged uneasy glances. ¡°We¡­ weren¡¯t really farmers¡­¡± Oslea admitted.


    Of course they weren¡¯t. Their whole lives were spent in the tower, except for those unlucky enough to be sent to oversee yearly pilgrimages through the surrounding villages to collect food while tricking all the natives into believing they were angelic messengers.


    ¡°Maybe that is a bad idea, then,¡± I said. ¡°If I drop you off on an island, you¡¯re going to need to be able to forage and hunt enough food to keep everyone from starving, and you¡¯re going to have to figure out some basic farming at the same time.¡±


    ¡°Foraging shouldn¡¯t be too unreasonable. We are diviners, after all,¡± Nakra said.


    ¡°How many of you can fight?¡± I asked, remembering the pitiful attempts at defending themselves most of the diviners I¡¯d just killed had put up. Other than that pair of mages with the construct summons, I doubted a single one of them could have defeated Senica in combat.


    ¡°Five or six?¡± Oslea asked as much as stated. She looked over to Nakra, who shrugged and nodded.


    ¡°Something like that,¡± he agreed.


    ¡°Alright, if that¡¯s what you want. Give me ten minutes to get the portal ready and I¡¯ll send you all through with some supplies to last a week or two.¡±


    I¡¯d found dozens of islands off the coast, most of them no more than a few hundred feet wide, but a few that had miles of land on them. What I hadn¡¯t done was vetted them for monsters, so I hoped Oslea hadn¡¯t been exaggerating about having a few diviners who knew how to fight in their ranks. I chose one that was about five miles long and a half-mile wide, its interior filled with trees.


    The portal took shape after a few minutes and I held it in place manually while dumping food out of my phantom space. Thanks to its ability to temporally preserve its contents, I had a considerable supply that I was willing to donate.


    ¡°Pick something up and march through,¡± I yelled.

 Book 4, Chapter 60

    One of the hardest parts of being a diviner was having to have an excellent memory. There was only so much magic could do to help that along, too. At some point, how well a mage could process and remember information separated the hobbyists from the professionals. Ammun¡¯s diviners were, presumably, all professionals.


    I was about to put that to the test with Ashinder. Querit had been grilling him heavily, and I was very curious to see if his information would match up with what the other diviners had told me. Part of me regretted that I couldn¡¯t talk to all of them, but the truth was that I had a limited amount of time remaining, and I¡¯d rather spend it advancing my core to stage seven than interviewing a bunch of people for the same information to see who was lying or misremembering.


    I teleported myself into Querit¡¯s workshop, where the golem was busy putting together an illusory map of what I assumed was the summit. It was impressively big, especially for an artificial mountain. There were no less than eight floors, each one with dozens of rooms, all nestled behind a thousand feet of solid, spell-reinforced rock. There were permanent portals leading in, but the other sides were all in the tower, which was inarguably even more well defended than the summit.


    The odds of me getting lucky with another sympathetic connection I could use to bypass the wards were next to nonexistent. The only reason it had happened the first time was because Querit had tangled with somebody with enough skill to put the enchantment on his combat frame, but without enough skill to use a better alternative. Ammun¡¯s only options had been to leave the vulnerability to spy on me, or lose the ability to see what I was up to.


    He really should have put the other end of that room somewhere else besides his diviner corps main operations room. His mistake ¨C it was a pile of shattered glass now, and I was several thousand gallons of liquid mana richer.


    ¡°This hallway is wider,¡± Ashinder was saying as I appeared nearby. ¡°And I think there are some wards on the door at the end. We had to be escorted past it every time.¡±


    The image stretched out a bit at the diviner¡¯s direction. He nodded in satisfaction, then froze when he saw me standing there. ¡°Uh¡­ Hello.¡±


    ¡°Hi,¡± I said dryly. Ashinder didn¡¯t quite flinch at the sound of my voice, but it was clear that he was holding himself steady. This was far from the first time I¡¯d seen a mage struggle to control his fear when I showed up, though admittedly it hadn¡¯t happened all that much since my reincarnation. This particular mage, however, had watched me slaughter the better part of a hundred people at his direction. I imagined he had some baggage to deal with after that.


    ¡°What are the defenses like on this?¡± I asked.


    ¡°No physical access,¡± Querit said. ¡°We could probably bore through it if we had a week and Ammun left us alone, but neither of those is likely to happen.¡±


    ¡°Ward set up?¡±


    ¡°Identical to his tower, from what I understand.¡±


    ¡°So we¡¯re not going to be phasing through it,¡± I said. ¡°This site must be incredibly important to him if he¡¯s investing this much into it.¡±


    I asked a few more questions about the defenses, all of which confirmed the information I¡¯d gotten from Nakra and Oslea. It seemed Ammun hadn¡¯t treated his diviners very well, which was generally bad practice since there was no one else more likely to start digging for secrets better left alone. Pissing off an entire platoon of diviners was beyond stupid, but I supposed Ammun hadn¡¯t been too worried about betrayal when he thought they had nowhere to go and he had an entire army of mages to help keep them in line.


    ¡°Can we get some eyes inside?¡± I finally asked.


    Ashinder hesitated. ¡°Maybe? We couldn¡¯t scry half of the summit even when we were inside it, but I might still be keyed into the wards?¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s find out,¡± I said. I pulled all three of us from Querit¡¯s workshop to my personal scrying chamber.


    Unlike the portable mirror I usually used, this room was set up similar to what Ammun had furnished his diviners with ¨C yet another design he¡¯d copied from me. The walls were all mirrored panels five feet wide and stretching from floor to ceiling. Each one was trimmed with a border of runes, optimized for different situations. One worked better for long-distance scrying, another excelled at communication between multiple discrete points, and a third was designed to pierce wards.


    It was to that one that I led Ashinder. ¡°I¡¯ll handle the distance. You focus on getting through the wards.¡±


    ¡°What do you want me doing?¡± Querit asked.


    I thought for a moment. ¡°Have those zombie strike teams stopped coming yet?¡±


    ¡°Slowing down. I managed to collapse another portal, and that seems to have them hesitating. I know they¡¯ve still got a thousand zombies in reserve, probably more.¡±Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    ¡°Stay here for a bit. I might need your help with that other thing we were talking about.¡±


    Querit nodded and settled back into place. I noticed he hadn¡¯t left his combat frame and found that the thought of that didn¡¯t really bother me. Perhaps I was coming to trust the golem after all. I was running out of reasons not to at this point, and every time an opportunity came up to betray me, he chose otherwise.


    Huh. Was Querit a friend, now? No, not yet, probably not ever. But a colleague? That felt right. He was an ally, one I found myself trusting, but it had still only been a few months. He could still be playing a long game, but if so, it wasn¡¯t anything to do with Ammun. That, if nothing else, I was confident in.


    I turned my attention to Ashinder and the scrying mirror. Mana raced through the inscriptions as I activated them and started guiding the spell through the series of relays I¡¯d laid across thousands and thousands of miles.


    ¡°Take control of the spell,¡± I instructed the diviner.


    He took the handover clumsily, but I compensated and kept everything stable until he was ready. Then, we plunged through the summit¡¯s outer walls. I studied the wards carefully as Ashinder guided the mirror through them, stopping twice to complete verification checks on his spell signature. There was a weakness there, one I could exploit as long as I did it before Ammun revoked access.


    The scrying spell broke into the interior of the summit, revealing the same silvery gray stone that made up the tower. No surprise there. Ammun had never been terribly original, and it made sense that he¡¯d stick with a design he knew would work. Still, I¡¯d have expected a more dramatic change to his warding schemes after what I¡¯d done to his tower. It had taken him months to fix everything I¡¯d broken in less than ten minutes.


    As far as I could tell, the only thing stopping me from doing the same thing here was that I didn¡¯t know where the master control room was yet. Based on what Ashinder and the other diviners had shown me, I could make a few educated guesses as to where it might be. Seeing the wards for myself, I was even more sure of my speculations.


    This was just about as perfect a situation as I could ask for. I¡¯d found Ammun¡¯s secret base. I knew the majority of the interior¡¯s layout. I was familiar with the ward setup. The only way this could be easier was if Ammun left.


    He was going to be a problem, but one I thought I could take care of once I utilized my new mana resonance point. I just needed to confirm that this moon beam weapon wasn¡¯t going to descend on the valley in the next six hours first. And to do that, I needed Ashinder to guide me to where the other shift of diviners was busy working.


    That wasn¡¯t hard to find, mostly because it was in the most obvious place. It didn¡¯t hurt that Ashinder had already told me where he¡¯d been working. The very center of the summit was a series of six rooms stacked on top of each other, open-floored with ringed balconies to make a silo. All of them were worked with divination runes and hooked up to mana banks. The signal started in the bottom level and, as it was pushed upward, it grew stronger and stronger until the top room sent it off-planet to reach the moon.


    We took a quick tour of each room, with Ashinder explaining what they¡¯d done there. All but the top-most room was complete, and in that, close to a hundred diviners worked feverishly while several dozen mages with stage four cores watched over them. Ammun himself was presumably busy working on something else and was nowhere to be found.


    ¡°If I destroy these rooms, that would set him back over a year,¡± I said. ¡°More, really, since he lost half his diviner corps today. Thinning out the other half could very well stop this project for good.¡±


    I didn¡¯t believe that. In the worst case, Ammun would step in and do the rituals himself. Liches were very, very good at completing rituals that should require whole cabals by themselves. It was one of the advantages of their undead state; they didn¡¯t generate their own mana anymore, but they were capable of controlling enormous amounts of it without tiring or losing focus.


    The most important takeaway from our little spying mission was that I still had that most precious of resources available: time. I could finish my advancement and take a few hours to recover, then launch my attack against the summit without fear of a moon beam destroying my demesne.


    ¡°I think we¡¯ve learned everything we need to,¡± I said. ¡°Go ahead and¡ª¡±


    Ammun appeared in the middle of the room in a swirl of black robes trimmed in indigo. He floated in the air, his skeletal body fully on display and the burning red pits of his eyes scouring the diviners. ¡°Which one of you incompetent idiots let the runes defending the scrying center from Keiran run out of mana?¡± he demanded.


    ¡°Ah, looks like he knows about the other diviners,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s unfortunate. I was hoping we¡¯d have a few more hours before that got back to him.¡±


    When no one answered, the lich picked a diviner seemingly at random and lifted him with a pointed finger and a powerful telekinesis spell. ¡°You. You¡¯re supposed to be in charge here. Explain this.¡±


    ¡°Lord Ammun, I don¡¯t know what you mean! The runes were fully charged at the end of our shift. There¡¯s no way they could be drained already.¡±


    ¡°Excuses!¡± the lich roared as he flung the unfortunate diviner away. Ashinder winced when the man hit the stone wall and slid down to the ground, but I could see he wasn¡¯t dead. Despite Ammun¡¯s apparent rage, he wasn¡¯t willing to destroy important resources just because he was angry. The display was a calculated thing, perhaps some sort of motivational ploy to make the remaining diviners work harder.


    Ammun¡¯s eyes swept across the room again, then stopped and darted back to land on my scrying spell. ¡°So you know about this place now,¡± he said. ¡°Of course you do. You¡¯re too clever by far. But I know your weaknesses, too. Averin!¡±


    One of the mages who¡¯d been guarding the room flew up into the air and approached Ammun. ¡°Yes, my lord?¡± he asked. I recognized the man as the former leader of the Breakers of Chains, the man who¡¯d lied to everyone in order to release Ammun from his thousand-year stasis.


    ¡°Take Ghaldiral to the village we¡¯ve discovered, New Alkerist. Destroy it.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Lord Ammun!¡±


    Then the lich sent out a wave of dispelling mana and broke my scrying spell. With him being mere feet from it and us channeling it through a dozen relay points, there was no contesting the action. The image faded from the mirror, leaving us in silence.


    ¡°It seems the next round of distractions is about to begin,¡± Querit remarked. ¡°Who is Ghaldiral?¡±


    ¡°No idea,¡± I said. We both turned to look at Ashinder, who¡¯d gone pale and was trembling.


    ¡°Ghaldiral is Ammun¡¯s pet dragon,¡± the diviner said.

 Book 4, Chapter 61

    Dragons, even undead skeletal ones, were difficult opponents. Sheer size was a quality all its own, both in terms of offense and defense. The living ones could shrug off hits that would kill smaller creatures, and the undead versions were even more durable. Physically attacking one was an exercise in futility.


    Worse, dragons had enormous mana cores, easily hundreds of times the size of a human¡¯s. Attacking their cores directly was almost as difficult as fighting them physically. There was a reason they were the world¡¯s apex predator, or at least they had been back before Ammun had inadvertently driven them to extinction.


    ¡°What¡¯s in New Alkerist?¡± Querit asked.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± I said. ¡°How long has it been taking them to get a portal open to a new location?¡±


    ¡°Ten minutes? Why am I not worrying about it?¡±


    ¡°Because I¡¯m going to take care of it myself. Ten minutes isn¡¯t long enough.¡±


    ¡°If I knew where the portal was going to open¡­¡± Querit began.


    ¡°Temporal scrying won¡¯t work. Ammun wards against it.¡±


    ¡°Smart of him. In that case, there¡¯s not much we can do to delay them.¡±


    I¡¯d have to fight the dragon at stage six, which wouldn¡¯t even do me any good as I¡¯d be hundreds of miles from my demesne. Ammun had made the right call not sending it here. Knowing what I did now, I almost regretted not using the time I¡¯d had to take advantage of the mana resonance point, but it had been the right decision at the time to go after more knowledge first, and even if I¡¯d started the second I¡¯d woken up, I still might not have finished in time.


    Besides, it wasn¡¯t like I hadn¡¯t made any preparations at all. I¡¯d known that dragon was going to be a problem sooner or later, and I¡¯d had years to get ready for a fight with it. If it was just the dragon itself, I could at least hold it off. But it wasn¡¯t just the dragon. Averin was a stage four master mage, or at least he had been a few years ago. He could very well be stage five now.


    There was no reason to think a few hundred or even a thousand zombies wouldn¡¯t be accompanying him, complete with necromancer squad leaders. There might be some other surprises in there, too. Ammun had had just as much time to cook up his series of distractions as I¡¯d had to prepare myself for them.


    ¡°Take Ashinder somewhere out of the demesne,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m going to meet Ammun¡¯s monster and put it down. If you want to help stop whatever else is coming, I won¡¯t turn it down, but be prepared to fight stage four and five mages.¡±


    With only minutes on the clock, I didn¡¯t have time to argue or explain. I teleported to my workshop and pulled out a crate full of gear I¡¯d made specifically with this fight in mind, loaded my phantom space with everything I wouldn¡¯t be wearing directly, and telepathically reached out to my family.


    ¡®Ammun is throwing a heavy hitter at New Alkerist. He¡¯s somehow discovered your presence there. Start the emergency contingencies to get everyone you can out of the town. It¡¯s probably going to be nothing but rubble by the time the fight ends.¡¯


    * * *


    The portal opening wouldn¡¯t be subtle. It couldn¡¯t be, not really, with something dragon-sized coming through it. It was smaller than I¡¯d been expecting, but not by much. Technically, it only had to let the skull pass through cleanly, since the rest of the dragon¡¯s body was bones unconstrained by things like muscles or tendons.


    Below me, farmers ran for the relative safety of the town¡¯s barrier, abandoning their tools in the fields. I¡¯d dropped a single platform in the center of town that connected to Derro after I¡¯d arrived, but it wouldn¡¯t have anywhere near enough mana to take more than three or four groups. At most, a quarter of the town would escape through it. Most of the children at the school would be teleported out through their own safe room.


    And that left better than two hundred people with no choice but to flee on foot or stand and fight. Despite my urgings, they¡¯d foolishly chosen the latter. The barrier wasn¡¯t going to protect them from a dragon, but if I could keep that monster fully occupied and draw it away from the town, the wards might save people from the weaker mages and their zombie minions.


    Averin was going to crack it open in under ten minutes, though. After that, all bets were off.


    I watched the townsfolk scramble around below me and tried to pick out my family. Mother and Nailu were already in the shelter below the school. Father was busy helping organize people, and Senica was, inevitably, preparing to repel the invaders along with two dozen other mages. Not a single one of them was past stage two. If it came down to a fight, they¡¯d die.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    ¡®You¡¯ve got the recall pendant, right?¡¯ I sent to her.


    ¡®Yes. Stop pestering me,¡¯ she thought back.


    ¡®I won¡¯t be able to save you if things go wrong on the ground. It is very possible that a lot of people are going to die in the next half an hour, and I¡¯d prefer you weren¡¯t one of them.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯ll be fine. I¡¯ve got this under control. You just focus on what you¡¯re doing.¡¯


    I very much doubted things would go anything like how Senica envisioned. She¡¯d hunted monsters a few times. She¡¯d sparred with other mages near her skill level under controlled conditions. But she¡¯d never faced anything like this. Unfortunately, Querit hadn¡¯t shown up yet. I wasn¡¯t sure if he was going to.


    A flash of blue light split the sky, and a portal started to unfold. A bleached-white maw came through, razor-edged teeth on full display, followed by the undead dragon¡¯s empty eye sockets, then finally its long, swept-back horns. By itself, the dragon¡¯s skull was probably more than a ton of weight. It was bigger than most of the houses in town, and that was only the start.


    Before the rest of the monster could slither out of the portal, I launched my attack. In my hands was a new staff, one made of black steel, gold, and diamond. I¡¯d crafted it with a singular purpose, and then it sat, fully charged and waiting for my command.


    The force bolt that surged out of its tip was so overcharged with mana that the steel fractured and the gold started to melt. Only the diamond core held strong through the spell, and the enchantments I¡¯d placed on it shredded themselves as the magic overloaded the staff.


    A normal force bolt could split a man¡¯s skull. One sized to do the same to a dragon needed to be hundreds of times more powerful. That meant the spell I¡¯d opened with was a solid orb of pure force eight feet in diameter flying more than five times faster than I could at maximum speed. It was so fast, in fact, that it cracked the air with its passage.


    Thunder rang out behind it, so loud as to be deafening all on its own, and the force bolt jumped through the sky to strike the emerging dragon¡¯s skull. The dragon¡¯s head snapped to the side, and a chunk of bone cracked and fell away from the impact. More importantly, it disrupted its smooth passage through the portal. The attack was only a stall to keep it trapped halfway here, but it gave me the opportunity to hit the monster a few more times before it pulled itself free.


    I cast the ruined staff aside and let it fall to the ground below me. In its place, I pulled a ball of pure, empty darkness bound in runes that glowed gold from my phantom space. The ball immediately started crackling and the runes lit up bright as they struggled to contain it now that it was exposed to the air.


    I might not have access to my demesne¡¯s mana right now, but I¡¯d brought a hell of a lot of it with me. The costs had been enormous, far more than simply casting the spells myself would require, but what was the point of having an archmage¡¯s resources if I never used them?


    The ball hissed and sputtered as I launched it. Unlike the force bolt, it moved at a more sedate pace, taking about twenty seconds to reach the skeletal dragon. As soon as it got close, mana flared from the monster and started pushing the ball off to the side. I wasn¡¯t about to let that happen, not after how much work it had been to make the damn thing.


    I pushed back against the spell¡ªnot telekinesis, but something akin to it¡ªand corrected the ball¡¯s course. More mana radiated out of the dragon, enough to overwhelm my own attempts to keep the ball heading in the right direction. That had been an inevitable conclusion to our little duel, but I¡¯d hoped to hold my own long enough that the dragon couldn¡¯t avoid the attack. In that respect, I won.


    The dragon was halfway out of the portal, its ribs partially collapsed to let it slip through, when the ball reached it. Rather than take the strike head-on, it raised one of its forelegs to deflect the attack. Deflection wasn¡¯t really a possible outcome, though. Detonation was the only way things could turn out.


    Against a flesh-and-blood creature, the effect would have been fatal. The ball exploded outwards, expanding to a hundred times its original size as the gold-glowing runes containing it shattered. Everything inside its radius was deconstructed down to particles, removing the dragon¡¯s front claw and part of its foreleg.


    Chalky-white bone dust puffed out in every direction, but I knew the damage was mostly superficial. If Ammun wanted to waste the mana, he could even regrow the lost limb, assuming the dragon survived our battle and made it back to him. I wasn¡¯t planning on letting that happen, but this was one of the few times since my reincarnation that I was entering a fight I wasn¡¯t certain I could win.


    Just because victory wasn¡¯t guaranteed didn¡¯t mean I was going to shy away from putting this monster down. If anything, Ammun had done me a favor sending it out here and now. I¡¯d expected I¡¯d be fighting it off while battling him directly. Meeting it above New Alkerist wasn¡¯t ideal, but Averin acting as its partner was going to make this fight a lot easier than I¡¯d planned on it being.


    Two new master spells coalesced around the skeletal dragon, both freezing the air solid on either side of the monster and causing ice to form on its bones. The dragon twisted in slow-motion as it forced its way through the physical effects it was sandwiched between. While it fought through that, I used the last bit of time left to attack the animating energies binding its body together directly.


    A good necromancer would always win out against any attempts to dispel their corpse-controlling magic, and despite the fact that I hadn¡¯t taught Ammun any necromancy personally, I had no doubt he was excellent in the field. He¡¯d turned himself into a lich, after all. However, Ammun wasn¡¯t here, which meant that, at best, Averin would be contesting me. And he hadn¡¯t yet made his appearance, probably because he was sending the dragon through the portal first to avoid me tearing him into bloody shreds and scattering him across the desert.


    Smart of him, really. I¡¯d do it anyway, but fighting the dragon at the same time was going to make it a lot harder.


    My dispelling magic started to unravel the connections holding the dragon¡¯s leg together, but it proved my point about their enormous mana cores making them a chore to fight and tore through my magic by sheer volume of mana.


    Then it pushed through my spells and its wings unfolded as more of its body slithered through the open portal. An instant later, it launched itself forward into the sky, and the true battle started.

 Book 4, Chapter 62

    Dragon tongue didn¡¯t have a word for ¡®subtle.¡¯ They just didn¡¯t think that way, which wasn¡¯t to say that they were stupid, just that the idea of being clever instead of crushing challenges head-on was synonymous with being weak. It was something lesser races did.


    Dragons were straightforward. They shredded enemies with their immense talons, ripped them apart with their teeth, crushed them under great weight, or incinerated them with their potent fire breath. If, for some reason, none of that worked, they tended to use invocations to apply even more strength to their attacks, or conjurations if they needed some range.


    Thankfully, their immense size and the need to consume massive amounts of mana worked against them when it came to igniting their cores. It was the rare dragon that reached stage one, and only generational talents could claim to reach stage three. That meant human archmages had the advantage when it came to spells, which was good, because it was the only arena we could claim that in.


    Luckily for me, undead dragons had all the issues associated with needing massive amounts of mana just to survive, but none of the brains their living counterparts did. If I¡¯d been facing a dragon of flesh and blood, I most certainly would have died. Even if I managed to win the fight, it wouldn¡¯t be without the town below being utterly destroyed.


    This particular dragon was well past a thousand feet in length if I included the tail. Its bones were stark white beneath a mesh of black and purple animating mana. Tendrils spread between the joints, holding everything together, and strung themselves through the fingers of the dragon¡¯s wings. It shouldn¡¯t have been able to fly like that, not with nothing but those relatively thin strands looking like black cobwebs forming its wings, but its flight was purely powered by magic, so it not only flew, it flew horrifyingly fast.


    And it was flying directly at me, easily closing the distance as it burned precious mana to pack on more speed. There were times when being frugal was justified, especially in this new world. And then there was right now.


    I cast a short-range teleport spell, timed perfectly so that the skeletal dragon would lose track of me just as its own muzzle blocked its view. A fraction of a second later would have meant being struck by a multi-ton behemoth. But this way, it couldn¡¯t be sure what had happened while I was in its blind spot, at least not until I reappeared above and behind it and unleashed two more of the void bombs I¡¯d stashed away. They veered in, targeting the wing joints to blow the limbs right off the monster.


    It rolled at the last moment and took both shots to its ribs. Another cloud of powdered bone filled the air, though it was far from a lethal attack against a creature that was already dead. That didn¡¯t matter, though; the physical damage wasn¡¯t the point. Disrupting the necromantic animating web was. As long as that was fully intact, even striking its core was going to be difficult, let alone doing damage.


    The dragon banked hard, practically curling up on itself as it changed directions and shot up at me. I was already retreating, a string of explosive inferno spells trailing out behind me. Undead monsters had singular focus, which could be both a blessing and a bane to them. It flew right through every single spell and completely ignored the scorch marks appearing on its skull.


    Each spell chipped away at its animating energy, forcing it to spend more mana from its core to keep itself together. Fighting a dragon was a game of attrition, one which they were well-suited to win. I could be up here for hours leading this thing around, which was time I didn¡¯t have!


    Worse, I couldn¡¯t even draw it away from New Alkerist yet. The portal it had arrived through still hung open in the air, but there was no sign of Averin. He probably knew I¡¯d target him for immediate extermination and was hanging back, hoping the dragon alone could kill me. Unfortunately, that meant I couldn¡¯t stray too far from the portal ¨C he could just as easily destroy the town if he arrived and I wasn¡¯t here to intercept him.


    As long as the dragon was limiting itself to physically chasing after me, I¡¯d only get caught if I did something stupid, like overreaching on the damage I was laying down on it. Unfortunately, even skeletal dragons had access to their mana and the ability to shape it. It wasn¡¯t likely to use it, but I couldn¡¯t discount the possibility that it might, so I had to let some opportunities to break it down slip past me since I would be leaving myself vulnerable if I tried to take advantage of them.


    Below, six new portals opened up in a line a few thousand feet outside of town. Immediately, swarms of undead started pouring out of them at a run, all headed the exact same direction. There were too many for me to get an accurate headcount, but as long as it was just zombies, New Alkerist would be fine. I did my best to spot any necromancers in their ranks, but the dragon up in the sky was keeping me busy. Instead of targeted attacks, I had to settle for raining down wide-area conjurations and hope to catch someone important inside their reach.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    My ongoing divination perched high overhead alerted me of someone coming through the sky portal while I was busy dodging dragon teeth and raining fire down on the undead massed below. Even forewarned, I wasn¡¯t able to dodge his attack: a fully-charged mana beam that arced through the open air unerringly toward me.


    Immediately, the dragon got clever. Rather than snapping at me or taking a swipe with its remaining forelimb, it turned its dive into a spin and lashed out with its long, spiny, whip-like tail. At the same time, mana surged down its body, and a line of pure force arced out.


    I wasn¡¯t dodging all of that. The tail slash was doable with a bit of effort. The mana beam was chasing me across the sky and, in all honesty, would probably be easier to absorb. But the great thing about being an archmage was that I didn¡¯t need to scramble to fly out of the way. I simply expended a ruinously large chunk of mana and teleported directly behind the man who¡¯d come out of the portal.


    As I¡¯d expected, it was Averin. He¡¯d been lurking on the other side, waiting for the moment to make his move. It was a good one, too. Whatever spell he¡¯d used to create that mana beam had locked onto me and wasn¡¯t letting go. It curved through the air to circle back to my new location, which amusingly enough was also Averin¡¯s location. His eyes widened as he grasped the implication, and mana burst out of him in every direction.


    My shield ward twisted the explosion of mana away from me and let it wash back toward the portal. If it had actually gone through, that probably would have been enough to destabilize it completely, but whoever had built that portal knew what they were doing. Mana rolled across its surface and slid around it, not stressing the rune constructs enough to collapse the thing.


    It was tempting to finish the job myself, but the truth of the matter was that I had a lot less time and fewer resources than Ammun did. If I could force the dragon into a retreat back through that portal, I¡¯d count it as a win. Destroying it probably wasn¡¯t in the cards, especially not now that Averin was here to control it, as evidenced by the fact that the monster had pivoted midair again and had unhinged its jaws to reveal a maw full of rapidly-forming mana.


    Averin hurled himself straight down as the dragon unleashed a blast of fire that traveled hundreds of feet. At the same time, the mana beam locked onto me closed in. Those could hit each other and see who won; I wouldn¡¯t be sticking around to be part of it.


    Battlefield teleportation was too expensive to use this freely, but dragons were so huge that it was impossible not to occasionally. There just wasn¡¯t a better way to keep ahead of them. Even now, it was already reorienting itself, either having found me through its own senses or because Averin was directing it. My bet was on it being a mixture of both.


    I threw fire from either hand as I flew backward, raining it down on Averin¡¯s fleeing form as he dodged left and right. Then the dragon caught up to me just as the mana beam lanced by again, and I had to set off a force bomb to hold its jaws open long enough for me to slip out.


    This was getting ridiculous. I needed to collapse that mana beam before it got me killed. The only advantage I had here was that I could predict its path, so, much like I¡¯d done with the dragon, I started dropping mana disrupting spheres in my wake as I flew directly away from the mana beam. It cut through them, one after another, and the structure of the spell started to collapse.


    Averin saw what I was doing and took manual control of his spell. It started weaving around the spheres, but that was well within my expectations. I simply willed them to move and intercept the beam again while I desperately flew at a sharp angle to avoid another lunge from the dragon. I¡¯d hit it enough times now that the animation weave coating its bones was starting to thin, which hopefully meant I¡¯d have a clean shot at its core soon.


    Before that, I needed to take care of its handler, which meant finding a way to ground the dragon for at least a minute. I had just the thing to make that happen, but I needed to set up the right circumstances. This was going to be dangerous, more so than the rest of the fight had been.


    I went into a dive, not aiming for Averin specifically but angling myself close enough that he took evasive action rather than risk it. The mage threw himself out of the way, only slowing down when he realized I hadn¡¯t corrected my descent. By then, it was too late for him to catch up with me.


    The dragon, on the other hand, could fly far faster than I could, and it had no problem chasing me down. More mana was gathering in its open maw to spew in a deadly burst of flame that would turn me into a piece of flying charcoal. I turned to look up at it, wanting to judge its speed with my own eyes. If I messed this up, there was a very good possibility that I¡¯d be killed in the next few seconds, shield ward be damned.


    I pulled two things out of my phantom space, took a breath, then teleported right next to the skeletal dragon¡¯s open rib cage and forced a lump of glowing marble between bones bigger than I was. Immediately, the dragon roared, and the animating net jumped into place as it bucked against the interfering spell.


    The disruption only lasted for a second before it was smothered by the sheer metaphysical mass of the dragon¡¯s mana, but a single second was all I needed. I flicked what looked like a small seed made of polished steel through the gap in the dragon¡¯s defenses, then threw myself as far away from the dragon as I could. It streaked past me, a blur of white and black, and I almost completely cleared its back legs without getting clipped. At the last moment, a foot of bone claw smacked into me, utterly demolishing my shield ward and sending me spinning end over end through the air.


    I missed the effects of the seed, but by the time the disorientation wore off, I could see its results. The dragon rolled through the sky, completely out of control, as silvery tendrils thick around as tree trunks crawled through its bones and tangled things up. A few seconds later, the titanic monster struck the desert, sending a great plume of sand a mile up into the air.


    I turned to Averin and started pumping mana into my shield ward to rebuild my defenses. I¡¯d only get a minute at most before the dragon regained control of itself. That was more than enough time.

 Book 4, Chapter 63

    Averin wasn¡¯t stupid, despite his inexplicable desire to bring Ammun back from the annals of history. His questionable motives aside, he was perfectly aware of how overmatched he was without the dragon¡¯s help. There were really only two possible options: he either fled the field back through a portal, or he found some way to stop the fight.


    Whether it was because he knew the price of failure if he ran back through that portal, or because he didn¡¯t think he could reach it without me catching up to him, Averin decided to fly directly toward New Alkerist instead. Mana surged out of him, building itself up into an expensive master-tier spell with a lot of shifting pieces that made it hard to identify.


    I had seconds to deal with him, maybe a minute or two at most, before the spell I¡¯d tangled the dragon up in expired¡ªor more likely was broken early¡ªand I¡¯d have to fight them both at the same time again. That wasn¡¯t an experience I was eager to repeat, which meant I needed to prioritize saving as many of those seconds as possible.


    So while I could have probably caught up to Averin through flight, I opted for the far more expensive instant teleportation spell instead. My mana crystal was over half empty at this point, meaning I needed to start being thrifty with my tactics if I couldn¡¯t end the fight soon, but I was confident there was enough mana left to finish the job.


    I appeared twenty feet in front of Averin and immediately blasted a wave of dispelling magic over him. He was too skilled to let his constructed spell collapse from just that, but it gave him one more thing to juggle. His speed suffered from it, giving me enough time to start moving and match his pace so that he didn¡¯t just blow past me while I was reorienting myself.


    Up close, I could see that he¡¯d advanced his mana core to stage five under Ammun¡¯s tutelage. That would complicate things, since it gave him a body akin to a mana crystal. He¡¯d naturally resist just about all magic by virtue of draining the mana right out of it. Some spells, such as offensive transmutations used on his body, would outright fail with no effort on his part.


    I hated it when my enemies enjoyed the same perks I did.


    Force spells were a good opening move and, at this range, it would be near impossible to miss. I flung out force cleaves, conjuring waves of them three at a time. Averin¡¯s shield ward soaked up most of them, but the sheer momentum and weight of the spells knocked him around enough to disrupt his attempt to reach New Alkerist.


    Averin tumbled away in an uncontrolled spin that took him several seconds to pull himself out of. Impressively, he never lost control of the master-tier spell he was building. He even managed to fend off my own probing tendrils of mana, but that was a losing proposition. Even if we were at the same level of skill, it was far more difficult to defend a spell construct than it was to break one.


    And we weren¡¯t at the same level.


    Averin knew it just as well as I did, and he didn¡¯t try. After repelling my initial attempt to break it, he simply detonated the spell in my face. Concussive waves of force radiated out in every direction, steered subtly by their creator to focus on me. I was battered over and over again, each wave weakening my shield ward as I was thrown back. It didn¡¯t take much to break the defense completely.


    That hadn¡¯t been the purpose of Averin¡¯s spell. He¡¯d planned to use it on the barrier protecting the town. Arguably, I should have let him instead of intercepting him. The spell was specifically designed to crack magical defenses through repeated and mounting pressure, perfect for stressing a barrier powered by a ward stone.


    As an unfortunate consequence, it also worked against shield wards. Only the fact that I was flooding the ward with mana in the fractions of a second between each wave of force energy, and that my own mana-crystal body was soaking up some of the power of the spell, kept it from pulping me up in the sky. I was left to weather the attack as best I could.


    If all I¡¯d needed to do was defend myself, I could have managed it without being in any real danger, but Averin¡¯s attack also presented me with an opportunity. Such a large amount of undirected force had also cracked his defenses, too. Admittedly, being at the epicenter of the eruption of force waves was making things a lot easier for him, but he hadn¡¯t escaped the power of his own spell.


    I had a small window of opportunity to smite Averin out of existence, but only if I could survive the onslaught of magic and strike while he was vulnerable. Fortunately for me, the bottleneck in maintaining my shield ward was in how fast it could accept more mana, not in how fast I could supply it. The rest of my attention was going toward counteracting some of the force waves to prevent the ward from being overwhelmed and shutting down completely. I could survive a few seconds without that.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Whether it was coincidence or strategy that saved Averin, I couldn¡¯t tell. Either way, his flight spell ended and he started falling just as a lance of force shot through the space his head had occupied a fraction of a second earlier. Cursing at the unexpected drop in elevation, I descended to chase after him and fired off a second spell.


    This one struck true, tearing into his mana-reinforced body and leaving a bloody, gaping wound. It wasn¡¯t as much damage as it should have been, but it proved that he¡¯d overwhelmed his own defenses with his force explosion. He was vulnerable, and I had whole seconds left to take him out before I needed to switch my focus back to defense.


    A bolt of lightning arced out from my hand and scorched him, leaving streamers of smoke behind as he continued to fall. Before he got much farther, a second force lance tore off a leg, followed by a force cleave that bisected his abdomen. I finished him off with a small tornado of solidified wind centered around him.


    Briefly, the column of air became a wall of chunky red gore. When the spell faded, there was nothing recognizable about the corpse. It was thrown wildly about, still caught in the throes of the ongoing force explosion spell.


    That was one problem down, and with the distraction taken care of, I bent my full abilities toward keeping my own body from suffering the same fate Averin¡¯s was undergoing. I managed to ride out the remaining waves long enough to escape the radius of the spell, a surprisingly robust distance of over five hundred feet.


    Below, zombies continued their assault on the barrier at the commands of the necromancers who¡¯d arrived with them. Various conjurations tested the ward¡¯s integrity, but the amount of mana I¡¯d left to power it was far, far greater than what a mere twenty or thirty mages of indeterminate quality were capable of overcoming. Unless something went drastically wrong, New Alkerist was safe for the moment.


    Of course, with a massive undead dragon still in the area, there were plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. I was hoping that with its handler nothing but scraps of bloody flesh, I¡¯d be able to wear the dragon down without any further issues, but even that might not necessarily be a victory if it took me so long that Ammun finished getting his device working.


    I¡¯d killed Averin with plenty of time to spare, however. The dragon was still struggling to disentangle itself over a mile away out in the desert, though it looked like it was starting to win that fight. I had half a minute or so before that became a problem I needed to deal with again, which was plenty of time to prepare a good shot, or barely enough time to wipe out all the weak mages and undead fodder below.


    ¡°Eh,¡± I muttered. ¡°The town can take care of itself.¡±


    I flew over to the dragon. By the time I got there, it was nearly free, but my spell was complete. I triggered it just in time, and an abyssal maw opened up beneath the struggling skeleton. It fell in and I immediately landed on the edge, or as close as I could get with all the loose sand pouring into the giant hole and burying the dragon.


    That wouldn¡¯t do much to stop it, but my hope was that the extra weight from the sand would slow it down, and the jolt from falling and slamming into the ground would keep it tangled up a bit longer. I pulled out a metal pole covered in runes and drove it into the sand deep enough that only four feet were still visible, then flew a few hundred feet around the outer edge of the pit and did it again.


    This trap needed five points all properly spaced out before it could be activated, which was a bit of a long shot to get up and running, but if I pulled it off, I might very well destroy this dragon instead of just forcing it to retreat. I had two down already, and it was still partially buried under the sand and struggling with the snare I¡¯d implanted in its ribcage.


    I was just setting up the third pole when a crack like a thousand trees breaking came from the pit, followed by a triumphant, guttural roar. I quickly placed the pole and started flying again while peering down at the dragon with a divination centered over the pit. It had ripped away the restraints and was now wallowing in loose sand, trying to extract enough of its body to climb free. With only one forelimb, it was having some trouble.


    I dropped the fourth pole in place and oriented it in the right direction. One more to go, just ten seconds. The dragon finally ripped its hind legs free and shook loose sand out from between its bones. There wasn¡¯t a lot of room in the pit to spread its wings, but then, it didn¡¯t really need to. It crouched down, cat-like, and pounced on the wall.


    Claws ten feet long dug through the sand and stone to find purchase while it flared its wings as best it could. I zipped through the air overhead, cutting across the pit instead of circling around it to save myself a second. The final pole materialized in my hand as I closed in on the last spot, but before I could drive it into the ground, the crack of stone filled my ears.


    The dragon hadn¡¯t escaped the pit. Instead, its weight had been too great, and whatever chunk of stone it had driven its claws into hadn¡¯t been up to the task of supporting it. Rather than leverage itself out of the pit, the dragon slid back down, causing a miniature avalanche of sand and stone. That would have been fine, except in doing so, it had caused one of the poles to shift out of place.


    I dropped the fifth pole in one smooth motion and darted back across the pit to rescue the wayward pole before it could slide into the pit, only to pull up short when a beam of mana shot out from between the dragon¡¯s jaws. It missed me by a hair, and only because I¡¯d sensed it coming at the last second and stopped short of flying into it.


    The pole tumbled into the pit. I watched it slip into a free fall, then winced as the metal clinked against a chunk of stone in the wall and went spinning off. If I could have grabbed it with telekinesis, I would have. That might have salvaged my plan. But instead of doing that, I was busy dodging another death beam from the dragon.


    It leaped again, and this time, there wasn¡¯t enough sand in the way to stop it. The dragon bellowed as it clung to its perch, then jumped again. I barely managed to fly out of the way as its massive wings spread to their full length and pulled it back into the sky, my attempted trap left worthless below on the ground.

 Book 4, Chapter 64

    It should have been impossible for a battle with a titanic undead dragon to feel tedious, but honestly, that¡¯s how it was. Without Averin or anyone else here to control it, and with its limited number of ways to express its mana, it really wasn¡¯t that hard to outmaneuver it in the air while I whittled it down. The worst part of it was the knowledge that even a single mistake could end up with me absorbing so much kinetic force simply from impacting its body that it could kill me.


    Ten minutes turned into twenty as we danced through the sky. I was forced to abandon casting master-tier spells in favor of attacks that I could recycle all the mana from, which slowed down my progress even further. The worst part of it was when Querit unexpectedly appeared in town and decided to help kill off the attacking zombies. The surge of mana he put out drew the dragon¡¯s attention and required some quick thinking on my part to get it focused back on me, even though we were miles away from the town at the time.


    Other than that, I splintered bones one spell at a time, leaving them scorched and scratched as I slowly broke down the web of necrotic energy tying them together. When I could, I took shots at its core, but rupturing an undead¡¯s core didn¡¯t work like it would on a living person. The dragon didn¡¯t feel pain. It wasn¡¯t incapacitated by the spell. If anything, springing a metaphorical leak helped it reinforce the magic animating it since it just pulled the loose mana into the spell.


    I found that acid worked the best, especially the kind I¡¯d produced with alchemy. Stored in fragile glass flasks, each one I tagged the dragon with clung to its frame and slowly ate through whatever bones they happened to break against. They were a constant drain on the monster, one that wasn¡¯t going to fizzle out anytime soon.


    Finally, I saw an opportunity to end the fight once and for all. If I was really lucky, the monster wouldn¡¯t be getting back up. I¡¯d been focusing a lot of effort on pummeling its ribs, trying to break them off to disrupt the net of necrotic energy surrounding them, and a telekinetically hurled boulder as we skimmed a hundred feet or so off the ground proved to be the last bit of effort needed to succeed.


    Bone splintered and cracked, then a thirty-foot chunk of rib snapped and crashed into the desert below. Before the animating magic could crawl over that hole and seal it up, I darted in. A claw slashed through the air at me, but I had the dragon¡¯s measure now. It was fast, but I could dodge its attacks as long as I paid attention.


    Then I was inside its rib cage, ironically safe from practically anything the dragon could do to me. Instead, I had to worry about necrotic energy literally sloughing the flesh off my body as it tried to kill and reanimate me as an undead. Against any normal-sized beast, the aura wasn¡¯t all that great, but in the heart of a gargantuan dragon, it was a very real risk.


    With part of my mind devoted to protecting myself¡ªand once again, I was thankful that my stage five mana core upgrade insulated me from harmful magic¡ªI started slamming spell after spell into the dragon¡¯s core. There was nowhere it could run to escape me now, no attack it could make to distract me. Its limbs scrabbled against its chest, unable to reach between the ribs to pluck me loose.


    Its head turned on a serpentine neck and breathed deadly mana at me, but that just got sucked up by its necrotic coating, strengthening it but utterly failing to reach me. In vain, the dragon started flailing and shaking, perhaps thinking to jar me loose from my perch. I smiled grimly and held myself in place while I tore at its core.


    The important thing to know about undead was that their mana cores were different from living monsters. They couldn¡¯t produce mana, but they could process ambient mana much, much faster, and store significantly large quantities of it since filling their whole bodies didn¡¯t cripple them with pain like it would a living being. That was one of the big reasons attacking the dragon¡¯s core hadn¡¯t been my initial strategy.


    But now, I¡¯d thinned out its protections in addition to incapacitating huge swaths of its body. Not only that, but I¡¯d regenerated a significant amount of mana during the fight. It was nothing compared to what the valley made for me, of course, but it meant I had enough to infest the dragon¡¯s mana core with a spell I¡¯d been saving for the right moment.


    An undead¡¯s mana core functioned on similar principles to a house¡¯s enchanting schema. It needed a constant supply of mana coming in to replace what it used with each passing second, and the spells that kept the body moving were carefully anchored in the core itself. In that way, the core was a battery, and it was possible to disconnect the spells from their source of mana.


    That was a lot easier to do on a zombie than on my current target, but it was the same theory. But since the dragon could neither attack nor escape me while I was safely ensconced in its rib cage, the only thing I needed to worry about was it turning on New Alkerist to force me back out into the open again. Without a handler, I doubted it was smart enough to think of that.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Just to be safe, I disconnected its wings first. Immediately, the dragon took a nosedive into the sand, rattling my teeth with the impact and leaving me in the darkness as the sheer weight of the monster partially buried it. It lumbered back to its three remaining feet, only to stagger when I clipped the thread tying the front limb that was still intact to its animation spell.


    The dragon¡¯s skull slammed down into the dirt. Its weight was too great for its back legs to support it that way, especially without its wings functional. This wouldn¡¯t last long, unfortunately. The spells repaired themselves automatically, as long as there was still mana to consume. That was all part of the plan, though; I was hungry for mana myself. I just wanted it to hold still while I latched onto its core like the world¡¯s biggest parasite.


    I wasn¡¯t going to get back all the mana I¡¯d spent on this fight, but that wasn¡¯t the point. The point was to take it from the dragon so that, with nothing left, it would collapse into a regular skeleton again. Then I¡¯d destroy the damn thing so there was no chance Ammun could resurrect it. At least, that was the theory.


    What actually happened was that the dragon¡¯s crash and subsequent belly-drag across the sand taught it that while it couldn¡¯t get through its ribs to attack me, other things could. Even as I started draining its core dry, a never-ending stream of high-speed sand rushed through the ribs and slammed into me. I held my place through a judicious feed of mana into my shield ward, but that much weight wasn¡¯t easy to deal with.


    Worse, I¡¯d actually underestimated the dragon. The thing was just so damn big. Even my more liberal estimates as to the size of its mana core had fallen short, and it had barely used a quarter of its mana over close to forty minutes of nonstop fighting. It would take me hours to steal the rest of the mana, and I honestly wasn¡¯t sure my mana crystal could actually hold it all, even with the slight transference loss figured in.


    It was a moot point. The sandblasting might not have been enough to dislodge me, but it did thin out the web of necrotic energy between its ribs. The instant the dragon regained control of its front leg, it reared up, swung its head down, and blasted another beam of mana into its chest cavity. This time, it wasn¡¯t stymied by its own defenses.


    I channeled some of my stolen mana into a barrier to deflect the mana, but that wasn¡¯t going to hold for long. If and when it failed, I¡¯d do something else. I¡¯d fought too long and too hard to give up my position here now that I¡¯d secured it. The dragon¡¯s death beam ended, but I could feel more mana shooting up the length of its neck so that it could try again.


    Abruptly, its head snapped off to the side as a chunk of stone the size of a building smacked into it. Querit came into view at the edge of one of my divinations, still in his combat frame and flying in the air. Two more boulders floated behind him, an impressive piece of telekinesis. Without hesitation, he launched one and then the other at the dragon¡¯s skull.


    ¡°Keiran!¡± he called out. ¡°Are you alive in there?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± I yelled back. ¡°What are you doing here?¡±


    ¡°Ammun¡¯s invaders are dead. Or re-dead. Whatever. You know what I mean.¡±


    The dragon¡¯s head snapped back around like a whip and unleashed a death beam in Querit¡¯s direction. It passed through him, leaving the golem unharmed. Without a living body to react to the mana in the attack, Querit couldn¡¯t be hurt by necromantic abilities like that, a fact which the dragon was apparently smart enough to figure out for itself since it didn¡¯t try again.


    Unfortunately for it, its wings still weren¡¯t functioning, leaving Querit to float in the air out of reach. He spent mana picking the boulders back up to pummel the dragon with them again and again, which honestly didn¡¯t do much other than distract the monster, but it did give me a few more minutes to drain mana out of it.


    A sudden surge of power shot through the necromantic enchantments holding it together, some sort of emergency response probably triggered by its mana core dipping below a certain threshold. Even as I did my best to stop or at least slow it, I watched cracked bones seal themselves all over its body and missing pieces start to regrow.


    That wasn¡¯t good. If that chunk of blasted-off rib came back, I¡¯d be completely stuck in here. A skeletal dragon¡¯s rib cage made for a fantastic prison, and I wasn¡¯t confident I could blast my way out from the inside without killing myself in the process. Trying to teleport through a field of necrotic energy was an idea better left unexplored, which just left getting clear while I still could.


    The dragon¡¯s wings snapped back out to their full length and it leaped up into the air. Only my own flight magic kept me from tumbling end over end inside its ribs, but it did slow down my escape. I only just barely managed to squeeze past the reforming rib before the necrotic energy washed through the open hole, and even that was more thanks to luck than skill.


    I was vulnerable when I fell through that hole, but the dragon paid no attention to me. It was on the wing, flying directly back to the still-open portal hanging in the sky a few miles away and not even bothering to respond to Querit¡¯s final attacks before it got out of range.


    ¡°Looks like we drove it off,¡± the golem said as he came to a stop next to me.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, frowning as I watched its retreating form. ¡°Why, though?¡±


    ¡°It knew it couldn¡¯t win?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°The whole point was to buy Ammun time. It could have kept fighting, but maybe it didn¡¯t need to. Maybe Ammun finished doing whatever he was up to. I thought it¡¯d take a few more hours.¡±


    ¡°We weren¡¯t able to scry the summit again,¡± Querit said. ¡°Maybe if you try, you¡¯ll have better luck.¡±


    I nodded. ¡°How¡¯s the village?¡±


    ¡°Untouched, somehow.¡±


    ¡°Good enough for now,¡± I said. ¡°Let¡¯s head back to the valley and see if we can figure out what Ammun¡¯s doing.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 65

    ¡°What did you do with the diviner?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Didn¡¯t seem like you wanted him left unsupervised at the valley, so I brought him with me to New Alkerist,¡± Querit told me.


    I wasn¡¯t thrilled about the idea of a captured enemy combatant in my family¡¯s town, especially with neither of us there to keep an eye on him. In Querit¡¯s defense, though, it wasn¡¯t like he knew why I was keen on protecting the town. And he was right; I didn¡¯t want anyone in my demesne without me being there.


    ¡°Are you sure you want to stay involved in this?¡±


    The golem shrugged. ¡°You¡¯ve done a lot for me. I can do a bit more to help you out. Besides, we still need to finish figuring out lossless casting on enchantments and inscriptions.¡±


    Left unsaid was the fact that outside of Ammun¡¯s tower, there was nowhere else on the planet that was likely to have workshops and labs as well-equipped as mine were, or anywhere with ambient mana. Querit had seen a few places out in the world now; he knew that I hadn¡¯t lied to him about the mana all being gone.


    All things considered, I probably wouldn¡¯t get a better ally than Querit. He was far more competent than any mage outside of a few of Ammun¡¯s elites, and even though his base magical abilities were somewhat lacking in variety, the frame system he¡¯d built fixed that. I had some hopes that he¡¯d start free casting more spells rather than relying on a prebuilt rune structure to make the magic happen, but that wasn¡¯t a priority right now.


    If he wanted to stick around and keep helping me, then I¡¯d let him. Other than getting tagged with that enchantment that had allowed Ammun to spy on us, he¡¯d been nothing but helpful. And even that had worked out in our favor in the end. More than half of Ammun¡¯s diviners were dead, and his scrying hall was completely destroyed.


    Hopefully, that would be enough of a setback to keep him occupied for a while, as long as I could trash the summit, too. That job had a short clock on it, and Ammun knew I¡¯d be coming. I wouldn¡¯t be launching any surprise attacks this time.


    That meant I needed to advance my core to stage seven and form my astral body, which would take a few hours. The question was whether or not I actually had that much time to waste. I could be at the summit inside of twenty minutes, but it wouldn¡¯t matter if I was too late to stop Ammun from seizing control of a moon and raining fiery destruction down on me from the heavens.


    ¡°Collect our traitorous diviner and meet me back at the valley,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll go ahead and see if I can get a look at what Ammun¡¯s doing. We only lost an hour or so, so there should still be time to spare.¡±


    * * *


    When Querit caught up to me ten minutes later, I was standing in front of a mirror the size of a wall that showed Ammun¡¯s fake mountain. The golem took one look at the mirror and said, ¡°That¡¯s not good.¡±


    ¡°Not at all. And it looks like teleportation inside is being blocked by wards.¡±


    Curled around the peak of the mountain was a familiar-looking skeletal dragon. Already, pieces of it were regenerating, including the front claw I¡¯d disintegrated during the opening moments of our first battle. It wasn¡¯t completely restored yet, but considering it had been less than half an hour since the monster had retreated, that was still impressive.


    ¡°So how will you get inside?¡±


    ¡°The old-fashioned way,¡± I said. ¡°A lot of explosive magic.¡±


    Querit studied the mountain for a few seconds. ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯ll work.¡±


    ¡°Not by itself, no,¡± I admitted. ¡°Whatever faults he might have, Ammun does good work when it comes to warding stone. I know the wards are incomplete, however, which means there are some weaknesses I can exploit.¡±


    ¡°And how do you know that?¡±


    ¡°Because if he¡¯d done it right, we wouldn¡¯t be able to scry inside.¡±


    Ashinder stood behind Querit, keeping quiet and out of the way. He was clearly out of his depth, but I suspected he was more than willing to help if he could. Destroying Ammun was what he wanted, after all. He frowned at the mirror and opened his mouth like he was about to speak, then paused, shook his head, and closed it again.


    ¡°Something to add to the conversation?¡± I asked without turning around.


    ¡°I¡¯m probably wrong,¡± the diviner said. ¡°But I think there¡¯s a tunnel that leads inside.¡±


    That could be helpful, but every last inch of it would probably also be trapped. That was something we could check for, if the tunnel existed and if we could find it. Even if I had to fight my way through a deadly hallway, it might still be faster than destroying that dragon so I could break into a hollow mountain.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    ¡°Why do you think that, and where do you think it is?¡±


    ¡°The diviners would come and go by portal for our shifts, but no one else ever used the damn thing. I put a recording divination on it myself and observed it for over a week. No supplies ever came through. No food. No raw materials. Nothing. Whatever the engineers have been using, they didn¡¯t get it through that portal, and I just don¡¯t believe it was all fabricated onsite.¡±


    ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be the first time Ammun had pieces physically transported,¡± Querit said.


    ¡°Right. The collar we broke had the same problem. Makes sense. But he¡¯s less than a day away from completing this, so it¡¯s entirely possible that he¡¯s already gotten everything he needs delivered and has sealed up the tunnel.¡± I swung the divination around to circle the whole mountain a few times, looking for clues, but nothing jumped out at me. ¡°So, where would this hypothetical tunnel be?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Ashinder told me. ¡°I can¡¯t even say for sure if it exists. It¡¯s just speculation because I noticed only people were using the portal. No supplies ever came through."


    "I developed a few surveying spells to help find things underground," Querit offered.


    ¡°You did? When?¡±


    ¡°I started working on them when you got obsessed with digging for that moon core, but I couldn¡¯t ever get them to work with the kind of range you needed. If we¡¯re just looking for a tunnel ten or twenty feet below ground level, though, they should work.¡±


    ¡°It could be deeper,¡± Ashinder argued.


    ¡°But the entrance has to connect to the surface at some point,¡± Querit said. ¡°Even if the tunnel itself is out of range, we could find where it exits to the surface and trace it back.¡±


    ¡°Not with that dragon sitting there we can¡¯t,¡± I said. ¡°Even if it left, could we do it fast enough?¡±


    We were coming at this from the wrong angle. Instead of trying to find an entrance that could be anywhere in a few square miles around the mountain ¨C and even that was assuming it existed in the first place ¨C a better idea would be to map out the interior of the mountain. If there was a tunnel, I could find where it ended and follow it back to the beginning.


    Or rather, Querit and Ashinder could do that. I had something else to go take care of. I outlined my plan to the golem, who nodded thoughtfully and gestured to Ashinder to step up and help. ¡°You¡¯re going to¡­¡± Querit started to say to me before he trailed off.


    ¡°Yes. We¡¯ve delayed too long, and I need the boost to my offensive capabilities anyway. It should only take five or six hours.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll work on this. I¡¯ll come get you if it looks like we don¡¯t have enough time.¡±


    If we were lucky, we hadn¡¯t been delayed so much by Ammun¡¯s attacks that he could finish his moon weapon in the next few hours. Losing my demesne would be bad enough; losing the resonance point before I could advance to stage seven would be a disaster.


    I left the two of them to work on scrying the interior of the summit, hopefully without Ammun detecting their scrying spells again. As long as he wasn¡¯t actively interfering, I doubted the wards would slow them down much now that I¡¯d gotten the spell past the outer layer. It had barely been an hour since our last attempt, not nearly enough time for Ammun to do any upgrades.


    The resonance point looked exactly the same as I¡¯d left it. I teleported myself directly underneath it and studied it for a minute, just to make sure nothing had been damaged during the fight with the invading mages ¨C not that I thought that was possible. If a resonance point broke, anybody with the barest hint of the ability to sense mana would know it.


    It was unharmed and still holding the local mana flows in shape to mirror the Astral Realm. With everything perfectly matched up, I reached into my core, my own personal gateway into the Astral Realm that supplied me with mana. Doing this was an incredibly difficult task that I would have preferred to take on while completely fresh, but Ammun had put too much pressure on me to wait any longer.


    My mana wasn¡¯t excluded from the resonance point, meaning that on the other side of that internal gateway was a perfect replica of my mana core. All that was left was to build an astral body around it, something that would be tied to me and move where I moved, only on the other side of the border between the physical world and the Astral Realm.


    Forging that connection was somewhat like tying puppet strings to my body. They connected to every part of me and threaded back through my core, where my astral counterpart was slowly being woven together from those very same threads. It was a slow, delicate process, each individual thread taking only seconds to create, but I had to do it thousands of times. Every muscle, every bone, and every organ needed dozens of threads, sometimes more.


    It wasn¡¯t something I could have done without extensive knowledge of my own anatomy or, more easily, divinations to help me look inside myself and ensure I was connecting everything correctly. Honestly, it was probably both facets that allowed me to do it at all, let alone as quickly as I did. I sat there with my eyes closed, focused entirely inward, and took a process that should have taken a day at minimum and did it in a quarter of that time.


    It wasn¡¯t until I was done that I allowed myself to truly feel the change. It was hard to describe how it felt, to be connected to an astral body again. My movements had weight to them, like I was underwater. Currents of mana were dragged along behind me, a sort of resistance that didn¡¯t really exist. Trying to explain it to someone who hadn¡¯t experienced it for themselves was a waste of time, and it had been so many centuries since I¡¯d felt it for myself that I¡¯d all but forgotten the sensation.


    Hopefully, I wouldn¡¯t need much time to get used to it. Stage eight was all about detaching my astral body from myself so that it could function independently as a mage¡¯s shadow, but until that time, I could look forward to a massively increased flow of mana into my body, as well as the strength of all my spells more than doubled.


    ¡°Let¡¯s see how that dragon stands up to me now,¡± I said. My mana was almost completely drained now, but it took bare minutes to refill my core and my mana crystal. I¡¯d expended all the resources I¡¯d stockpiled to fight it during our first encounter, but I was still more confident in the rematch now that I¡¯d formed my astral body. My entire being was a conduit to the Astral Realm now, not just my core. The fight would go very differently this time.


    I teleported back to my scrying room. Querit glanced up at me, then did a double take. ¡°Wow,¡± was all he said about the subject, though.


    ¡°Tell me what you¡¯ve found,¡± I ordered.

 Book 4, Chapter 66

    The dragon wasn¡¯t the only thing I¡¯d spent time preparing for. A confrontation with Ammun seemed inevitable, and since it would almost certainly be in his demesne, I¡¯d invested some resources into building a few disposables to help even the odds. Unless I managed to fully rebuild my core back to stage nine, however, victory was likely out of my reach. All these trinkets would do was slow Ammun down, maybe long enough to accomplish some other goal and allow me to escape after.


    Those were already loaded into my phantom space. They¡¯d been there since the day I¡¯d created them, on the off chance I¡¯d somehow run into the lich anywhere else. I wasn¡¯t expecting it, but I needed to be ready just in case. Of course, when Ammun actually had shown up, he¡¯d stayed for a matter of seconds before retreating again, thus rendering all my preparations moot.


    That would not be the case this time. In fact, this was possibly my best chance to get rid of him. We¡¯d be meeting on a sort of neutral ground, neither of us empowered by our demesnes. If there was ever a chance to defeat him, it was now, assuming I wasn¡¯t entirely drained of mana from fighting off his dragon. It was no coincidence he¡¯d recalled his most powerful minion.


    Fighting both at the same time was a nonstarter. Even dealing with Averin had been a challenge until I¡¯d managed to take the dragon out of the equation for a minute. Against someone like Ammun, the dragon would be the easier half of the battle. I couldn¡¯t do it, not as I currently was, but if I could get to them one at a time, I thought there was a chance of victory.


    Unfortunately, Querit did not have good news for me. They¡¯d mapped out the summit in as thorough detail as I could ask for, and they hadn¡¯t found an access point. Perhaps more importantly, they hadn¡¯t seen Ammun. We could only assume the lich was moving around inside the summit, which struck me as strange. I¡¯d assumed he¡¯d be guarding his ritual circles personally if he was going to be there at all, and where else could possibly be more important?


    ¡°Maybe he had to return to his tower to regain his mana,¡± I said as the three of us peered at the illusion.


    ¡°Maybe,¡± Querit said, but I could tell he wasn¡¯t any more convinced than I was.


    It was more likely that the lich was there, using some sort of magic to hide from divinations. I couldn¡¯t afford to assume otherwise. ¡°I¡¯m going now,¡± I said.


    ¡°Do you want help?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± There was very little Querit could do in this fight. ¡°Keep an eye on things here. Or maybe teleport somewhere else for a little while, just in case things go poorly.¡±


    ¡°Um,¡± Ashinder said.


    ¡°Oh, right,¡± I added. ¡°And find somewhere to stick our new friend where he won¡¯t get hurt and we can retrieve him later.¡±


    I pulled myself through my demesne and appeared on my teleportation platform. As tempting as it was to stand there discussing strategy and options, I didn¡¯t know how much time I had left. What I did know was that the longer that dragon sat there, the harder it would be to beat when I showed up. I needed to destroy it, then pummel the mountain until I cracked it open, then stop Ammun by virtue of holding him at bay long enough to break all his toys, and finally, I needed to escape with my life.


    I focused on the first teleportation beacon in my chain of jumps and let the magic whisk me away.


    * * *


    The summit looked exactly like it had in my scrying mirror, with the only difference being that the dragon wrapping itself around its peak was looking significantly better. Most of the cracks and spurs in its bones had disappeared, and the animating necrotic net that held its bones together was a rich, vibrant indigo again.


    I appeared in the sky four miles away from my target, hopefully out of range of any divination wards Ammun had set up. This was the maximum distance I could get for the spell I was planning on using, so if this didn¡¯t work, my only remaining option would be to get in close and reenact my morning playing with the dragon.


    Siege magic wasn¡¯t really my specialty, but I could cast it as well as anyone. One part transmutation, one part conjuration, the spell dragged up huge chunks of raw earth to use as material, reshaped it into something resembling a steel caltrop the size of a house with spikes eight feet long, and launched it a considerable distance to crash into targets at high speeds.


    The best part of it was that I could stockpile ammo before I ever flung the first attack, so I spent twenty minutes building shots. By the time I was done, the ground a thousand feet below me was littered with a few dozen of them. The first one rose into the air, guided by my magic, then launched itself across the miles to slam into the dragon with more force than I could have mustered yesterday thanks to my astral body working in concert with me.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    By the time the first one struck, I had six more in the air behind it. Not all of them were going to hit the dragon, not with a flight time of about thirty seconds, but those that didn¡¯t would still bombard the mountain itself. I needed to crack that open anyway, so I didn¡¯t consider it wasted ammunition.


    The first star hit the dragon square on one of the wing joints, ripping off the limb and throwing it down the side of the mountain. It also slammed into the dragon¡¯s spine and sent it sprawling. Only the monster¡¯s grip on the mountain peak prevented it from being ripped free to tumble after its wing.


    Then the second part of the attack took effect. The steel was actually hollow¡ªwhich was the only reason I was able to make so many¡ªand as it crumpled, it released the magic captured inside. Explosions bloomed, throwing fire and debris thousands of feet into the air. Among that debris were rocks and bone chunks.


    Then the next half a dozen stars slammed into the dragon¡¯s position, creating a deafening cacophony and completely concealing the entire peak of the mountain in billowing clouds of dust. I couldn¡¯t tell if the dragon was still in one piece or not, but I suspected it was. That was why I loaded the next exploding steel star up for firing with the expectation that I¡¯d be trying to hit a moving target. There were probably going to be quite a few misses in the next minute or two.


    Siege magic, unfortunately, was not very good at hitting things that weren¡¯t buildings or other stationary targets. Dragons might meet the size requirements, but they were considerably nimbler than the average castle.


    When the dragon didn¡¯t appear out of the dust cloud in the next thirty seconds, I resumed my bombardment. Unlike the spells I¡¯d been using this morning, forming my astral body allowed me to really take advantage of concentrated, high-density mana ¨C what was commonly referred to as heavy mana. A stage five mage could survive in areas of heavy mana. A stage seven could thrive in them.


    Some spells just weren¡¯t possible to create with normal mana. They needed more mana than their rune structures could hold, and the runes couldn¡¯t be expanded on to provide them without the whole thing destabilizing and collapsing prior to completion of the spell. There were workarounds, usually involving multiple people collaborating to hold everything together manually¡ªthat was the whole basis for ritualized siege magic¡ªbut nothing worked quite as well as using actual heavy mana.


    Exploding star was like star fall in a lot of ways, except that because I¡¯d transmuted actual dirt and stone into metal, I could launch the spell for miles and miles before it impacted its target. The conjuration magic suspended inside would have unraveled in seconds if it hadn¡¯t been forged of heavy mana, long before reaching the target.


    There was a drawback, of course. Heavy mana was difficult to use. It sapped my willpower and devastated my mana reserves, but in some situations, it was the best option. I¡¯d rather take a hit to my resources now and take out the dragon quickly than get pulled into a long, drawn-out fight that ended with me dead or fleeing after Ammun joined in.


    With that in mind, I started launching more of the stars. If the dragon had moved, it was crawling down the side of the mountain, and I already had scrying spells circling the whole thing. I didn¡¯t see it. With luck, I¡¯d crippled it and left it unable to flee or advance to attack. If not, well, it would take a lot of effort to blow up the side of a mountain.


    Star after star landed, so many that my shield ward activated briefly to protect me from the sound of it. At some point, I must have blown up enough layers of stone that I hit the interior wards. That explosion was truly spectacular, cutting through the noise and rising dust to give me my first glimpse of a clear sky beyond the strike zone as a rolling wave of mana expanded outward from the impact.


    It also showed me what was left of the dragon. A few scattered bones dotted the mountainside, all of them broken and giving little indication of which part they¡¯d originally been. I briefly spotted a chunk of what I recognized as the dragon¡¯s skull, and a bit of horn wedged into a ravine partway down the side of the mountain, but then a fresh cloud of rising dust obscured it again.


    I let out a deep sigh and regarded my final three exploding stars. It might be better to save them to throw at Ammun, but they¡¯d probably be little better than a distraction. Unlike crippled, wingless, skeletal dragons, he could very easily get himself out of the way. The better use of these things was to blow up more of the mountain, hopefully granting me a quick way in and destroying some important infrastructure at the same time.


    When the last one was in the air, I spun up a few divinations to investigate the damage. I wasn¡¯t quite through the stone yet, but it looked like I¡¯d broken the wards in that area and they were having a hard time repairing themselves. I doubted I¡¯d drained the ward stone for the mountain, or even that there was only a single one of them, but as long as I moved in right behind the explosions, I could get inside before the wards sealed things back up.


    I gave it thirty seconds after the last star exploded to let debris finish falling, then flew directly in. My magic helped me see where I was going once I was blind inside the dust cloud and I easily slipped through the breach. Based on the display Querit had crafted for me, I was somewhere in the southeast corner of the complex, probably bare minutes away from the main silo of ritual chambers. Ammun would show up soon to stop me, or so I assumed.


    Considering the bombardment of his mountain, he had to know I was here. His dragon was gone, leaving only himself to defend the weapon. This wasn¡¯t his demesne, but that didn¡¯t mean it wasn¡¯t loaded with wards and traps to give him an advantage anyway.


    Except, when I started looking around, I didn¡¯t find anything like that. The outer wards were still trying to repair themselves, but the inner corridors had nothing more than basic light spells threaded through them. I quickly found the portal frame that the diviners had been using, only to see that it had been disconnected from the summit¡¯s mana supply.


    Everything was quiet. Nobody was around. The place appeared to be abandoned. There were no traps; Ammun didn¡¯t pop out from behind a corner with death beams shooting from his hands. There was just¡­ nothing.


    What the hell was going on here?

 Book 4, Chapter 67

    The main silo of the summit was undamaged by my attack, but was just as empty as everywhere else. Theories whirled through my mind, one after another. Was this whole site a decoy? Everything Ammun had thrown at me had been a long series of distractions, and I¡¯d made assumptions as to the purpose. Maybe Ashinder was the world¡¯s best actor, one who¡¯d willingly sacrificed dozens of his coworkers to pull off the con.


    Or maybe I¡¯d been trapped in a mental illusion, like that one mage of Ammun¡¯s had used on me back at Eyrie Peak. I doubted it, especially since none of the telltale signs were there and I¡¯d already tested that theory to confirm there was nothing to break out of while I was exploring. If this was some sort of mind cage, it was the most powerful one I¡¯d ever seen, something that I doubted Ammun could create even with help.


    There was one explanation that I didn¡¯t like, but which I thought was probable. The summit was a true base: an expensive, long-term project with thousands of man-hours and an incalculable amount of mana put into it. It really could reach the moon from the surface of the planet.


    And Ammun had already finished it. But if so, what had he used it on? And how had he done it without us noticing? I found one of those answers in the top chamber of the ritual silo. It was carved into the wall with some sort of spell that had literally melted the stone away. The remnants were a viscous puddle on the floor and I could still feel the heat rising out of the runes.


    It was a clever bit of counter-divination that caused anyone scrying on the location to see something else from the recent past. Ammun must have made it as soon as he¡¯d sent out his dragon to keep me busy. Querit¡¯s scrying probably revealed what had happened hours ago, set to loop over and over again, and he¡¯d never noticed.


    The ward also prevented anyone from looking anywhere else in the past, but that at least I could bypass through the simple expedient of destroying it. Force magic hammered the wall repeatedly until the stone finally cracked and gave way. I made a mental note to study the ward schema reinforcing things around here; my own methods were durable, but this went beyond even that. I suspected I knew how Ammun was doing it and that it was too mana-intensive for casual use, but I wanted to confirm my theory when I had time.


    With the temporal redirection ward broken, I started scrying into the past to see exactly what I¡¯d missed. Had Ammun completed his project? If so, what were the results? And where had everyone gone?


    It started normally enough ¨C diviners took their positions on every floor and worked in conjunction to feed the ritual. I skipped past Ammun¡¯s delivered threats, having already seen those in real time, and moved to what happened after he¡¯d sicced his minions on me. The ritual started pulling mana from the banks stored in the mountain, enormous amounts of it, from what I could tell. One floor at a time, the diviners activated their portions until the entire center of the summit was lit up with magic.


    Ammun stood at the top floor and worked his own magic, something that his counter-divinations obscured from me. I spared a brief moment to wonder how I was even getting this much of a picture, given how strong I knew those wards were, but soon enough, the answer was revealed to me.


    The wards were draining, and Ammun¡¯s mana was too tied up in what he was doing to keep them going. Or perhaps they were just interfering with the divination aspects of the ritual and he¡¯d had no choice but to let them fall. Either way, as things went on, it became clearer and clearer around him.


    About three hours after he¡¯d sent Averin to keep me distracted, the diviners established a link with Yulitar. That was a sight to behold, a new frontier to magic being pushed right before my eyes, but I couldn¡¯t appreciate it. All I could feel was dread at knowing it was too late.


    I kept watching anyway, hoping against hope that I was wrong, that this was just a step in the plan and there was still time to stop it. Maybe Ammun had to build some sort of targeting infrastructure to harness the moon core into a weapon. If not, then I wasn¡¯t sure how my demesne was still in one piece, since I¡¯d obviously been too late to stop all of this.


    Then something unexpected happened: Ammun vanished from the top of the silo. Some of the diviners got excited about that; others merely slumped down in exhaustion. It was a rather mixed reaction that only served to showcase exactly how many people had been forced into helping their undead overlord.


    I wondered if there¡¯d been any serious attempts at destroying him when he¡¯d first woken back up, and, if so, if any of them had succeeded. It was easy to picture a group of rebellious mages fighting back against an archmage lich, breaking his body, and celebrating their victory while mourning their losses, only to have Ammun show back up the next day like nothing had happened. That was the kind of tactic that broke spirits and led to the despair I¡¯d seen in some of the diviners.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    From what I could see, it looked like the outcome of the ritual was a known factor. Nobody looked surprised or confused, at least. Whatever had happened, there had to be clues in the ritual. Unfortunately, the farther back I tried to look, the harder it was to see what the actual beginning of it looked like. I could study the symbols carved into the floor, but that wouldn¡¯t show me the active part the diviners were responsible for.


    In my temporal vision, mana surged down through the silo, hitting each floor in sequence while the diviners screamed in terror. It reached the bottom, then snapped back up to the top, taking every single person with it. I blinked in surprise and pushed my sight back through time to see it again.


    When I still couldn¡¯t figure out what had happened the second time around, I decided I had no choice but to ask some questions. I pulled out my mirror and contacted Querit. When his face appeared, I asked, ¡°Do you still have Ashinder with you?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± the golem said. ¡°I was just about to¡­ Never mind. You need to talk to him?¡±


    ¡°I do,¡± I said. ¡°Ammun¡¯s gone. The diviners are gone. Whatever he was trying to accomplish here, he pulled it off. But I don¡¯t think it was what we theorized, based on the fact that he hasn¡¯t vaporized us already.¡±


    The diviner came into view as Querit manipulated his mirror to expand my field of view outward. Ashinder was standing nearby, his back to the golem while he spoke to a few people I didn¡¯t recognize. ¡°One moment, let me get his attention,¡± Querit said.


    I watched him walk away for a second, then something else caught my eye. A man walked through the background, probably a hundred feet or so away from the mirror. He stopped and eyed the scene curiously, which wasn¡¯t unusual. It wasn¡¯t often a big mirror floated in the air, completely unsupported by anything but magic.


    ¡°It figures,¡± I grumbled. ¡°I should just be happy about it, I suppose.¡±


    ¡°Happy about what?¡± Querit asked as he walked back over.


    ¡°That man behind you wearing the green vest,¡± I said. The golem looked over his shoulder and spotted who I was talking about. ¡°His name is Hyago. I¡¯ve been looking for him for a while now. Can you keep track of him for me until I¡¯m done with what I¡¯m doing here?¡±


    ¡°Does it matter if he knows I¡¯m keeping an eye on him?¡±


    ¡°No. In fact, you should just go approach him openly. He used to work for me, helped create the petrified forest, actually. I have a job offer for him, mostly the same stuff he always did, but he moved while I was distracted with other stuff and I lost track of him.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll let him know as soon as we¡¯re done here.¡±


    ¡°I can maintain the link,¡± I said. ¡°And this is going to be a long conversation. Go ahead and catch up with him now.¡±


    ¡°It is?¡± Ashinder asked. ¡°What are we talking about?¡±


    ¡°We need to go over the technical details of what Ammun had you doing. This ritual obviously doesn¡¯t do what we were originally thinking, and I need to know more about the active portion the diviners had to control to figure out what its actual purpose is. Let¡¯s start with these ignition runes on the bottom floor¡­¡±


    * * *


    ¡°Incredible,¡± I muttered. ¡°It actually works. It¡¯s insane, but it works.¡±


    This whole silo, multiple floors of runes, hundreds of thousands of them on each individual floor and powered by more mana than the valley could produce in a month, served one singular purpose. It was a damned teleportation platform with a single destination: Yulitar itself.


    Ammun was actually up there, standing on the surface of a moon. It was possible that he was looking down on Manoch right now and laughing. He¡¯d done something that should have been impossible, and for some reason, he¡¯d taken a hundred or so people with him. That part didn¡¯t seem voluntary to me, but that didn¡¯t make it any less incredible.


    It also meant something incredibly important. If Ammun was on the moon, he had to have his phylactery with him. There wasn¡¯t enough mana on the planet to stretch a tether that long. Or if there was, it would run out long before he accomplished anything useful. The only logical conclusion was that he¡¯d pulled his phylactery out of hiding.


    That meant that if I could replicate this ritual, I could get up there, kill him, and claim possession of his phylactery. I just needed to figure out how. The mana usage wouldn¡¯t be a problem, at least. As far as I could tell, the massive amounts of mana had been because Ammun had felt the need to take his whole entourage with him. I would be going by myself, meaning I needed a small fraction of what they¡¯d used the first time.


    The more I studied the design, the more I was sure that the diviners who¡¯d bridged the gap between Manoch and Yulitar had just followed Ammun¡¯s orders without any understanding of what they were powering. Now that I knew how the active portion of the ritual worked, or at least the singular fragment of it that Ashinder had been responsible for understanding, I could already see how little of it was actually necessary if the spell wasn¡¯t transporting a group.


    I could make this work. It would be expensive, but presumably, Yulitar¡¯s moon core was intact, and I¡¯d be able to harvest new mana once I got there. There were some risks, but that was true of any plan that involved confronting Ammun. The difference here was that this might be my single best chance to catch the lich and put him down permanently.


    I powered the ritual, one floor at a time. It was difficult holding it all together, but compared to the mana resonance point, it wasn¡¯t the hardest thing I¡¯d done recently. At the top, I stood in the center of the circle, right where Ammun had. The rooms didn¡¯t glow since I didn¡¯t need almost any of those pieces, and with a sudden pulse of mana as the spell completed, I felt myself pulled upwards in defiance of gravity for just a moment before everything went black.

 Book 4, Chapter 68

    For a second, I thought I¡¯d somehow been teleported back to Derro, to the tunnels deep underground where I''d found Querit. A moment later, I started noticing the differences in the room. If nothing else, it was cold, considerably colder than anywhere I¡¯d been since my reincarnation. The air had a lot less dust in it, too.


    The confusing part was that I knew this ritual was a one-way teleportation to the moon. I¡¯d verified the whole thing myself. I even knew that it only worked when the moon was in a certain spot, one that had very little leeway. But, if I was on Yulitar, it looked far, far different than anyone had ever imagined.


    Were there cities on the moon? Did a whole civilization exist up here? That seemed impossible, considering astronomy was a hobby many, many mages indulged in, and there were hundreds of spells that allowed them to peer up into the night sky in great detail. Any city would have to be shrouded in some kind of massive camouflaging illusion to avoid detection.


    Maybe this wasn¡¯t a city, then. It could be something smaller, a singular building or even a camp. Obviously, at some point in the past, mages had figured out how to overcome extreme distances, and the fact that I was here at all was proof that it was possible to not only reach a moon, but to bring supplies and equipment here. Given that, there was no reason to assume those ancient mages hadn¡¯t started the process of colonizing all six moons, at least until one of them had been destroyed.


    Runes glowed on the wall, all in patterns I was intimately familiar with. There were inscriptions for keeping the room clean, for keeping it heated¡ªnot that those seemed to be working properly¡ªfor creating air and cycling it through purifiers, and many other things. There were even complex workings that manipulated gravity. I could only assume it was a whole suite of effects designed for the singular purpose of mimicking life on Manoch.


    The one thing I didn¡¯t see was Ammun or his gaggle of diviners. My first guess was that they were at some kind of control room, and I immediately spun out several scrying spells and sent them out to scour the building for signs of life while I started processing moon mana. It didn¡¯t feel any different than the mana I made myself or harvested from my demesne.


    That was something of a relief. It wasn¡¯t that I¡¯d expected the mana to be different, especially not since I¡¯d already obtained a slab of moon core for my own personal use back home, but absorbing it from a moon still circling the planet was a new and novel experience. If there was ever a set of circumstances that might alter the fundamental nature of mana itself, it was here and now.


    But no, everything appeared to be fine. As far as I could tell, the mana was just regular old mana. It filled the air the way I remembered Manoch being back in the old days ¨C maybe a little bit thinner than normal, but nothing that unusual. And even that thinness could be partially blamed on all the active runes drawing in mana to keep themselves powered, not that I was complaining about that. Generating breathable air and keeping the temperature from being fatally cold were perfectly acceptable uses of mana.


    The diviners found me before I found them. I¡¯d been sitting there for a few minutes, carefully exploring the moon base with my magic to avoid setting off any traps or being spotted by Ammun, when I sensed a foreign scrying spell settle on me. Surprised, I turned to face it fully and quickly cast a tracing spell that would follow it back to its source. Immediately, a vision of a room with an enormous bay window appeared in my mind. The hundred or so diviners were all huddled together there, most of them simply sitting on the floor wherever they could find an out-of-the-way spot to do so. The few that were active and alert were all casting spells, and it was one of those who¡¯d found me.


    Her face paled when she realized that I¡¯d noticed her magic and followed it back. ¡°We¡­ might have a problem,¡± she announced.


    ¡°What kind of problem?¡± one of the other diviners asked.


    ¡°Remember that guy we were spying on? The one that Lord Ammun didn¡¯t want finding out anything about what we were doing?¡±


    ¡°Yeah?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s here.¡±


    That got some attention. A dozen people who¡¯d been slumped over, staring listlessly at the floor between their feet, all snapped upright. Fear spread through the room, and everyone started talking at once.


    Ammun wasn¡¯t with the group, and my own scrying spells hadn¡¯t found him, either. The building was impressively large, three floors at least, with plenty of spaces left for me to check, but the diviners were a good place to start asking questions. I traced out a mental map from me to them, then headed in their direction while I held the connection I¡¯d piggybacked on open.


    While I walked, I listened in on the conversation. I¡¯d gotten a reputation among Ammun¡¯s people as a major threat, certain death if encountered. I wanted to be a bit offended by that; I¡¯d spared plenty of people, after all, but when I considered that I hadn¡¯t let a single one of them return home, it was hard to fault anyone for thinking the way they did.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°I¡¯m not here to kill you,¡± I told them through an audible illusion I remotely cast to their room. ¡°I¡¯m just here for Ammun.¡±


    ¡°How are you even here at all?¡± one of the diviners asked, his voice on the edge of hysterics. ¡°It¡¯s impossible! We¡¯re not even on the planet anymore!¡±


    ¡°Why would you think that I can¡¯t duplicate a spell you¡¯ve cast?¡±


    ¡°There are eighty-seven of us,¡± another diviner protested.


    ¡°And if I¡¯d needed to transport that many people, I probably would have needed some help, too. Just moving myself was much easier.¡±


    ¡°Impossible,¡± the diviner whined again. ¡°Impossible.¡±


    ¡°You keep using that word,¡± I pointed out.


    It wasn¡¯t a very long walk, but I¡¯d still expected them to make a run for it. It was only after I arrived that I discovered why they hadn¡¯t. Ammun had locked them in the room. They literally couldn¡¯t escape, and their attempts at stopping me with their own offensive divinations were pathetic. I barely even noticed the weak mind spikes and sensory snares buzzing around me like a cloud of gnats.


    ¡°Seriously?¡± I asked when I stood outside the door. ¡°You¡¯re actually trapped by this?¡±


    It wasn¡¯t even a master-tier spell. It was barely advanced. This group was dangerously overspecialized in divinations if there wasn¡¯t a single mage in there that could break the seal Ammun had left behind. A basic transmutation could defeat this prison just by targeting one of the walls.


    ¡°We were asked not to move,¡± the diviner who¡¯d found me said.


    ¡°Ordered to on pain of death is more like it,¡± another one muttered.


    ¡°Ah. I see. It¡¯s not that you can¡¯t defeat the magic. It¡¯s that you¡¯re afraid of the consequences if you do.¡±


    I unceremoniously ripped the mana out of the seal on the door and pulled it open, sparing it just a single glance when I realized it was made of the same reflective metal as that combat frame I¡¯d found Querit in. I never had found the time to investigate that more thoroughly with everything else going on.


    ¡°Now then,¡± I said in my physical voice. ¡°I¡¯d like to ask you a few questions.¡±


    A cloud of ice barbs distorted and shattered against my shield ward while an orb of solid force smacked against it and was deflected at an angle. No less than three different mages tried to puncture my mana core while a dozen of them cooperatively cast a mind crush spell in an attempt to render me insensate.


    I spared a moment to top up the mana reserves in my shield ward and took a second step into the room, only to be greeted with a burst of fire aimed directly at my face. ¡°Now that¡¯s just stupid,¡± I said. ¡°Are you trying to suffocate us?¡±


    ¡°Better than letting you torture and kill us,¡± a diviner snarled as he pulled together another powerful conjuration.


    Foolishly, he¡¯d chosen a spell that took several seconds to cast while standing mere feet from me. I absently reached out with a tendril of mana and twisted the spell¡¯s framework so hard that the whole thing snapped into pieces, then I repeated the action to six other mages doing the same thing.


    ¡°Look, I¡¯m really not here to hurt you. I don¡¯t care about you at all. I just need to know where Ammun is and what he¡¯s trying to do up here.¡±


    ¡°We don¡¯t know where he is,¡± someone said.


    I snorted. ¡°Oh, come on. Who would believe that? A group of diviners trapped in a locked room with nothing to do but use their magic to look around, and you¡¯re telling me you don¡¯t know where your boss is?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s not in this building. He took Ergl and went¡­¡± the diviner trailed off and waved a hand at the giant wall of glass. Beyond it was an endless expanse of fish-belly white stone that eventually faded off into the darkness.


    ¡°Ammun went for a walk on the surface of the moon?¡± I asked. ¡°Huh¡­ okay. Why? And who¡¯s Ergl?¡±


    ¡°His personal golem,¡± the diviner explained.


    I wondered if Querit would be offended or find the comparison hilarious. Maybe it would be better to avoid telling him.


    ¡°And as to why Lord Ammun does anything he does¡­ He¡¯s not in the habit of explaining his plans to us.¡±


    That sounded about right. I¡¯d interrogated enough people in Ammun¡¯s organization to know that they rarely had more than unfounded speculations. Still, I¡¯d been hoping these particular people would have some insight into what was going on since they¡¯d been important enough to drag up to the moon.


    Or had they been? The spell ritual they¡¯d used had called for that many people and had certainly pulled mana from them to power it, but why would Ammun bring them up here if he was just going to leave them behind? There had to be a reason. He¡¯d built an entire mountain to house the silo with the long-range teleportation ritual.


    It couldn¡¯t be as simple as him not being able to puzzle out the ritual and modify it for use by a single person. He¡¯d managed to make it to archmage and then transform himself into a lich. That implied a level of competency that exceeded such a simple task.


    Come to think of it, how had he managed to transition to lichdom? That wasn¡¯t something I could picture my old apprentice managing on his own. And he¡¯d stolen a bunch of my ward schema to use on his tower, too. Every spell I¡¯d seen him cast had been powerful, but also brutally straightforward. The cleverest thing I¡¯d personally seen him do was use a decoy phylactery in our first confrontation. I¡¯d only been fooled because it was real, just not attuned to him.


    Was it possible that Ammun had just stolen a bunch of spell designs from that insurrectionist faction who¡¯d enslaved a moon core a thousand years ago and wasn¡¯t smart enough to figure out how they actually worked? Had I been giving him far too much credit this entire time?


    What did that say about me if my theory was right?


    Regardless of whether or not Ammun really was a big dumb metaphorical hammer who¡¯d been propped up to his current level of power by unknown¡ªand probably long dead¡ªbackers, he was still a threat now. Whatever his goal here was, I needed to figure it out, find him, and put a stop to it. There was far too much potential mana up here to let him have free rein of it.


    ¡°Which way did he go?¡± I asked. When no one spoke up, I snapped. ¡°You¡¯re going to tell me. I don¡¯t believe for a second that not one of you at least looked out the window to watch him leave. Now. Which. Way.¡±

 Book 4, Chapter 69

    Once I really started pushing, I found four different diviners willing to admit that they¡¯d spied on Ammun using wide-area scries that wouldn¡¯t be passively detected. None of them knew where he¡¯d stopped, but they all independently confirmed which direction he¡¯d set out in. My own brief divinations centered in that area showed me that it wouldn¡¯t be too difficult to track him, if for no other reason than he was maintaining his temporal scrambling wards. It was easy¡ªbut expensive¡ªto sweep an area with a temporal scry and follow the trail of where I couldn¡¯t see into the past.


    That left me with the problem of what to do with the diviners. They were all low on mana from the ritual, but recovering rapidly. The ones who¡¯d attacked me were more or less completely tapped out, which meant I wouldn¡¯t get a better opportunity to slaughter them all without resistance. That was certainly a possibility, but I preferred not to leave a pile of corpses in the area when I was about to engage in a battle with a lich.


    I could burn them, but that seemed like a short-sighted plan with the most likely result being suffocating myself and leaving a partially charred pile of bodies behind for Ammun to find when he got back. The lack of air certainly wouldn¡¯t hurt him if the runes hadn¡¯t regenerated it by the time he returned. The only thing I¡¯d accomplish was stranding him up here.


    There was an idea. Ammun obviously didn¡¯t need these people to do whatever he was up here to do. As far as I could tell, he¡¯d only brought them along because the ritual he was using was designed to pull a large group of people with him. Its mana costs and complexity were reflections of that fact. What could Ammun do if I simply took his mages and left him here?


    Well, he could do whatever he¡¯d come here to do, which could very well include tapping into Yulitar¡¯s core and firing catastrophic mana beams down onto the surface of Manoch. At the very least, I¡¯d need to stay behind to interfere with Ammun, but sending his minions back to the planet was a good way to get rid of them without leaving potential weapons for him to claim.


    ¡°Alright,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯ve all been poking around this place just like me. Who knows where the ritual silo to get us back home is?¡±


    ¡°In the center,¡± one of the leaders of the group said. Most of the diviners had justifiably shied away from having anything to do with me, but a few of the stronger ones had either volunteered or had the responsibility foisted on them. ¡°It¡¯s the only place with enough height to set it all up.¡±


    I hadn¡¯t found it myself, but I trusted it was where they said it was. It also explained why Ammun had locked everyone in here. He didn¡¯t want them trying to go home without him. ¡°Right, we¡¯re heading there. Everyone on your feet!¡±


    A wave of fear rolled through the assembled mages, probably at the thought of their leader punishing them for disobeying orders. Protests started coming at me from every angle, but I silenced them with a burst of raw mana. ¡°This isn¡¯t a debate,¡± I said. ¡°If you don¡¯t want to die here, get walking.¡±


    They were hesitant. They dragged their feet. They tried to come up with excuses to delay. But in the end, they obeyed. I walked along at the end of the line, my very obviously placed divinations keeping track of everyone I couldn¡¯t physically see. ¡°And no magic,¡± I announced as we filed out of the room. ¡°Focus on recovering your mana reserves so we can cast the ritual to get everyone back home.¡±


    I was almost surprised to see no one fighting me on that, but not once did I detect any stealthy telepathic messages between them. No one was casting out scrying spells to look around, or attempting to contact Ammun. Though, when I thought about it, that part made sense. That would essentially be telling on themselves if they let him know I¡¯d moved them. Sure, he might reward whoever did it. Or he might show back up and kill a few people.


    Unlike back on Manoch, there were no mana banks to draw power from here. The ambient mana of the moon was enough to make the ritual work, so all we were waiting on was the mages I¡¯d forced into participating to recover enough of their personal supplies to play their parts. While they did that, I set the leaders of the groups to organizing each floor of the silo. Roughly seventeen mages occupied each ring, with three of them at the very top platform where I stood.


    The rune structures were slightly different, mostly to account for the more diffuse power source and the fact that this silo was designed to send us back to the planet. The differences were minute enough that I was comfortable making a few on-the-spot modifications to suit my purposes, ones that I was reasonably certain none of them could understand well enough to spot.


    Eventually, I got them moving and took my place¡ªAmmun¡¯s place¡ªat the top of the formation, surrounded by my three chosen diviners. ¡°This is going to work a bit differently than the ritual you used to get up here,¡± I told them. ¡°As far as I can tell, this has a locked location that I¡¯m just going to assume doesn¡¯t exist anymore, so we¡¯ll be redirecting that to some empty space outside the tower.¡±If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    ¡°That¡¯s this part here that we¡¯re bypassing?¡± the diviner on my left asked.


    I glanced down at the rune structure carved into the floor panel and nodded. ¡°And also this section over here.¡±


    That was a lie. Both of those pieces locked onto what I was mentally referring to as the ¡®bridge¡¯ target. That was supposed to be me. The spell functioned by pushing that one person first and using them as a relay beacon to drag everyone else along behind them. I¡¯d cut the mana costs on my own version by simply severing everything after the bridge portion. There was no need to build something that allowed everyone else to cross if I was the only one going.


    In this case, I didn¡¯t want to go, so I was redirecting that role onto these three guys. If I could have trusted one of them to play the role of the ritual director, it would have been even easier, but since I still had to do that, splitting the bridge amongst three other people was the best way I¡¯d come up with to make the ritual work on short notice.


    We got started, and the mana slowly built up in the silo. Seeing it through temporal scrying was one thing, but experiencing it live was an entirely different experience. The amount of mana going into this ritual was, frankly, incredibly dangerous, and there were far too many potential points of failure for me to be comfortable here. I honestly wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d survive if things went wrong.


    I worked hard to make sure that didn¡¯t happen, which included reaching out multiple times to correct bad mana flows on various levels. Nothing catastrophic occurred, and it was clear that this group had practiced this ritual more than a few times. Most of the errors came about in the parts that were different from what they were used to. That was a small portion of the overall ritual, and within half an hour of starting, things were ready to go.


    Light flashed up and down the silo, grabbing the three diviners I¡¯d stationed around me and transporting them back down to the planet. A second later, a second pulse of light snatched up everyone else, leaving me alone on the platform strung up at the top. Perfect. Unless Ammun could figure out how to modify the ritual, he was stuck up here. The only other way he was getting home was if I was wrong about him bringing his phylactery with him.


    The real question in my mind was whether or not I could get home if I destroyed this silo. I wasn¡¯t willing to die up here just to cut off another potential escape route for Ammun, especially one I was relatively certain he couldn¡¯t utilize on his own. But it would be prudent to make sure I understood long-range teleportation well enough to pull it off without this silo, if only because fights between archmages often had collateral damage, and it was entirely possible he¡¯d target the facility just to keep me trapped here with him once he realized what I¡¯d done.


    I was very capable of multitasking, however. While my divinations scoured the surface of the moon to track down Ammun, I started working on adapting the long-range teleport into something I could use as a personal spell instead of a ritual that required equipment to set up.


    I started by gutting all the components that made it suitable for large groups. While it made sense that such a monumental feat of translocation would want to move as many people as possible at once to offset the enormous mana expenditure, that wasn¡¯t what I needed it for. Without all of that, I was down from a silo of multiple ringed balconies to a single room, at most. With a bit of time to refine the design, I was confident I could reduce it to something similar to my current teleportation platforms.


    Mana efficiency was my next concern. The long-range scrying portions used to target the moon devoured mana, and that was with them being streamlined to connect to a specific point. A free-targeting teleport spell that could cross this much distance was prohibitively expensive for a single person to use, even if that person was an archmage with a full demesne backing them.


    That alone was probably going to stop me from ever being able to cast this spell without some sort of equipment. I would have to choose a specific destination when designing the rune structure, which would at best give me a teleport-from-anywhere-to-one-spot spell. That wasn¡¯t necessarily useless, since I could rebuild the spell to take me directly to my demesne, and it wasn¡¯t like anyone besides me was ever going to use it, anyway.


    I continued to break down problems and redesign the spell one step at a time. Outside the base, my divinations followed signs of disturbance in the dusty surface of the moon or resorted to eliminating variables via temporal scrying when no other signs were available. It looked like Ammun was heading for lower elevations, possibly to remove as much physical distance between himself and the moon core as possible.


    I arbitrarily labeled Ammun¡¯s direction as north, since I didn¡¯t have a frame of reference for what actual north might be. He¡¯d already gone at least a hundred miles, though I thought he was moving very, very slowly for some reason. As soon as I found him, I planned to be ready to teleport there and force an immediate confrontation. With any luck, I¡¯d destroy his physical body, recover his phylactery, and put an end to his plans before he could bring them to fruition.


    The part where I destroyed his physical form was the sticking point. I just wasn¡¯t sure I could do it, even with access to my astral body. If I failed at that, confirming his phylactery was up here and leaving him stranded was an acceptable alternative, as long as I could break this silo down first.


    In order to do that, I needed to finish refining my own version of the teleportation ritual so that I no longer had to reference the rune structures here. I floated in the middle of the silo, going up and down as I checked various parts against my own designs and smoothed out flaws where I found them.


    It was too bad that I wouldn¡¯t have the opportunity to test this first, but life was full of risks. What was one more?

 Book 4, Chapter 70

    I paused in the middle of my preparations to pay more attention to one of my scrying spells. The more miles I had to cover, the slower my progress got, not in the least because Ammun had started using his own magic to actively obfuscate his trail about twenty miles or so from the base. I¡¯d been working for over six hours now, trying to track him down. Considering he¡¯d only had two or three hour¡¯s lead on me, at most, it was ridiculous how much effort it had taken to finally find something worth looking at.


    Whether that thing was actually relevant remained to be seen. It was entirely possible I¡¯d found something interesting but ultimately unimportant. Still, this was the first time I¡¯d seen anything more than white rock choked in fine dust. It turned out that Yulitar did have a thin atmosphere, though not something humans could breathe. It did provide enough air currents that a great deal of the landscape was obscured in clouds of dust that slowly drifted for miles and miles before settling back down until the next breeze came by to stir them up again.


    And in the middle of all that was a valley that sloped a few thousand feet before it started to rise again. It wasn¡¯t anything special by itself, but it did have several caves in it. Exploring those would have been an enormous expenditure of time except for the fact that one mouth had obviously been artificially enlarged by a significant amount, and not via transmutation.


    Broken rubble was scattered across the valley floor, looking for all the world like wet clay that had been scooped up by a giant¡¯s bare hands and casually tossed aside to dry and harden. Moon stone wasn¡¯t anything so soft as that, though, which meant whatever had done this was enormously strong ¨C strong enough to dig.


    Perhaps strong enough to dig straight down to the moon¡¯s core?


    I never had figured out how Ammun had managed to burrow so deep under Manoch¡¯s surface to build his tower. I¡¯d just assumed he¡¯d done it the hard way over a span of decades or even centuries, one transmutation spell at a time. Maybe I¡¯d been wrong. Maybe he¡¯d come up with something better. What had that diviner called the golem he¡¯d brought with him again? Ergl?


    I should have asked more questions about that thing before sending them all back to the planet. I¡¯d dismissed it as a concern, though, knowing it couldn¡¯t be anywhere near as powerful as its master and assuming it would be inconsequential to any fight between the two of us. War golems were a known entity and well within my limits to destroy, but I¡¯d been working right next to a sentient golem for months now. I should have given more consideration to the possibility that Ammun¡¯s golem wasn¡¯t there to fight.


    So he was digging, presumably to get closer to the moon¡¯s core. Why? Was he going to build another tower up here? Was that what he needed to harness the mana into a weapon? If that was the case, then I couldn¡¯t just leave him stranded up here. Eventually, he¡¯d find a way to attack Manoch¡¯s surface even if he couldn¡¯t get home.


    I finished up my preparations for the ritual silo while my scrying spell chased after Ammun through a surprisingly robust network of underground tunnels. It didn¡¯t take much work to figure out where he was going now, not with all the damage being done to any opening that wasn¡¯t large enough for the golem to fit through.


    Without warning, my scrying spell was completely shredded. ¡°I guess that¡¯s where he¡¯s at,¡± I said to myself as I prepared a teleportation spell. A few minutes later, I was standing inside a pitch-black cave, breathing only because I¡¯d taken a considerable amount of air with me. The spell was one used for diving underwater and fighting back pressure, but it had been simple to repurpose it to work here. If anything, it was even easier since it took no effort to hold the air steady against the moon¡¯s natural environment.


    Flying, on the other hand, was a bit more complicated. It turned out that spell was calibrated to function in Manoch¡¯s atmosphere and didn¡¯t work so well out here. The best I could manage was a series of long, floaty hops that almost felt like being underwater, and the spell really didn¡¯t do much to make that happen. It did speed up my progress, however, and it wasn¡¯t like it cost me anything, so I relied on that to take me deeper underground.


    While I was mastering movement in low gravity, a constant, muted banging sound filled the air. At first, I couldn¡¯t understand what I was hearing, mostly because the weird not-air currents of the moon didn¡¯t seem to be transmitting sound properly. Once I realized that, I figured out that the thumps, which sounded more like someone dropping a book in slow-motion than anything else, was actually the golem digging its way through too-tight tunnels.


    Following the distorted sound was impossible, but I didn¡¯t need to. Divinations were enough to keep me on track, and it was too late to keep Ammun from knowing he was being followed. I chased after him, eventually arriving in a large cavern that sloped sharply downward while narrowing into a funnel. The golem was at the bottom, widening the exit, while Ammun floated in the air above him.


    I took a moment to analyze that flight spell. It was an obvious sign that the lich had prepared for a trip off-world far more thoroughly than I had, but that didn¡¯t mean I couldn¡¯t copy what he was doing. Adjusting the rune structure to work with the local air wasn¡¯t going to be possible for me, not if I wanted to keep breathing, but it was good to know what to do if the need to move freely became more important than the need to breathe.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    The golem itself was fifteen feet tall and could best be described as lanky. It was thinner than I was, with arms that ended in big hands shaped like scoops. The fingers were pointed spikes of mysteel, designed to drive into stone and fracture it. Its legs were only about three feet long, but it had six of them firmly planted to help it hold its position while it dug. I could see spots where it had anchored itself inside the stone to keep its grip, too.


    Surprisingly, this actually wasn¡¯t too far off the standard design of a digging golem used in city infrastructure projects back in my original time. The real changes were in the way it used mana to help it dig and process stone. Spells compacted the stone down to a fraction of its original size, not through transmutation, but through simple force and heat. The lumps it discarded probably would have made for a good building material; that might even have been the original purpose.


    I took all of that in over the span of about three seconds, then Ammun spun in place and glared up at me. ¡°I should have expected this,¡± he growled. ¡°Somehow, you¡¯d find a way to follow me even here.¡±


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t that hard,¡± I said. ¡°You left everything I needed to know just sitting there.¡±


    ¡°And you just so happened to have close to a hundred capable mages on hand to help,¡± he sneered. ¡°How convenient that half my corp of diviners deserted at the last second.¡±


    That made sense, even if it was entirely wrong. I decided against correcting Ammun. There was no need for him to realize I¡¯d modified his ritual to work for a single person. ¡°I¡¯ll admit, having to chase you all the way up to Yulitar was a surprise. I was under the impression that the cabal that managed to turn Amodir into a weapon did so directly from the ground.¡±


    Our voices were warped so badly that it would have been impossible to understand each other without a bit of magic to straighten things out. Ammun did that naturally¡ªthe act of speaking anywhere was a magical process for him¡ªand I managed it by duplicating the part of his body¡¯s animating magic that did that. It would have been a bit wasteful under normal circumstances, but I was hoping to drag some information about his plans out of him.


    ¡°Oh, they did, but not without doing some work up here, first. Foolish little mages. They stumbled across something that could change the world, but failed to understand the true scope of their discovery. They¡¯d barely gotten started duplicating their success on a second moon before they had to unveil their project to the world. Of course, the powers that ruled immediately realized the potential and agreed unanimously that it couldn¡¯t be left in the hands of a group of dissidents.¡±


    ¡°And so you broke the world rather than let anyone else have it,¡± I finished for him. ¡°And now, what? You¡¯ve been back for two years. Already trying to repeat history?¡±


    It was creepy how much emotion a skinless skull could convey. He had no lips, but I could hear the grin in his voice. ¡°Is that what you think I¡¯m up here to do?¡± he practically purred. ¡°Master, I¡¯m disappointed. After everything you¡¯ve discovered and all the ways you¡¯ve interfered, you never figured out the end goal of my little moon project?¡±


    He didn¡¯t appear to be bluffing, but I couldn¡¯t think of what else there was up here worth the effort of obtaining it besides the moon core itself. And that was far too big to take anywhere. Destroying it felt equally pointless. So it had to be the mana itself he was after ¨C but why?


    ¡°I recognize that look,¡± Ammun said. ¡°You¡¯ve got a puzzle to ponder over. You know, I used to be so jealous of that expression. You¡¯d stand there for a few seconds, oblivious to the world, and then just suddenly have the solution like it was no effort at all. No matter how complex the problem, you could pull it apart. I always hated that I couldn¡¯t think like that.¡±


    ¡°Yes, I¡¯ve been meaning to ask who helped you achieve your current state,¡± I said. ¡°After seeing your prowess over our last few years of picking at each other, I¡¯m not inclined to believe you managed it on your own, just like I¡¯m not inclined to believe you came up with whatever plan you¡¯re working toward right now.¡±


    ¡°Always so arrogant,¡± the lich snarled. ¡°Always so smug and convinced of your own superiority. You just can¡¯t conceive of a world where anyone might be your equal, let alone one of your students.¡±


    The golem stopped digging and pulled itself out of the tunnel. It looked up at me, its one large eye a smooth emerald sphere that reflected my own image. Perhaps it was responding to some mental signal from Ammun, but I doubted it. Undead were practically impossible to affect with things like mind magic, which was a double-edged sword when it came to them connecting their minds to others telepathically. Any orders he gave would need to be verbal or visual.


    And yet, the golem had stopped its work and started paying attention to me, which meant that Ergl was smarter than I¡¯d given it credit for. What other surprises did it have in store for me? What other ways could it shape mana ¨C not to dig, but to fight?


    ¡°Mana,¡± I murmured as I looked down at my former apprentice. ¡°Of course. That¡¯s what it¡¯s all about, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    The pinpricks in Ammun¡¯s eye sockets erupted in furious red light, but he said nothing.


    ¡°An entire moon core for yourself. No one to share it with. It¡¯s a lot of mana, enough to reach all the way to the planet itself. And the distance from Yulitar to Manoch is so great that it would hardly make a difference if you were all the way on the opposite side of the planet from the moon, would it?¡±


    That¡¯s what this was. Ammun was tired of being tied to the tower, which could only pull up the mana a broken world core produced. He wanted the freedom to go anywhere at any time. He was trying to tap into a moon and take its entire mana production for himself, just to ensure that he¡¯d never be so starved that he¡¯d have to go into hibernation again.


    He¡¯d be free to hide his phylactery anywhere, no longer bound by distance to it. In theory, there¡¯d be no way to ever truly be rid of him, because it would become impossible to find and break the phylactery. No matter how many times he was destroyed, he¡¯d just come back again.


    ¡°I see,¡± I said softly. Our eyes met. ¡°I can¡¯t let you do this.¡±


    ¡°Kill him, Ergl,¡± Ammun ordered.

 Book 4, Chapter 71

    There was a hundred feet of space at a steep incline between myself and the golem. I could have jumped down there in a single leap, probably without using any sort of magic to assist my movement. For Ergl to reach me was an entirely different matter. It would have to claw its way up what was essentially the side of a mountain.


    I¡¯d expected the golem to have a bit more trouble with that task than it actually did. Not only was it frighteningly fast, but the almost vertical surface didn¡¯t slow it down one bit. Maybe the lowered gravity helped it out, too, but either way, it cleared those hundred feet in less than two seconds. Even throwing myself out into the open air the instant it started moving only barely got me clear of one of its long arms.


    And then that long arm extended, the plates protecting it splitting open to give it even more length. I practically willed a force wall into existence since I didn¡¯t have the time to cast the spell properly. It lasted a fraction of a second, just long enough to deflect Ergl¡¯s shovel-like hand from clamping down on my leg.


    Then the wall shattered, and the arc of my jump started taking me down. Quick as a flash, the golem reversed direction and skittered back down the slope without any apparent regard for the constraints of gravity. Obviously, this golem was designed for more than just digging.


    A chunk of stone sped through the air and struck my shield ward, pushing me closer to Ergl before it bounced away. Ammun picked another one up with telekinesis, this time angling it overhead and firing it off to drive me closer to the ground. I shot it down with a force bolt, which didn¡¯t do nearly the damage it should have, but still had enough momentum to deflect the shot wide.


    I pushed myself upward with a burst of flight magic after taking a deep, deep breath. My air scattered as the magic ripped through it, which gave me at most ten minutes before I suffocated, even with invocations helping me get the most out of the lungful I¡¯d gotten. It was that or let Ergl grab hold of me, however, and that made the choice easy.


    There was a reason Ammun was using pure force magic to attack me. Yulitar¡¯s atmospheric composition was fundamentally different from Manoch¡¯s, and without doing any experiments, I couldn¡¯t definitively say I knew what would happen if I conjured up an open flame or a lightning bolt. Even transmutation could have unforeseen effects.


    Throwing a rock was predictable and easy to do. Sure, it took a bit more effort to make it fly the same speed, and sure, it took a bit of practice to get used to the reduced gravity, but those were trivial problems to overcome, especially with something like telekinesis that ignored those issues to begin with.


    That was why I immediately adopted Ammun¡¯s strategy and started snapping up my own rocks to slam into the golem. It staggered when a stone the size of my chest smacked into its head, but its huge emerald eye stayed locked on me the entire time, even when I managed to knock it loose from its perch with a concentrated barrage at its feet.


    Defending myself against Ammun was surprisingly easy, though I couldn¡¯t for the life of me figure out why he was holding back. Maybe he was just afraid of exhausting his mana so far away from the tower, but the mana here was thick enough that I didn¡¯t think that particular explanation held water.


    I started paying more attention to his mana as he cast a series of weak spells to keep me distracted while his golem leapt through the air to grab me. It didn¡¯t take long to figure out the problem. It wasn¡¯t that Ammun was trying to conserve mana. It was that he physically couldn¡¯t use most of it. It was already tied up with his attempt to bind his phylactery to the moon core. I¡¯d caught him in the middle of the process, and he¡¯d either need to abandon the ritual completely to fight me off or stall me long enough to dig deeper and fully establish the connection.


    In the meantime, all of his spells were constructed by skimming ambient mana at an admittedly impressive speed, but which made for a series of weak attacks that he knew wouldn¡¯t do anything more than distract me. I really only needed to destroy the golem to mess everything up.


    I set about doing just that. I¡¯d been holding back myself, trying to keep Ammun from getting a good look at lossless casting in action. We were both limiting ourselves to intermediate-tier magic for different reasons, but the bigger handicap was mine. Ammun was a lich. His golem wasn¡¯t living. I was the only one who¡¯d suffocate down here if I didn¡¯t end this fight quickly.


    My mana reserves weren¡¯t built up enough to survive a brawl with another archmage without lossless casting, which meant it was time to put an all-or-nothing bet on myself. I needed to reveal what I could do and hope that I¡¯d prepared well enough to stop Ammun once and for all. If I pulled that off, it wouldn¡¯t matter what he saw. He¡¯d be too dead to act on that knowledge.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Master-tier telekinesis spells didn¡¯t struggle with the weight or velocity limits their lesser brethren did. It was incredibly easy to pick up Ergl and slam it into the ceiling, then hurl it down the slope at Ammun. He deflected the golem away with a casual gesture, and it twisted in the air to land, cat-like with its six legs splayed out beneath its frame, on the wall.


    Jaws of stone rose up around it and slammed shut, catching the golem in their teeth. I knew that wouldn¡¯t hold for long, not against a construct designed to tear through the ground, but the spell managed to catch one of its arms and pin it against the golem¡¯s torso. That would help hold it for the duration of the spell.


    Metal screeched as stone scraped across it. Even then, the golem¡¯s single eye stayed locked on me while its free arm arced around and slammed down on the jaw-shaped trap. A spark of light erupted from its eye and a beam of pure mana lanced through the air to hit me before I could react. It breached my shield ward in an instant, completely overloading it and leaving me almost defenseless.


    Almost, but not quite. My body was akin to living mana crystal now. Even as the beam tore through my shirt, my skin drank it up. Seared flesh aside, I stole most of the mana from the attack and returned it as an orb of crushing force that blinked into existence around the golem the exact moment it broke free and leaped at me.


    ¡°No, you don¡¯t,¡± Ammun snapped. A wedge of his own mana drove into the orb and sent cracks spidering across its surface. The orb held against the first strike, but the wedge was already in, and a second blow of force magic sent it completely through. Both our spells flashed into mana as they unraveled, and Ammun paused for a moment.


    He¡¯d noticed the recycling aspect of my magic, and far quicker than I¡¯d been hoping. Before he could focus too much on it, I conjured up metal spikes by the dozens and rained them down the slope. As an attack, it was an utter failure. But as a distraction, it worked well enough to allow me to funnel mana into my shield ward and get it back up.


    ¡°You don¡¯t really think this crazy plan of yours is actually going to work, do you?¡± I asked. ¡°I mean, sure, there¡¯s a lot of mana up here, but the sheer miles between a moon and the planet are prohibitive. Have you actually done the math on this? I know how much you hate the math.¡±


    ¡°Shut up,¡± Ammun snapped. That was a sore subject for him, I supposed.


    Mana wove itself into Ergl, empowering the golem and refilling whatever reserves it had spent. Freshly energized, it bounded up the slope and hurled itself through the air to reach me. As it got close, its arms shot out to triple their usual length. I let my flight spell drop and started to drift out of the way, remembering at the last moment that the moon¡¯s lower gravity was going to drop me slower.


    It wasn¡¯t enough to get out of the way. Small squares of force appeared between us, not to stop the multi-ton golem¡¯s momentum, but to try to deflect it up and over my head. The damn thing was too agile for something so big; it just curled at the torso and came right back down toward the back of my skull.


    There was no good way to prevent getting tagged, not without expending more mana than I could afford. The golem struck me, but this time, the moon¡¯s lower gravity worked in my favor. We sunk back to the ground at a relatively sedate pace, giving me full seconds to react. My shield ward still had mana in it, which was preventing direct contact. Its limbs were wrapped around me to stop the magic from pushing it away, all of them steadily tightening in an attempt to overpower the ward¡¯s kinetic resistance.


    I wasn¡¯t going to outmuscle a golem physically, not even pitting telekinesis against it. Sure, I could pick it up and throw it, but that wouldn¡¯t do me any good if it was wrapped around me like a murderous octopus. I needed to switch strategies to take advantage of our relative positions, and I had a good idea of how to do that.


    First, I needed time. I subtly pushed back against our descent, slowing it even further and giving me a few extra seconds. Hopefully, Ergl wasn¡¯t intelligent enough to realize this was anything more than the strange gravity we were fighting under. Then I let my shield ward peel back from the hand I slapped on the golem¡¯s torso.


    Finally, I cast a spell similar to rupture core, only designed to work on artificial cores instead of natural ones. Golems didn¡¯t feel pain, so it wouldn¡¯t be writhing around in agony as mana flooded a body that wasn¡¯t designed to withstand it, but it would weaken a construct to the point that it quickly lost the ability to keep moving. I¡¯d rupture the core, then I just needed to find a way to stay alive for the next thirty seconds or so until Ergl wound down to a stop.


    The spell took no time at all to weave together. It was as simple as wanting it to happen, and my mana leaped to obey my command. Fully formed, the core breaker surged out through my hand, using my fingertips as a bridge to enter the golem¡¯s body.


    Ammun¡¯s magic slammed into the spell, shattering it into motes of unstructured and worthless mana. The destruction was so complete that I couldn¡¯t even claw back the fraction of a master-tier spell I usually recycled with lossless casting, not that I had time to worry about that. At the same time my spell failed, the lich disrupted the flight effect slowing us from hitting the ground.


    Even the weak gravity wasn¡¯t enough to save me. We slammed into the stone slope, my body still tangled up in Ergl¡¯s limbs, and my shield ward popped like a soap bubble. Cloth and flesh tore away as we slid down to the base of the cavern, and I dimly saw one of Ergl¡¯s arms raise up.


    Then it descended on me and struck me full-force. Everything went black, and what little air I still had left in my lungs after minutes of holding my breath escaped in an explosive gasp of pain.

 Book 4, Chapter 72

    In hindsight, I¡¯d overestimated my ability to fight in such a hostile environment. Ammun was far better suited to exist here than I was, even with his magic severely handicapped. Now I was pinned down and suffocating, with a hostile archmage watching for the slightest mana fluctuations so he could counter any attempt I made at saving myself. It wasn''t a good position to be in.


    ¡°Ah, yes, the weaknesses of the flesh,¡± Ammun said with a dry chuckle. ¡°Sustenance. Sleep. Air. Your method of attempting immortality was novel, I¡¯ll give you that, but you¡¯d have been better off transitioning to lichdom instead.¡±


    It was hard to argue, given my current predicament. Then again, I¡¯d have likely been starved of mana a thousand years ago if I¡¯d gone that route. Besides, a life lived as a lich wasn¡¯t really a life worth living. The creature I was calling Ammun now had the memories of my former apprentice, but he wasn¡¯t really him. He was an artificial construct, a caricature of a person that was powered by the real Ammun¡¯s soul, itself trapped in some bauble somewhere. Ammun¡¯s soul hung in a state of perpetual agony while a puppet pretending to be him roamed the world.


    I had no doubt that the real Ammun, that soul entity, had regretted his decision to transform himself into a lich every single second for the last thousand years or more. It was a fate far worse than death to be trapped as a severed soul, and only an absolute fool would consider it an acceptable road to power.


    Death would be my fate, however, if I didn¡¯t come up with something clever in the next few seconds. Once I blacked out from lack of air, that would be the end for me. I¡¯d be completely at Ammun¡¯s mercy, and I didn¡¯t have any illusions about how that would play out.


    I released a burst of mana in a huge, unstructured cloud. It was nothing more than a screen to keep Ammun from targeting my next spell to counter it, a fact that he knew. A wave of dispelling magic rolled across me, dissipating the mana cloud into a fine mist that quickly faded into nothingness. But right after that dispelling wave hit, there was a single moment where I could act unimpeded.


    I activated the recall bracelet on my wrist and the instant teleportation magic took hold.


    I was gone before Ammun could react, but even so, I could almost hear the shriek of rage no doubt pouring out of his mouth.


    Something went wrong in the spell. It twisted and stretched, almost to the point of breaking, then it snapped back into place, and the stone slope I was pressed into disappeared. It was replaced by smooth tile instead, and I immediately sucked in a ragged gasp of air. It was a good thing I¡¯d had the foresight to update my recall contingency to the moon base. If I¡¯d left its destination as my sanctuary down on Manoch, the spell would have failed.


    It was only as I was taking my second deep breath that I realized the problem. Somehow, against my own will, I¡¯d brought a passenger with me. Ergl was still wrapped around me, doing its best to squeeze the life out of my body and being held at bay only by the flickering remnants of my shield ward. Even as my eyes snapped open to take in the danger, I felt mana building up in that brilliant emerald orb in the center of its head.


    A mana beam shot out, just like the one that had pierced my shield ward earlier. It would do the same now, doing painful but superficial damage as my body absorbed the mana. What it would also do was finally allow Ergl¡¯s limbs to crush me. I wondered briefly if the golem was intelligent enough to understand that, or if it was just blindly attacking me with every way it possibly could at the same time.


    Either way, things were not going to plan. I cursed myself for even including the option to teleport with a passenger in the design. Somehow, the golem had gotten carried along with that, possibly because it wasn¡¯t alive in any meaningful way and the spell had gotten confused about whether it was equipment to be carried along. Since it had the mana capacity, it had used it.


    This was why it was better to cast complicated spells manually. Errors like this couldn¡¯t happen if I was in full control of the magic. It was too bad teleportation had such a lengthy cast time. Once I¡¯d allowed myself to be pinned, there¡¯d been no good options left. Ammun¡¯s golem had outmaneuvered me, and I¡¯d failed to adapt to the environment quickly enough.


    That having been said, separating the golem from the lich was the best possible outcome I could have hoped for. I just needed to survive the next few minutes. My mana was low from venting out a whole cloud, but it wasn¡¯t gone.


    I started with grand telekinesis to grab the golem¡¯s head and pull it to one side. The mana beam still flashed out of its eye, but it struck the floor next to me instead of my face. I was still tangled up in its legs, so when my spell sent it careening off balance, I went along for the ride. That only worked in my favor as I flooded more mana into my shield ward and started creating bars of force to wedge between my body and Ergl¡¯s legs.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    It was a tenacious foe, however, one that was unwilling to give up any advantages. Every time I pried myself free from one leg, another one snaked around to grab hold of me again. Finally, I accepted that I wouldn¡¯t be freeing myself by physically repelling Ergl. It just had too many limbs and too much strength.


    Without Ammun here to stop me, I revisited my idea of shutting down its core. It wouldn¡¯t immediately stop Ergl, but it would guarantee an eventual victory in a few minutes. I put together the spell, then reached out to slap one of the golem¡¯s metal legs. Mana arced from my hand into its body, and the shell of magic defending its core buckled under the pressure.


    For its part, Ergl was smart enough to recognize what I¡¯d done. It abandoned all restraint¡ªnot that it had much to begin with¡ªand started firing off mana beams more or less at random while increasing the pressure of its constricting grasp to the point where my shield ward couldn¡¯t hope to keep up with it.


    Small force walls bloomed around me, curved and stretched to contour to a human body instead of being flat, square planes. Even those didn¡¯t last long, but I could recycle the mana I used to chain them endlessly, and I had plenty of ambient mana to draw on as well. Ergl¡¯s damaged core only added to my reserves as I siphoned that away, too.


    Something in the golem¡¯s logic structure finally reached the inevitable conclusion: it was doomed. Even killing me now wouldn¡¯t save it. I could only guess at the cascade of reasoning that led it to the point it reached, but it quickly became apparent that the golem had decided to turn itself into a mana bomb.


    As confident as I was in my body¡¯s ability to withstand the beams it had been shooting at me, I suspected surviving this attack would be a different story. I needed to get away, and I needed to do it now. Attempts to escape the grapple physically had all failed, but I was now at the point where I couldn¡¯t worry about how little mana I¡¯d have left to fight with after. It was time to get drastic.


    I initiated a short-range teleport, this time under my full control and excluding the golem latched onto me. It took almost all of my remaining mana, but that was better than being obliterated in the next ten seconds.


    Only, when I reappeared a few rooms away from my starting point, the golem was somehow still clinging to me. Now that I was clearheaded, I saw the problem immediately. It had stabbed barbs of its own mana into the structure of the spell ¨C not enough to disrupt it, but they had allowed Ergl to hitch a ride along with me.


    Far from escaping to safety, I¡¯d brought the impending explosion with me and run myself practically dry of mana in the process. Was I really about to die, my corpse reduced to dust, on the surface of a moon a hundred thousand miles away from home? It certainly seemed that way. I was out of ideas and out of resources.


    No. There was no way I was letting this happen. I might not have enough mana left in me for a master-tier spell, but that still left me with thousands of weaker spells that I could use. There had to be one that would get me out of this situation.


    Escaping the blast was no longer an option. Now that I knew what the golem had done, I could block it on future teleports. But it was too late for that. I didn¡¯t have nearly enough mana left, nor did I have the time to recover it. I needed to focus on mitigating the damage. My shield ward couldn¡¯t help; Ergl had already proven it was capable of punching through with pure mana attacks, and the wards were fully stressed just preventing the golem from physically crushing me.


    A phantasmal shell might work, but it would only block the mana from hitting me directly. The rest of the room would still be blown to pieces, and the shrapnel would almost certainly kill me. I needed a multi-layered defense, something that could protect me when my shield ward inevitably failed.


    I sucked in mana as quickly as I could, knowing I had only seconds left. The golem¡¯s core was fully destabilized, teetering on the brink of starting a cascading failure that would result in all of its mana detonating at the same time. Worse, it was still actively pushing to make it happen.


    The phantasmal shell appeared around me, shaped more as a cloak clinging to my body than a sphere I stood in the center of. That was a harder shape to maintain, but it was necessary in order to exclude any parts of Ergl from being physically inside it. It would do me no good to let the mana detonation go off inside its arm if that limb wasn¡¯t on the outside of the shell.


    And then I did the tricky part. The whole time I¡¯d been building my phantasmal shell, I was busy casting another spell, one that I¡¯d never expected to use on myself. Force crush created a sphere of force around the target that constricted, tightening until it crushed them to death. It would be my all-around physical defense even as it tried to kill me.


    The spell sprang to life, already small enough to fit inside my shield ward, and only my expert control over its parameters prevented it from immediately tightening around me. Even with my dual-layered defense, I wasn¡¯t confident this would be enough. It was too bad I didn¡¯t have more mana or time, but I was out of options.


    The last thing I did was put up a series of thin force walls between myself and Ergl¡¯s torso, where its golem core was located. Then I felt its mana reach the tipping point and spiral out of control. An instant later, the panes of force started shattering under the pressure of an expanding mana reaction, and everything went white. I lost track of where I was as the force of the explosion threw me around the room, bouncing me off walls, the ceiling, the floor, and chunks of golem repeatedly.


    My defenses were battered, broken, and reformed as quickly as possible. Raw mana seeped through the cracks in my phantasmal shell, then jetted in as I failed to hold the spell together under the onslaught. More mana than I could process bombarded me, scorching my body in the process and leaving me ragged and worn out.


    But then I could see again, and I was still alive. That was more than I could say for Ergl.

 Book 4, Chapter 73

    I laid there on the floor for a minute, just coming to terms with the fact that I¡¯d survived a mana bomb exploding two feet from my face. Even for me, that was an accomplishment. I was injured, in part from my own force crush spell, but I was still breathing. I did make a mental note to design a more permanent version of a protective force crush to cast so that I didn¡¯t have to tweak the spell¡¯s structure on the fly to avoid being killed by it, just in case something like this ever happened to me again.


    Slowly, my body started recovering. Mana filled my core and I sped that process up by processing some of the ample amount of ambient mana in the room. It would take days to regain everything I¡¯d lost if I stayed up here, far more time than I actually had.


    The room I¡¯d teleported myself and Ergl to was completely and utterly destroyed. The walls had collapsed, revealing the adjoining chambers. Most of the ceiling was gone, and the devastation had obliterated the room directly above us as well. The ceiling in that chamber also had some holes in it, and a few pieces of furniture had fallen through to shatter themselves on the pile of rubble scattered across the floor.


    Somehow, the floor itself was actually intact. I suspected that had more to do with me being in the way than any structural integrity the room might have possessed. My own magic had no doubt reflected a great deal of the mana and kinetic energy away from the floor, which also accounted for the greater-than-expected devastation going straight up.


    And yet, for all of that, things were in relatively good shape. Nothing looked to be in danger of falling down, which meant I was unlikely to be buried alive. The spells I¡¯d placed around the base were still functional, as far as I could tell. At least, the important ones were. It was possible some of the ones out where Ergl had self-destructed were too damaged to function now.


    As for myself, my clothes were ripped to shreds and I had a full-body ache, the kind of pain I¡¯d felt at the end of my previous life when it had been nothing but life-extension magic holding my body together. Everything hurt. Literally everything.


    I was tired and drained and ready to drop. As much as I hated to admit it, Ammun had won that fight without even really trying. The moon itself had been enough of a handicap for a simple golem to defeat me. I couldn¡¯t fight him out there, but at the same time, I couldn¡¯t just let him go through with his plans.


    Could I?


    He was almost certainly stuck up here now. Even if he appeared in the next second and killed me, that wouldn¡¯t help him get back to Manoch. If he was to be believed, the cabal who¡¯d pioneered the extreme-long-distance spells powered by a moon had needed to build ritual sites on the moon¡¯s surface in order to turn it into a weapon. They¡¯d only finished one of those on Amodir, which had promptly been destroyed.


    So, Ammun couldn¡¯t get home, and he couldn¡¯t use the moon core to attack Manoch¡¯s surface without spending years building the ritual sites, and maybe not even then. He was going to succeed in linking his phylactery to the moon core, giving him the ability to go anywhere he wanted on the planet with nearly unlimited mana. Except he couldn¡¯t get off the moon, so that was a hollow victory.


    Yes, the ideal scenario was to destroy his physical body, take possession of his phylactery, and shatter it. That was the only way to permanently end the threat of Ammun. But at the same time, if he was stuck up here for even a year or two, that gave me plenty of time to advance my core to stage eight while I tore down his tower and started the process of healing the world core. Even if he made it back, Ammun would be too late to save his demesne, and honestly, him being stuck up here for a few decades while the planet healed was probably the only way it could happen without him being destroyed in the process.


    I could wait a few hours, try to recover my mana, and take the fight back to him for round two. Maybe I¡¯d even catch up to him before he completed his bonding ritual and regained full use of his mana. And maybe if I did, he¡¯d kill me anyway.


    Or I could put together enough mana to get home, trigger the contingency spells to bring down the moon base and destroy the ritual silo so Ammun would have nothing to reference when he tried to engineer a solo-teleportation version of the spell, and leave him to his own devices while I prepared for his eventual return unimpeded.


    I checked the rate I was generating mana against how much I needed. Five minutes, at most. Unless he showed back up in that time frame, I was out of here, and Ammun could find his own way home.


    I hobbled across the base to view the explosive enchantments I¡¯d woven into the ritual silo one more time. Those were the most important ones, and I took the effort to manually activate them. When I got too far away or ten minutes passed, whichever happened first, they¡¯d bring the base down. Once I was done, I sat down and started constructing the spell that would take me home.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Ammun never showed up. I imagined he was digging his way deeper underground, slowly creeping toward the moon core with each passing minute. Or maybe he was frantically trying to put together a functional teleportation spell that would carry him across Yulitar to stop me from killing the diviners he still thought were alive up here.


    Whatever he was doing in those last few minutes, he didn¡¯t find me. The ritual went off without a hitch, and I appeared on the peak of a mountain twenty miles from my home. Above me, a flash of light bloomed on Yulitar¡¯s surface ¨C the explosions ripping apart the moon base. It lasted for about five seconds, just a silent speck of light, there and gone so fast I wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if no one else in the world noticed it.


    And that was that. The die was cast. Either I was right and Ammun was trapped on a moon orbiting around Manoch, or I was wrong and in the next few days, he¡¯d show up to personally murder me. Or maybe he¡¯d fire a city-sized mana beam down from the heavens and wipe me out that way.


    Time would tell.


    * * *


    ¡°You just left him there?¡± Querit asked.


    ¡°Yes,¡± I said as I slowed the drip of liquid mana onto the pane of glass. It darkened to a deep blue color for a moment, then turned silver. I angled the glass to get the liquid mana running across its length, then used telekinesis to spread it evenly. When that wasn¡¯t enough, I fetched some more from the giant tank in the corner of my alchemy lab.


    ¡°And you¡¯re not going back?¡±


    ¡°Not anytime soon.¡±


    ¡°But what if he¡ª¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re hoping for the best right now,¡± I told him. ¡°I lost that fight, and I¡¯m not in any shape to try again. Why do you think I¡¯m making this scrying mirror?¡±


    Querit peered at my creation, specifically at the rune-covered silver frame it was mounted in. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t know what this does.¡±


    ¡°Good for scrying on far, faraway places. I made it using the ultra-long-range scrying portion of Ammun¡¯s moon teleportation ritual.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll spy on him all the way from here?¡± Querit asked.


    ¡°I thought I might get some help from our new friends, the gestalt ant colony.¡±


    ¡°Speaking of friends, I spoke to Hyago on your behalf. He gave me the location of the new grove he¡¯s started and says you¡¯re welcome to come visit as long as you promise not to turn all the trees to stone again.¡±


    I snorted. ¡°That shouldn¡¯t be a problem.¡±


    ¡°I also repelled another two zombie invasions while you were gone. It seems that Ammun¡¯s absence isn¡¯t slowing down his generals.¡±


    ¡°Any further attacks on New Alkerist?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Nothing yet, but the last attack was led by a master mage with a stage four core. My combat frame is basically scrap metal now. I won¡¯t be able to stop another one.¡±


    ¡°Just keep watch for me,¡± I said. ¡°As long as they don¡¯t launch an attack in the next three hours, I¡¯ll handle it personally. With Ammun out of the way, time is on our side now.¡±


    At least, I hoped it was. There was no telling how many more minions like that dragon Ammun might have. With another year of uninterrupted work, I could get within spitting distance of my former strength, but there were no guarantees I¡¯d have that much time. I¡¯d need to make the most of every day, which meant not letting myself get bogged down fighting a bunch of weak mages.


    ¡°Maybe you should consider aggressively training some combat mages of your own,¡± Querit suggested.


    ¡°Or suborning some of the enemy into fighting on my side. Plenty of the children of light weren¡¯t happy to find themselves under his command. There were even some rebel groups which I imagine will keep the loyalists busy in the near future. Perhaps we could lend some support to a few of them.¡±


    The liquid mana coating complete, I stowed the mirror away in my phantom space and stood up.


    ¡°Where are you going?¡± Querit asked. ¡°To the eyrie?¡±


    ¡°I have other things to do first,¡± I explained. ¡°Come on. Time to go.¡±


    The golem paused to make a show of looking around. ¡°It¡¯s a nice lab,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m glad I finally got to see it.¡±


    I rolled my eyes and pulled us both through my demesne to the surface. ¡°Think you can repair that combat frame on your own? I have another errand to take care of.¡±


    ¡°Ehhhh. Probably not,¡± Querit said. ¡°If it was just the rune structure, I could. I don¡¯t have the skills to transmute steel like you do, and my silver steel frame is missing the chest plate.¡±


    ¡°Ah, right. That. I¡¯ve been meaning to study that and figure out how to replicate it when I get some free time.¡± I wondered what the odds of that happening in the next six months were.


    Recruiting Hyago. Researching silver steel. Stage eight advancement. Destroying Ammun¡¯s tower. Mysteel scavenging. Training Senica. Testing Nailu and possibly training him, too. Lecturing at New Alkerist¡¯s school. Keeping an eye on Yulitar and watching for Ammun¡¯s return. Defeating the remaining loyalists. Opening up the brakvaw portals and watching out for the gestalt ant colony I¡¯d stuck there.


    And, of course, fixing the world core, which I still had to figure out how exactly to accomplish. Why did I always have so much to do?


    ¡°Where are you going?¡± Querit asked. ¡°New Alkerist?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°Are you going to tell me what¡¯s so special about that town?¡±


    I hesitated and glanced over at the golem. After all this, he¡¯d earned some trust. ¡°My family,¡± I admitted.


    Honestly, getting to see the shocked expression on his face alone was worth it. He stood there, completely poleaxed and staring mutely with his jaw hanging open, as I walked over to the teleportation platform.


    ¡°Wait, what? You have a family?¡± he sputtered.


    ¡°I do. Is that really so strange?¡±


    ¡°For the most powerful archmage in history, who is a notorious recluse that sees the outside world once every few decades at most? It¡¯s a bit weird.¡±


    I laughed. ¡°I¡¯m not that guy anymore.¡±


    ¡°Can I meet them?¡± Querit asked.


    I was about to say no out of hand, but I paused. What was the harm? I trusted him. ¡°Sure, come on.¡±


    Querit, a sapient golem and possibly the first person I could consider a friend in the last five hundred years, joined me on the teleportation platform.


    End of Book 4

 Book 5 Blurb/Catch up summary

    Blurb:


    It¡¯s been six months since Keiran left his greatest enemy stranded on one of Manoch¡¯s moons, six months of feverish work preparing for the lich¡¯s seemingly inevitable return. Keiran is gathering allies and resources, and working to strengthen himself as much as possible.


    But when he hits a bottleneck just one step short of finally regaining his full power, never mind solving it before Ammun returns, he¡¯s not sure he¡¯ll be able to solve it, ever. Distractions abound as payments come due for past aid, an order of archmages takes an unhealthy interest in his activities, and friendships begin to fracture under the weight of both Keiran¡¯s responsibilities and his secrets.


    Can he survive the crushing weight of a lich clad in a moon¡¯s full power bearing down on him, or will he be washed away in the flood?


    ----


    Summary of book 4:


    After two years of effort, Keiran¡¯s plan to create a petrified forest of living stone comes to fruition. It¡¯s now producing incalculable amounts of mana and he¡¯s ready to bind the valley as his genius loci to finish his mana core¡¯s ascension to stage six. The ritual goes off smoothly, and he heads to the town he helped his family establish, New Alkerist, to celebrate.


    After enjoying an evening with his parents, his sister, and his new little brother, Nailu, Keiran is about to leave when a force of armed warriors teleports onto the town platform. Far from being hostile, they¡¯re refugees from a coastal town near the tower that fled by ship. Ammun¡¯s mages are attacking everybody, driving people out of towns or killing them and stealing food and supplies. Keiran takes a day to help get the refugees integrated on a peninsula hidden behind the mountains that they¡¯ve settled on, then starts actively poking around Ralvost.


    What he finds is that Ammun is reclaiming the land controlled by the old empire with military force, and that, more importantly, there are secret facilities beyond even that border that are getting shipments of mysterious components. Keiran lays a series of divinations throughout the countryside in the hopes of finding one of these shipments and tracing it to its delivery site.


    When he returns home, it¡¯s to find a message from Keeper, former records keeper of the Wolf Pack cabal, wanting to talk to him. She¡¯s discovered some passages in old books indicating that the city of Derro has a large quantity of mysteel buried deep underground, originally used as part of its infrastructure. Keiran needs this to patch up the broken shell around the world core, and pays Keeper for the info before descending underground to salvage it.


    What he finds instead are thousands of giant sand worms, all intent on consuming any source of mana they can reach. After fighting his way through, Keiran eventually discovers the cache of mysteel in the form of an enormous pillar. It has layers and layers of metal wrapped around it, each one carved with tens of thousands of runes. They were designed to empower the city with all sorts of functions, not in the least of which was protecting it.


    He also finds a dormant golem, one made of a strange material he doesn¡¯t recognize. Keiran relocates the pillar¡ªalong with all of its smaller companion pieces¡ªand the golem back to his demesne to research them further. After modifying the pillars to work in conjunction with his own wards, Keiran then examines the golem and determines it has an incredibly complex personality matrix, so detailed that it acts like a living person.


    He wakes the golem up by feeding it mana, and it introduces itself as Querit. He is a research golem that was active a thousand years ago when the world broke, who then shut down after being starved of mana. Keiran quickly puts the golem to work in exchange for the mana he needs to survive, and his new assistant proves most capable.


    Keiran¡¯s spying on Ammun¡¯s lands bears fruit. He discovers not only the facility that deliveries are being made to, but that there are eight of them total. Each one is building some sort of complicated machine, one that has something to do with spatial magic and which is incredibly delicate. Working with Querit, he constructs mobile bomb golems that can be remotely piloted. They sneak one into each facility and destroy the machines, hoping to set back Ammun¡¯s plans.


    In the process, Querit comes under attack, but he manages to hold the group of mages that found him off long enough for Keiran to intervene. Their mission accomplished, the pair retreat back to Keiran¡¯s demesne to plan their next move.


    Keiran wants to advance his core again, but to do that, he needs to find a mana resonance point. With mana having disappeared from the world, he doesn¡¯t believe any natural points remain. Querit agrees with that assessment, but suggests that he can help Keiran build an artificial one instead. The catch is that they need to go digging under Derro to find an archive owned by Querit¡¯s creator in order to find the knowledge needed.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    While they¡¯re down there, Keiran has a realization about the sand worms. They¡¯re much bigger than Querit remembers them being, and they have to have a source of mana to feed on. Keiran theorizes that a piece of the shattered moon¡¯s core struck Derro, leaving the massive crater he¡¯s already explored, and that a thousand years ago, the sand worms dragged the actual core farther underground, where they¡¯ve been feeding off it ever since.


    That much mana would be incredibly valuable in creating an artificial resonance point, and Keiran devises a plan to feed scrying beacons to the sand worms to track their movements in the hope that they¡¯ll lead him to the core. Querit recovers the books he wants while Keiran works on creating the beacons needed.


    Soon after, a group of Ammun¡¯s mage hunters attack the valley. Their attempt fails utterly, and they are quickly killed or captured. He interrogates one of the mages and discovers that Ammun is attempting to build some sort of tether system that will link him to the tower, allowing him to roam anywhere inside the circle of the eight facilities without worrying about running out of mana.


    Keiran traces the mage hunters entry to the island back to one of the brakvaw portals and goes there to shut it down, much to the consternation of Grandfather and the elder council. Unwilling to leave an open portal for his enemies to use, Keiran closes it anyway. Then he begins making plans to fortify New Alkerist, plans which include removing the island-wide teleportation platform network to prevent the enemy from using it.


    While Keiran fortifies the island, Querit is hard at work researching both the designs of Ammun¡¯s machines they gained from interrogating prisoners and adapting lossless casting to give himself an infinite source of mana. Ideally, he wants to expand his research to perpetual enchantments and inscriptions as well, but that requires more work.


    With everything else taken care of for the moment, Keiran follows up on his search for a buried moon core. He goes digging deep under Derro, miles down, where the sand worms are so big they could swallow him whole. Instead of finding the moon core, he finds a colony of ants gifted in mind magic who¡¯ve formed a gestalt entity. Keiran quickly strikes a deal with the gestalt that involves relocating its colony to the brakvaw eyrie, where it will keep an eye on the portals using its divinations in exchange for unlimited food and the location of the moon core.


    After handling that transaction, Keiran finishes his delve. He finds the broken chunk of moon core nestled in the coils of a massive, multi-mile long sand worm. After killing the monster, he extracts the core from its clutches and takes it to the valley, where he harnesses its mana-producing capabilities to increase his demesne¡¯s rate of production even further. Soon, he and Querit are ready to forge their artificial mana resonance point.


    Just as they complete it, Ammun¡¯s forces launch their second attack. Ammun himself makes a brief appearance via a portal and breaks Keiran¡¯s wards, allowing mages to swarm the valley. Keiran and Querit fight them off, killing all of them but leaving Keiran too exhausted to retaliate. He speculates that Ammun must have found a way to spy on them in order to time the attack so well.


    Querit realizes that during his own fight months ago, one of the mages tagged him with a sympathetic scrying rune and piggybacks on the magic to turn it into a two-way viewing. Keiran gains access to the diviners¡¯ hall in Ammun¡¯s tower, where he kills close to a hundred of the mages and frees several dozen more. They tell him about the secret project in the heart of a hollowed-out mountain.


    Before Keiran can follow up on that, Ammun sends his next distraction to New Alkerist. A massive skeletal dragon arrives via portal, shepherded by none other than Averin, the master mage who worked to revive Ammun back in the tower. Keiran fights the dragon off, killing Averin in the process, then returns to the valley.


    They determine that they still have some time before Ammun finishes harnessing a moon to use as a weapon like the rebel cabal did a thousand years ago. Keiran uses that window to finally advance his core to stage seven and gains the ability to use heavy mana in his spells. Fully empowered now, he takes the fight to Ammun¡¯s hidden mountain, where he destroys the undead dragon completely before entering the sanctum inside the summit.


    There he finds the place empty but for a massive ritual chamber that he determines is an ultra-long-range teleportation spell that can take a group of people all the way to the surface of the moon. Using the ritual construct as a base, he pars it down to operate on a single person: him.


    Once he arrives, Keiran quickly realizes that Ammun can¡¯t make the magic work on his own. He couldn¡¯t figure out how to do what Keiran did, and if Keiran takes the group of mages Ammun has left in the moon base back down to the planet, Ammun will have no way home. After sending them away, he tracks Ammun down in a cave network under the moon¡¯s surface.


    After catching up to the lich, Keiran realizes Ammun¡¯s true goal. It¡¯s not to turn the moon into a weapon. It¡¯s to embed his phylacerty in the moon core to create a permanent connection to it as a source of mana. Ammun will be able to go anywhere on the planet with no fear of getting too far from his phylactery and starving himself of mana. He¡¯ll have an unlimited amount of mana to cast spells at the same time. Even if he¡¯s defeated, he¡¯ll simply grow a new body far out of anyone¡¯s reach.


    Ammun and his golem, Ergl, attack and overpower Keiran. Unfamiliar with the strange gravity and needing things like air to survive, Keiran loses the fight and activates his emergency recall, which he¡¯s retooled to take him back to the moon base. Ergl, who is grappling Keiran at the time the spell goes off, ends up coming along for the ride. Without its master to help, the golem is unable to defeat Keiran and detonates its core as a mana bomb to in an attempt to kill Keiran.


    Keiran survives, but is now injured, exhausted, and out of mana. He concedes Ammun¡¯s victory, but, knowing that the lich can¡¯t return to Manoch on his own, destroys the moon base and teleports back down to the planet¡¯s surface. As soon as Keiran recovers, he gets to work adapting the ultra-long-range portion of the ritual into scrying mirrors to keep an eye on what Ammun¡¯s doing up there, just in case, and begins planning the final steps to regaining his lost power in preparation for their inevitable final confrontation.

 Book 5, Chapter 1

    Golemancy was considered by many mages to be the absolute peak of the inscription discipline. To carve the language of magic into a physical object in such a detailed and intricate way that running mana through it created something akin to a living being was a difficult and rewarding task. And, of course, there were infinite variations. Golems could be as simple as having no function beyond opening a door when it sensed someone approaching or so complex that they were practically indistinguishable from a human being.


    The sheer breadth of knowledge needed was a huge hurdle to be overcome. Divinations were mandatory just to allow the golem to interact with environmental stimulus. Invocations and conjurations were needed if the golem was to exceed its base material in any way. All in all, a great deal of skill, time, material and effort went into even the simplest of creations.


    Breaking a golem, however, was quite easy.


    A bolt of pure force, a conjuration of kinetic energy, cut through the air and slammed into the closest golem¡¯s head. It rocked back on its heels precariously before shifting enough of its ponderous weight forward to settle solidly onto its feet and continue its advance. The few seconds it wasted on that were enough to allow me to distance myself from the encroaching line of enemies.


    Ammun¡¯s golems were quite durable, even for ones built specifically with defense in mind. It helped that the tower itself was feeding them all the mana they needed to run at maximum power for an unlimited amount of time. That was a clever bit of synergy there. But it didn¡¯t make them unbeatable; it just meant I needed to adjust my strategy.


    Initially, I¡¯d been attempting precision attacks. Since I had no idea how many golems were defending the lower levels of Ammun¡¯s tower, I didn¡¯t want to burn through my mana going all-out on this batch, only to be forced into a retreat later on. That was still an option, but it was quickly becoming apparent that it would take a prohibitive amount of time to break through with anything approaching finesse.


    ¡°The hard way it is,¡± I told a swiftly approaching golem.


    When attacking a being made of stone that wasn¡¯t actually alive, my options were limited. Fire was worthless. Ice wasn¡¯t much better. Lightning would do practically nothing, and they had no minds for me to dominate in mental combat. That was why I¡¯d opted for force magic initially, but their stone bodies were repairing themselves too quickly.


    I could rupture their cores, but not only would that not destroy them immediately, it would take far too much mana to do hundreds of times. Instead, I grabbed hold of them with a grand telekinesis spell and slammed them around until pieces started falling off. It was expensive, but I was able to siphon some of the excess mana they bled out as they broke down, and the fact that I was grabbing a dozen or more golems at a time to smack into each other helped mitigate the cost.


    My progress wasn¡¯t as fast as I wanted it to be¡ªI had another appointment when I was done here that I didn¡¯t want to be late for¡ªbut it was steady. More and more golems poured out of hidden rooms, relentless in their efforts to reach me and empowered with nigh-infinite mana. I just kept breaking through them as I advanced up the massive intake shaft.


    This was getting annoying. I¡¯d destroyed or disabled hundreds of golems already, not to mention shredding a few thousand mana wraiths on my way down to the tower¡¯s base, and no matter how many I took out, there were always more ready to take their place. When had Ammun found the time to make all of these?


    Maybe they were leftovers from before he¡¯d cracked the world core and destroyed global civilization. They could have laid dormant for all those centuries and only been activated as a defense when Ammun himself returned from his hibernation. That was the only way I could see them existing in such numbers, since they certainly hadn¡¯t been here the last time I¡¯d come through.


    Eventually I won against the masses, but it was a slog. I reached the point in the mana intake shaft where it started splitting dozens of directions and took a moment to consider my approach. What I wanted to leave behind probably wouldn¡¯t be recognized as something the golems should attack, but even if it was, it would only have to survive for a few weeks.


    Just to be safe, I burned the mana to conjure up a platform made of pure force, then spun an enchantment around it to keep it existing indefinitely. If there was anywhere that could afford such an extravagant and wasteful demonstration, it was here. There was enough mana down here¡ªheavy mana, at that¡ªto power the platform for years.


    I stood in the middle and lifted it to float in the air a full twenty feet above the floor. That should keep everything outside the reach of any future golems that might come wandering by. Then, one by one, I started pulling out the pieces I¡¯d fabricated back home and assembling them into one big machine.


    When I was done, I fed it the initial spark of mana to bring it to life, then stood back and watched to make sure everything was working right. It sucked mana in from the environment around it, not bothering the platform it was sitting on, but drawing massive quantities of loose mana out of the air. After a minute of that, it had a sufficient volume to start refining it into the one thing it was capable of making: mysteel.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I had no time to watch it after I was sure it was cycling correctly. After all, it would take a full day to make a chip the size of my pinky nail. I simply ensured that there were no problems with the process since I already knew it would work from previous testing. The only variables were whether I¡¯d constructed it properly, which I knew I had, and if the heavier mana down here would cause a problem. Since I¡¯d accounted for that in the initial construction, I was confident everything would work fine.


    What I wasn¡¯t sure about was the golems. Those hadn¡¯t been here last time I¡¯d come into the tower through the mana intake vents and I really didn¡¯t have time to pick apart one of their cores to map out their defense protocols. That was the kind of project that would take days, unless it was something stupidly simple like ¡®attack anything that moves,¡¯ and even then, there¡¯d be additional layers of runic scripts to coordinate with the other golems and determine how best to kill the intruder.


    Golems were complicated.


    With my work done, I retreated back down the intake to the outside of the tower and flew around its base to the next entrance. I was miles and miles deep in an enormous chasm, so far down that no sunlight could reach me where the air was so thick with mana that it would kill any normal person exposed to it.


    The new intake had its own set of golems, proving that I hadn¡¯t just gotten unlucky with my initial pick. I fought my way through them as well, eventually reached the spot I wanted where it split and placing a second mysteel generator. Then I backed out and repeated the process for a third time, but that was all I could get done before I ran out of time.


    I wanted to leave a teleportation platform down here, but I needed to spend some extra effort shielding it from detection. There were still thousands of mages a hundred miles up, many of whom were skilled enough to notice such a platform, and that wasn¡¯t even counting whatever automated defenses Ammun had activated. The best I could hope for was to leave a platform deep inside the intake valve and hope the golems would ignore it.


    I wasn¡¯t that worried about it being destroyed. A platform was a convenience, not a necessity. Losing it wouldn¡¯t stop me from regaining access to my mysteel generators. It would just take a bit longer. I suspected the golems were probably operating on a ¡®destroy anything that¡¯s not supposed to be here¡¯ set of commands, which could very well include the platform. I supposed I¡¯d find out when I came back to check on things later.


    With my work as done as I could get it in the limited amount of time I had left, I used the platform to teleport to my first relay point a thousand miles southeast of the tower. A second jump brought me close to my destination, and a third saw me there.


    Two massive black-feathered birds, each one with beaks longer than I was tall, loomed over the platform. They looked down at me in unison, and I felt mana surge through one up into its throat to form sounds its mouth had no hope of ever accurately replicating on its own.


    ¡°You¡¯re late,¡± the brakvaw said. ¡°Everyone is waiting for you up at the peak.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± I groused without bothering to explain. Some random brakvaw stuck on platform guarding duty wasn¡¯t going to care about my excuses. I lifted myself into the air with a flight spell and zoomed up the slope, dodging a flock of juvenile birds when they suddenly poured out of a crevice in the side of the mountain. Every single one of them was almost as big as me.


    They didn¡¯t even notice me, so intent were they on each other and their game. A larger, adult brakvaw streaked after them, his voice harsh and screechy as he scolded them. I caught a single glimpse of them looking back and up to see me flying away, then I was around the curve of the mountain and approaching the peak.


    In normal times, it was a huge depression, a sort of bowl left over when the tip of the mountain had been broken off and sent up past the clouds. In the center was a single, enormous roost, home to the brakvaw leader known simply as Grandfather. He¡¯d been stuck there for years now, and even that had been an improvement from his original position on the floating island up beyond the clouds.


    Today, we were fixing that once and for all. Thanks almost entirely to my assistant¡¯s hard work over the last four months, we were finally ready to attempt merging lossless casting into a standing enchantment to make it entirely self-sufficient. If it worked, the magic Grandfather had been continually channeling for centuries to hold the floating island aloft would power itself autonomously, finally freeing the brakvaw patriarch to leave his roost.


    Querit was standing there waiting for me, as were a few thousand eyeless, crystalline ants. Those were a small fraction of the gestalt entity that lived inside the mountain, a sapient colony of mind magic specialists, all joined together in a singular consciousness. On the ground, circling the whole bowl in row after row of runes joined in a complex array of connecting lines, was the inscribed portion of the ritual. If everything went as planned, it wouldn¡¯t be necessary.


    Grandfather had wanted a backup system in place, however, so Querit had labored for weeks to shape the whole ritual, then spent another week going over everything. He was a golem, however, and didn¡¯t suffer from human foibles like fatigue or loss of focus. He¡¯d simply worked, hours upon hours stacking up without so much as a break, until the runes were carved.


    ¡°Finally,¡± he said when I landed next to him. ¡°How was the mission?¡±


    ¡°I only got three of them done. Ammun filled the lower levels with thousands of war golems. I¡¯m a little bit concerned about the machines being attacked, but I took steps to mitigate the chances of that happening.¡±


    ¡°Maybe we can come up with something to trick their sensory inputs,¡± Querit said. ¡°Did you bring back a few core samples?¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t have time to sift through the rubble to find one that was intact. I¡¯ll try to preserve one when I go back to install the rest of the harvesters.¡±


    Querit nodded, then turned his attention to the center of the caldera when Grandfather appeared on top of his roost. ¡°Time to get this going,¡± he said.


    Together, we started casting the spell that would free the old brakvaw from his self-imposed prison.

 Book 5, Chapter 2

    We¡¯d tested plenty of smaller enchantments, measured their efficiency and their output, and confirmed our theories. Everything worked as expected ¨C they had higher initial mana costs, but then they recycled all but the tiniest fraction of their expended mana, increasing their lifespan by near a hundred-fold what the old method granted.


    Small enchantments were fine, but there was the possibility that our predictions would fail on something this massive, so Grandfather was approaching the procedure with a noticeable amount of trepidation despite our safeguards. I didn¡¯t expect any issues with scaling things up, but his concerns were understandable.


    ¡°You¡¯re sure you¡¯ve accounted for everything?¡± he asked again.


    ¡°Yes. And if something does go wrong, either of us can manually take over the spell. Stop worrying so much and stop pestering me,¡± I said. ¡°Look, Querit¡¯s in position. It¡¯s time to start. Get out of the center so you don¡¯t disrupt anything.¡±


    ¡°How quickly can you get this online?¡± Grandfather asked. ¡°As soon as I move out of position¡ª¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± I interrupted. ¡°Just move. We¡¯re ready to go.¡±


    Maybe I could have been nicer about it. An objective part of my mind noted that I was still angry about failing to plant all the mysteel generators thanks to the unexpected resistance of thousands and thousands of golems, but that wasn¡¯t Grandfather¡¯s fault and taking it out on him wasn¡¯t fair.


    Before I could say anything, the old grayfeather broke the spell that was holding the island aloft above the clouds and sped out of the ritual circle with two flaps of his huge wings. His bulk landed behind me, shaking the ground slightly as he settled into place. I ignored that and started the enchantment.


    A huge surge of mana chased the retreating trail of Grandfather¡¯s magic up into the sky, steadily gaining on it until it overtook it completely. The first step had gone off without a hitch, and the island would maintain its altitude uninterrupted. If anything, it might rise up a few hundred feet before settling back to its current position.


    Mana raced through the ritual, both mine and Querit¡¯s, as it provided the initial spark to get things going. We had about three minutes before the temporary surge abated and the enchantments were forced to hold the island up. If things weren¡¯t ready by then, someone would have to step in and the whole ritual would be ruined.


    But, for a change, everything went smoothly. Querit did his part of the ritual and I handled mine. The enchantments flowed into place smoothly, each one locking around its fellows to create a unified whole that powered a massive feat of long-distance levitation. It was backed by the inscription array, but that was a failsafe, not a necessity. That had enough mana in it to keep things in the air for an entire day if the enchantments somehow failed, more than long enough for someone to step in.


    They wouldn¡¯t, I knew, not unless some flaw started a cascading reaction that burnt out the mana powering the enchantments before anyone could correct it. And I doubted such a flaw existed, but I understood why Grandfather would be concerned. This was an island he¡¯d spent centuries holding up, and now he was trusting it to the workings of a man who wasn¡¯t even brakvaw.


    ¡°And we¡¯re done,¡± I announced. ¡°I imagine you¡¯ll want to hang around here and reassure yourself that nothing¡¯s going to go wrong. Feel free to do so. You can move through the center now that the ritual is complete. As long as the runes aren¡¯t physically damaged, the safeguard system will stay intact, though it will need regular infusions of mana if you plan to keep it operational.¡±


    ¡°The mana batteries we buried under the stone are holding steady as well,¡± Querit reported as he walked up to us. ¡°At the rate they¡¯re draining power, I would say they¡¯ll need to be recharged once a month, just to be safe. They should last three months without maintenance before the backup has to take over.¡±


    ¡°We will keep an eye on them,¡± the gestalt added, their feminine voice seemingly coming from nowhere. ¡°It is no trouble for us.¡±


    ¡°I appreciate that,¡± Grandfather said. He peered down at the cluster of crystalline ants that had observed the ritual. ¡°Do you think it will all hold?¡±


    ¡°If Keiran says it will, then we believe him,¡± they said. ¡°He has not misled us, so far.¡±


    It was good to see the brakvaw and the gestalt getting along. I¡¯d sort of dumped the ant colony in the eyrie with no warning and Grandfather had been justifiably upset about that. Creating this enchantment to free him from his duties as a living channel for the massive levitation spell holding their graveyard up in the sky had been a sort of apology for that.


    Plus, it was the perfect test to confirm massive enchantments handled the lossless modifications before I risked any of my own demesne¡¯s enchantments trying it. No sense in making sweeping changes to my own setup without checking to see if they worked first.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    ¡°Speaking of things that work, I also have your new scrying¡­ orbs,¡± I said. They weren¡¯t really orbs, but they might as well have been at a casual glance.


    ¡°Excellent. We will show you where to place them.¡±


    ¡°You guys alright up here?¡± I asked. ¡°Fine if I go take care of other things?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re good,¡± Querit assured me. ¡°Everything is working correctly.¡±


    ¡°Perfect. In that case, I¡¯ll be on my way.¡±


    I followed the stream of ants as they scurried down the side of the mountain. The permanent portals I¡¯d built for the brakvaw were stationed on a vertical cliff face that had been magically smoothed out, and the gestalt¡¯s lair was right below that. It had expanded its caverns considerably and the stone now looked more like smooth volcanic glass than the rough granite that existed here when the gestalt had first moved in.


    My own access point was a bit grosser than the ones the gestalt used. They simply crawled through the thousands of cracks in the stone, filing in one after another, but I had to use the feeding hole, a fissure opened in the ground that brakvaw dropped whole carcasses in as part of the deal between them and the gestalt. It watched over the portals for threats, monitoring all of them at once, in exchange for what was barely a snack for the average brakvaw once a day.


    The hole was not regularly cleaned. Bits of fur and meat were stuck to the walls. To say it was an unpleasant passage would be an understatement.


    But I could fly and my shield ward protected me from actually coming into contact with any of the remains, so I didn¡¯t complain about it. Instead, I floated through the air to the main chamber, where a massive stone tree grew out of the ground. Somehow, it was even bigger than the last time I¡¯d seen it, despite the fact that stone generally couldn¡¯t grow.


    I pulled the three orbs out of my phantom space and held them in the air with telekinesis until I felt the gestalt¡¯s own magic pluck them out of my grip. Each one was a thousand-sided polyhedron, its facets so small as to make it appear to be a sphere. To anyone other than a gestalt entity, it would be an utterly pointless device.


    For a collective consciousness composed of millions of ants, each orb would let them look at a thousand different places at once. Getting the spellwork small enough while keeping it functional had been quite the task, but I¡¯d been working on them diligently for months now. Much like the enchantments I¡¯d designed to take Grandfather¡¯s place, there was no way to be sure the scrying orbs would work without actually testing them, and I couldn¡¯t do that with my singular mind.


    But a colony of magical ants that specialized in divinations could. The orbs held themselves off the ground, only an inch or two, and the ants climbed up and swarmed them so thick that I could no longer see the mirrored surfaces. Only the fact that mana swept through them told me that the gestalt had activated the orbs, and even that wasn¡¯t enough to confirm if everything was working properly.


    ¡°Well?¡± I asked after a minute.


    ¡®The design is functional,¡¯ the gestalt projected into my mind. Without Querit¡ªa being that had no mind to connect to¡ªhere, there was no need for them to use physical words. ¡®With these, we shall see farther than ever before. Soon, there will be nowhere that escapes our sight. Wherever invaders think to hide, we shall find them.¡¯


    ¡°Good. That¡¯s exactly what I need you to do.¡±


    Ammun himself was trapped up on one of Manoch¡¯s moons right now, but that wasn¡¯t stopping the people running his army from continuing his campaign against me. Of course, they were a lot less threatening without their lich overlord, but there were still thousands of them. Keeping them off my island was high on my priority list, especially with them knowing where my family lived.


    ¡°Any movement up on Yulitar?¡± I asked.


    ¡®This being that you claim is up there continues to block all attempts to scry on it,¡¯ the gestalt sent. ¡®We know of its movements only in the places we cannot look, and while the ultra-long-range scrying mirror you gave us works, a single mirror is not enough to keep track of the entirety of the moon¡¯s surface. Nor would we have the mana to scry so much land so far away.¡¯


    I frowned. ¡°I¡¯m still working on it. We probably won¡¯t ever be able to pierce Ammun¡¯s scrying wards, but I think I can streamline the cost with these new lossless enchantments.¡±


    Surprisingly, the gestalt had proven completely incapable of mastering lossless casting. Something about the way their mana functioned as a collective consciousness ran counter to the technique in a way that we hadn¡¯t quite been able to figure out. Whenever they¡¯d tried to use it, any ant involved in the spell had been disconnected from the gestalt. That had caused several splinter consciousnesses to form that the main entity had needed to excise.


    It hadn¡¯t taken them long to deem even practicing lossless casting too dangerous to continue, despite the potential gains. As inconvenient as that was, I couldn¡¯t blame them. If I¡¯d been forced to cut out part of my body every time I cast a spell, I would have stopped, too.


    ¡°No signs of anything new being built up there?¡± I asked.


    ¡®Nothing in any area we¡¯ve been able to see.¡¯


    That wasn¡¯t a ¡®no,¡¯ unfortunately. It was entirely possible that Ammun had set up underground where we wouldn¡¯t be able to physically see him on top of using a standard set of archmage-level scrying wards. For that matter, it was possible that he¡¯d figured out how to modify the ritual he¡¯d used to get up there and was already back down on the planet, though I didn¡¯t think that was likely. If Ammun had returned home, I¡¯d never have gotten away with placing my mysteel generators in his tower.


    ¡°I¡¯ll keep working on something else to make that easier. Thank you for doing your best with the tools I¡¯ve created so far.¡±


    The gestalt brushed off the gratitude. ¡®It is little enough trouble. We are well supplied with mana and food and a single mirror takes an insignificant portion of our mind to direct.¡¯


    ¡°Still, I feel better knowing you¡¯re keeping an eye on things.¡±


    I left then, stopping only to check on the peak once more before moving on to my next errand. Everything was still operating smoothly up there, much to Grandfather¡¯s delight. It would probably be a few more weeks before he felt comfortable enough to truly leave the caldera unattended, but I knew he was looking forward to seeing the rest of the world in person for the first time in centuries.


    My work on Eyrie Peak was done for the day, so I returned to the teleportation platform and headed off to my next destination.

 Book 5, Chapter 3

    The wastes were a bit unusual for a desert climate due to one simple fact: there was plenty of water. Hundreds of streams came down from the mountains, and near their banks, short grasses or scraggly bushes did often grow. But without mana from the world core, nothing was vibrant. Nothing was healthy. Plants lived or died on their own mana production, which was generally insufficient even with a ready source of water.


    It was the soil that did it, or rather, the lack of soil. The island had never been good, arable farmland, but the cataclysmic disaster that was Ammun¡¯s breaking of the world had driven it to its current state. I doubted so much as one part in a hundred of the island was capable of supporting human life.


    ¡°And you plan to change that,¡± I said to Hyago, who stood proudly in front of a grove of close to a thousand large, healthy trees.


    ¡°Oh, not in my lifetime,¡± the druid said. ¡°But I can get it started. I have gotten it started.¡±


    I glanced at his work. Admittedly, it had only been a year or so and it was impressive how far he¡¯d come, but a century of work just like this wouldn¡¯t be enough to cover even a fraction of the island. I doubted the trees he left behind as he continued to expand would remain healthy without his care, either.


    ¡°This doesn¡¯t seem sustainable to me,¡± I said. ¡°How much can you really do when every tree you grow operates at a mana deficit?¡±


    ¡°By myself, I¡¯d be limited,¡± he admitted. ¡°But I¡¯ve got eight assistants now.¡±


    ¡°You know that won¡¯t be enough. It wouldn¡¯t even be close to enough.¡±


    His voice turned sly and he said, ¡°We might not be able to cover more than an acre or two, but with you helping us¡­¡±


    I laughed. ¡°Hyago, I came to you because I don¡¯t have enough time in the day to do everything that needs doing. I do not have the time to help you.¡±


    ¡°No, but you have ember blooms. I¡¯ll do your herb gardens for you in exchange for some cuttings.¡±


    While that was true, the cuttings hadn¡¯t done nearly as well as the original I¡¯d taken them from. Without that one anchor tree, my whole system would have collapsed years ago. Fortunately, I didn¡¯t strictly need the ember bloom anymore, not now that the petrified forest was complete. It produced more than enough mana to power the wards and enchantments in my valley, and as soon as I got around to redoing those with the same techniques we¡¯d used on Eyrie Peak, even the living stone trees would be unnecessary.


    I couldn¡¯t produce the mana Hyago needed out of nothing, but I could ease the amount of mana the trees used to the point where they started generating excess. Teaching Hyago how to make the enchantments would take far too long, but if I could get Querit out here to set them up, that would certainly help continue the expansion efforts.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think an ember bloom cutting would help,¡± I said. ¡°And the tree still hasn¡¯t dropped any kind of seeds that I can find. However, I have an alternative proposition.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m listening.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve got some enchantments running to keep your trees healthy, to protect the soil against erosion, climate adjustments, so on. That¡¯s got to be hard on your budget. How much more could you do if you didn¡¯t need to keep the mana batteries topped off?¡±


    ¡°A lot,¡± the druid admitted. ¡°That¡¯s an unexpectedly generous proposal, though. Can you really afford to spend that much mana just to avoid a bit of gardening?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve learned some new tricks since you left my employ,¡± I said with a grin. ¡°Remember what those giant birds taught me?¡±


    ¡°The mana recycling thing? But you said it was only useful for certain kinds of spells¡­¡± Hyago trailed off. Then he laughed and said, ¡°You sly bastard. You figured out how to adapt it.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t take all the credit. I had some help from my new assistant.¡±


    ¡°Ah, right. I met him ¨C seemed like a nice enough fellow.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s a golem,¡± I said.


    Hyago¡¯s eyebrows climbed up to his hairline. ¡°That was a golem?¡±


    ¡°The most advanced one I¡¯ve ever seen in my life. I found him deactivated in some old ruins and fed him some mana to get him moving again.¡±


    ¡°Incredible,¡± Hyago said with a laugh and a shake of his head. ¡°And the two of you cracked your infinite mana trick for enchantments. You¡¯re willing to redo ours?¡±If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    ¡°It¡¯s not infinite,¡± I said. ¡°More like¡­ ninety-five percent reduction in cost. If the enchantment could have run for a day without being refreshed, it¡¯ll last about three weeks instead. Maybe a bit longer, depending on the enchantment.¡±


    ¡°That would still help us expand quite a bit. Would we need to do anything?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d expect you to grow some plants for me,¡± I said dryly.


    ¡°Besides that. Would we need to do anything special to maintain them?¡±


    ¡°No, they act just like normal enchantments. Feed the mana batteries regularly and they¡¯ll last forever.¡±


    Hyago nodded along and regarded his little oasis in the desert. ¡°Okay, you¡¯ve got a deal. Let¡¯s talk about what you need grown and how much.¡±


    * * *


    By the time I left, I¡¯d invested far more effort than I¡¯d planned. Monsters were a bit of a problem for the druids, specifically some sort of ringed serpent that apparently loved trees. How or why those existed in a desert was a bit of a mystery, but I suspected they were used to climbing cracks in rock walls and had simply adapted to Hyago¡¯s forest.


    I raised walls to keep out the less nimble monsters and crafted some strong vermin repellent wards under the theory that without any mice or the like to prey on, the monstrous snakes would quickly abandon their new homes under threat of starvation. I also opened a portal to a far greener land, one which Hyago eagerly sent his underlings through to collect copious amounts of good soil and a few new tree species.


    Finally, I opened portals to a few specific locations I¡¯d marked during my travels to allow Hyago to gain access to several breeds of tree I wanted to see flourish on the island. It wasn¡¯t so much that I thought he had a chance of succeeding at his goals in the next century, but if he was going to try, there were a few fruits I¡¯d like to see readily available.


    First was a peculiar type of apple tree. Its bark was a rich, distinctive gold color, quite beautiful in its own right. But the tree¡¯s true value was the fruits that it produced. Each harvest took years to come in, or at least that¡¯s how long it had been back in my original life. With the limited mana available now, we¡¯d probably be measuring its fruiting cycles in decades.


    But those apples could be eaten raw and would grant increased health and longevity. Properly prepared, the effect could prolong a life by a good century. They were so famous that there were all sorts of myths and stories told about them. Having spent a few hundred years eating them myself, I could confidentially say that they worked well at first, though with diminishing returns until they finally did nothing at all.


    Less impressive, but far more practical, I led the druids to some vines that grew grapes bursting with mana. It was no substitute for a good mana crystal, and they would draw monsters to them once they ripened, but they had plenty of alchemical uses.


    Finally, they obtained three shield willows, perfect for travelers seeking shelter. The thick, flexible branches could easily protect against bad weather and hide whoever was camping inside. Even better, a mage who knew the trick of it could convince the tree to fend off predators when needed.


    I got a bit more than I was originally looking for as payment for the extra work. Alchemy relied heavily on various plants grown in mana-rich environments, but it could also make use of monster parts. Those were significantly more difficult to get hold of, for obvious reasons. While the druids weren¡¯t hunters, they were already fending off all sorts of monsters. Adding the mana-bearing grape vines to their orchards was going to make that problem worse.


    It wasn¡¯t much of a stretch to get them to save certain parts for my use. All I needed to do was get a look at a few of the more common monsters while they were still alive so that I could point out what to harvest off them, which was easy enough to do with a few simple divinations pointing me in the right directions.


    ¡°I think that¡¯s everything,¡± I said as I glanced at the setting sun. ¡°And I am officially out of time now anyway.¡±


    ¡°Got somewhere to be?¡± Hyago asked.


    ¡°Family thing. I¡¯m probably already late.¡±


    ¡°Say no more. You¡¯ll send your golem assistant over to do the enchantments tomorrow?¡±


    ¡°Maybe not tomorrow, but sometime in the next few days. We¡¯ve got a lot going on right now.¡±


    Hyago shrugged. ¡°Take your time. Can¡¯t start growing your stuff without the seeds anyway.¡±


    ¡°Right. I¡¯ll get those to you.¡±


    It was technically possible to store seeds in my phantom space, but organic matter was always tricky even if it wasn¡¯t really alive yet. Some of the seeds would inevitably end up damaged and fail to sprout if I went that route, and I wasn¡¯t in that much of a hurry. I¡¯d get Hyago the starter samples soon enough.


    ¡°Good luck with all of this,¡± I said, waving a hand at his miniature forest. ¡°I¡¯m hoping to get the world core itself fixed in the next decade or so. It¡¯ll take a while, but if I can pull it off, mana will start flooding the land again. That¡¯ll make everything a lot easier.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Why the obsession with the world core?¡± he asked. ¡°I know things aren¡¯t the same as how they were in your last life, but you¡¯re plenty powerful. I know how much mana your demesne makes. And I know how little you care about helping strangers when there¡¯s nothing in it for you. So¡­ Why?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not for them. I just¡­ It¡¯s for magic itself. I know I¡¯m not good with people. I¡¯m impatient and rude and have no empathy for them. I run roughshod over everyone I meet, and I get away with it because no one can actually stop me. But magic¡­¡±


    I trailed off and gathered my thoughts while Hyago waited patiently. ¡°Magic saved me,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯d have died in the gutter without it. It¡¯s everything to me. I want mana to come back so I can rebuild what this world lost. You¡¯ve lived your whole life with things like this. You can¡¯t even imagine what it was like before Ammun. If you¡¯d experienced it, you¡¯d understand why it¡¯s worth the effort.¡±


    The druid glanced around at his grove. ¡°I think I get that, a little bit. Living in your valley for a few years really showed me how much better our lives would be if this whole island wasn¡¯t an endless desert.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s true enough,¡± I said. ¡°But I don¡¯t think you¡¯re going to be able to scale this up to accomplish your goals. Still, it¡¯ll be a nice few miles of green amidst an endless yellow and brown. That¡¯s worth something.¡±


    ¡°Says the man who turned his whole forest to stone,¡± Hyago snorted.


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t because I thought it looked better this way.¡± I looked past Hyago to the setting sun again and sighed. ¡°Good luck with all of this, though. Honestly, I hope you prove me wrong. Now, where would you like me to leave this teleportation platform? I need to drop it and get going.¡±

 Book 5, Chapter 4

    There was a backpack sitting just inside my bedroom door, presumably packed by my sister. It was the first thing I saw when I teleported to my parents¡¯ home. I chuckled softly; Senica had probably been obnoxiously impatient all evening while she waited for me to finish up everything else on my agenda. Truthfully, the most efficient way to organize my tasks would be to delay this outing until I finished setting all the mysteel generators in the mana intakes of Ammun¡¯s tower, but in the end, a few extra days without them in place wouldn¡¯t make a real difference.


    New Alkerist¡¯s population had swollen to almost double its original size after Ammun sent a few thousand zombies through portals all over the island to attack random villages in an attempt to distract me. I hadn¡¯t taken the bait, with the end result being that a dozen different settlements were destroyed, their populations scattered into the wastes to live or die depending on how well they could fend off the local monsters.


    Querit had done an admirable job rescuing many of the survivors, and the island¡¯s only city had absorbed most of the displaced villagers easily. For those that weren¡¯t interested in city life and had no family elsewhere to take them in, New Alkerist had become their new home. The council had been trying to get me to help them build more housing for months now, or rather to get me to do the standard set of housing enchantments in them. I¡¯d been too busy and had ignored their requests.


    It was for exactly that reason that I¡¯d teleported directly to my family¡¯s house and would be leaving the same way. No one on the council¡ªexcluding my father¡ªwould ever know that I¡¯d been here. And he wasn¡¯t going to tell on me.


    Annoyingly, it seemed only one of the two people coming with me on this trip was actually here. Senica was sitting at the table, watching Nailu run around chattering and my parents worked together in the kitchen preparing food. Senica¡¯s boyfriend was nowhere to be found. I stood in the doorway, as of yet unnoticed, and sent scrying spells out to sweep the town.


    ¡°You¡¯re late,¡± Nailu announced in a high-pitched voice as he jabbed a finger at me. That caught everyone else¡¯s attention, causing them to stop what they were doing and look up.


    ¡°I know,¡± I said. ¡°It was a very busy day.¡±


    ¡°Told you he¡¯d show up just in time to eat the food,¡± Father said out of the corner of his mouth to Mother. I rolled my eyes and pretended not to hear while I kneeled down and readied myself for my little brother¡¯s charge across the room.


    Just before he could hit me, I swept us both up into the air to spin around in circles while he giggled. I stayed in place, but the arc of his rotation got bigger and bigger until he was flying around the entire room with each pass. Slowly, I settled back onto the floor. Nailu, however, kept kicking his legs and flailing his arms in an attempt to speed up.


    ¡°Hey, not in the house,¡± Mother scolded us after one of his feet clipped a clay jar set on a shelf halfway up the wall. I caught and steadied the jar with telekinesis before it could do more than wobble, but that was the end of the game for my little brother.


    ¡°So, what was the problem?¡± Senica asked as I claimed the chair opposite of her.


    ¡°Ammun left an unexpectedly high amount of security behind,¡± I grumbled. ¡°Thousands and thousands of golems. I only got three of the generators placed and I stayed for almost double my allotted time. The stuff at Eyrie Peak went smoothly, but getting Hyago on board also took far longer than I expected.¡±


    ¡°He agreed, though. That¡¯s something.¡±


    ¡°He did,¡± I said. ¡°But I need to send Querit out there to do probably a whole day¡¯s worth of work now. That crazy druid is trying to reforest the entire island.¡±


    ¡°Reforest?¡± Father asked. ¡°Was it ever forested in the first place?¡±


    ¡°Not to my knowledge, but I guess the basin used to be mostly prairies prior to Ammun¡¯s mistake.¡±


    ¡°Can he actually do it?¡± Mother asked. When I shook my head, she added, ¡°Not even with your help?¡±


    ¡°Not before you¡¯re dead and dust,¡± I told her. ¡°Not the way he¡¯s currently going, at least. Even with a hundred druids to help, they won¡¯t have the time and the mana to cover more than the smallest fraction of the island. The only way this works is if I get the world core fixed, and even then, it¡¯ll probably be another fifty years before ambient mana levels rise to the point where trees could support themselves naturally in this environment.¡±


    My scrying spells finally found Juby, out on the far edges of the south fields. He was staring off into the desert, perched on a rather large rock that marked the boundary of the town. Just judging by how the farmers completely ignored him, I was guessing he¡¯d been there a while.


    It wasn¡¯t hard to put the pieces together. There was only one backpack. Juby was sitting off by himself, sulking¡ªor maybe it was angry brooding¡ªat the edge of town. Senica hadn¡¯t mentioned his name once, even though he was supposed to be going on this trip with us.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    ¡°So, what was the fight about?¡± I asked my sister.


    She let out an exasperated sigh and said, ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter. I don¡¯t want to talk about it. He¡¯s not coming, if you haven¡¯t already figured that out.¡±


    ¡°I assumed as much. I just wanted to know if this is going to be something that distracts you from doing your job?¡±


    ¡°No, I¡¯m fine. He¡¯s the one being a¡ª¡± she cut herself off glared out the window.


    ¡°Right. Well, if you¡¯re sure¡­¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± she said again. ¡°Let¡¯s just eat and then we can go.¡±


    ¡°Speaking of eating, dinner¡¯s ready,¡± Mother said. Four metal pots floated off the stove to the table and spaced themselves out in the center on a thin slab of thin stone placed there for the purpose of holding them.


    It was a far cry from the cauldron they¡¯d boiled every meal in when I¡¯d first awakened in my new body, but my family had taken to using an enchanted stove with gusto and learned quite a few ways to prepare dishes besides ¡®raw¡¯ or ¡®boiled,¡¯ not that I had anything against stew in all of its infinite variations.


    ¡°Gravin,¡± Nailu said, demanding my attention. ¡°Up.¡±


    ¡°No magic during din¡ª¡±


    But it was too late for Mother¡¯s admonishment. Nailu was already floating through the air in a graceful hop to land on his chair. He even did a flip halfway through, much to Mother¡¯s consternation and everyone else¡¯s amusement.


    ¡°Tada!¡± he announced, holding his arms up and looking about expectantly.


    ¡°Did you¡­?¡± Senica looked at me.


    ¡°Nope, that was all him.¡±


    * * *


    We appeared on a rocky overlook above a few-mile long stretch of old forest sometime later. I was pleased to see that the instant we arrived, Senica spun up a divination spell to sweep the area for threats. It took her six seconds to fully cast it, but the fact that she was using it at all was a massive improvement over her capabilities even a few years ago.


    ¡°Well?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t see anything that could be a threat to us,¡± she said. ¡°Not that I expected to.¡±


    ¡°You never know.¡±


    ¡°I might not, but you do. I don¡¯t believe for a second that you teleported us here without scrying the area first.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I did. But what I consider a threat and what you consider a threat aren¡¯t necessarily the same thing.¡±


    Senica rolled her eyes and stepped off the edge of the overlook. Flight magic took hold of her body and sped her off over the trees to the north. Our destination was only a mile or two away, easily close enough for her to fly at her top speed without getting tired. If she thought that was going to be enough to beat me, though, she was sadly mistaken.


    Ten seconds later, I caught up to her and slowed down to match her speed. ¡®How long can you keep this up now?¡¯ I asked telepathically.


    ¡®Depends how I cast it,¡¯ she replied.


    That was honestly a fair answer. We¡¯d spent some time working on lossless casting, but the truth was that in exchange for reclaiming spent mana, spells were significantly more difficult to cast. For something channeled like flight, that added a considerable burden to the process. Unfortunately, as a stage two mage, mana was in short supply and Senica needed to save as much as she could.


    ¡®Lossless style,¡¯ I sent.


    ¡®At full speed? Fifteen minutes? Maybe twenty. At half speed, I¡¯m good for an hour or so.¡¯


    I mentally translated that to half the spell¡¯s actual maximum speed, which wasn¡¯t bad for a mage who was only technically past the apprentice stage by the strictest definition of what a full mage actually was. Senica met the actual requirements to be a mage¡ªproficiency in intermediate spells in at least three different disciplines¡ªbut it was generally expected that apprentices would also have a grasp on the basic spells in all the other disciplines as well.


    Her education had been¡­ spotty. It wasn¡¯t her fault. Mana was a precious resource now and we¡¯d had to focus on giving her the tools she needed. Even with my recent advancements up to stage seven over the last few years, my own mana was tied up so heavily in fighting Ammun that I hadn¡¯t had much to spare for her.


    This outing was a step toward changing that. I¡¯d done the best I could teaching my sister magic under the circumstances, but the fact of it was that my best wasn¡¯t very good. I couldn¡¯t really afford the time or resources she needed, despite her clear talent. Unfortunately, there wasn¡¯t anybody else around who was really qualified, so Senica had done her best with a part-time tutor and no help with training.


    ¡®Where are we landing?¡¯ Senica asked thirty seconds later when the ruins of an old city started poking through the trees.


    I¡¯d already picked out a spot, a large, three-story building that was missing most of the roof and was near the center of the city. We landed on the moss-covered stone and peered around at the streets below. Old cobblestones had been busted up practically everywhere either by tree roots or by the city¡¯s new occupants, several of which were going about their business under the canopy of green leaves.


    ¡°You didn¡¯t mention how bad they¡¯d smell,¡± Senica said.


    I shrugged. ¡°You¡¯ll get used to it.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d rather not.¡±


    ¡°Think of it as a good training opportunity to practice filtering harmful fumes out of the air.¡±


    ¡°Wait, are you not smelling this, too?¡± she demanded.


    ¡°I am not,¡± I confirmed.


    ¡°That is completely unfair.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯d better figure it out quick. They smell worse up close, and the stink is basically weaponized once you start cutting them up.¡±


    ¡°I regret agreeing to this,¡± she muttered.


    ¡°Too late for regrets. Some of them noticed us.¡±


    Down below, a group of six trolls were looking up at the roof and pointing. Each of them was over eight feet tall and probably weighed six hundred pounds at minimum. Their skin was mottled green and brown, surprisingly good at blending in with the forest growing up through the ruined city.


    And they were strong, as one of them demonstrated by hauling up a loose hunk of stone and throwing it fifty feet into the air. It flew unerringly at me, only to be deflected at the last moment by my shield ward. ¡°Good arm on that one,¡± I said.


    ¡°Are you going to help?¡± Senica asked.


    ¡°What? Why would I do that. This is why you¡¯re here. You¡¯ve got practically unlimited mana to use and you specialize in fire conjurations. I have every confidence that you¡¯ll defeat these monsters.¡±


    Four more stones, each the size of my head, sailed up from the ground to pelt us. Senica shot me a dirty look and produced her wand. ¡°Yeah, if they don¡¯t split my skull open first,¡± she said.


    Then she got to work setting the trolls on fire.

 Book 5, Chapter 5

    I floated along behind my sister as she flew through the air, moving like a particularly acrobatic dancer to avoid the barrage of rocks the trolls were hurling at us. More and more of the monsters were showing up, and there was plenty of loose stonework to serve as ammunition. Senica spun around, her limbs contorting to get them out of the way and her magic shifting her from side to side.


    I caught my own fair share of attacks as well, but for me, they weren¡¯t such a serious threat. I simply kept an eye on my shield ward and made sure its mana reserves were topped off while I focused on ensuring that Senica was far better protected than she thought she was. The whole point of a training mission was to get real-world experience, after all. If she knew that I had invisible strands of telekinesis threaded around her, ready to stop any attack that she couldn¡¯t dodge, she wouldn¡¯t be trying so hard to keep herself safe.


    Of course, just dodging wasn¡¯t going to win this fight, so while Senica darted through the air, she was also flicking her wand out and dropping lines of fire on the trolls. Back in my day, trolls had a well-known weakness to being burnt, but apparently these ones had gone without any sort of predators in their environment for so long that they¡¯d forgotten it was possible to be hurt.


    Senica taught them better.


    At first, the trolls ignored her retaliatory spells. That was their primary method of defense ¨C to just accept any number of hits in exchange for one of their own. They were monstrously strong, probably used to ending a fight with anything they could reach in a single blow. It wasn¡¯t until more than a dozen of their numbers were on the ground, bellowing so loud that they shook the leaves off the trees, that the rest finally realized something was wrong.


    Predictably, their response was to simply keep doing what they¡¯d been trying all along. If it were just Senica up here, it probably would have worked, too. More and more trolls kept showing up; more and more rocks filled the air. Even with some of them targeting me, it was getting to be too much for Senica.


    ¡°Time to retreat,¡± she announced.


    We flew up together, her dodging around rocks and me just deflecting them away, until we were five hundred feet up and well out of the range of the trolls. Dozens of them stared up at us, their prominent, floppy noses sniffing repeatedly and squished, beady little eyes squinting to pick us out from so far away.


    ¡°Thoughts?¡± I asked.


    ¡°There are a lot of them,¡± she said. ¡°More than I thought I¡¯d be facing at one time. They take longer to kill than I was expecting. I think it¡¯s safe to say I underestimated how difficult a fight this would be.¡±


    ¡°What else?¡±


    ¡°I need something better than just dodging for defense. I think it might be easier to just stay away from them and modify my conjurations to increase their range. I won¡¯t get all of them that way, but we don¡¯t need to kill all of them, do we?¡±


    ¡°That depends entirely on whether you can harvest troll blood without killing everything in the area first,¡± I said.


    ¡°You know I can¡¯t.¡±


    Troll blood worked well as an alchemical reagent, but it did require a lot of work refining it into something suitable for use. Like many monsters, trolls could use mana instinctively to mimic various magics. In the case of trolls, they could recover from almost any kind of damage given enough mana. Fire was the hardest to bounce back from, but if they had the time, they¡¯d regenerate charred flesh, too.


    That magic was present mostly in their blood, which of course circulated everywhere and repaired the body using the same mechanics as a regeneration spell. It was entirely possible to create a synthetic liquid for use in alchemy that did the same thing, but it was also altogether cheaper and faster to harvest troll blood and purify it. Since Senica couldn¡¯t rely on my mana reserves for her own purposes, we were going to be working on the harvesting and purification process tonight.


    ¡°Alright,¡± I said, looking down at the assembled trolls and counting upwards of a hundred. ¡°This is partially my fault for being so late. Dusk is the prime hunting time for trolls, so there are more active now than usual. That having been said, sometimes you¡¯ll have to deal with suboptimal circumstances. If I wasn¡¯t here, how would you adapt to the extra challenges?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d wait for the sun to come back up,¡± Senica said dryly. ¡°I¡¯m not in any hurry, certainly not enough of one to justify taking more risks than necessary.¡±


    I laughed. ¡°Excellent answer. That¡¯s exactly what you should do. But what if there was a pressing need for this reagent? Someone is injured and you need to make a healing potion.¡±


    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not like I need dozens of trolls for this. I¡¯d scry for an isolated troll off on the outskirts of the city, bait it to a location I¡¯d already secured, kill it there, and bleed it dry.¡±If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    ¡°Good, good. That¡¯s smart. Rational. It¡¯s the path forward with the least resistance and the least risk. However¡­¡±


    Senica groaned. ¡°Why do you have to keep changing the rules?¡±


    ¡°Why should you only take one lesson from this mission when you could explore multiple scenarios?¡± I countered.


    She just groaned again. ¡°Fine, what restrictions are you adding this time?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re trying to retake the city so it can be filled with human settlers. Every troll needs to be killed in order to make this dream a reality.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s dumb. Why would I try to take an entire city by myself?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re the only one who can. Everyone else in your group is too busy trying to find food and keep your base camp safe.¡±


    ¡°We would just go live somewhere else. There¡¯s nothing worth fighting over here.¡±


    ¡°Sure there is,¡± I said. ¡°According to Keeper, there¡¯s a fortune in mysteel under the city.¡±


    ¡°Mysteel is worthless to anyone but you,¡± she pointed out.


    ¡°And I¡¯m paying you a fortune to retrieve it for me, but in order to accomplish that, you need to clear out the troll tribes in the city.¡±


    Senica paused to consider that. ¡°Is there actually a bunch of mysteel under the city?¡±


    ¡°Yes. That¡¯s why I¡¯m here,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re here to get some hands-on problem-solving experience. At minimum, you need to secure a portion of the ruins so that I can dig uninterrupted.¡±


    ¡°Again, I wouldn¡¯t come here myself.¡±


    ¡°Your trusty companions have met a variety of bad ends along the way. You¡¯re all that¡¯s left and the job is depending entirely on you.¡±


    ¡°In that case, it doesn¡¯t matter if I can harvest any troll blood. I¡¯m burning the whole city down. There are plenty of trees I can light up. The trolls will either burn to death or they¡¯ll flee. Either way, you can dig in peace.¡±


    I considered the city below us. It was overgrown, most of the buildings swallowed up by nature. In fact, it was surprisingly green compared to everywhere else I¡¯d been in the new world. That made me wonder what else I¡¯d find buried under its streets. When Keeper had come to me with information about a city called Geldrisa, everything she¡¯d found had led us to believe the setup would be similar to Derro. I was starting to suspect that wouldn¡¯t be the case.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think you fully appreciate how hard it is to get a wildfire started, or how hard it is to stop one,¡± I said. ¡°But that¡¯s alright. This is an impossible job, and I know that you know that. Let¡¯s narrow down the scope. Your new mission is to clear everything in that block of the city.¡±


    I pointed to a square that had at one time held a public fountain, but these days was filled with thin trees that hung over the edges of a green, scum-covered pond. Trails worn through the brush told me that trolls¡ªand possibly other monsters¡ªwere using it as a watering hole, but that wasn¡¯t why I¡¯d picked it.


    The north side of the square had what looked like some sort of temple, miraculously intact even after a thousand years of neglect. Vines ran up its walls, thick leafy things that pulsed with mana. Even as I watched, two new vines crept out through a crack and stretched out to catch hold of nearby tree branches.


    ¡°Uh, what was that?¡± Senica asked.


    ¡°Different type of monster,¡± I said. ¡°Probably why that building is still in one piece. The trolls must know better than to get near.¡±


    ¡°And you want me to fight that?¡±


    ¡°No. I want you to secure the square. I¡¯ll handle whatever¡¯s inside the temple.¡±


    ¡°You make it sound so easy,¡± she said. ¡°How many trolls do you think will come running when the fighting starts.¡±


    ¡°I guess that depends on how many of them you¡¯ve made afraid of fire. My advice would be to keep a clear escape route and not to overestimate yourself.¡±


    ¡°Oh, sure. I¡¯ll just abandon you.¡±


    I rolled my eyes. ¡°I appreciate the show of loyalty, but when we go back down, I¡¯ll be working and you¡¯ll be training. I don¡¯t actually need you to protect me from a bunch of forest trolls. Now, I¡¯ll be clearing out the interior of the temple. You¡¯ll be killing or driving off anything else that comes into that square. Hold it for as long as you can, then retreat. Don¡¯t follow me into the temple.¡±


    ¡°I can do that,¡± she said, but she didn¡¯t sound too sure of herself. That was good. This job was too big for her to handle and I wanted her to get some experience feeling the limits of her abilities while I was around to bail her out if she overestimated herself.


    ¡°Here we go, then.¡±


    We descended through the canopy using force spells to make a hole and landed on the north side of the pond. The ruined stone face of the fountain statue sticking halfway out of the center of the water stared at us, what little that was left of its expression somehow mournful. I spared a moment to wonder if Keeper knew this particular statue¡¯s history and what, if any, relation it had to the temple it faced.


    Then the first troll appeared between the trees a hundred feet away. It paused, its nostrils flaring as it sniffed the air, then advanced into the open. ¡°Can it really smell us from that far away?¡± Senica asked.


    ¡°Probably. Their eyesight isn¡¯t that great, but their noses help them make up for it. They¡¯re pursuit predators, and this is how they run down their prey. Fortunately, trolls are dumb as a rock, barely even sentient. Just don¡¯t let their numbers overwhelm you.¡±


    ¡°Got it,¡± she said, flicking her wand to where a second troll had appeared and igniting the air around it into flames.


    While she torched the incoming trolls, I floated through the air, my feet a foot or so off the ground to avoid touching any of the vines coming out of the temple¡¯s main door. I noticed that several of them stirred as I approached, somehow sensing my passage anyway. Something must have confused them, because they didn¡¯t lash out at me, not that they would have been able to grab me anyway, and I drifted by unhindered.


    I¡¯d chosen the temple as my base of operations for two reasons. First, it was highly defensible, being one of the few buildings left in Galdrisa that was mostly intact. Second, it had several sublevels below it that would save me a few hundred feet of digging.


    The drawback was that I needed to kill this plant monster living down in the basement, but, well, there were always going to be monsters no matter where I started. I might as well enjoy the perks of using this temple. Besides, maybe the plant monster would be alchemically interesting.


    As I entered the foyer, vines writhed across the walls and rose up behind me, weaving themselves together into a living net that blocked my retreat. I glanced back over my shoulder, snorted, and flew deeper inside the temple.

 Book 5, Chapter 6

    There wasn¡¯t a single inch of bare stone to be found. Instead, layer upon layer of vines coated everything, even the ceiling. I wasn¡¯t sure how exactly they clung to the stone, but my guess was some sort of magic rather than the physical methods non-mobile vines used.


    They were surprisingly still, considering the plant monster had made its move to seal off the exit. I¡¯d expected an attack already. When that didn¡¯t happen, I flew over to the interior door and sent a burst of force blades scything through the vines clogging the entrance. They were so thick that I wouldn¡¯t even have known there was a door there at all if not for the scrying I¡¯d already done.


    The monster, predictably, didn¡¯t appreciate me cutting apart its vines. The entire temple quivered as its body flexed and ripped itself free. By the time the room was done coming to life, I¡¯d already flown past it and blocked the door with a force wall. The mana drain was negligible enough that I decided to just leave the spell active purely to inconvenience my opponent. If it wanted those particular vines to be part of this battle, it would need to withdraw them through the various cracks and side passages they¡¯d filled.


    The monster had filled the interior of the temple over years and years, and there were plenty of vines ahead of me. As soon as I floated out of the foyer, I was set upon by a hundred or so, all lashing out as one in an attempt to batter and restrain me. Individually, their attacks were too weak to matter, and that meant there was no danger of them piercing my shield ward.


    Monsters like this didn¡¯t really care about individual attacks failing, not when they had thousands of limbs to bring to bear. Additionally, plants didn¡¯t feel pain like animals did, which meant that while the monster definitely knew I¡¯d damaged it, I¡¯d done nothing to actually slow it down.


    My only concern here was that I could conceivably be pinned down, though the vines couldn¡¯t actually grab hold of me. Even if that remote possibility came to pass, I saw no reason I couldn¡¯t simply brute force my way free, so I advanced without concern. Blades of force rotated around me, chopping apart anything that got within their range and allowing me access the inner rooms of the temple.


    I didn¡¯t bother heading for the main worshipping hall. There was nothing interesting there, and the heart of this monster was underground. I followed the hallways, stopping occasionally to hack through walls of vegetation, until I reached the staircase leading down into the cellar.


    While I worked my way forward, I kept an eye on Senica outside. She was doing well, mostly because the trolls had quickly rediscovered their fear of open flames. The trees provided excellent cover as she flitted through their upper branches and ducked behind the trunks. Even better, the trolls themselves were wary about getting too close to the temple, which greatly reduced the amount of open space they could occupy in the square.


    More than one of them had been snagged by the surprisingly strong vines and dragged into the temple. Unlike me, they hadn¡¯t made it past the first room and now their regeneration was working against them as the vines repeatedly tore off chunks of flesh and wormed their way inside the trolls¡¯ bodies. Eight of them were being slowly pulled deeper and deeper into the temple, all still alive while the vines repeatedly tore them apart.


    It was a gruesome reminder of the fate that awaited me if my magic were to fail for some reason. I could take some solace in the fact that I¡¯d be dead in under a minute, at least. Those trolls would last for as long as they still had mana in them. The irony that this plant monster was essentially doing the same thing to them that we¡¯d come to do¡ªdrain them of their blood¡ªwas not lost on me.


    Light spells guided me forward, not that I really needed them with all the divinations I had going right now. I flew at a sedate pace, a little slower than an unempowered run. If I¡¯d had any concerns about running out of mana, now was when I would have turned back. The stairwell was a writhing mass of vines, these ones covered in metallic thorns instead of leaves. As they reared up and snapped at me, I could see the gouges in the stone walls beneath them.


    That made them considerably more dangerous than the outer defenses, enough so that I felt it would be impractical to let my shield ward handle them. I cast a spell to drain the heat from the area that flash froze every vine ahead of me. That wouldn¡¯t kill the plant monster as a whole, but it did make it exceedingly easy to bust up this particular section with a simple force wave.


    The first basement level had two sets of stairs leading back up to the ground floor and one more leading even deeper. It wasn¡¯t clear what exactly the purpose of that layout was, but I¡¯d already figured out the entire layout before I entered the temple, so I wasn¡¯t worried about finding my way. I simply floated through the darkness, only my light orb bobbing ahead to illuminate my path.


    Up above, Senica had gotten herself into a bit of a sticky situation. She¡¯d overcommitted to the east side of the square, and had done an admirable job of keeping those trolls at bay. As a result of that effort, more trolls on the west side had gotten to the point where they could start climbing trees to get at her. That, combined with the third group on the south side who were bombarding her position with rocks, was making it hard for her to fight back.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I could see a few ways to turn things around, but I wasn¡¯t sure Senica had the skill needed to cast so many spells in that tight a timeframe. The point where she needed to break away from the fight and flee was fast approaching, and if she didn¡¯t realize it in time, I¡¯d have to go rescue her.


    I figured she¡¯d last another few minutes one way or another, so I hurried down a third set of stairs and found myself in the plant¡¯s core room. It was a massive grayish-purple sac that hung suspended from its own vines. Thick, razor-edged, ropy lengths of vegetation were tangled all throughout the room, wrapped around the stone pillars supporting the temple overhead. The whole room writhed like a pit of snakes crawling across each other, and the second the core came into sight, I was under attack.


    Ice flowed out across the room, radiating from me and lancing toward the core a hundred feet away. It caught the vines in the air and buried them as more and more layers built over the plants. Unlike what I¡¯d used upstairs, this wasn¡¯t an instant effect. It took several seconds for the ice to coat the room, which was far too large for my previous spell to cover.


    It probably wouldn¡¯t kill any part of the plant monster, either, but I didn¡¯t need it to. Now that I had access to the core, it would be a simple matter to finish it off. I formed a force lance and launched it across the basement to strike the sac, only for the magic to rebound and shatter.


    ¡°Huh. That¡¯s¡­ surprising.¡±


    Fire exploded around it, but did little more than leave greasy soot across the sac¡¯s surface and thaw out half an inch of ice over the nearby vines. I approached cautiously and studied the sac, both with my eyes and with a series of divinations.


    The first thing I realized was that I¡¯d been mistaken about the sac. It wasn¡¯t any sort of vegetation or fruit like its appearance had led me to believe. It was hardened, like an ironbark tree. Strangely, it didn¡¯t seem to be any sort of innate magical invocation, either.


    I prodded it a few times while I analyzed its composition, then pulled back in surprise. Unless I was very much mistaken, this plant was actually an incredibly valuable find. Not destroying it was going to make digging here harder, though. It might be worth finding some other starting location just to preserve this specimen.


    I summoned my scrying mirror and fed a trickle of mana into it. ¡°Querit,¡± I called out, but, annoyingly, he didn¡¯t answer. ¡°Come on. What are you so busy with?¡±


    That wasn¡¯t exactly fair, considering how much work I¡¯d dumped on him to do for Hyago. My golem assistant did have the advantage of never needing to sleep or rest, which gave him the ability to get through an incredible amount of work very quickly, but it had only been a few hours since I¡¯d filled his plate. He was probably just doing what I¡¯d asked.


    ¡°Keiran?¡± a voice came out of my mirror a few seconds later. I glanced down at it and blinked.


    ¡°Hyago,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll assume Querit¡¯s busy redoing enchantments.¡±


    ¡°He is, but if it¡¯s urgent, I could go get him.¡±


    Now that I thought about it, Hyago was someone who¡¯d be interested in this, too. ¡°Take a look,¡± I said, angling the mirror to catch the core sac¡¯s reflection. ¡°Some kind of plant monster that took over tens of thousands of square feet with prehensile vines. This is what¡¯s at the center, about fifty feet underground.¡±


    ¡°A plant monster,¡± the druid said, his tone not quite unfriendly but clearly unimpressed.


    ¡°Yes. That¡¯s not the interesting part. The vines are all held down with a layer of ice right now, but they¡¯ve got razor-edged thorns growing out of them. And this thing,¡± I said, pausing to rap a knuckle against the sac. ¡°This is entirely metal. Living, growing, biological metal.¡±


    ¡°Not really metal,¡± Hyago argued. ¡°Just a plant structure that mimics the properties of metal when it¡¯s charged with mana.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I said with a laugh. ¡°That¡¯s what¡¯s so interesting. It¡¯s not using any mana to maintain its structure. I think it¡¯s actually growing this way. It might be doing some sort of transmutation to use troll blood to fuel the change, but once it¡¯s complete, it stays that way.¡±


    ¡°Really?¡± Hyago was eyeing the plant hungrily now.


    ¡°I¡¯m thinking about cutting the vines and relocating the sac for further study,¡± I said. ¡°Would you be interested in being part of that?¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡± He paused and shook his head with a sigh. ¡°I have too much work to do already. There just aren¡¯t enough hours in the day. Let me go grab your golem for you¡ª¡±


    ¡°Damn it,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll be right back. I have to go save an overconfident teenager from her own bad decisions.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what?¡±


    But I was already gone. Phantasmal step would have been the perfect spell to get out of the temple quickly, except that it couldn¡¯t pass through living objects and everything was coated in vegetation. Instead, I used an expensive combat teleport with a limited range to pull myself five hundred feet straight up.


    I appeared in the sky just in time to watch a troll leap out of a tree and catch my fleeing sister by her foot. She plummeted with the monster, unable to hold both their weights and not strong enough to break its grip. With a sigh, I caught them in a grand telekinesis spell, broke the troll¡¯s fingers in an act of precision, and flung it away. Then I pulled Senica up into the air next to me and looked her over.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to bruise where it grabbed me, but I¡¯m fine,¡± she said.


    ¡°I¡¯m still disappointed. I thought you knew when to disengage.¡±


    ¡°I was trying to! I wasn¡¯t expecting the damn tree to come to life and grab me.¡±


    I frowned at that and mentally reviewed what I¡¯d seen with my scrying spells. It was subtle, but she was telling the truth. There was a moment, just when she¡¯d decided to cut and run¡ªprobably about thirty seconds later than she should have, but still with enough room to escape¡ªwhere a branch shifted in front of her.


    It could have been the wind, if I looked at that branch in isolation. But it wasn¡¯t. Nothing else had moved ¨C just that one branch.


    ¡°Huh,¡± I said. ¡°This place is full of interesting flora.¡±

 Book 5, Chapter 7

    The mystery of the mobile tree would have to wait. I¡¯d left my scrying mirror down by the plant core in my rush to bail Senica out of trouble. Taking her back underground with a teleportation spell wasn¡¯t really feasible, not because it was impossible, but because the quick combat versions didn¡¯t generally allow for passengers. There wasn¡¯t much point in casting a full teleportation spell just to move a few hundred feet when we weren¡¯t in that big a rush, so we flew back instead.


    ¡°This place is creepy,¡± Senica said. She peered around at the mass of vines wherever they¡¯d survived my initial passage. New vegetation had crawled in to cover some of the bare patches of stone, but they hadn¡¯t finished the job yet. Perhaps reaching the monster¡¯s core had caused it to divert its resources away, or perhaps it simply wasn¡¯t fast enough to grow new appendages in such a short amount of time.


    Either way, the second trip underground went much faster. I deflected the plant¡¯s feeble attacks when it mustered the strength to make the attempt and spared a brief moment to wonder if there were actually two plant cores whose bodies were tangled together, but if that had been the case, my scrying spells would have located the second one.


    I frowned and traced the vines that were still moving back into the darkness. Could a second core be buried somewhere outside the temple¡¯s stone walls? I could picture its core hidden away, the vines penetrating cracks in the walls and infesting the interior. There were thousands of them covering the temple; it was certainly possible that there was more than one core. What was less likely was that my divinations had failed to detect them.


    Once I removed the core I knew about, that would settle the question. The vines attached to it would wither and die, and if anything was still moving about, I¡¯d know there was a second core. Before that, I needed to determine how best to go about preserving the sac of biological metal for future experimentation.


    ¡°What¡­ is that?¡± Senica asked, her face twisted into a mask of disgust.


    Admittedly, the sac looked something like an enormous raisin with a tree trunk¡¯s worth of intertwined vines coming out of the top, but it wasn¡¯t that ugly. ¡°It¡¯s the part of this monster I want to preserve,¡± I said. ¡°Somehow, it¡¯s growing metal like living tissue.¡±


    ¡°It looks like a bruised ball sac. And why it is¡­ uh¡­ pulsing?¡±


    Choosing to deliberately ignore part of that description for the time being, I asked ¡°Pulsing?¡±


    ¡°The temperature.¡±


    ¡°Hmm¡­ I haven¡¯t looked at it that way yet.¡± I cast a quick heat sensing divination and confirmed Senica was correct. The temperature was fluctuating over the course of a minute or so, peaking at a point so hot that the sac should have been glowing red before dipping back down to a more reasonable level, only to pulse out another wave of heat again. Each time, heat rushed down the vines before they cooled again.


    ¡°Ah, I see. It wasn¡¯t doing that before. I think it¡¯s generating heat to counteract the ice blanket I laid on the vines here. Look there, you can see where it¡¯s almost completely melted its way free.¡±


    ¡°Should we do something about that?¡±


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you take care of it?¡± I suggested. ¡°Ice is just the opposite of fire. You should be able to thicken up that layer easily.¡±


    We both knew it wasn¡¯t that easy. Conjuring up an ice prison involved condensing water out of the air while simultaneously pulling heat away to freeze everything, which wasn¡¯t that complicated, but was mana intensive. Since Senica was working off the mana I¡¯d donated to her, she didn¡¯t have any room to complain about the expense.


    Scowling, she set about renewing the ice layer keeping us safe from being mauled by razor-thorned vines while I circled back around to my mirror. Both Hyago and Querit were visible in it now, talking in hushed tones and scribbling down notes while they waited for me to come back.


    ¡°Keiran,¡± the golem said when he spotted me. ¡°You find the most interesting things.¡±


    ¡°This one was entirely on accident. But I think this might be the key to something big. I just need to figure out how to extract the core without killing it.¡±


    ¡°How important could it be?¡± Hyago asked. ¡°It¡¯s novel to see metal growing, sure, but I know you can transmute any quantity you need easily enough.¡±


    ¡°For steel or gold, yes. But what I need is a massive amount of mysteel.¡±


    Querit¡¯s eyes lit up with understanding, but Hyago just looked confused. ¡°What¡¯s mysteel, and why do you need it? And what does it have to do with this monster?¡±


    ¡°Mysteel is nigh-indestructible,¡± Querit explained. ¡°It doesn¡¯t form naturally and takes prohibitive quantities of mana to transmute.¡±The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°It¡¯s also what surrounds the world core,¡± I added. ¡°Patching up the hole Ammun tore in it when he blew up a moon is going to be difficult. If I could get this thing to start growing bio-mysteel, then replicate that a few hundred times, that would go a long way toward harvesting the amount I¡¯m going to need.¡±


    ¡°So, the same strategy you used making the petrified forest?¡± Hyago asked.


    ¡°Same theory, at least. I¡¯m sure it¡¯ll be a vastly different process, if it even works at all.¡±


    ¡°Are you bringing that thing back to my grove?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°Too dangerous. I¡¯m sure it¡¯ll put every effort into regrowing its vines once I amputate them. It¡¯ll go back to my demesne where I can ensure it can¡¯t hurt anybody.¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s get a look at the top of the core,¡± Querit said. ¡°I think I know what to do, but I need to check something first.¡±


    I obliged him and tilted the angle of the mirror to give him the view he wanted. Tendrils of a divination reached out through the mirror and burrowed into the sac while I watched, and a minute later my assistant and Hyago were discussing the results.


    ¡°You were right,¡± Querit said. ¡°If you just sever the vines, you¡¯ll kill the core. To be fair, the amount of metal I¡¯m sensing there would make cutting through a difficult task for a normal person. Did you harvest any troll¡¯s blood yet?¡±


    ¡°No, There were¡­¡± I shot Senica a look. ¡°Complications.¡±


    ¡°Alright, well, for my idea to work, you¡¯re going to need a gallon or two. The more purified it is, the less you¡¯ll need.¡±


    ¡°This thing¡¯s been feeding off trolls directly. It probably doesn¡¯t need to be purified at all,¡± I said.


    ¡°That¡¯s how it¡¯s been growing,¡± Hyago said, ¡°but you¡¯re going to need the regenerative properties.¡±


    I nodded. ¡°You want me to cut the connection, relocate the core, then basically force feed it a massive dose of a regeneration potion.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d probably put up some sort of force wall between the sac and the severed vines on the ceiling when you do it, just to make sure it can¡¯t reconnect, then hit it with the potion immediately. I¡¯m not sure how long this thing will survive with that kind of damage. Despite what it looks like, it¡¯s more monster than plant. I¡¯d bet it bleeds like an animal when the core gets injured.¡±


    That was more or less what I¡¯d been planning on doing, though I probably wouldn¡¯t have bothered to refine the troll¡¯s blood. I doubted it was truly necessary, but it wouldn¡¯t hurt. Besides, I could make Senica do the work there. That¡¯s what apprentices were for.


    ¡°Alright, I think we¡¯ve got a plan moving forward. Querit, I¡¯ll be moving this by portal back to the valley. How much longer do you need before you¡¯re done at the grove?¡±


    ¡°Two or three hours,¡± the golem said.


    ¡°Can you head back after to help me get this monster relocated? I¡¯m going to have Senica do the alchemy, so figure it¡¯ll be about five hours before we¡¯re ready.¡±


    ¡°Sure. I¡¯ll set up a specimen lab for containment. Maybe convert the one on the east side of the valley over.¡±


    ¡°Perfect,¡± I said. ¡°I think we have a plan. Thanks for the help.¡±


    * * *


    ¡°This is so gross,¡± Senica complained. ¡°Why is everything in this place disgusting?¡±


    ¡°The fresher the ingredients, the better,¡± I said.


    ¡°It¡¯s still alive! We¡¯re basically torturing it.¡±


    I glanced over at the troll, which was suspended above a wide stone funnel by manacles that stretched its arms and legs out to hold it tight. A spike of steel had been driven into the artery in its thigh, and blood gushed out to splash down into the funnel. Despite the fact that the troll had been up there for twenty minutes, it still thrashed and roared in rage.


    ¡°Trolls don¡¯t really feel pain like you or me, if that helps you feel better about the whole thing,¡± I said.


    Senica shot a look at the four corpses visible through an open archway. Their regeneration lasted only until they ran out of mana, and at that point, the blood was no longer valuable. The bodies had been tossed to the vines, which were slowly constricting around various limbs, trying to squeeze mana-rich blood out.


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t, no,¡± she said. ¡°How much more of this do I have to make?¡±


    ¡°How much liquid mana is left in that barrel?¡±


    ¡°Half.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d say you¡¯re halfway there, then,¡± I told her.


    I was doing my own work on the table next to her while simultaneously keeping the vines from intruding into the room. Really, Senica had the easiest part of the whole process. All she had to do was run the blood through a series of filters and mix the resultant base liquid in a two-to-one ratio with liquid mana, then add in the catalyzing agent I¡¯d already prepared.


    I was the one doing the other six steps of the process while keeping us safe and remotely hunting down the next troll. There was one drinking from the scum-covered pond just outside the temple I was about to grab with telekinesis if it didn¡¯t wander away in the next few minutes, which it didn¡¯t appear to be in any hurry to do.


    If they weren¡¯t so dumb, the troll probably would have smelled all the blood in the air and realized something was wrong, but I¡¯d never met a troll that could do anything but batter its problems into submission and then stuff them in its mouth. Not much had changed in the last thousand years in that regard.


    ¡°If you want to take a break, the ice is starting to thin again,¡± I said.


    ¡°Ugh. No, you do it. I don¡¯t want to go back down there alone.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s perfectly safe. Most of the vines are inert now.¡±


    ¡°Tell that to the trolls over there,¡± she said, gesturing to the corpses being slowly pulped.


    ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure those belong to a second core somewhere else.¡±


    ¡°Is that supposed to make me feel better? Why would I care which particular monster is strangling me?"


    That was a fair point. ¡°Fine, I¡¯ll go refreeze it,¡± I said. ¡°As soon as we replace this troll. Pull the shiv, please.¡±


    ¡°So gross,¡± she grumbled as she telekinetically plucked the hunk of metal out. The wound sealed itself closed, but it took several seconds instead of doing it instantly. This particular troll probably could have lasted another few minutes, but I didn¡¯t need blood that didn¡¯t carry its full regenerative capabilities, not when there were a thousand replacement trolls nearby.


    My magic tossed it to the vines with the rest and pinned it down until they had it good and tangled. Then I snatched up the surprised and confused troll outside the temple and dragged it to our impromptu lab. The manacles fitted themselves around its wrists and ankles, then pulled themselves apart to stretch it to its full height while it bellowed in fury.


    With a sigh, Senica drove the shiv in to our newest victim. If the troll felt it at all, it didn¡¯t show it. It just kept roaring at us while it futilely tried to rip itself free of its bindings. Blood ran down its leg into the funnel, and Senica set the filters back into place.

 Book 5, Chapter 8

    Removing the core was a delicate process, but with a bit of patience and plenty of mana, I managed to extract it without killing the thing. When I finished severing the connection, every single vine in the room went limp all at once, and my scrying revealed that the rest of the temple stilled as well. ¡°I guess that kills off my theory about there being more than one core,¡± I said.


    In a way, that made things easier. I just needed to clean out the dead vegetation and reinforce the temple walls to prevent anything new from getting in. Then this place would serve as a fine base for exploring the area and excavating the city¡¯s underground. If nothing else, we were going to need a steady supply of troll blood to keep the core alive until it stabilized itself. Even then, I¡¯d probably still have to throw trolls into its pen regularly, though hopefully not as often without its massive network of vines to maintain.


    ¡°Here, hold on to this while I open the portal,¡± I told Senica. Her own telekinesis spell grabbed the sac and held it steady, but it was an obvious strain for her to handle the weight.


    ¡°How long does a portal take to make?¡± she gasped out.


    ¡°Not too long. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll be fine.¡±


    ¡°Just. Hurry.¡±


    I might have taken a little bit longer than was strictly necessary to open the portal, just in the name of Senica¡¯s training. Sometimes, it was best to push an apprentice to stretch their limits beyond what they thought they could accomplish, even if Senica technically wasn¡¯t an apprentice anymore. But soon enough, the doorway through reality opened to reveal Querit waiting for us.


    ¡°Oh. It looks a bit bigger in person,¡± he said. ¡°This lab might be too cramped once it starts regrowing the vines.¡±


    I guided the core through, with Querit catching it on the other side. He spun it around and floated it upright to a harness he¡¯d rigged up. It settled into place, its hardened biometal exterior more than up to the task of protecting it. I followed the sac through with several flasks of rejuvenating troll¡¯s blood potions to get the core back into good shape.


    ¡°You¡¯ll take care of the initial testing?¡± I asked.


    Querit laughed and said, ¡°It¡¯s a good thing I don¡¯t need to sleep, huh? As much work as you¡¯re piling on me lately, I¡¯d never keep up otherwise.¡±


    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. I know you work yourself just as hard.¡±


    There was some truth to that. With the hours I kept, I wouldn¡¯t be able to function without a significant investiture into ongoing invocations to keep me upright. When I did eventually crash, I was basically dead to the world for days at a time now.


    ¡°I¡¯ll sleep like a regular person once I get that tower torn down and the world core repaired,¡± I said.


    ¡°How many decades will that take?¡±


    I didn¡¯t answer. The truth was that even without interference from Ammun, this wasn¡¯t a short-term project. That having been said, I probably wouldn¡¯t have felt half the pressure to move quickly if I didn¡¯t know Ammun was still out there. Trapping him on one of Manoch¡¯s moons was a temporary solution, and I had no real way of knowing when he¡¯d get back to the planet.


    ¡°Anyway,¡± Querit said after a moment of awkward silence, ¡°I¡¯ll get this thing ready for your experiments when you get back. I should have a fresh stock of alchemy supplies from Hyago by then, too. He¡¯s got a whole circle of druids growing things out there at ten times normal speed.¡±


    ¡°Too bad the most valuable ones can¡¯t be grown like that.¡± Then again, if they could, they wouldn¡¯t be as valuable. Still, I¡¯d prefer that the reagents I needed be cheap and plentiful if at all possible. ¡°As far as the troll¡¯s blood goes, I¡¯ll have my sister work on processing as much as possible over the next few days for you.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure that wasn¡¯t what she was expecting to be doing when she signed on for this trip,¡± the golem said dryly.


    ¡°Absolutely not, but what¡¯s the point of having apprentices if you can¡¯t unload the scut work on them?¡±


    ¡°Speaking as the golem created specifically to do scut work, I can¡¯t say I appreciate the sentiment.¡±


    ¡°Oh, come on. You were made for much more than that.¡±


    Though I couldn¡¯t really agree with his creator¡¯s priorities, Querit had what was without a doubt the most complicated personality matrix I¡¯d ever seen in a golem core. His behavior was so natural that it was easy to forget he wasn¡¯t a human, at least until he shifted the shape of his body or sat down on a piece of furniture that wasn¡¯t designed to hold four hundred pounds of golem.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    ¡°Yes,¡± he said, an unhappy frown on his lips. His creator, and everyone else he¡¯d known in his old life, were long dead, victims of a meteor strike on his home city caused by Ammun destroying one of the moons. Querit had been surprisingly resilient about being woken up to that fact after I¡¯d discovered his inert body deep under Derro and fed it enough mana to bring him back to life.


    ¡°Uh, Gravin,¡± Senica called through the portal. ¡°I think the trolls noticed that the vines all died. There¡¯s a bunch approaching the temple.¡±


    ¡°Looks like it¡¯s time for me to go,¡± I said. ¡°Thanks for the help.¡±


    I stepped back through the portal and let it close while I reestablished my scrying network in the old city. If anything, Senica had been understating the problem. It was more like a horde than a bunch. Apparently, killing off the vines was a big deal to these trolls. That, or the smell of all that meat up near the entrance was pulling them in. Trolls hunted more by scent than anything, and they had no problems with cannibalism.


    Either way, we had far more trolls coming in than we actually needed, so it was best to take care of the problem now before it spiraled out of control. ¡°Come along,¡± I said. ¡°Let¡¯s see how your fire spells are progressing.¡±


    We flew back up to the ground floor of the temple, mostly to avoid the nuisance of tripping over thousands of thick, ropy vines. Even dead, they were still tangled across the entire floor, and their thorns were still sharp. I made a mental note to scavenge those bits of biometal out after burning the rest of the vegetation later. There was no telling what they¡¯d be useful for.


    The trolls were ripping their way through the curtains of plant matter when we found them. There were five of them, all fighting each other as much as the vines in their struggle to be the first one through. Senica stepped in front of me, brandished the emberbloom wand I¡¯d made for her, and sent a jet of fire streaming across the room.


    Bellowed screams of rage filled the temple as flames washed across the trolls. The two at the back came out of the spell in the best shape, but even the ones in the front were already visibly regenerating. As one, the group turned to charge at us, only to slam into a quickly formed force wall. The lead troll was flattened by two of its fellows before their combined weight overloaded the spell and sent them all sprawling to the floor.


    Senica sent out another line of fire, this time tightened down to a finger-thick bar that sliced across their faces and burned into their brains by melting through bone. Working quickly, she cut the beam left, then right, each movement sweeping it across the enemy group to strike a different troll.


    ¡°That won¡¯t put them down for long,¡± I warned.


    ¡°I know. Isn¡¯t it kind of weird that they don¡¯t actually need their brains?¡±


    I shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s not like they use much of them to begin with.¡±


    She snorted out an indelicate laugh. ¡°Even animals die if their brains are destroyed.¡±


    ¡°Nothing else regenerates quite like a troll. If you were to attack their mana cores directly, they¡¯d die a lot quicker. Failing that, fire¡¯s a reliable way to force them to burn their mana quickly enough to actually kill one.¡±


    Even that short conversation gave the first troll enough time to regenerate enough brain matter to get back to its feet. It rushed forward, fists raised to turn us into paste, only to be blasted backward by a front-facing wave of force. The spell carried it all the way across the room to slam into the rest of the trolls, knocking all of them back down and setting them up to receive a fire burst that engulfed the whole group.


    ¡°Trolls are annoying,¡± Senica said. ¡°Nothing should get back up that many times.¡±


    ¡°You should see some of the hardier varieties of undead. There are a few that don¡¯t stop even if the body is completely destroyed. They just keep coming in spiritual form.¡±


    While Senica was keeping this group pinned down with a non-stop barrage of fire spells in an attempt to burn through their mana and halt their regeneration, a few dozen more trolls grew bold enough to enter the temple. I cast my own fire magic, a master-tier spell called inferno, and scorched them down to the bone from eight rooms and a thousand feet away.


    The boom of my spell going off caused Senica to flinch¡ªor maybe it was seeing the sudden fire storm immolate twenty trolls at once in her ongoing scry¡ªand shoot me an angry look. ¡°Warn me next time,¡± she said.


    ¡°Adjusting to unexpected magic on the battlefield is an integral skill for any combat mage.¡±


    Senica just huffed in displeasure and kept throwing spell after spell at the group of five trolls she¡¯d pinned down. Meanwhile, the other few dozen I¡¯d attacked had been reduced to nothing more than charred skeletons, their natural regeneration completely overwhelmed by the intense heat of my magic.


    That did nothing to deter hundreds of other trolls attracted by the sound and smells of the fight. In retrospect, disabling the core and killing off the temple¡¯s defenses before I¡¯d started the digging and established an underground base camp might have been a mistake.


    Well, it was easy enough to fix, at least. I cast a few rapid mana puncture spells to riddle the trolls¡¯ cores with holes and let Senica finish them off. ¡°What¡¯d you do that for?¡± she asked.


    ¡°I need to go seal off the front of the temple. Rather, we need to. How have you been doing on stone shaping transmutations?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s¡­ not my best discipline, but I¡¯m passable. I helped make the new school back home.¡±


    I kept my expression carefully neutral at that proclamation. That school was an architectural disaster, functional only by dint of brute force. Walls a foot thicker on the bottom than the top were the main reason it hadn¡¯t fallen down already, and every time I visited New Alkerist, I was taken by a strong desire to tear the building down and remake it properly.


    ¡°I suppose that means now is as good a time as any for a lesson in remedial structural engineering,¡± I told her. ¡°Now, an important distinction to make here is that there¡¯s a difference in a home built to be functional and safe for its occupants and defensive fortifications designed to hold against a half-ton troll that doesn¡¯t even understand the concept of stopping.


    ¡°To start with the obvious, the wall needs to be far thicker than normal. It also needs to be fully integrated with the rest of the structure, else a particularly stubborn opponent might knock the thing down as one whole piece simply because the building your modification is anchored to isn¡¯t as strong as the rest of the wall. This brings up two more subjects: material and support structures¡­¡±

 Book 5, Chapter 9

    With the temple fully secured against troll incursions, I set Senica to work disposing of the vegetation. We ignored the stuff out near the edges that lacked metallic thorns in favor of the rooms near the core. A constant, moderate heat was enough to incinerate the vines, though I did end up having to create a chimney in the room we picked to hold the bonfire. Bits of thorns remained behind, mixed in with the ashes, the sorting of which was another perfect task for my sister to take on.


    She didn¡¯t see it that way, of course. I wasn¡¯t sure what exactly Senica thought she¡¯d be doing on this trip, but we weren¡¯t on vacation. The only reason I¡¯d agreed to bringing her along was to get some work out of her in exchange for her getting to experience a new environment, new monsters, and new spells.


    While she worked on that, I cleared out the very lowest room in the temple and got to work digging. Using transmutation to excavate wasn¡¯t like using a shovel. I made progress by compressing dirt into stone and using it to line the walls of the tunnel a few feet at a time. It was a slow process made even worse by the fact that scrying didn¡¯t really work in solid ground. The best I could do was use a spell called earth sense or one of its variations to try to get a feel for the ground composition in a small radius around me.


    Querit had developed a stronger version of it that I was using today, but it was by no means failproof. I got a bit more range and it did a better job of separating out what I was sensing, but it didn¡¯t let me scan for miles in every direction. It was entirely possible for me to miss any underground facilities, especially since I was going off Keeper¡¯s speculations based on old books she¡¯d read and my own knowledge of city planning.


    The temple was ideally placed to line up with the city¡¯s buried infrastructure, which probably wasn¡¯t a coincidence. It had been an important building back when people still lived here. Even so, it was well over a thousand feet wide and I doubted any maintenance rooms I might find buried down here would be even a fraction of that size. I also didn¡¯t know for sure how far I¡¯d have to dig and what, if anything, I could expect to find living underground.


    Last time it had been sand worms ranging from man-sized to miles-long. But Galdrisa wasn¡¯t located in a desert, so that was unlikely to be a problem here. We also weren¡¯t in a mountainous area, so their cousin species, the rock worm, also probably wasn¡¯t an issue. Was there some sort of¡­ dirt worm? Root worm? It wouldn¡¯t surprise me to find something like that.


    After going down about five hundred feet, I took the time to expand the tunnel into a small cave complete with lighting and air recycling enchantments. The walls were reinforced with a steel net, just in case some sort of burrowing monster did find the place and tried to get in. Anything small enough to dig through the net probably wouldn¡¯t be much of a threat given that the lack of ambient mana had culled off pretty much anything that had the magical capabilities to compensate for a tiny body.


    There were exceptions, of course, but it was a decent safety measure for a temporary camp that only took ten minutes to slap together. That combined with some basic security wards and my own ability to sense mana would be enough to keep us safe.


    ¡®How are things coming along up there?¡¯ I telepathically sent to Senica.


    ¡®Hot. Smokey. Stinky. Why do these things smell so bad when you torch them?¡¯ she complained back.


    ¡®Probably something in the sap. Have you recovered much biometal?¡¯


    ¡®I haven¡¯t even started sifting it out of the ash yet. Are you in a hurry to get your hands on a sample?¡¯


    ¡®No,¡¯ I told her. ¡®Just checking in and letting you know I¡¯ve hollowed out a spot underground for us to use as a base camp. When you¡¯re done, bring the thorns with you, please.¡¯


    ¡®It¡¯s going to be a few hours, at least. If this magnetic spell thing doesn¡¯t work, it¡¯ll be even longer,¡¯ she sent. After a pause, she added, ¡®But wouldn¡¯t that just mean they¡¯re not metal and we don¡¯t need to collect them?¡¯


    ¡®No. Not all metals are magnetic, and I have no ideas what kind of properties a biologically growing metal might have. I¡¯m not even sure if it can go into my phantom space, though it probably can since it¡¯s ¡®dead¡¯ now that it¡¯s been cut off from the core.¡¯


    ¡®Right. I¡¯ll be down when I¡¯m done. The barriers are holding, by the way. And you were right about them not giving up. The pounding has been non-stop. I¡¯m kind of starting to worry that one of them will get smart enough to break through the stone wall instead.¡¯


    ¡®Keep an eye on it and retreat if necessary,¡¯ I suggested. ¡®The hole I bored is too small for a troll to fit through and I can seal it up easily enough.¡¯The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    With that said, I went back to digging and Senica went back to setting things on fire. For a girl who professed a deep and abiding love for burning monsters, I would have thought she¡¯d enjoy cleaning all the vines out of the temple. There really was no pleasing some people.


    * * *


    Eight hours later, we were lounging on a pair of plush chairs I¡¯d pulled out of my phantom space and snacking on cold leftovers from dinner. Senica had reeked of smoke when she¡¯d finished clearing out the sublevels of the temple, but a few cleaning spells went a long way toward taking care of that problem.


    I, on the other hand, just smelled like dirt. Considering that everything else here smelled the exact same, it was hard to notice. I was sure that once we left, I¡¯d be working some magic of my own followed immediately by a shower. Hopefully that would be happening in the next day or two, but it would mostly come down to luck. I might find a chunk of mysteel within minutes of resuming my digging, or it might take weeks.


    Either way, I was only going to be here for three days before returning Senica home and going back to Ammun¡¯s tower to install the rest of those mysteel generators. I also needed to check on the three I¡¯d already placed to ensure that they were operating properly and free of damage.


    It seemed that giving Senica downtime was doing her no favors. Based on the scowl on her face as she picked at her food, I suspected she¡¯d started thinking about whatever it was that had upset her back home.


    ¡°So,¡± I said, dragging the word out a bit. ¡°You want to talk about it?¡±


    Startled, she looked up at me. ¡°Talk about what?¡±


    ¡°About whatever¡¯s got you looking like you¡¯re going to light someone¡¯s hair on fire.¡±


    I had my assumptions, but I¡¯d learned the hard way that it was better to let her just tell me what was on her mind. That way, she had the choice of whether or not to share and I didn¡¯t end up being the one she was mad at for bringing up the topic. Senica was not a person who appreciated being figured out.


    ¡°It¡¯s Juby,¡± she said. ¡°Obviously. Thanks for not asking earlier, by the way.¡±


    ¡°I assumed. He was supposed to go with us, but since nobody was worried, I figured he wasn¡¯t in any danger or hurt.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s going to get hurt if he doesn¡¯t knock it off,¡± she muttered darkly.


    ¡°Knock what off?¡±


    Senica let out a growl of frustration. ¡°He¡¯s just¡­ He¡¯s so damn pushy lately. It¡¯s like he doesn¡¯t care what I want at all. It¡¯s always him nagging me that I should be focusing on learning enchantments or inscriptions to maintain the town¡¯s magic. I need to give up fire magic and conjurations in general. No more traveling. No more monster hunting. Just stay at home and learn to keep the house in good shape for him.¡±


    I frowned. That was not exactly an uncommon attitude, but I hadn¡¯t expected it from Juby. Prior to my reincarnation, there¡¯d been a clear division of labor in the villages. Men went out to work in the fields. Women stayed home and tended the garden attached to the family hut. Children were sent to communal schools for a few years until they were old enough to take on their gender-assigned roles.


    With the knowledge of mana core ignition becoming widespread again, those roles were starting to fall apart. It was simple for a mage to maintain an invocation that boosted their strength all day, which went a long way toward balancing the difference in muscle size between the average men and women. Beyond that, as the communities became more and more magically developed, less people were needed in the fields to begin with. Everyone was discovering new professions now.


    So hearing that Juby subscribed to more traditionalist views on gender roles in relationships was a bit of a surprise. He¡¯d grown up as an orphan and knew as well as anyone that everyone had to do their best regardless of whether or not they squatted down to pee. I wondered if this was a new attitude he¡¯d picked up from one of the locals, though I doubted it. Most of the people who¡¯d chosen to relocate to my valley and then to New Alkerist held progressive views, so I wasn¡¯t sure who would have given him these ideas.


    ¡°Maybe he¡¯s jealous,¡± I mused aloud. ¡°Does he feel threatened by your prowess?¡±


    ¡°Not as much as he is by yours,¡± she said wryly.


    I waved the joke away. Everyone who was threatened by power was afraid of me. That was nothing new, and I¡¯d known Juby for the better part of a decade now. ¡°It¡¯s different when you¡¯re romantically involved with the other person.¡±


    ¡°How would you know?¡± she asked. ¡°I seem to recall your one marriage ended in murder. Wait¡­ It wasn¡¯t because¡­?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°Nothing like that. That was more because of greed, lies, and betrayal. She thought she was cleverer than she actually was, that I wouldn¡¯t notice her snooping for secrets and selling them to my enemies.¡±


    I cut myself off before I could go any further down that line of thought. It had been a spectacularly violent end to what had started as one of the best times of my previous life, but now it was just an old wound that had scarred over. There was no point in picking at it anymore. I¡¯d done enough of that at the time.


    ¡°But we¡¯re not talking about me. We¡¯re discussing Juby,¡± I finished.


    ¡°There¡¯s not much more to say,¡± she said. ¡°He¡¯s been really pushy lately and what he wants me to do isn¡¯t what I want to do. I¡¯m starting to think it¡¯s time to break it off with him. I¡¯m going to be a master mage, then an archmage. I¡¯m not giving up on that. Whatever his hangups are over that, they¡¯re his problems. Either he gets over them or I¡¯ll get over him.¡±


    I nodded approvingly. ¡°Magic never lets you down,¡± I said. ¡°Much better than people.¡±


    ¡°Present company excluded?¡±


    ¡°Did you finish collecting all the biometal?¡±


    ¡°Most of it,¡± she said.


    ¡°Then sure. Present company excluded.¡±


    ¡°Whatever. You¡¯re a jerk.¡± She rolled her eyes when she said it, but I could hear fondness in her voice.


    ¡°That¡¯s what brothers are for.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t need you anymore. I¡¯ve got Nailu now, and I¡¯m going to teach him to be the sweetest little boy. None of this snark I get from you.¡±


    I considered our little brother¡¯s behaviors. He was fully mobile and more or less talking now. Some of his comments, though¡­


    ¡°Good luck with that,¡± I said.


    Senica just sighed.

 Book 5, Chapter 10

    It ended up taking me three weeks to find what I was looking for, including a two-day side trip back to Ammun¡¯s tower to place the rest of the mysteel generators. Those would take years to produce what I pulled out of Galdrisa, which was itself barely a quarter of what I¡¯d found beneath Derro.


    It was going to be a long few years of repeating this process if I couldn¡¯t find a better way to acquire mysteel. If not for the looming threat of Ammun hanging over the world, I would have been content to devote that time to fixing the core. It was certainly worth the effort.


    Senica had returned home after the first few days. Harvesting troll blood had lost its thrill almost immediately, especially once she¡¯d learned that she was expected to process it as well. After we¡¯d run out of all the other ingredients, I¡¯d sent her back to New Alkerist. She¡¯d been more than happy to leave.


    ¡°That is a lot of mysteel,¡± Querit said when I returned to the valley and unloaded my new stockpile into the vault.


    ¡°And yet, not nearly enough,¡± I replied with a sigh. ¡°We¡¯ll see how much I can pull out of the tower before it collapses, but I foresee a lot more digging ahead of us.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll keep working on refining the divination spells,¡± the golem said.


    ¡°That¡­ would be appreciated. The whole process would go a lot smoother if I knew where to dig in the first place.¡±


    ¡°This biometal lead might make your archeology adventures unnecessary, too.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t going to put a lot of hope in that. We didn¡¯t even know how fast the monster could grow biometal as it stood, let alone if we could get it to grow mysteel the same way. It was an angle worth exploring, but not so likely to pan out that I was willing to devote all of my time and resources toward nurturing it.


    ¡°Let¡¯s hope so. Keeper doesn¡¯t have another lead for me, yet. She¡¯s looking at three more old cities, but last I knew, she hasn¡¯t narrowed down where to start digging at. If she can¡¯t get me the information I need, this project and Ammun¡¯s tower will likely be our biggest sources of mysteel.¡±


    We stared at the vault in silence for a minute. It was so much mysteel, piled up in five-foot cubes I¡¯d shaped it into, dozens of them, in fact. Even back in my old life, it would have been a king¡¯s ransom. These days, it was literally priceless. Mysteel didn¡¯t exist naturally and I doubted anyone besides me and possibly Ammun was capable of producing it.


    ¡°So much, and yet so far from being enough,¡± I murmured again. ¡°Just sourcing everything needed will be the work of years. Actually placing the patch will be another level of difficulty altogether.¡±


    ¡°One step at a time,¡± Querit said. ¡°Speaking of next steps, let¡¯s get started, shall we?¡±


    I gave the contents of my vault one last look before I closed things up. ¡°Alright. Show me where we¡¯re at.¡±


    * * *


    Without an endless supply of trolls to feed on, the plant monster didn¡¯t seem to be able to grow the way it had back in the temple. There were only seven vines coming out of its core now, each one as thick around as my wrist. None of them had anything remotely resembling thorns, and it seemed like the only metallic part of it was the shell around its core.


    ¡°Without a constant supply of troll¡¯s blood elixirs, I haven¡¯t been able to get it to produce any new biometal,¡± Querit confirmed after I¡¯d looked through the notes. ¡°Even setting up a regeneration enchantment that encompasses the whole room didn¡¯t replicate the effect.¡±


    ¡°Not surprising,¡± I said. ¡°The elixirs don¡¯t really work the same way. This chart shows that the monster is responding better to the elixirs than to unfiltered troll¡¯s blood, though. So we don¡¯t necessarily need trolls. I wonder if I could convince Hyago to maintain another field for me to make it artificially.¡±


    I used to have a set of greenhouses in New Alkerist, but Senica and Juby had been in charge of maintaining them. The quality had been so inconsistent that half of what they¡¯d produced had been unusable, and I¡¯d given up on it a few months ago when I¡¯d found Hyago again. Getting the time to actually talk to him had been a different story what with everything else I¡¯d been working on, but that was set now. Soon, my alchemy table would receive a significant portion of my attention.


    Querit and I worked through the next several nights experimenting with the plant monster core. What we learned only served to confirm my initial theory: the monster could only grow biometal if it was fed on a diet of troll blood or the alchemical equivalent of it. Even then, attempting to control what kind of metal the monster produced was currently beyond us.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Ah. I think I understand,¡± Querit said while we were studying the fifth set of samples. ¡°The metal is based on iron. Here, look.¡±


    The research station we were using had a mirror mounted on it to display divination results, and at Querit¡¯s gesture, an enhanced view of one of the thorns appeared. ¡°That¡¯s not iron,¡± I said as I peered at the thorn in far greater detail than an unenhanced human eye could perceive.


    ¡°No, but it¡¯s close.¡±


    ¡°Your theory then is that the iron in the troll blood is influencing the structure of the metal it grows?¡±


    ¡°Exactly so. If that¡¯s true and we already know that the core will grow new thorns when subjected to your elixir instead of pure troll¡¯s blood, then it would stand to reason we could introduce mysteel into the mix through alchemy. If the core replaces its pattern with a mysteel one, then the thorns should start growing the new metal.¡±


    ¡°Makes sense,¡± I said, scratching at my chin as I considered the problem. ¡°Dissolving mysteel into liquid isn¡¯t easy, though. The formula I¡¯m using now isn¡¯t going to cut it, not even at the levels we¡¯re talking about.¡±


    A tiny fingernail¡¯s worth of metal dissolved into a full-sized barrel was the appropriate ratio, but mysteel was practically indestructible. It didn¡¯t just dissolve on its own, which meant I¡¯d need to invest a lot of mana into getting it to do what I wanted. That, in turn, meant altering the formula to account not only for the different material but for the dramatically increased amount of mana. Those alterations would force even more changes, all the way down until at the end, the formula was completely different than the one I¡¯d started with.


    ¡°This is going to take some thinking,¡± I said. ¡°For now, I guess let¡¯s just focus on keeping this sample alive. I¡¯m going to see about restocking my alchemy lab so I can run a few experiments.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think Hyago¡¯s got anything ready for you quite this soon,¡± Querit said.


    I nodded. ¡°Likely not. I do still have my greenhouses in New Alkerist. I¡¯m going to see if there¡¯s anything left in there I can salvage, and then¡­ I do know another place that grows herbs. Maybe I¡¯ll go visit there and see what I can convince them to part with.¡±


    * * *


    It was kind of funny how, once New Alkerist had been built, the original Alkerist couldn¡¯t just remain ¡®Alkerist¡¯ in anyone¡¯s mind. It was now commonly known, and with some measure of affection by most, as Old Alkerist. This moniker did not please those who lived in that village, which was just fine by me.


    I hadn¡¯t made many friends in Old Alkerist. I couldn¡¯t even fairly say that I had any left there now ¨C just acquaintances and enemies. Though, if I was being honest, calling anyone there an enemy was a stretch. None of them were a threat. They just didn¡¯t like me for flouting village law. That had led to an exile, which only really stuck because I¡¯d already been planning on leaving.


    The one thing Old Alkerist had that I was interested in today was a group called the Arborists. They were primarily responsible for the trees north of the village, including the fruit trees that supplemented everyone¡¯s diets. More importantly, they had a number of greenhouses that, once upon a time, had been capable of growing the specific plants I needed.


    It had been years since I¡¯d set foot in Old Alkerist, but the leader of the Arborists was a one-time student of mine. I¡¯d introduced her to alchemical gardening, and my hope was that she¡¯d kept up on the process. I had no idea what I could expect to find, but I was willing to bet I could convince her to part with at least some of it.


    Old Alkerist looked almost exactly like I remembered it. The mud-brick huts with thatched roofs were still lined up in their neat little grid. The Collectors office sat in the middle of town, though I had no idea what they used it for anymore. There was no evidence of modernization anywhere, not even the standard teleportation platform that so many other villages had adopted.


    I suspected the council¡¯s personal feelings toward me had motivated their decision to reject any of the standard upgrades everyone else was enjoying. Even most of the mana cores I could sense around me were still dormant despite the village having the knowledge of how to complete the process for years. But, with my scrying spells all but instantly mapping out the town, I quickly realized that it was far emptier than it should be.


    That begged the question: had they lost half their population in an attack when Ammun had unleashed hordes of zombies all over the island, or had half the village simply packed up their bags and left because they disagreed with the council¡¯s decisions? As a distant third possibility, I considered that perhaps a bunch of families were simply off somewhere else together, soon to return.


    That one didn¡¯t seem likely to me, but I expanded the range of my divinations just in case there was some campsite set up a few miles out of town. It didn¡¯t really matter one way or another, but I had to admit to a bit of curiosity about what had happened here.


    With no platform in the village, there was no need to appear in plain sight. My destination was a spot a mile in the air. I promptly turned myself invisible the moment I arrived, having no real desire to speak to anyone involved with the council or any of my extended family while I was here. They hadn¡¯t been kind to Mother when we¡¯d left, or for many years before that, from the way I understood things. As far as I was concerned, they were no family of mine.


    Instead, I turned my focus north and flew over to the arbor, where a small circle of huts was surrounded by no less than eight greenhouses, with several more tucked away between the trees. It seemed the Arborists had been hard at work expanding their operations in the last few years.


    The person I was looking for was a woman perhaps forty or fifty years of age. She¡¯d had a stage one mana core when I¡¯d left, but that had been a number of years ago. It was possible she¡¯d advanced to stage two, though it was also equally possibly the knowledge of how to do that had never made it here. In that case, she¡¯d probably be stuck at stage one still.


    Either way, she wasn¡¯t anywhere in the arbor, as far as I could tell. Maybe she¡¯d abandoned the village after all. She¡¯d stayed behind when we left, citing her duty to the arbor as the council member in charge of it, but a lot could change in half a decade.


    If I couldn¡¯t find her, I¡¯d just have to start asking questions. I located the nearest Arborists, landed behind a nearby tree, canceled my invisibility spell, and walked out into view. ¡°Hi,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m looking for Shel.¡±

 Book 5, Chapter 11

    The villager¡ªhe looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn¡¯t put a name to his face¡ªblinked at me slowly. ¡°Shel?¡± he repeated. ¡°She left years ago.¡±


    ¡°Left?¡± I asked. ¡°Left where?¡±


    The man just shrugged, but then a suspicious look came over his face. ¡°Who¡¯re you, anyway?¡±


    ¡°Who would know?¡± I asked, ignoring his question.


    ¡°You one of those, what¡¯cha call ¡®ems, the magicals?¡±


    It seemed things had changed more than I¡¯d expected. It had been a while since I¡¯d used this particular interrogation tactic, but I doubted my victim would realize what was happening. I formed a connection with his mind and started reading his surface thoughts.


    There was suspicion there, of course. I was a stranger in a village that didn¡¯t see much of the outside world. I was asking for a woman who was no longer around, thus confirming I knew something about Old Alkerist, but not enough to keep up with recent events.


    ¡°What¡¯s a ¡®magical¡¯ supposed to be?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Maybe you ought to ask around in town,¡± he said, ¡°They might be able to tell you more.¡±


    But his thoughts painted a different story. He was planning on siccing the local militia on me, such as they were. Their numbers were reduced to the point where instead of having dedicated village guards and hunters, they had a bunch of farmers who were trusted to access the local armory in times of need.


    I also picked up that he meant mage when he called me a magical. It seemed the knowledge I¡¯d introduced to Old Alkerist had caused a schism in the population. ¡°So a bunch of people decided they were going to practice magic despite the council trying to stamp down on it,¡± I said, more to myself than to the man.


    His face screwed up in confusion. ¡°Who are you?¡± he demanded, reaching out a hand to grab my shoulder.


    My shield ward caused him to stagger to the side when it shoved him away. He blinked down at his hand for a moment like it had personally betrayed him, then his brain caught up to his eyes. ¡°You are a magical!¡± he snapped. ¡°Get out of here. We don¡¯t want your kind. Go back to your fucking caves!¡±


    ¡°Caves? What caves?¡±


    ¡°Screw you. Get lost before I call someone over to give you a beating.¡±


    So much for subtlety. I gripped the man with greater telekinesis and lifted him off the ground. ¡°I¡¯ve done nothing to deserve this attitude,¡± I said coldly, ¡°but if you¡¯re going to treat me this way, I might as well play the part. Now, you¡¯re going to explain to me exactly what the hell happened to half this village.¡±


    The spell enveloped him, preventing any part of his body from moving. I left enough slack in it to keep his chest rising and falling so he didn¡¯t suffocate, but it wouldn¡¯t be hard to correct that if needed. It would be even easier to just wrap a band of force around his throat and prevent him from getting any air in the first place.


    ¡°The caves,¡± the man stammered out. ¡°West of town! Most of the magicals fled town a few years ago. Abandoned their families, too.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Wanted to practice their evilness. Wouldn¡¯t listen to the voice of the ancestors.¡±


    I needed more context on that. Had Old Alkerist been infested by a cult? I knew there was a general belief that the spirits of their ancestors guided them, but this whole voice thing was new to me. Actually, now that I thought about it, I didn¡¯t care that much. The person I was here to see didn¡¯t live in town anymore. Worse, those who remained were undeniably hostile toward mages.


    There wasn¡¯t much reason to stick around at this point. I wasn¡¯t going to change any minds with my presence, and if I truly wanted to address this problem, my efforts would be better spent tracking down those who¡¯d been driven out of town and ensuring they¡¯d found a way to live without being poised on the brink of starvation or fallen victims to monster predation.


    More importantly, it wasn¡¯t likely that I¡¯d get what I came here for, and I didn¡¯t need someone else to grow things for me. I had that covered. I needed supplies today. It was probably worth the effort to scry the area and attempt to find this group, just in case. If they were really living out of some caves, I could probably offer some tempting services and knowledge in exchange for any magically infused herbs they did have.


    I released the man with a shove, sending him backward three steps in a futile attempt to regain his balance before he fell on his backside. ¡°I think I¡¯ve seen enough of this place. It¡¯s just as backward as it¡¯s always been.¡±


    There was no need to wait for an answer. I didn¡¯t care what this man had to say about me or anything else, really. I¡¯d already plucked the information I wanted from his mind; all that remained was to confirm it, and I could do that just as easily in the air where no one could distract me.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    While my scrying sensors swept across the foot of the mountains west of town, I debated on what to tell my family. They¡¯d been born here. Mother still had family living in town. Senica had left friends behind that she probably held some fondness for. Whether those people had stayed¡ªand in the case of Mother¡¯s family, I¡¯d checked to confirm that they had¡ªor left, there were bound to be individuals my parents would want to know about.


    Alternatively, I could simply not tell them. It would save me a headache, but I felt like that was the wrong answer. It was easier for me, but this was something I knew they¡¯d want to know about. This was going to be one of those annoying morality things.


    Maybe I could just leave them a note detailing what I¡¯d discovered. That way they could process without me there to hold any hands. That was probably a good compromise. I¡¯d pay for it later, but it was better than dealing with breaking the news to them in person.


    While I pondered the best way to navigate this situation, my divinations worked overtime scouring the mountains trying to figure out where the rebellious villagers had disappeared to. I would have thought this would be easy, considering how few caves there were that could actually hold a few dozen people. That was proving to be an incorrect assumption.


    Most likely, I was operating on bad information. Sure, that guy believed what he¡¯d said about a bunch of people squatting in caves, and maybe that had even been true for a little while, but why would they remain there for years? At best, I was going to find a starting point to a longer journey that probably led to them founding their own little magic village out in the mountains.


    Half an hour of searching didn¡¯t suddenly reveal the location, which meant that I¡¯d officially reached the threshold for how much effort I was willing to invest into looking for them. I had better things to do, and this was the kind of project that would be perfect to hand off to someone who cared a whole lot more than me. I¡¯d just have to deal with the fallout of breaking the bad news.


    ¡®Hey, are you busy?¡¯ I telepathically asked.


    I could feel a wave of surprise roll back through the connection, then my sister angrily formed a reply. ¡®Don¡¯t do that! I didn¡¯t even know you were here.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m not. I¡¯m in the sky above Old Alkerist.¡¯


    ¡®What? But then how are you connecting? That¡¯s way outside this spell¡¯s range.¡¯


    ¡®Linked it off the scrying mirror in my bedroom,¡¯ I explained.


    ¡®Oooooh. I¡­ didn¡¯t know it could do that.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯ll show you how to do it some other time. It¡¯s the same basic concept those emergency messaging stones I made for you last year run off of.¡¯


    ¡®Right. That makes sense.¡¯ There was a pause, then, ¡®So, did you need something or¡­?¡¯


    ¡®Well, I stopped by the old village and found out that everyone who ignited their core was driven out of town. I haven¡¯t been able to figure out where they went though. I need someone to do some long-distance scrying to track them down.¡¯


    ¡®Oh, that. That¡¯s easy. I know where they are.¡¯


    If my will wasn¡¯t as unbending as steel, I¡¯d have fallen out of the sky in shock. ¡®You what?¡¯


    ¡®I know where they built their new village. They reached out to Dad years ago to purchase enough food to make it through their first season until the crops started growing in.¡¯


    ¡®Wait, so you all knew about this? And nobody bothered to tell me?¡¯


    ¡®It¡¯s been mentioned in your presence more than once, Gravin. You¡¯re just so self-absorbed that you don¡¯t care. I¡¯m surprised you¡¯re interested now. Actually, hmm, what did you want from them?¡¯


    ¡®Alchemy ingredients,¡¯ I admitted. ¡®And I¡¯m not self-absorbed. I have a lot of other problems I¡¯m dealing with!¡¯


    ¡®That, and you don¡¯t care about them beyond your own needs.¡¯


    ¡®That¡¯s not fair.¡¯


    There was another pause. Finally, she sent back, ¡®Do you want to know where they are or not?¡¯


    ¡®Yes,¡¯ I sent, somewhat grumpily.


    One of the nice things about mind-to-mind communication was that words weren¡¯t necessary. It was easy to have a conversation that mimicked talking, but we could also do things like share images or even memories if the mages involved were skilled enough. Senica¡¯s map was a bit rough and unfocused, but I managed to line it up with the landmarks I could see.


    That explained the failure of my divinations to find them. They were technically ten miles or so west of Old Alkerist, where the foothills started to turn into mountains. But they were also fifty miles south, buried deep in a hidden valley that was completely inaccessible without flight or the blood of a mountain goat running through an expert climber¡¯s veins.


    It was a pretty enough valley, I supposed. There weren¡¯t nearly as many trees, and the valley floor was far flatter than mine. Two streams cut it into roughly equal thirds, and the village had been built in the center with fields flanking it on either side. Just going by the count of homes, I expected to find at most fifty people there, which lined up with my guesses based on how many of Old Alkerist¡¯s citizens my own actions had reduced the village¡¯s population by.


    Unlike Old Alkerist, this new mage village definitely had contact with the rest of the island. Even through my scrying spell, I could see traces of my designs in their buildings. It was obvious that a lot of transmutation magic had been utilized in their construction. The wards were too far away to study, but I knew they were there and I was willing to bet I¡¯d see a lot of familiar rune structures if I bothered to look.


    Perhaps most importantly, there were greenhouses and herb gardens in the village. This whole trip hadn¡¯t been a total waste after all. If Shel was there, and I suspected she was, it would be easy enough to trade some lessons or resources for what I wanted.


    That was assuming they had the ingredients I needed. I had no proof of that yet, so I made an effort to keep my expectations reasonable. This was simply an exploratory mission. I wasn¡¯t out much beyond an hour of my time if things fell through


    ¡®Thanks,¡¯ I sent to my sister. ¡®This saves me a lot of time.¡¯


    ¡®You¡¯re welcome. You can pay me back by showing me the linking spell like you said you would.¡¯


    ¡®I will, next time I come home.¡¯


    We ended the connection there and I took a moment to consider whether I wanted to fly or teleport. It was a nice day, and, ultimately, flight cost me no mana. Master-tier spells, unfortunately, were still too difficult to combine with lossless casting, though I was getting better every month. With that in mind, I started cruising across the sky toward the hidden village. I wondered what exactly I¡¯d find when I got there.

 Book 5, Chapter 12

    I had an audience waiting for me when I landed, a full twenty familiar faces from the beginning of my new life in Old Alkerist. Shel was there, along with six other Arborists. A few random villagers I hadn¡¯t had much interaction with also stood below, watching me. There were four children, none of them older than ten or eleven, but I didn¡¯t know them. I¡¯d been exiled before my mandatory enrollment in the village school, not that I¡¯d had any plans of going.


    It was possible Senica might know a few of them from school, but given the age gap and how young she¡¯d been after we¡¯d left, I doubted it. Thankfully, the school teacher, a man named Cherok who harbored a great deal of hatred for my father, was still back in Old Alkerist. Satisfying as it might have been to verbally abuse him today, it would make my task here all the more difficult.


    Surprisingly, Karad was there. That head of the Garrison and de facto governor of Old Alkerist was not someone I expected to defect when the village had split apart over the usage of magic. If anything, I would have thought that, given his surprising stance on it, those who hated magic would have been the ones to leave.


    ¡°Stranger,¡± Karad said, stepping forward. ¡°Welcome to Vestrus.¡±


    ¡°Stranger?¡± I repeated with a laugh. ¡°I suppose none of you remembers me? I was born in Alkerist, too.¡±


    Brows furrowed, Karad exchanged a confused look with Shel. When nobody stepped forward with any information, he turned back to face me. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I don¡¯t recognize you.¡±


    That was fair enough, really. I¡¯d sped up my aging with alchemy and looked to be in my early twenties, an age I planned to maintain for a few thousand years. Not having back pain, joint pain, constantly upset stomachs, and a sagging face appealed to me. But my reincarnation¡¯s actual age was ten or so ¨C I¡¯d lost track over the years. Maybe I was twelve? It wasn¡¯t really that important to me.


    ¡°Keiran,¡± Shel said suddenly.


    ¡°What? No,¡± Karad said. ¡°Keiran would be¡­¡±


    He held a hand to his chest, then gestured to me. At around six and a half feet tall, no one else even came close to my height. That was also due to my abuse of alchemy on my body. A bit of height was a small advantage when determining core size, but I¡¯d been tall in my previous life too and there¡¯d been no reason not to make myself the same size when the option was available.


    ¡°The aging ointment must have worked,¡± she said.


    ¡°Is she right?¡± Karad asked, turning back to me.


    ¡°She is,¡± I confirmed.


    ¡°Well¡­ Welcome to Vestrus, Keiran. This village wouldn¡¯t exist if not for you.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Uh, about that. What happened? Last I remember, the council was a united front on wanting to get rid of me, not get rid of magic completely.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a delicate subject,¡± Karad said.


    ¡°No, it¡¯s not.¡± Shel shoved her way past the man. ¡°Melmir was being a jackass about the whole thing. He was pissed that the Collectors got disbanded once everyone knew how to donate mana to the ward stone directly. So, he lobbied for some rule changes prohibiting people from using magic on the basis that we should all be donating all our mana to the defense of the village, never mind the fact that we were making so much mana now that it only took twenty people to keep everyone safe.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s more complicated than that,¡± Karad objected. ¡°There were other factors to consider, like when Tsurai accidentally destroyed both her home and her neighbor¡¯s trying to figure out that fire blast spell. Melmir had some good points. That¡¯s why Solidaire agreed with him.¡±


    ¡°But you two didn¡¯t,¡± I said. ¡°I get why Shel would be against banning magic, but I¡¯m a little bit surprised you backed her up.¡±


    ¡°Magic isn¡¯t evil,¡± Karad said. ¡°Yes, Noctra did some bad things to the village. For that matter, you did a few yourself. But you also saved us all, twice. And you saved Nermet¡¯s life. I haven¡¯t forgotten that.¡±


    That had really been more Father than me. Yes, I¡¯d untangled the mind control spell Old Alkerist¡¯s former governor had laid on Nermet, but Father was the one whose mana had kept the man alive until I could free him. I would have simply put him out of his misery to prevent Noctra from using the enslaved man against us.


    I glanced around at the gathered villagers. ¡°You all felt strongly enough about the new rules demanding you stop using your mana for yourselves that you banded together and left? Why? With this many people against it, surely you could have just rejected the ruling.¡±


    ¡°We tried that,¡± one of the gathered villagers said sourly. ¡°Didn¡¯t work out.¡±The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Things got violent,¡± Karad added. ¡°It was tearing Alkerist apart. The jail cells were full even after we added a few more. The way it was going, we were going to starve just because there weren¡¯t enough people to grow food.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s all history now,¡± Shel said. ¡°We left. We founded this village. And now we¡¯re doing just fine. No offense, but you¡¯ve never shown any interest in Vestrus before. Why are you here now?¡±


    ¡°I always liked that about you,¡± I said. ¡°Direct. To the point. None of this waffling and politics I¡¯m always dealing with. Put simply, I am in need of some emergency alchemy supplies, and I¡¯m here to offer you a trade for access to your gardens and greenhouses.¡±


    They didn¡¯t outright reject the idea, but I could tell they weren¡¯t happy about it. They probably had good reason for growing the things they did and lacked the manpower and the supplies to grow extra. If I took some of their stock, there was the potential that it would hurt them down the road.


    I¡¯d just have to offer enough to make it worth their while, then. Relatively speaking, I was rich. I had what was an effectively unlimited mana budget, as far as they were concerned. I had all the knowledge to make practically any sort of tool or enchantment they might desire. It was very rare for me to enter into a negotiation where I didn¡¯t have something the other party wanted.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t we find a place to talk things over?¡± I offered. ¡°I¡¯m sure these people have lives they need to get back to anyway.¡±


    ¡°Hmm,¡± was all Karad said before gesturing toward a nearby building.


    I followed him in with Shel and two other Arborists¡ªor whatever they were calling themselves now¡ªbehind us. At first glance, it looked like we¡¯d stepped into some sort of communal kitchen. There were a few tables set up at the front half of the hut, which was all one large room, and the back side had several firepits. Two of them had cauldrons suspended over them, and another was some sort of grill with a flat sheet of metal suspended over the flames.


    Upgrading their cooking equipment was probably a good place to start the negotiations. Then again, it was hard to demonstrate the immediate benefits when their current system no doubt felt fine to them. And honestly, if their town was struggling to survive, maybe a magical stove wasn¡¯t the luxury good they needed.


    The building itself was sadly reminiscent of the mud-brick huts they¡¯d been using back in Old Alkerist. Apparently, their advances in magic hadn¡¯t extended deeply enough into the discipline of transmutation to allow for stone-shaped homes. There was nothing wrong with their current construction methods, but they weren¡¯t terribly sturdy, certainly not anything I¡¯d want to waste time reinforcing with enchantments.


    That being said, renovating the entire town was a little much for access to their herb gardens. I could offer to raise a single building and do some enchantments on it. Then they could study and copy it at their leisure. That was probably a good deal.


    ¡°Let¡¯s start with the hesitation I¡¯m sensing from your side of the table,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re obviously growing those plants for a reason. I assume it¡¯s important. Medicine for the village? Some sort of catalyst to increase crop yields?¡±


    ¡°Crop yields? Is that even possible?¡± Shel asked.


    ¡°Sure. It works on the same concept as fertilizer, just¡­ uh¡­ without the associated smell.¡±


    Karad gave me a wry smile. ¡°Now that¡¯s something I¡¯d be interested in.¡±


    ¡°But no, it¡¯s not either of those. It¡¯s just that we¡¯re sort of under contract to produce them for somebody else already,¡± Shel said. ¡°It¡¯s not that we¡¯re not willing to trade them away.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s that they¡¯re already sold,¡± I finished. ¡°I see.¡±


    ¡°How urgently do you need the reagents?¡± the former leader of the Arborists asked. ¡°We could sell you the next crop. Or even clear some new patches and start growing something now.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°I¡¯m afraid my need is quite a bit more urgent than that. I¡¯ve already made arrangements for future supplies. I need reagents to get me through this week and I don¡¯t have the time to go hunting for wild plants.¡±


    ¡°Then I¡¯m afraid there¡¯s not much we can do to help right now,¡± Karad said. ¡°This particular crop is already spoken for.¡±


    Well, that certainly limited my options. It didn¡¯t necessarily eliminate all of them, however. ¡°If you don¡¯t mind me asking, what exactly are the terms of the contract?¡±


    ¡°Two dozen ointments that block scents for hunters, ten healing potions, and a flask of¡­ ahem, let¡¯s just call it renewed manhood.¡±


    I frowned at that, not because I cared that some old man wanted an alchemical pick-me-up for the bedroom, but because their fields held far more reagents than were needed for such a small order. ¡°That¡¯s everything?¡± I asked.


    ¡°It is, so you can see¡ª¡±


    ¡°I can make all of that with less than a quarter of your yield.¡±


    Shel paused for a moment. ¡°A quarter?¡±


    ¡°Less than that,¡± I repeated.


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­ I know our techniques aren¡¯t as good as yours, but are we really that far behind?¡±


    ¡°I have no idea what techniques you¡¯re using. I¡¯m just saying that you¡¯ve grown far more than you need for what you¡¯ve listed.¡±


    ¡°Are you offering to make everything for us? Because if not, it doesn¡¯t really matter.¡±


    ¡°Yes, that¡¯s what I¡¯m offering,¡± I said. ¡°A few hours of alchemy. I¡¯ll take everything you planned on using, and you get your contract filled. This way, you¡¯re not out any of the ingredients you grew and you don¡¯t have to actually do any of the work making it.¡±


    ¡°Give us a few moments to confer, please.¡±


    Shel¡¯s group retreated to another table and talked in hushed whispers while I did my best to ignore what they were saying. That took an active effort on my part since the far table was still only ten feet away, but it was a short conversation. The only possible downside was that I might screw something up, but Shel laughed away that suggestion when one of her subordinates mentioned it.


    Even an active effort not to eavesdrop was doomed to fail in such confined quarters.


    After a minute, Shel and Karad returned to the table I was seated at. ¡°We¡¯ll need to clear up some details,¡± Karad said. ¡°The contract is due in a week. Can you get everything done by yourself by then?¡±


    ¡°I can have it all done this evening,¡± I assured him.


    ¡°And you can guarantee the quality?¡±


    ¡°Please. Don¡¯t be insulting.¡±


    ¡°Our people will harvest everything for you. You¡¯ll return everything needed to fulfill the contract and the rest of the supplies are yours to keep.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯m proposing, yes,¡± I said.


    ¡°I think we have a deal,¡± Karad said, holding out a hand.


    ¡°Not just yet!¡± Shel said. ¡°I have one more condition.¡±


    Oh, no.


    ¡°I want to watch. And ask questions.¡±


    I hadn¡¯t missed that part of Shel¡¯s apprenticeship, not at all.

 Book 5, Chapter 13

    I¡¯d offered to make extra potions. I¡¯d offered the town storage crystals packed full of mana. I¡¯d offered them a teleportation platform ¨C though to be fair, I¡¯d given a few dozen of those away already, so that last one wasn¡¯t much of an offer.


    Shel had declined all of that. She knew what she wanted, and she knew I wanted access to their reagents bad enough that she could push for it. I spared a moment to remember the old days, when I just took what I wanted, stepping over literal bodies if I had to. I was a very different person now, and had been for centuries, but at the moment, it had a certain appeal.


    But no, this was a petty annoyance that didn¡¯t actually cost me anything other than an extremely limited amount of extra mana teleporting her along with me. Somewhat ungraciously, I accepted the deal. It stung all the more because I could see an amused twinkle in Karad¡¯s eyes.


    ¡°Fantastic!¡± Shel said. ¡°I¡¯ll have my people start gathering everything up immediately.¡±


    She rushed out the door, followed by the other Arborists, leaving me alone with Karad. The former leader of Alkerist regarded me silently for a second, then said, ¡°So how many years did you give up to make yourself look like an adult?¡±


    I shrugged. ¡°A decade or so, I suppose. It hardly matters much when I have a lifespan measured in millennia.¡±


    ¡°You haven¡¯t changed much, have you?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a little late in life to still be figuring out who I am,¡± I said dryly. ¡°I¡¯m at the point where I¡¯m rounding my total age to the nearest century and occasionally losing track.¡±


    Karad shook his head, bemused. ¡°Ancestors guide me. I can¡¯t even imagine what kind of thinking a life like that leads to. It¡¯s a wonder you¡¯re as well-adjusted as you are.¡±


    ¡°Some people wouldn¡¯t agree with your assessment of me. I can think of more than a few who think of me as a right bastard.¡±


    ¡°Oh, you are,¡± Karad agreed. ¡°It hasn¡¯t been so many years that I¡¯ve forgotten what dealing with you was like. As soon as you told us what you wanted, I knew you¡¯d get it. The only real question was how much we could convince you to pay for it.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not that bad,¡± I protested. ¡°I always paid a fair amount for anything I needed.¡±


    ¡°Negotiating with you is like trying to talk the weather into behaving. Maybe the village gets what it needs, but it¡¯s more of a coincidence than because of anything we did. That¡¯s one of the big reasons you rubbed so many people the wrong way. That and the fact that no one likes being bullied by someone who¡¯s less than three feet tall, regardless of how old they actually are.¡±


    ¡°Yes, I recall that being a point of contention.¡±


    Apparently, Karad was planning on babysitting me while we waited. That was probably just for his own peace of mind rather than out of any foolish belief that he could stop me if I decided to do something he didn¡¯t like. If he was here, he could at least try to talk me out of it instead of having to clean up after I was done.


    ¡°For all you rubbed us the wrong way, though, you¡¯ve honestly done a lot to help this whole island. Heh, ¡®island.¡¯ We didn¡¯t even know we were on an island ten years ago. We barely knew the names of the next village over and the city Noctra came from. And forget about magic. I kind of suspect, looking back on it now, that Noctra knew almost nothing, too. There are probably six or seven people in this village now who are better mages than he was.¡±


    ¡°That wouldn¡¯t surprise me, to be honest. You¡¯re right that Noctra was not a very good mage. I don¡¯t know if he was even technically a true mage. His core was ignited, but his skills were lacking. His assistant knew more magic than he did; she just lacked the ability to generate her own mana at any appreciable rate.¡±


    ¡°Ah. Her¡­¡± Karad trailed off with a dark scowl. I supposed his position as the guy who enforced the rules had probably put him in close contact with Iskara, the governor¡¯s aide and the woman truly in charge of everything. No doubt he had plenty of bad memories that he¡¯d recovered after I¡¯d killed both Noctra and Iskara. Without them there to maintain all the mind magic they¡¯d been laying on people, a whole lot of negative feelings had cropped up about the pair.


    ¡°Enough of bad times,¡± I said. ¡°How has this new village been doing since you founded it?¡±


    ¡°A bit of a rough start, but having everybody here able to produce mana with an ignited core has smoothed things out considerably. Other than a few kids who haven¡¯t reached that point yet, we¡¯re all able to spend mana freely to grow crops and defend Vestrus from the rare monsters that find us all the way out here.¡±You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    ¡°No teleportation platform, though. You¡¯re completely disconnected from everywhere else.¡±


    Karad shrugged. ¡°For now. Someday, I¡¯m sure we¡¯ll reach out to your new town to buy one.¡±


    I laughed. ¡°Nobody buys one. I give them away.¡±


    ¡°You do?¡±


    ¡°You have to power it yourself, but yes. It doesn¡¯t take very long to make a platform. The mana banks are the expensive portion. The rest is just a chunk of stone. Do you want one?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re really just giving something like that away? There has to be a catch.¡±


    ¡°There isn¡¯t, but you don¡¯t have to accept it. I don¡¯t really care one way or another. I doubt I¡¯ll ever be back after today.¡±


    While Karad turned that offer over and tried to spot the non-existent trap in it, I watched Shel organize about twenty people into harvesting herbs from various gardens scattered throughout the village. She personally hit no less than three greenhouses, where I was pleased to see her gardening skills had grown considerably since back when we¡¯d been working in the greenhouses of Old Alkerist. The various plants that required mana to thrive were all healthy and green. Even some of the tricky ones that could die if they were oversaturated were in perfect condition.


    It was going to be a few hours before everything was packaged up, which unfortunately left me with some time to kill. I looked back at Karad and asked, ¡°You make a decision yet?¡±


    * * *


    Shel and I stood on Vestrus¡¯s new teleportation platform while I filled it with enough mana for a single trip. All the herbs were packed up in baskets or crates and safely stowed away in my phantom space, meaning we¡¯d be leaving in about twenty seconds.


    ¡°¡ªtell her I¡¯ll deal with it tomorrow when I get back,¡± Shel was telling one of the Arborists.


    ¡°But Shel, you know she¡¯s going to want an answer now. It¡¯ll only take a few minutes. Can¡¯t you take care of that before you leave?¡±


    Shel shot a glance at me, but I shook my head. Turning back to the Arborist, she said, ¡°Guess n¡ª¡±


    Then the world vanished and we reappeared in my biggest alchemy lab inside my demesne. ¡°¡ªot,¡± Shel finished. She blinked and looked around. ¡°Oh, damn. This is a lot of equipment. Is this how you¡¯re going to make everything so fast?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s part of it,¡± I said. ¡°Having six tables and being good enough to keep all of them running smoothly at the same time will speed things up, but the real trick is the refined recipes. Alchemy requires a lot of expensive trial and error to truly distill a potion down to the fewest steps and least amount of materials, but fortunately for us, I¡¯ve long since done that work.¡±


    ¡°Or stolen someone else¡¯s work,¡± she added.


    ¡°Yes, or that. Now, let¡¯s get started processing this stuff. You can help with that while you bombard me with questions.¡±


    I set her up with a mortar and pestle to pulp a stack of leaves into the powdered base we¡¯d need for the ointments while I used some very precise force spells and delicate telekinesis to dice up everything else. While we worked, I explained what spells I was using, how to cast them, and what sorts of drills worked best for practicing this kind of magic without wasting expensive materials.


    Shel¡¯s questions, just as annoyingly thorough as I recalled them being, did not stop there. She got ahead of the process and started questioning me on the tools filling the work stations, with a special focus on the heat emitters. Those had been finely tuned by various enchantments to hold exact temperatures, something that was vitally important in alchemy.


    ¡°I want one,¡± she said. ¡°No, actually, I want five of them. How much would you charge to make them?¡±


    ¡°I won¡¯t make them for you, but if you really need them that badly, there¡¯s a guy named Tetrin who makes his living off commissions like that. I¡¯ll help you get in contact with him and you can negotiate the rate.¡±


    ¡°Will they be as good as yours?¡±


    I pointed to one of the heaters on the back table. ¡°He made that one. His work is good enough that I have no problem using it.¡±


    She considered that for a moment before putting down the mortar and walking over to examine the heater. ¡°I can¡¯t see a difference between this and the one I was looking at before.¡±


    ¡°How about that?¡± I deadpanned.


    ¡°I know, I know. But can you blame me for wanting to experience it for myself? Why take someone¡¯s word for it when you don¡¯t have to?¡±


    It went on like that for another hour or so while we finished prepping everything. Then I started loading up the tables, which prompted a whole new round of questions every time my method deviated from the one she knew.


    ¡°Why are you putting the base in first? Isn¡¯t there too much air in the flask if you do it this way?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not enough calbera root for a full dose.¡±


    ¡°Why doesn¡¯t your recipe use gold thistle? And what are you substituting for it?¡±


    Some questions I answered. Some I ignored. Shel seemed to have a sixth sense for when she was growing too annoying and would occasionally get quiet for a few minutes. It never lasted though, and it was with a great amount of relief that I finished up the last part of the order a few hours later and placed it in the box.


    ¡°Here you go. One contract fulfilled, and the leftover reagents are now mine,¡± I said.


    She peered into the box and silently counted it all up, even though she¡¯d done that several times already while I was preparing the very last part. While she was busy doing that, I teleported us both across my demesne to the platform I used for traveling to the outside world, causing her to start and almost drop the box.


    ¡°I¡¯d appreciate if you didn¡¯t destroy all of that,¡± I told her. ¡°I¡¯m not in the mood to make it again.¡±


    ¡°No, that would be bad,¡± she agreed. ¡°The sudden jump was just surprising, is all. I suppose this is goodbye for now, then?¡±


    ¡°For now,¡± I said, having absolutely no intention of ever seeing this most annoying of temporary students ever again if I could help it.


    I sent her back to the new platform in her home village, then let out a long groan. ¡°What a day,¡± I muttered.


    Querit appeared next to me just then. ¡°Who was that?¡± he asked.


    ¡°It¡¯s a long story. Trust me, that one¡¯s too much of a nuisance to want to get to know. What¡¯s important is that I got what we needed to start running the experiments on dissolving mysteel.¡±


    ¡°So soon? And here I thought we might actually get a few weeks off.¡±


    ¡°No such luck,¡± I said. ¡°To the lab.¡±

 Book 5, Chapter 14

    ¡°Keiran, it¡¯s time to stop.¡±


    I ignored Querit and started preparing the reagents for the next experiment.


    ¡°Keiran! Please.¡±


    Force magic chopped the herb into thin slices, then did a second pass to dice them into cubes.


    ¡°Keiran¡­¡± Querit reached out to grab my shoulder.


    I shrugged him off and turned an angry glare on the golem. ¡°I don¡¯t have time to stop right now.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s been a month. I haven¡¯t seen you sleep. You cannot tell me that the quality of your work hasn¡¯t suffered.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to argue with you about this. You know how important it is,¡± I said.


    ¡°I agree. It¡¯s important. I will stay here and keep things running while you sleep, but please, please, go find your bed.¡±


    I¡¯d burned through the reagents I¡¯d gotten from Shel¡¯s new village faster than I¡¯d wanted, but Hyago had come through for me and now had no less than five of his druids working in shifts to keep up with me. Each batch was a bit smaller than the last, but it was enough to keep pushing forward. We¡¯d find the answer sooner or later, but only if we kept looking.


    ¡°Why are you so obsessed with this experiment?¡± Querit asked, not for the first time. ¡°We have other sources of mysteel. It might take us a few extra years, but you weren¡¯t in such a rush before.¡±


    ¡°You damn well know why,¡± I said, jerking myself free of Querit¡¯s hand.


    Six weeks ago, the gestalt had contacted me to let me know that something had appeared on Yulitar. It wasn¡¯t much, just a single, solitary tower peeking out of the ground, but there was only one person capable of making it. And if Ammun had built it, that meant there was a reason. Maybe that reason was just that he was getting a spot of revenge by making us panic, but I couldn¡¯t assume there wasn¡¯t any greater purpose.


    And if that was the case, then we needed to get things resolved down here before he showed back up. My mysteel generators were running full tilt inside the tower¡¯s foundations, starving it of mana and producing the all-important metal at the same time. It wasn¡¯t as fast as taking a metaphorical sledgehammer to it and breaking it to pieces, but it did have the upside of probably not killing everyone living inside it. They¡¯d have plenty of time to realize the mana was gone, that it wasn¡¯t coming back, and that there was no reason to stay.


    I hoped.


    ¡°This isn¡¯t the way to do it. You¡¯re not thinking right. What happens if that lich shows up tomorrow and you¡¯re in this state?¡±


    ¡°This is all I can do to prepare,¡± I said.


    ¡°Well¡­¡±


    ¡°Well, what?¡±


    ¡°Have you looked at the valley¡¯s mana levels in the last few days?¡± Querit asked.


    I frowned. ¡°No¡­ Why would¡­¡± My eyes popped wide open as I realized what he was saying. ¡°We hit our threshold?¡±


    ¡°As far as I can tell, yes.¡±


    ¡°Even with all the mana we¡¯ve been burning?¡±


    ¡°See for yourself,¡± Querit said. ¡°And then go get some sleep. You¡¯re going to need to be in good shape.¡±


    When I¡¯d advanced my core to stage seven, I¡¯d planned on quickly taking the next step to stage eight. That plan hadn¡¯t worked out for a very simple reason. I didn¡¯t have enough mana. Stage seven involved creating an astral body double that existed inside the Astral Realm, essentially multiplying my capabilities and allowing me to easily handle heavy mana.


    Stage eight was the forging of the mage¡¯s shadow, which was essentially the creation of two more astral bodies, except one of them existed in this world. The shadow was connected to me, but could operate independently and couldn¡¯t be truly destroyed. And the amount of mana needed to create it depended entirely on how powerful the stage seven mage was.


    I was significantly more powerful than I¡¯d been the last time I¡¯d reached stage seven, and not just because I¡¯d taken advantage of the opportunity to build my mana core perfectly. Something about my reincarnation had caused my core to exceed even my most optimistic expectations as far back as stage two, and that advantage had only been growing each time I advanced.


    In short, I¡¯d underestimated the amount of mana I¡¯d needed significantly, so much so that it had taken over six months for my demesne, itself practically a mana dynamo with a fragment of moon core buried beneath a petrified forest of living stone, to make what I needed. In all fairness, I spent my mana quite readily these days and probably could have shaved a month or two off the buildup if I¡¯d tried.


    Advancing to stage eight would be a significant advantage if it came to another fight with Ammun. I would have done it months ago if I could have. If everything was ready now, then Querit was right. I needed to take a break from my attempts to integrate mysteel into the plant monster¡¯s biometal processing and prepare myself to weave my new shadow.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    ¡°Fine. You win,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m going to get something to eat, then hibernate for a few days. When I come out of it, I¡¯ll be busy for a week or so.¡±


    ¡°Thank you,¡± Querit said, clearly exasperated. ¡°Go, I¡¯ll finish this up.¡±


    ¡°Okay, but first, let me just¡ª¡±


    ¡°Keiran!¡±


    ¡°Alright! Alright. I¡¯m going.¡±


    * * *


    As much as it pained me to admit it, once I got my mind off working, the past month hit me like a herd of stampeding horses. Human bodies weren¡¯t meant to withstand what I¡¯d been putting mine through, and I¡¯d stretched it beyond my limits with a dozen invocations running every second of every day. I¡¯d accomplished a lot in that time, but unfortunately, not the one thing I¡¯d been trying to do.


    Now that I¡¯d stopped, the only thing I wanted was to sleep ¨C the bed was optional. Food wasn¡¯t, however. Once I went down, I wasn¡¯t getting back up until my stomach made me. If I didn¡¯t eat first, that¡¯d be in less than a day, and I needed way more time than that. So I shoveled raw vegetables into my mouth, rounded them out with a few pieces of fruit, detoured to the bathroom, then teleported myself the twenty feet to my bed.


    I didn¡¯t even remember releasing the invocations keeping me conscious.


    * * *


    Coming out of a hibernation was a strange feeling. On the one hand, I felt amazing after even just a few days of sleep. On the other, I was in desperate need of a trip to the bathroom and something to drink. A shower wouldn¡¯t go amiss either.


    While I was doing that, I used my connection to the valley¡¯s genius loci, the very aspect of my mana core that formed my demesne, to get caught up on what I¡¯d missed. For the most part, things were unchanged. The trees were still stone. The artificial mana resonance point we¡¯d forged still hung in the air over a shelf of bare rock on the south side. The wards were functioning, and the collection of mysteel pillars that formed the backbone of my defense network were intact and ready to be used.


    In the labs, Querit was hard at work overseeing the experiments we¡¯d designed, and our test subject was as alive and well as it had ever been. The golem noticed my divination sweep over him and paused in his work to look up at the source of the spell. ¡°Six days,¡± he said.


    My eyebrows shot up. That was a hell of a hibernation cycle, even for an archmage. No doubt, my mana had worked to keep me from dying of dehydration, however inefficiently it might have done the job. It certainly explained a few things about my trip to the bathroom after waking up, not in the least among them the ripeness of my smell.


    Now that my head was fully clear, I could admit that Querit had been right. I¡¯d been flailing at a problem to no effect. I cringed just thinking about how bad some of my ideas had been toward the end. It was incredibly obvious how those experiments would turn out, and I should have seen that without the need to waste resources.


    I got the feeling Querit was going to be insufferable about this, probably holding it over my head every time I went without sleep for any extended period of time. He was always just a little bit smug about his golem body being able to function indefinitely. The joke was on him, though. I was ready to move up to stage eight.


    Stage nine was going to be more of a problem, but I¡¯d done it before. I could do it again. I just didn¡¯t know how yet. Things were different this time around, but I¡¯d adapt. It was really more of a question of how long it would take me.


    And then I could resume the search for the mythical stage ten: true immortality. I had thousands of years left to figure it out, too. And if I failed again, well, there was always the reincarnation method. Admittedly, with the planet being down a moon and the world core itself broken, I was going to have to revise my methods, but I could figure that out if I devoted some time to it after I got everything else fixed on this busted up planet.


    Once I was presentable and nourished again, I teleported to the resonance point. It wasn¡¯t strictly necessary to do this here, but I figured it would be easier if the local mana flows were more tightly leashed. There¡¯d be less interference that way.


    Perhaps sensing my intentions, or just knowing me well enough to know I¡¯d be impatient to get on with it as soon as possible, Querit was already there. ¡°Before you get started, I¡¯ve got a few things to update you on,¡± he said.


    ¡°Anything dire?¡±


    ¡°No. Hyago dropped off another shipment. He was concerned at the rate we¡¯re going through the ingredients, but I assured him we¡¯d be slowing down for a few weeks at least as something else had come up that required your attention. As I understand it, this will give his team a chance to do¡­ something¡­ I¡¯m afraid I didn¡¯t quite follow all the technical terms, but I understood it as rejuvenating the soil between crop cycles.¡±


    I nodded along. ¡°What else?¡±


    ¡°Grandfather showed up to talk to you three days ago. It seems everything is going smoothly at Eyrie Peak, but he wants you there to do one final check with him before he starts some long trip he¡¯s planning. I didn¡¯t get the details, but there¡¯s no rush to get that done right now.


    ¡°Finally, your father has been trying to reach you via your scrying mirror all week. When he was unable to, he contacted me instead. I assured him that you¡¯re alright, just in the middle of something.¡±


    ¡°What did he need?¡± I asked, my mind already conjuring all sorts of trouble that could beset the town.


    ¡°Shel showed up in New Alkerist. I¡¯ve been told that she was quite insistent that she speak with you, but of course, no one could produce you. Your father said it wasn¡¯t an emergency.¡±


    ¡°All of that in just a few days, huh? How¡¯s the progress coming on our experiments?¡±


    ¡°Slowly. I¡¯ve ruled out a few more catalysts and redesigned the acclimation process four times. All I¡¯ve managed to do was cross out a few more potential combinations.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve got a few new ideas to try,¡± I said. ¡°Just kind of came to me when I woke up.¡±


    ¡°Imagine that.¡±


    ¡°Yes¡­ Imagine that.¡± I gave him a flat look. ¡°Okay, let¡¯s talk about the base liquid. We¡¯ve tried using acids to help dissolve the mysteel, but that was never going to work. On other metals, sure, but mysteel just won¡¯t melt. It¡¯s hard enough to reshape it, let alone dissolve it. We need to powder it, instead.¡±


    ¡°How would you go about powdering mysteel?¡± Querit asked, clearly bewildered.


    ¡°I¡¯ve got a few ideas for you to try out while I¡¯m busy. To start, a mysteel grinder combined with a transmutation spell to soften metal. I¡¯ve already figured out how to recalibrate the spell from brass to mysteel. I think it will work better than any other type of metal transmutation.¡±


    I finished giving Querit my ideas for the next round of experiments, then he left to prepare them. I took a breath, then opened myself to my demesne again. I would need all of the mana it could give me over the next few days.


    Exhaling, I closed my eyes and plucked at the first thread of mana.

 Book 5, Chapter 15

    No mage, not even me, had the mental capacity to weave a mage¡¯s shadow on their own. It was just too complex a task to be done without assistance. That was why the sixth stage was the forming of a genius loci and binding it to my mana core. It helped focus my magic, allowed me to pull off feats of mental gymnastics that I never could have anywhere else in the world. Without my demesne, the artificial resonance point hanging in the air overhead wouldn¡¯t exist.


    Even that wasn¡¯t enough in and of itself to accomplish what I was trying to do here. That was why I pulled a device of my own invention out of my phantom space. I¡¯d made the prototype about seven hundred years before my last death. At the time, there was nothing like it in the world and I was advancing through uncharted territories. I doubted I was the first archmage to reach stage eight, but all those who¡¯d gone before had taken their secrets to the grave.


    That had forced me to come up with my own solution: the mana loom. It looked nothing like an actual loom, of course. There was no need for it to mimic the shape when its purpose was to organize mana, not threads. My original version had been a sprawling, clunky thing almost the same size as the hut I¡¯d been born in as Gravin. Since then, I¡¯d made numerous improvements and helped no less than four other archmages follow in my footsteps.


    Suffice to say that the new design was considerably more elegant.


    From the outside, it looked like a simple jewelry box, one that easily fit between my hands. It was made of gold and silver and glinting gemstones, far too ornamental and tawdry looking to be practical. There was a reason for that, however. Certain metals influenced mana drawn through them, and in the case of gold, it made the mana more rigid. It would help the threads I wove keep their shape for just a little bit longer as long as I concentrated.


    Silver, on the other hand, made mana more malleable, which I needed for the parts where I sculpted mana into shape around that inflexible base. Similarly, the various gems studding the box both inside and out were designed to hold mana and alter it in different ways. To be more specific, they worked with heavy mana, which no mage below stage seven could reliably shape into magic without immediately exhausting themselves.


    I placed the box on the ground in front of me and activated it with a mental command, causing it to unfold itself repeatedly until it formed a ritual platform for me to stand on that was far bigger than the outer dimensions allowed for. In between the sapphires, diamonds, garnets, and more were rune structures, deep channels carved into the wood that were waiting to be filled with liquid mana.


    I sat in the center, inside a circle with lines of runes radiating out from it in a sunburst pattern. Compared to my original mana loom, this one was barely more than a carpet placed under a kitchen table, but it was undoubtedly the most powerful loom I¡¯d ever created. It would have to be, seeing as to how it was personally designed to take advantage of my mana reserves, willpower, and knowledge.


    Back when I was just Keiran, my first try at becoming a stage eight archmage had taken me two weeks and failed in the end. It was only on my fourth attempt that I¡¯d succeeded after a month of effort. But now I knew every mistake I¡¯d made on the road to success, and I was older and stronger. I was getting this done in the next week.


    I pulled the first thread of mana through the loom and started weaving my shadow. In the Astral Realm, my opposite mirrored me.


    * * *


    No spider had ever woven a web to match what I sat in the middle of. It connected to my body at a million different points. A single twitch would ruin it. Even taking a breath would be too much. I¡¯d been feeding myself air using a combination of conjuration to force the air to move and invocation to cycle it through my lungs without actually inhaling.


    Slowly, delicately, I mentally grabbed hold of two strands of mana being held in place by my loom and twined them together.


    * * *


    I was trapped in a cocoon of mana so dense that I was oblivious to the world around me. Or maybe ¡®trapped¡¯ wasn¡¯t the right word. It was so delicate that I could easily rip my way free if I had to. But the waste¡­ It would set me back months if I gave up at this point. No, the only way out was forward.


    My astral body shifted on its own for the first time, not in mirror of my actions, but in response to my thoughts. Good. It was beginning to break free.


    * * *


    No longer was the mana a cocoon. Now it was a fine suit, tailored for me and so flexible that it was practically a second skin. I could move again, but not off the ritual platform. My weave was done, and my astral body had mimicked that using pure mana suffusing the Astral Realm. Now it was time for the penultimate step: removing myself from the second skin of mana without ruining it. Emergence was as much a mental act as a magical one. Like wards that only I was allowed to pass through, I needed to part the heavy mana around me, to take that step without disturbing what I left behind.


    There would be no second chance if I made a mistake here. This was the step that I¡¯d bungled in two of my four attempts in my previous life, and even when I¡¯d managed to do it successfully, it had been a near thing.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    The loom was fully engaged, holding everything in place. I just had to detach it from my physical body now without breaking it apart. Carefully, I snipped the first thread wrapped around me, then smoothed out the loose end. With it sealed and the weave still stable, I cut another one.


    Repeat.


    Repeat.


    Repeat.


    * * *


    I stood face to face with myself, or rather a copy of my astral body, but fully in the real world. There was just one step left. I needed to take that connection between my mana core and my astral body and flip it inside out, to pull the astral body into this world so it could inhabit this body made of mana that I¡¯d built for it.


    Saying it and doing it were two different things. There were no words to describe the sensation of reaching into my own mana core to grab hold of a mirror of myself, but that was what I did. Our hands met in the middle and clasped, and then the mirror broke. I pulled, and instead of exerting equal pressure pulling me back, my astral body moved independent of me.


    It slipped through and was flung into the vessel I¡¯d prepared for it, the me that was made of pure mana. Now it was out of my hands. My astral body could draw on my power, but it would have to acclimate on its own. The only thing I could do was wait to see if it would survive, or if I¡¯d just broken myself back down to stage six.


    I wasn¡¯t worried. After all, that was my astral body. In a very real way, it was me. And I had plenty of faith in my own abilities.


    * * *


    I stood on the ground, my mana loom now closed up and back in its compact travel form. Behind me, my shadow flickered back and forth of its own volition. It leaped across the grass, merging with the shadow of a fallen pillar that had been part of the creation process back when Querit and I had forged the artificial mana resonance point.


    My shadow was perfectly invisible, swallowed up in the larger shadow it was hiding in. Despite that, I knew exactly where it was. In many ways, a mage¡¯s shadow was a living creature. It thought like me, almost perfectly in sync, but it wasn¡¯t me. And the longer it existed independently of me, the more we would diverge. Mages who never took the time to merge with their shadows again often found themselves with a companion possessed of its own opinions and desires.


    Most archmages agreed that letting a shadow run wild was a bad idea, if for no other reason than because we were technically sharing mana cores. We had a pair between us, and each could draw from either or both. Both cores also regenerated at the same rate, meaning I¡¯d effectively doubled how much mana I could hold and how quickly I regained it.


    My shadow pulled on our mana core, and a needle of stone rose ten feet into the air. With a thought, it shattered the temporary construction back into mana. Good. As it should, the shadow possessed all the skills I did. Lossless casting was no problem for it, and together we might even manage to cast master-tier spells without giving up any mana.


    We experimented for a few more minutes before I was satisfied with the results. It looked like true lossless master-tier spells were still out of reach, but we were up to something like seventy percent efficiency. This was as close to my true power as I was likely to get in a dead world with a stage eight core.


    I slipped through my demesne to appear in the bio testing lab. Querit wasn¡¯t there at the moment, but he was good about keeping records. Our monster specimen was still alive, but it didn¡¯t look like we¡¯d made any progress. Maybe I could fix that.


    The problem had always been getting mysteel dissolved to the point where the monster could assimilate it and start producing it for its biometal. We kept failing at that; even our most refined mixes weren¡¯t producing any metal at all.


    Mysteel¡¯s defining quality was that it was nigh-indestructible to both physical and magical forces. It was in fact so difficult to do anything with it that a thin shell of it was enough to contain the mana core of the entire planet. It had taken a force powerful enough to destroy a moon in orbit to fracture that shell.


    I couldn¡¯t generate that kind of magic, but then, the mysteel piece I was working with was much smaller. I could¡ªand had¡ªreduced it to a fine powder. That wasn¡¯t really the issue. The issue was getting it to combine properly with the elixir instead of remaining inert. In order for that to happen, I needed to fully suffuse the mysteel with mana.


    That was something I could probably do. And even if not, the attempt would be an excellent test of the maximum amount of mana my shadow and I could handle. I selected a vial of powdered mysteel and considered which alchemical bases were ready. Some of them were incompatible with the method I was planning, but I had a few that could handle the stress of that much mana being moved through them.


    My shadow and I both started cycling mana through the mysteel dust, more and more of it each second. Rather than let it flow back into me, I forced it to be more compact, denser, heavier. Then I added another layer, and another, and another, so many that it was a fight just to keep it all from venting out. If that happened, the glass vial would shatter, pelting me with the world¡¯s most expensive metallic sand.


    The only thing stopping it was our combined efforts. And slowly, ever so slowly, the mysteel was infused with so much raw mana that it couldn¡¯t hold. Carefully, I poured it into the already-prepared alchemical mixture and swirled it around. Its resistance overcome through sheer force, the mysteel couldn¡¯t resist reacting.


    The liquid turned from a rich blue to a murky silt-gray. Working swiftly, I started heating the elixir while stirring it with a slender glass rod, the end of which was flattened into a paddle. At the same time, my shadow starting casting the spell needed to engage the catalyst.


    Thirty seconds later, there was a burst of mana, so strong that it triggered my shield ward, and the elixir was a solid, sparkling gray. Subtle currents swirled through the bottle, barely visible even to my mana sense.


    Querit rushed into the lab, then froze when he saw me. ¡°You¡¯re done,¡± he said. With a glance at the elixir I¡¯d crafted, he added, ¡°I¡¯m assuming your core advancement went well.¡±


    ¡°Very well. I was able to apply a new level of pressure to the mysteel thanks to my shadow¡¯s help. It¡¯s not a clever solution, but I think it might work.¡±


    He studied the elixir intently, then straightened and said, ¡°You might just be right. The mysteel is actually alchemically bonded to the regeneration elixir this time. It¡¯s not going to separate no matter how long it sits.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s only one thing left to do,¡± I said with a grin. We both turned to look at the plant monster safely contained in its pen. ¡°Try it out.¡±

 Book 5, Chapter 16

    After making a few more samples for Querit to play with, I left him to his work. There were a few other things I had to catch up on, namely checking on what Ammun was doing up on the moon and helping Grandfather confirm everything was fine so he could do whatever it was he was planning. After that¡­ helping Father get rid of Shel should have been a priority, but I was very much alright with ignoring that particular problem.


    Before I left for Eyrie Peak, I spent a bit of time doing my own long-range scrying. I¡¯d modified my scrying chamber months ago so that I wouldn¡¯t have to go through the trouble of spending half an hour setting up the ritual every time I wanted to use it. Now it included an actual basin of liquid mana big enough for me to completely submerge myself in, the interior of which was covered in the necessary runes.


    I scoured the surface of the moon Ammun was trapped on, hindered mostly by the fact that his own magic was hiding whatever it was he was building. Unraveling it from this distance was sure to be difficult, which made me wonder exactly how the gestalt had done it ¨C probably by brute force. That was the primary advantage of having millions upon millions of bodies to throw at a problem.


    It wouldn¡¯t surprise me in the slightest to find out the gestalt was looking at the entirety of the moon through thousands of different scrying mirrors at the same time and noting which places they couldn¡¯t see so they could refine their spells to search there. It was impossible for a normal person to do, even someone like me, but for a gestalt entity, the only limiting factor would be the mana. It was too bad their ability to utilize lossless casting was practically nonexistent.


    Giving up the attempt at scrying Ammun¡¯s activities as a bad job, I slipped through my demesne to appear on my teleportation platform. One quick spell later, I was standing on an identical platform on Eyrie Peak and on my way up to speak to Grandfather.


    Surprisingly, the old grayfeather was nowhere to be found. Either he¡¯d decided to proceed with his vacation without me, or he was just somewhere nearby on the mountain. I could see him slowly starting to venture out as he got more comfortable with the new enchantments holding the brakvaw¡¯s graveyard up above the clouds.


    Rather than go looking for him, I decided to just seek out the gestalt instead. They were, as always, in their underground cavern, and also crawling across the portal network, and on the other side of it. Odds were they were quite a few other places I wasn¡¯t aware of, as well.


    ¡®Keiran,¡¯ their odd voice spoke in my head. ¡®You¡¯ve received our message about your enemy?¡¯


    ¡°I did,¡± I said. ¡°I would have been here earlier, but I was delayed with another project.¡±


    ¡®We see that your core has changed again. This is the second time since we have known you.¡¯


    That was a bit surprising to find out that the gestalt was able to feel enough of my mana core to notice the changes. I kept it shielded from casual observation at all times, and I would have expected to know if someone was snooping around, trying to get a good look.


    Assuming my shielding technique was as good as I thought it was, that meant the gestalt was able to tell the difference based on the visible mana that supported the various spells I¡¯d cast in their presence. So, they probably didn¡¯t know what stage my core was at, just that I¡¯d advanced it twice. Still, it was impressive that they could feel the difference in my mana well enough to note the change.


    ¡°Yes. Just earlier today I finished my advancement. You told my assistant that you¡¯d detected a building on Yulitar¡¯s surface, but I wasn¡¯t able to find it with my own scrying.¡±


    ¡®Correct,¡¯ the gestalt sent. ¡®We will show you.¡¯


    I flew over the carpet of ants below me so as not to step on any part of the gestalt and approached the three mirror balls I¡¯d made. All of them were already working, each individual facet showing a stretch of empty moonscape. As I¡¯d suspected, with thousands of images to work from and their unique ability to piece together disparate sensory perceptions, the gestalt had sniffed out Ammun¡¯s secrets through pure brute force.


    Next to the scrying orbs was an illusion of the moon with a particular spot highlighted in red. It showed a small, square tower perhaps four floors high. ¡®We were not able to see inside of this structure,¡¯ the gestalt told me. ¡®Not without some way to transfer some of our bodies to this location, and that would present its own series of challenges.¡¯


    Maintaining the connection to the rest of the gestalt would be damn near impossible over that kind of distance. They would almost have to split off a second, smaller gestalt to find what they wanted, then merge them back together after, something that a gestalt preferred to avoid doing. There was no guarantee the new gestalt would consent to rejoin their host once they¡¯d been separated.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    I might have to go back up there and investigate this myself. I¡¯d been hoping to avoid another fight with Ammun after I¡¯d lost so badly in our last encounter. Unused to fighting under the effects of the moon¡¯s gravity and with no air, I¡¯d failed to properly defend myself, nearly died, and ended up fleeing.


    Now, Ammun had been up there for months and was fully acclimated to the environment. Worse, he¡¯d no doubt already finished tying his phylactery to the moon¡¯s core. He¡¯d be at full strength if we fought again.


    No, going back up to Yulitar was out of the question. I needed to spend however much time I had left preparing for Ammun¡¯s return. If I was lucky, his tower would be starved of mana before he got back, leaving him with no demesne to return to. He¡¯d still be formidable, but not unbeatable. Of course, just destroying his body would just send him back up to the moon, where he¡¯d teleport back again once he was recovered.


    I had plans to deal with that. Ammun wouldn¡¯t find it so easy to flee the next time I beat him.


    ¡®Do you have any requests for what you¡¯d like us to search for now?¡¯ the gestalt asked.


    ¡°Presumably, if Ammun¡¯s anti-divination wards on this tower fall, that means he¡¯s left. That could be used as a warning to let us know that he¡¯s returned,¡± I said. ¡°Then again, it¡¯s just as likely that he¡¯s built them to run on ambient mana up there. It¡¯s not a reliable indicator. Damn. There¡¯s got to be something we can do with this information.¡±


    If I did go up there, could I do it without being discovered? And if so, could I infiltrate Ammun¡¯s wards? For that matter, was this tower even real? It could be a simple decoy he stone shaped then warded to keep our attention on it. There was no way to tell, not right now.


    ¡°Keep trying to get a look inside,¡± I said. ¡°Hopefully this tower is the real deal. I¡¯ll keep making preparations to deal with Ammun when he makes it back here.¡±


    What those preparations were going to be, I didn¡¯t yet know. There was no way I was going to be able to create an emergency recall charm that would take me back down to the planet. If I went up there, it¡¯d be a one-way trip until I managed to carve out a ritual circle to bring me back. I¡¯d need to make sure I destroyed it as soon as I left, too. If it fell into Ammun¡¯s hands, he could use it to follow me back down here. The more I considered the idea of making a second trip to Yulitar, the more I found reasons not to do it.


    I glanced at the illusory moonscape again and scowled. I¡¯d hoped to get another year or two before he figured out how to get home. The fact that it was a multi-floor tower was encouraging. It meant he was still thinking in terms of a group ritual, probably trying to figure out how to do every part of it at once by himself. Or it meant that he wanted me to think that and his real ritual chamber was underground where we¡¯d never be able to scry it. That was the smart thing to do.


    ¡®We shall continue to monitor the surface of this moon,¡¯ the gestalt said. ¡®It is no great trouble to our mind, but you shall need to supply the needed mana for us.¡¯


    I nodded absently and poured mana into the three mirror balls. The enchantments were incredibly efficient, but a thousand different scrying mirrors were still a steady drain on their reserves, especially viewing something so far away. Topping all three of them off took all the mana I had in my core.


    As long as I didn¡¯t need to cast any master-tier spells in the next hour, that was fine. And if I did, my mana crystal was over half full, easily able to support a dozen or so spells. I was in no way defenseless.


    ¡°Done,¡± I said. ¡°Do you know where Grandfather went? I¡¯m supposed to find him, too.¡±


    ¡®The patriarch departed, flying straight up past the clouds an hour ago.¡¯


    Crap. Of course he did. ¡°Did anyone else go with him?¡± I asked. If not, I could probably sneak up there and see what he needed.


    ¡®Four of the elder brakvaw,¡¯ the gestalt told me


    Out of luck, again. I wasn¡¯t on good terms with the elder council to begin with, and intruding on some brakvaw ceremony that took place on their floating graveyard island was just asking for trouble. I¡¯d have to come back some other time, and it probably wouldn¡¯t be anytime soon. My hibernation and ascent to stage eight had put me behind schedule.


    ¡°Did you scry out that other thing I asked for?¡± I asked.


    Information flooded my mind, almost too much to process. It was damn near a mental attack, but I¡¯d been expecting something like this and I was prepared for it, even going so far as to suppress the mental defenses on my shield ward for a few seconds.


    ¡°Thank you for the information,¡± I said as I flew back out of the gestalt¡¯s lair. They sent a feeling of acknowledgement after me.


    I¡¯d leave Grandfather a message and see about scheduling some time with the old bird later. I just needed to find a brakvaw to pass the message along to. Luckily, there was always at least one guard at the teleportation platform. One of them could serve as my messenger.


    I flew back down and picked the larger of the two to let Grandfather know I¡¯d come by. I got something that I took to be an acknowledgement without words, mostly because brakvaw couldn¡¯t speak anything remotely resembling a human language naturally, and not all of them knew enough magic to mimic words. Some of them also didn¡¯t understand Elotian, for that matter.


    Usually the platform guards were in the group that could communicate with outsiders, though I didn¡¯t know how many people actually showed up here besides me. In this case¡­ I wasn¡¯t sure with this guy. Maybe he just didn¡¯t like me. Either way, I suspected someone would tell Grandfather I¡¯d been around and he¡¯d come find me. If nothing else, the gestalt could let him know.


    Or not. And that was fine, too. I had other stops to make and plenty to keep me busy. There was a whole map in my head now, just waiting for me to address it. It would probably be best to wait for my mana core to refill before I started on that, though, so I headed home to speak to my family next.

 Book 5, Chapter 17

    As was typical, Father was out of the house when I got there. More unusually, Mother and Nailu were also gone. Then again, with the town grown significantly from what Old Alkerist had boasted at its peak, and with the advent of magical knowledge making everyone¡¯s lives easier, people found themselves with a lot more free time. Mother used hers to socialize with a far wider circle of friends, especially those who also had young children.


    As for Senica, she could be anywhere. Much to our parents¡¯ dismay, she was no longer limiting herself to staying in New Alkerist. Our successful troll hunt had given her enough confidence to push back against their desire to shelter her, not that she¡¯d had much trouble fighting them on that in the first place. Besides, she was closing in on sixteen now, which was the point where she was considered an adult in this culture.


    I could think of a few others I¡¯d found over the years that had much younger ages of majority. It was probably for the best that we hadn¡¯t been born in any of those places, however. Societies that acknowledged ten-year-olds as adults usually only did so in order to prey upon them in various unsavory ways.


    I¡¯d hoped to catch up with my whole family, but I wasn¡¯t surprised that I¡¯d missed everyone by popping up unannounced in the middle of the day. On the other hand, the only person I actually needed to talk to was Father, so I searched him out. Unsurprisingly, he was out in the fields. That was where he spent most of his time when not being swamped with his duties on the town¡¯s council.


    Good. It was far easier to get a chance to talk to him when he was working the fields than it was when he was busy talking to everyone else. I flew across town, skimming the rooftops both to shorten my journey and to avoid anyone on the streets who might try to flag me down. That didn¡¯t mean people didn¡¯t see me, just that I was gone over the next building before they could say anything.


    Father waved up at me as I approached, then turned and said something to the two men standing nearby. One of them nodded, and he handed off the shovel he¡¯d been holding before stepping away to meet me.


    ¡°Gravin,¡± he said. ¡°Finally feeling better?¡±


    ¡°Yes and no. Lot of work to catch up on,¡± I told him. ¡°I¡¯m refilling my mana core before I tackle the next problem and thought I¡¯d use the time to see what you need.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the next problem?¡± Father asked curiously.


    ¡°Boring experimentation and lab work,¡± I lied. It wasn¡¯t that my parents would try to stop me from going into dangerous situations, but they worried, sometimes over nothing. My next job would only become dangerous if Ammun happened to teleport on top of me while I was doing it. Admittedly, the likelihood of that actually happening seemed to be on the rise.


    However, it would seem dangerous if I explained it to Father, plus a lot of people were probably going to die today, so it was easier to just¡­ not tell him. Part of me thought I should feel bad about that, but that part was only whining because it was my parents I was keeping things from. Besides, I was technically a teenager now, probably. Hiding things from my parents was practically a rite of passage.


    ¡°I heard you were delivering a message from Shel?¡± I prompted in a bid to change the subject before Father could ask any follow up questions.


    A flicker of annoyance crossed his face, but he¡¯d spent enough time arbitrating disputes on the council to smother it immediately. ¡°Yes¡­ Shel. Thanks so much for bringing her back into my life,¡± he said.


    ¡°She can¡¯t possibly be that annoying when she lives hundreds of miles away.¡±


    ¡°For the two days she was here, yes, she could. Very insistent on seeing you again. She only gave up and went home after I got back from the valley and told her that not even I could get to you at the time.¡±


    ¡°Okay, but what did she want?¡± I asked. I assumed it was for me to help with something, but that didn¡¯t really narrow it down.


    ¡°To know what you wanted them to start growing next, I think.¡±


    ¡°Uh¡­ nothing? That was a one-time deal. I¡¯ve got my supplier sorted out and we¡¯ve invested a lot into his operation. Shel and the village got a harvest at a premium price because I needed it right then, but I¡¯m all set now.¡±


    Father snorted. ¡°Of course. All this time pestering me, and the answer is just, ¡®No thanks.¡¯ You think she¡¯ll accept that next time she comes around?¡±


    ¡°Does she have much choice? What would you do with anyone else if someone refused to accept an answer?¡±


    ¡°Warn them to get over it before they spent the night in the jail.¡±Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    ¡°So do that,¡± I suggested.


    We had sound wards on the cells. She couldn¡¯t annoy whoever was on duty too much that way. It seemed like a simple solution to me.


    ¡°Might be better to hear it from you, just so there¡¯s no ambiguity and you can address any other problems she has,¡± Father said.


    I squinted at him suspiciously. ¡°That sounds a lot like trying to foist a problem off on me.¡±


    ¡°It was your problem in the first place!¡± he protested. ¡°If anyone foisted anything, you did it to me!¡±


    There was a fair amount of truth in that statement, much as I hated to admit it. ¡°Fine, fine. I¡¯m up and about now. Next time she shows up, just let me know. I¡¯ll come back and deal with her.¡±


    Damn it, that was exactly what I didn¡¯t want to do. Why did I like having a family again?


    * * *


    I spent a few more minutes catching up with my father, then flew myself back to the town¡¯s teleportation platform. I hadn¡¯t nearly filled my mana core to full, but time was more valuable to me right now. I drew on my personal mana crystal to power a series of teleportation spells that ended with me in the old empire of Ralvost, now a mostly deserted land thanks to Ammun¡¯s predations.


    He¡¯d gotten a legion of zombies in exchange for killing almost everyone who¡¯d lived here, one that Querit had been remarkably thorough in killing when they¡¯d been sent through portals to besiege the various villages and towns located on my home island. He¡¯d also taken out a few dozen necromancers as well.


    That did not mean things were pacified over in this corner of the world ¨C far from it, in fact. Ammun had left an army of mages behind when he¡¯d teleported himself and a few dozen diviners up to Yulitar. I¡¯d sent those diviners back, stranding him up there with no one to help him work the ritual to get back, and most of them had had the good sense to run for the hills upon returning to Manoch.


    The rest of his army was a mixed bag. Some had deserted. A lot of them had gone running back to the tower, though I expected the ones who¡¯d disappeared into the wilderness had only done so because they were afraid of Ammun returning, easily finding them, and punishing them.


    I wasn¡¯t terribly worried about the deserters. The tower was getting weaker by the day, the mana needed to support the gargantuan building being siphoned away by my mysteel generators. Once the wards and enchantments holding it together started to fail, it would be crushed under its own weight.


    No, the problem was the rest of the army. There were still a few thousand hostile mages loyal to Ammun¡¯s cause that I¡¯d been ignoring for the last few months simply because there were so many other, more important problems demanding my attention. Collecting enough mysteel to repair the shell around the world core was one of my top priorities, right up there with destroying Ammun¡¯s demesne and figuring out how to return my mana core to stage nine.


    But now that I had to worry about my former apprentice showing back up, it was time to do something about them. The gestalt had helped me out by using my network of scrying beacons to do a lot of the busywork, even if their method of transferring that information left something to be desired. If I¡¯d had more time, I would have insisted it be delivered the normal way, but there was too much and I didn¡¯t have a few days to go through it all.


    Instead, I got a brain full of troop locations, defensive systems, supply lines, and identified officers. The gestalt had even found a lot of the deserters who¡¯d opted to flee instead of returning to the tower, and marked a hundred or so spots with anti-scrying wards that probably held the more competent mages, including Ammun¡¯s diviners.


    While I¡¯d been taking care of other business, I¡¯d been reviewing everything the gestalt had sent me. There were too many sites to just start raining destruction down on them randomly. I needed a strategy. At the very least, I needed to identify the most important places to destroy and plan the most efficient route to hit them all.


    That had been on my mind for the last half an hour or so, and I¡¯d slowly settled into a definitive plan of action. The most important aspect was preventing my victims from alerting other parts of the army. I¡¯d cut off the more isolated camps first, the ones that wouldn¡¯t be missed for days or even weeks. Then I¡¯d go after the high priority targets. They¡¯d be missed in a matter of hours, maybe less.


    After I hit the first one, it¡¯d be a race to take advantage of the information for as long as it remained accurate. At some point, the army would start to collapse back on its main base and there¡¯d be too many of them for me to do more than strafing runs. I didn¡¯t have the time to whittle them down, so the goal was to break them before they figured out what was happening.


    I considered bringing Querit in on this, but if I was being honest, I didn¡¯t need him and the work he was doing was probably more important. Or maybe I just didn¡¯t want him to have to kill thousands of people. I was already a monster; there was no need to turn anyone else into one.


    I flew above the clouds, trusting in my divinations to lead me to the first site I was going to attack. It was a small encampment fortified with transmuted earthworks and staffed by about fifty mages. Its only purpose, as far as I could tell, was to keep an eye on the northeast border of Ammun¡¯s empire. Considering they¡¯d killed or driven off all their neighbors, I wasn¡¯t sure why the fort hadn¡¯t been abandoned already.


    The first order of business was to place a divination lock on the fort, just in case anyone inside was decent enough to scry out for help. After that, a few carefully placed ward buster spells blew the defenses wide open, leaving the ward stone vulnerable to a mana surge that cracked it in half.


    That was when the soldiers started making noise. Some of it was panicked, but most of it was impressively disciplined. Discipline only got a soldier so far, however. Without the skill to back it up, they had no chance of spotting me before I was ready to reveal myself.


    Mindful of my reserves, I opted to send ropes of lightning down into the fort, killing its defenders one by one as it chained between bodies. It wasn¡¯t the fastest way to wipe everyone out, but it got the job done. Once I¡¯d ensured there was no one left alive, I flew to the next outlying encampment.


    It was a butcher¡¯s work, killing those soldiers loyal enough that they were still serving their absent emperor, but I was determined that by the time Ammun got back, he wouldn¡¯t have an army left.

 Book 5, Chapter 18

    I didn¡¯t even keep track of how many places I destroyed, let alone how many people I killed. All I knew was that it was a lot, and that I¡¯d almost certainly ended the lives of a significant number of people who didn¡¯t deserve it. That did not stop me from moving on to the next base, encampment, or fortification to repeat the process.


    Ammun was going to return eventually. I needed to cut away any and all support I could, even if the cost was an ocean of blood. These people had threatened me and mine too many times already.


    While I went about my gruesome work, part of me wondered why I was bothered at all. The old Keiran had broken armies multiple times, and he¡¯d never paused to consider the fates of those unfortunate soldiers. Why was I? It couldn¡¯t just be the Gravin part of me. I¡¯d long ago determined that Gravin¡¯s defining contribution to my new personality was affection for my immediate family, and that was it. It was a small circle, and even my new little brother was only loosely connected to it.


    Maybe it was how closely I¡¯d been working with others for the last decade making me go soft and sentimental. I¡¯d spent more hours around other people since being reincarnated than I had in the past two centuries of my old life, and as it turned out, they weren¡¯t really all that bad. Sure, they could be annoying and selfish and greedy, but I wasn¡¯t any better. And usually, the things they wanted were so trivial that it took almost no effort on my part to fulfill those desires.


    But I wasn¡¯t a charity, and thus was under no obligation to actually help anyone just because they wanted something. Besides, my time was too valuable to be spent on random engineering projects or putting up newer, better homes for people who honestly didn¡¯t like me that much and hadn¡¯t treated me that well anyway.


    Shel was on my mind more than I cared to admit. She was hardly the first person to show up and want something, and I supposed I understood her thinking since I¡¯d initially made contact with the village, but it was a lot harder to give her the brush off than I¡¯d expected. Shel was one of my first apprentices since I woke back up in Gravin¡¯s body, even if she was incredibly annoying. I hadn¡¯t technically abandoned her, but only by virtue of the fact that I¡¯d been banished from the village.


    Damn it. Did I owe her some help like I would any other apprentice? If so, what form did that help take? It definitely wasn¡¯t helping out her whole village, but it might be teaching her the spells needed so that she could do it herself.


    My musings were interrupted by a squad of artillery mages who¡¯d somehow shielded themselves from detection long enough to get a ritual spell up and running. A pillar of stone thirty feet tall and ten feet wide came flying up through the air with enough momentum to kill me on impact. Something that big and heavy had no right to move that fast, especially not moving straight up, but there it was all the same.


    It was too big to swat aside with telekinesis, even with master-tier grand telekinesis. Instead, I layered force walls in front of it, stressing the rock structure and bleeding off its speed as it blasted through each one. By the time it reached my altitude, I was already a hundred feet away and it was shedding small chunks of stone to rain down on the mages below.


    I quickly located the artillery squad hiding beneath an anti-divination ward with some attention redirection qualities woven into it. My earlier distraction had made it easy for the magic to keep me focused on killing everyone else, but now that I was focused on them, I ripped through the ward easily. Javelins of force rained down, dozens falling to spear through the artillery mages.


    Personal shield wards popped and shattered as they were bombarded with more damage than they could stop. Mages were shunted in every direction, often slamming into each other, and three seconds later, they were dead. What had been a potentially lethal threat was now a tangle of bodies leaking blood from punctured torsos and severed limbs.


    It did serve to drag my attention firmly back to the task at hand, though. Mages died or fled by the dozens until all two hundred or so that had been stationed here were disposed of. None of them had possessed the ability to teleport, or if they had, they hadn¡¯t found the time to actually cast the spell. Six had ¡®escaped¡¯ by flying away, only to be shot down by mana beams from the defensive embankments I¡¯d built and seeded around the camp in a large circle. The rest had died where they stood.


    I collected my equipment back into my phantom space through the simple expedient of triggering an enchantment on them that caused them to all fly toward me, then headed off for the next spot.


    * * *This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    A few other times, artillery squads managed to protect or hide themselves long enough to take a shot at me. Usually, it was a combination of hiding and sacrificing other mages as a distraction, since it was rather difficult to go hunting mages down while fending off a few dozen of their fellows hurling fire, ice, lightning, force, mind probes, and hexes at me all at once.


    The usual cycle for these things was to thin as much as half their numbers in my opening attack, whittle down another quarter or so over the next few minutes, then mop up the survivors once they broke and fled. That time I spent whittling was the only dangerous part, and a bunch of mages at stages one or two just weren¡¯t that threatening. Even the occasional stage three officers were more of a nuisance than anything else.


    That¡¯s how it went for the first eight hours or so. After that, all the isolated camps were gone and I had to start taking risks. I¡¯d already worked out my strategy, which was to change my priority targets to any communications centers first, then to prevent escape second. Taking out mages specializing in offense was the third most important part of the job, and I focused on it just heavily enough to ensure I didn¡¯t need to retreat.


    Even now, it was still a chore to be handled, the butchering of larger groups of mage soldiers that took slightly longer to murder than my original targets. I was still killing more people faster when I accounted for my travel time, especially since my mana had completely recovered and I¡¯d started opening up my assaults with devastating master-tier spells, just one or two for each base I destroyed.


    That worked for another hour or so, but then someone managed to get a message out and the whole plan unraveled. Once the soldiers were forewarned and had time to prepare, it got a lot tougher to devastate their forces with surprise attacks. That in turn reduced my effectiveness, drastically increased my mana costs, and left me facing considerably more danger.


    I hadn¡¯t gotten them all. I¡¯d killed maybe a third, and probably the worst third at that. Important and competent soldiers didn¡¯t get sent to isolated outposts that guarded nothing. But still, single-handedly destroying a third of an army several thousand strong in a single day was nothing to turn my nose up at.


    They weren¡¯t just going to take it lying down, however. Not only did I fail to take the next spot by surprise, but they actually ambushed me first. I was still setting up for my attack when my shield ward flared with mana, blocking some sort of overpowered mind crush spell. At the same time, a giant ball of force appeared around me and started trying to constrict on me, to crush me into paste.


    A few more attacks targeting my mind came my way, probably as a distraction, while I reached into the mana matrix of the force spell and broke it apart. By the time I freed myself, thirty mages were flying up to attack me, various spells already forming around them.


    A wave of dispelling magic rolled out from me, wide enough to catch all of them even if it was a bit wasteful. Conjurations designed to burn, tear, or bludgeon me to death fizzled out, and no small number of mages found their weight suddenly unsupported when they failed to protect their ongoing flight spells, too.


    More mages were coming out of everywhere to attack me, including no less than six artillery squads. It was somewhat flattering to know they were taking me seriously, but it was also making my job considerably harder. In fact, with so many enemy mages arrayed against me, all of them organized and with a plan to kill me in mind, this was looking like the point in my campaign of genocide where I needed to retreat.


    That was my plan until someone two miles north of the camp fired off a massive beam of heat and fire at me. It struck me squarely, breaking through my shield ward and turning my skin an angry red as it blistered. I was only in the edge of the beam for half a second before gravity pulled me clear, but that was enough to do some real damage. I¡¯d need to magically heal myself if I didn¡¯t want a face full of burn scars for the rest of my life.


    A simple intermediate-tier invocation killed my sensation of pain, allowing me to ignore the burnt skin for now. The deadly fire beam swept the sky, catching a few of the enemy mages in its path as it chased me around, but I¡¯d seen this spell a few times already and I knew how to handle it.


    It belonged to a mage who¡¯d gone by the moniker of Seven back when he¡¯d been in the Breakers. I¡¯d watched him use it to assassinate his own grandmother when I¡¯d first met him, and he¡¯d tried to kill me with it more than once. I hadn¡¯t exactly expected to run into him here and now, but that didn¡¯t mean I wasn¡¯t ready to deal with him.


    First, I had to rebuild my shield ward. It couldn¡¯t stand up to the fire beam, but he wasn¡¯t the only mage trying to kill me right now. A few dozen other conjurations were heading my way, all of them weak enough that my shield ward could defend me from them, but only if I could pump enough mana into it to get it back up fast enough.


    Two force bolts slammed into my back, rattling me and stealing my breath. My instinct was to spin in place and return fire, but I didn¡¯t have the time, not if I wanted to avoid becoming a charred corpse. Instead, I let myself keep falling for the second it took to get my shield ward back up, then jerked myself sideways with a short-range instant teleport.


    Blood seeped down my back and I definitely had a broken rib or two. I wrapped a band of force around my chest to hold everything mostly in place, but I needed to be careful for the rest of this fight or else I¡¯d end up with a punctured lung on top of everything else.


    Fortunately, flight didn¡¯t require me to actually move any part of my body, so the injury didn¡¯t slow me down. It did make dodging a bit riskier since sudden changes in direction were a problem, but I only had one goal left before I retreated from this battle.


    I flew toward the source of that fiery death beam that had scorched me. For as many times as I¡¯d seen Seven, this was the day I made sure he died.

 Book 5, Chapter 19

    The closer I got to the source of the beam, the harder it was to dodge it. That might have been a problem if I wasn¡¯t already so familiar with the spell, but I¡¯d been on the receiving end enough times to have a good idea of both the spell¡¯s and the person controlling it¡¯s limitations. Seven aimed the spell visually and seemed unable or unwilling to use divinations to assist with that. I had a theory that he just wasn¡¯t a good enough mage to channel a master-tier spell and cast anything else at the same time, but either way, it meant he had a lot of blind spots.


    One of those was that he couldn¡¯t see what was directly next to the beam since it blocked his own view, though he compensated by shifting it in a slight circular pattern to fry anyone who tried to hide there. Even without that, the amount of heat rolling off the beam was enough to cook anyone who got that close.


    It was a powerful spell on its own, made all the more dangerous by the fact that Seven had a full squadron of mages supporting him. They worked the divinations that fed him information and protected him from retaliatory magic. They were also the ones who tried to pin me down with telekinesis or mental attacks, to slow me enough to let Seven catch me. Really, they were the ones I was fighting right now. Without his support mages, it would be trivial to dance around Seven¡¯s death beam until he ran out of mana.


    So, I didn¡¯t target Seven directly with my counterattack. He was too well defended, anyway. Instead, I latched onto one of the dozen or so defenders on the platform working both to cover him and to maintain the wards, and I drove a massive mind spike into the man¡¯s brain. He cried out in pain and collapsed on the spot, leaving a small hole in the platform¡¯s coverage. Automated wards partially compensated for it, but it was obvious the system had been designed to have humans holding its hands. It wasn¡¯t robust enough to read what was attacking it and respond accordingly.


    Without that guidance, there were vulnerabilities to exploit. Normally, something as complex as wardbreaking wouldn¡¯t be done during live combat. However, in this case, messing the wards up would most likely result in an explosion that killed everyone on the platform. Since that was pretty much the goal, and because I wasn¡¯t going to be anywhere nearby when it happened, I sent a surge of mana into the hole left by the mage I¡¯d already dropped.


    It wasn¡¯t subtle. There were certainly better ways to unravel that defense, but I didn¡¯t have time for that, nor did I particularly care about breaking anything. My mana was a hammer, and I swung it with the intent to break something.


    As it happened, the wards looked to have been made by some mages who didn¡¯t really know what they were doing. It had been slapped together with nothing to anchor it to and no mana reserves outside what the mages could feed into it. When I hit it, I didn¡¯t just break something. I broke a lot of things.


    Miniature explosions filled the platform, outright killing at least four people and injuring a handful more. A few of them had personal shield wards strong enough to survive the catastrophic feedback the fallen ward let out, which unfortunately included Seven. I¡¯d give him his due; his concentration never wavered.


    His aim, on the other hand, got a lot worse all a sudden. I accelerated and got another hundred feet of distance from the beam even as I closed the distance on its source, and Seven couldn¡¯t keep up with my abrupt change in speed and direction. His magic sliced through the air, but by the time it reached where I¡¯d gone, I¡¯d already disappeared again.


    I was still too far out to use any sort of conjurations without having to worry about them being dispelled, but that was a risk I was willing to take. The mages left alive were still reeling from the failure of their wards. While it was a safe bet that just because they could dispel any spells I threw at them didn¡¯t mean they actually would.


    Force bolts spiraled through the air, striking unerringly and throwing bodies off the platform. I closed in, spinning a large loop to keep ahead of Seven, whose shield ward was still intact despite everything. The difference between Seven¡¯s gear and the average army mage¡¯s was night and day.


    ¡°Damn it!¡± Seven bellowed, finally releasing the beam of fiery destruction and spinning to face me as I approached. Mana welled up in him and burst out into four smaller beams that curved around to meet with me as their focal point.


    Unlike the big one he¡¯d been trying to cook me with, these ones were pure mana, designed to punch through shield wards, and not even close to up to the task. Maybe if I¡¯d been using the kind of shield wards that appeared to be standard issue in Ammun¡¯s army, I¡¯d have been in trouble. Instead, I brushed the spell off like it wasn¡¯t even there. I probably could have done it even without my shadow enhancing my magic.


    There were six feet and two shield wards separating us. A look of absolute rage twisted Seven¡¯s features as he glared at me, though I wasn¡¯t quite sure why. We were enemies, sure, but we¡¯d barely ever had any personal interactions.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Oh. Right. I¡¯d killed a few thousand soldiers. He probably had some friends in that group. That would do it.


    ¡°Just die already, you monster,¡± he screamed at me as he conjured up some sort of steel ball. It shot across the platform, grew spines and dug into my shield ward, trying to break it down. I shattered it with a pane of force and sent three blades at Seven. The feedback let me know that, despite everything, his defenses were still holding strong.


    This was not going to be quick, not unless I stumbled across some flaw in his shield ward, and unfortunately for me, I still had the rest of the army stationed here to deal with. I¡¯d gotten ahead of them momentarily, but now that I¡¯d stalled out, they¡¯d quickly catch up. I needed to end this fight before circumstances forced a draw.


    There was always the easy way. I could just dump tons of mana on Seven¡¯s head until the shield ward just couldn¡¯t take it anymore. If I was fast enough, I might even get away with not chaining master-tier spells so that I could recover all the mana I used. As much as it pained me to once again use the hammer, I didn¡¯t know what the right tool for this job was and I didn¡¯t have time to experiment.


    I dumped lightning on Seven¡¯s head. I flash froze the air around him. I bombarded him with force bolts, lances, and crushing waves. I cycled through various powerful conjurations, enough to break a small army, and when that still wasn¡¯t enough, I started attacking him with divinations and hexes as well. I didn¡¯t need any one thing to stick. I just needed to find the last straw that would prove too much weight.


    Seven wasn¡¯t stupid. He understood exactly what was happening. I was turning our fight into a contest of who had more mana available, and the fact that I might run myself dry killing him, only to be killed in turn by his allies, probably wasn¡¯t all any sort of comfort to him. The way he won this was to stall, to turtle up and reinforce his shield ward long enough for his allies to arrive.


    I didn¡¯t think he realized that, not fully. Conventional wisdom was that attacking forced an opponent to split their attention so that they couldn¡¯t hit back quite as hard. And, for the most part, I agreed with that. However, lossless casting allowed me to win any sort of contest over who had the most mana by default, which meant I didn¡¯t need to budget or be clever.


    When Seven tried to distract me with his own spells, I let my shield ward take the hit and kept my focus on hammering him down. He quickly gave up on trading spells with me and shifted focus to blocking as many conjurations as possible while pumping mana into the shield ward. It was a losing proposition for him, but if he was lucky, he¡¯d last just long enough for someone to save him.


    At least, that was what I assumed he was thinking right up until he decided to be a bit more proactive about the whole thing and threw himself off the platform. Lightning chased him down, striking him no less than six times and sending skittering lines of electricity across his shield ward. Then his flight magic caught hold of his weight and whisked him toward his allies.


    I ripped up chunks of stone to pelt him with, the smallest the size of my head and the bigger ones more than three feet across. It wouldn¡¯t stop him, nor did dealing with repeated kinetic impacts make it harder to fly since his shield ward apparently wasn¡¯t sophisticated enough to push him aside to lessen the mana load. Instead, he just took and stopped each attack, probably spending triple the mana and making this easily the most viable way to break through.


    The thirty seconds or so I¡¯d estimated I had left to finish him was shrinking rapidly, down to five or six before he made contact with the rest of the army, so it was time to do something a bit more drastic. While Seven was fleeing, I started setting up a master-tier spell. There was no chance anyone would interfere from this distance, but even so, I put it together as quickly as possible. It still took a good fifteen seconds, allowing Seven to rejoin the ranks of his supporters. He spun in the air to flash me a condescending smirk, but the expression slipped off his face when he realized what I was casting.


    Rather than explain to the rest of the mages, he turned and fled at maximum speed. No mana was spared on defense, not when he knew how pointless it would be. He managed to get a quarter mile or so away before I finished the spell I¡¯d been building while he flew.


    Then a beam of fiery destruction split the sky, instantly vaporizing anyone caught in its wake. I swung it across the approaching army, killing a hundred people in a second but not catching Seven. Unlike the erstwhile heir to now-defunct House Adelyn, I was more than capable of casting other spells while I channeled Seven¡¯s signature fire beam. I didn¡¯t need my eyes to tell me exactly where he was, and it was easy to tweak the spell¡¯s parameters to extend the beam¡¯s range.


    Now it was his turn to dart and weave through the air, desperately trying to keep ahead of me. I even let him think he could for a few seconds while I set up the next part of my trap. Perhaps he thought to just flee beyond the spell since I wasn¡¯t chasing after him. Or perhaps he was too panicked to think of anything beyond staying alive for another moment.


    Either way, he wasn¡¯t prepared for my modification, when the fire beam split from one twenty-foot-wide bar of destruction into ten two-foot-wide tendrils. They lashed out like living things, corralling Seven between them and quickly caging him in on all sides. Then, without pausing, they collapsed back together, catching him in their deadly embrace. His shield ward vanished like smoke on the wind, and Seven was reduced to a cloud of ash lightly drifting toward the ground.


    I turned the beam on the rest of the army. There was no point in wasting it when I already had the spell up and running. It cost more mana than I strictly needed to spend, but it got the job done. Survivors fled in all directions, more than I could possibly hunt down. I let them flee. My work busting armies was just about done for the day, anyway. If any of them dared to regroup, I¡¯d do a second pass and show them the error of their ways.


    For now, I was ready to head back home.

 Book 5, Chapter 20

    ¡°Querit,¡± I said, ¡°Did we have visitors while I was away?¡±


    I stood in the middle of the valley on my teleportation platform and frowned as I felt out the foreign node of mana embedded in my wards. My assistant was in the lab, peering over my shoulder through the scrying mirror I¡¯d pulled out of my phantom space.


    ¡°None that the wards detected,¡± he said. ¡°I suppose I could have missed somebody coming in who was already keyed in. But I¡¯m having trouble coming up with anyone who fit the criteria and could do something like this.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s because there isn¡¯t anyone like that,¡± I muttered. My immediate family could pass through unhindered. Querit himself could. And that was the end of that list. ¡°Someone could have stood outside the wards and done this, though.¡±


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t the divination components have detected them?¡±


    ¡°Unless they were really good, yes.¡±


    The golem considered that for a second, then said, ¡°Do you think one of Ammun¡¯s mages came here to spy on us?¡±


    ¡°No. This isn¡¯t anything like that. This is¡­ as far as I can tell, something I never expected to see again. It doesn¡¯t look quite right, but it¡¯s close enough that I feel comfortable calling this an archmage¡¯s knock.¡±


    ¡°I have no idea what that is,¡± Querit told me.


    ¡°It¡¯s exactly what it sounds like ¨C a way for archmages to announce their presence to each other without triggering a bunch of killing wards by trying to breach each other¡¯s demesnes.¡±


    I just had no idea who¡¯d put it there. To the best of my knowledge, I was the only archmage on the planet until Ammun figured out a way to return, and I was starting to doubt his credentials anyway. Of course, there were still a lot of unexplored continents left. It was possible whole magical civilizations existed there, and we just hadn¡¯t discovered them. Our recently adapted long-range scrying spells could let me see anywhere on the planet now, but I hadn¡¯t really had the time to do it yet.


    That sounded like yet another job to pass off to the gestalt, and one I probably should have asked them to do as soon as I¡¯d completed those scrying polyhedrons. But no, I¡¯d had legitimate concerns about keeping an eye on what Ammun was doing. He was an active threat, and I had limited resources and manpower. This¡­ whatever this was, was something new.


    ¡°Do you know any other archmages?¡± Querit asked. ¡°I was under the impression that magical culture had completely died out.¡±


    ¡°Me too. I guess maybe we were wrong about that. I wonder where they¡¯re from, and what they want.¡±


    I scried backward through time while I casually picked at the knot of mana. A middle-aged-looking man left the knock for me from about three miles away, outside the range of my wards¡¯ detection capabilities, but not outside my own scrying abilities. I doubted that was a coincidence.


    I studied him while he wove together the spell and embedded it in my demesne. He was tall, an inch or two over six feet, with a thick head of hair gone to gray the beginnings of crow¡¯s feet at the corners of his eyes. A close-cut beard lined his jaw, brown with more streaks of gray in it. I wasn¡¯t willing to take that at face value, not when it was so easy to appear significantly younger than he actually was. He looked middle-aged because he chose to, not because he was actually in his forties or fifties.


    Of more interest were his clothes. He was dressed in brown robes, simple and unadorned. Generally speaking, people with the level of power this man was displaying could afford to buy whatever clothes they wanted, so if he was wearing that, it was because he wanted to. It was a statement of some kind.


    The robe vaguely reminded me of some monastic orders that had existed back in my old life, ones who mixed magic and spirituality together in a way I¡¯d never quite found myself understanding the purpose of. It worked for them, though, and if their descendants were still around, maybe they¡¯d done something right, after all.


    Or it could just be a coincidence. Those kinds of people hardly had some sort of exclusive right to wearing plain brown robes even back in my last life. There was no telling how much things had drafted over a few thousand years.


    I finished unraveling the knock while I studied the mage who¡¯d left it. The pattern was a little different than I remembered, but once again, I was willing to blame that on millennia of culture drift. The important part was that the core of the knot contained a message, just like I¡¯d expected it to.


    ¡®Greetings, Keiran of the Night Vale. The Global Order of the Arcane would like to extend an invitation to meet with us regarding the recent events occurring in the Selivar Region, known locally as the kingdom of Ralvost. It has come to our attention that the lich lord known as Ammun Nescent has returned. You have been called upon to submit any and all information on this situation so that we can form an appropriate response. Please see the attached instructions for contacting us with a reply.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    ¡®Respectfully, Bakir Odrinac, Archmage of the Fifth Order¡¯


    It was a sort of mental image of the man I¡¯d scried out speaking to me, along with the mana signature of a scrying beacon and general location of it to find him. The message itself faded away after I¡¯d listened to it once, apparently not sophisticated enough to be repeatable.


    ¡°Well, I have some questions,¡± I said. ¡°Have you heard of any of this stuff?¡±


    I gave Querit the pertinent names, none of which he recognized. ¡°If such an organization existed back in my time, it was not general knowledge. I would hazard a guess that it¡¯s possible they formed post-cataclysm as a direct response to Ammun destroying a moon and shattering the world core.¡±


    That was a fair guess. Something like that was certainly a good reason for the archmages of the time to put aside their differences and focus on mitigating the damage. But that just raised the question of what exactly had attracted their attention to this part of Manoch now. Ammun had been awake for years already.


    ¡°Is there any way we can find out more about these people before I agree to meet with them?¡± I asked. ¡°Any books your creator left behind that might talk about them?¡±


    I wasn¡¯t eager to step into a cabal of archmages, all of whom had an unknown amount of strength. I was close to my former strength in terms of raw power and skill, but decidedly lacking in all the tools and workshops I¡¯d built up over a thousand years. My ability to prepare for a battle was a mere shadow of what it used to be, so much so that I wasn¡¯t confident I could learn anything at all about these new archmages.


    Perhaps a meeting with this Bakir Odrinac was the best move. I could invite him into my demesne, where I¡¯d be at the height of my power, and assess him before I agreed to talk to anyone else. If it seemed too risky, I¡¯d just send him on his way. I¡¯d tell him what his cabal wanted to know if there was some advantage to it, otherwise it¡¯d just be one more potential problem to deal with.


    I had plenty of things I needed to keep secret in my demesne, however. I would need to take steps to mitigate Bakir¡¯s ability to snoop if I didn¡¯t want him discovering my mana resonance point or moon core fragment. The labs were all individually warded, so the contents of those were safe. The petrified forest itself was impossible to hide. Anyone with eyes could simply look into the valley from miles away and see the trees.


    A private room, warded against scrying and that my unexpected guest could be teleported directly into would be best. He might already know about Querit, but if not, this was a good way to hide the golem¡¯s presence. It would also block him from detecting other mana sources inside my demesne. I just needed to set it up first.


    * * *


    The chamber was buried in the side of the mountain that made up the north slope of the valley. It was freshly formed, shaped entirely of magic and stocked with a few comfortable chairs and tables I¡¯d picked up and put into storage for the next time I needed them. I spent the most effort on the wards, designed to completely isolate it from any and all outside influences. A scrying mirror provided the only access to the rest of the world, and without enchantments constantly recycling the air, anyone trapped in here would soon pass out and die.


    One half of the room was filled with furniture and other comforts. The other half was a ritual summoning circle designed to bring my guest directly to me, assuming he was cooperative. I¡¯d given strong consideration to lacing the room with traps just in case negotiations broke down, but I¡¯d decided against it.


    It was possible these people could become important allies. I did still have a world core to save, after all, and any help I could get would make things easier. A cabal of archmages would be highly motivated to assist with that goal, so I was hopeful that this meeting would end with us on good terms. Summoning their representative into a deathtrap probably wasn¡¯t the best way to facilitate that goal.


    Once I¡¯d finished the prep work and relayed instructions to Querit on keeping himself out of sight just in case things went poorly, I reached out through the mirror and found the scrying beacon Bakir¡¯s message had directed me to. I found it immediately, and as soon as I did, the archmage himself noted the connection.


    ¡®Ah. Archmage Keiran, I presume?¡¯ he mentally projected.


    ¡®The same,¡¯ I sent back. ¡®I received your message that you wished to speak.¡¯


    I hadn¡¯t been expecting to have a telepathic conversation, but that was also fine. The meeting room could sit here collecting dust until I needed it for something else, and this was probably safer for both of us, anyway.


    ¡®Very much so,¡¯ Balkir sent. ¡®It seems you¡¯ve been quite busy since your reincarnation. We didn¡¯t even realize you¡¯d returned until Ammun started up again, to be truthful. I¡¯m afraid we all rather thought that project of yours was something of a fool¡¯s errand, but, well, here you are. I guess you showed us! Ha!¡¯


    ¡®I hadn¡¯t realized my works were so well known,¡¯ I thought sourly. ¡®I suppose everything came out after my death when my vaults and workshops were raided.¡¯


    ¡®More or less, yes. Not all of it, but I¡¯m told there were plenty of people interested in knowing what your final fate was after two hundred years with no word from you.¡¯


    It wasn¡¯t a new concept for me. I¡¯d discovered the remains of the Night Vale where Ammun¡¯s tower now stood¡ªa fact I still hadn¡¯t forgiven him for¡ªand knew that the home had been pillaged. I even had an old mysteel vault door I¡¯d salvaged and had been using for scraps to run my biometal experiments sitting in my phantom space. It still rankled every time I thought of the delicate instruments being destroyed and my life¡¯s work being carted off.


    ¡®There were some unexpected complications to my reincarnation,¡¯ I said. ¡®And the world appears to have fallen apart while I was gone.¡¯


    ¡®True. I suppose you¡¯ve invested some considerable effort into catching up on everything that happened between your death and rebirth?¡¯


    ¡®As much as I could,¡¯ I sent. ¡®I¡¯ve obviously missed a few things, as I¡¯ve never heard of the Global Order of the Arcane.¡¯


    ¡®Ah!¡¯ Balkir sounded excited now. ¡®A proper introduction is in order then. Might I trouble you for an invitation into your demesne?¡¯


    Apparently, we were going to be doing this face-to-face after all. ¡®I have a summoning circle set up to bring you in,¡¯ I told my fellow archmage.


    ¡®Perfect. Give me just a moment and I¡¯ll be ready.¡¯

 Book 5, Chapter 21

    Bakir¡¯s eyes glittered with amusement as he surveyed the meeting room I¡¯d constructed, but he kept any comments about my security to himself. I guided him to his seat and claimed the one opposite of him, then settled back and let him start the conversation.


    ¡°I confess to some curiosity,¡± he said. ¡°Not to pry into the intimate details of your life, but you may be the only person to ever navigate the cycle of reincarnation and come out with your memories intact. Having experienced the process, would you say this is the true key to immortality?¡±


    I snorted out a laugh. ¡°No. Not at all. Maybe it could be with some more refinement, but¡­ no, just the fact that it took thousands of years for me to come back means something went wrong. Without being able to fix that, it¡¯s a flawed process at best.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll continue to research it?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Someday, when I have the time. I¡¯ve got a lot of other problems competing for my attention right now.¡±


    ¡°Yes, that.¡± Bakir frowned. ¡°The lich lord is not someone we were expecting to show back up. Then again, I suppose the same is true for you. You¡¯re specters from the past, all but forgotten by civilization.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m perfectly fine with that,¡± I told him dryly.


    ¡°You¡¯ve certainly gone out of your way to draw attention to yourself, though.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m just trying to fix this broken world. If Ammun hadn¡¯t interfered, I¡¯d be halfway there already.¡±


    That wasn¡¯t strictly true, but I¡¯d certainly be farther along if I wasn¡¯t constantly getting sidetracked dealing with him. In his defense, fixing the world involved breaking his demesne. Prior to his little jaunt to a moon, that would have been a death sentence for him. Without an abundant source of mana to power his artificial body, he would be nothing but a tortured soul trapped in a rock. Eventually, even that magic would fade and break.


    Bakir leaned forward. ¡°It¡¯s true, then? The world really used to have so much mana that it just filled the air?¡±


    ¡°Not everywhere, and with varying degrees of density, but yes.¡± I frowned at the other archmage. How did he not know this? Now that I looked at him, really looked, I found myself a little bit suspicious.


    If this was an established group, and he was an archmage of the Fifth Order, whatever that meant, why were his robes plain, unenchanted material? Why couldn¡¯t I sense his connection to a phantom space? Where was his staff or wand? Where was the magic?


    ¡°Tell me about this Global Order of the Arcane,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t believe any such organization existed back in my time.¡±


    ¡°That is correct,¡± he told me. ¡°We were founded about three hundred years before the world broke, though none of our founding members remain among the living. At least, not unless any of them managed to follow the path you set forth and simply chose not to reveal themselves.¡±


    Ah, all the old-timers had died off. I was willing to bet they¡¯d lost a lot of knowledge thanks to Ammun¡¯s bungling. That called into question exactly whether their members were even archmages at all. There was no telling what that title had come to mean over the last millennium. I certainly hadn¡¯t met anyone recently worthy of being called an archmage besides my former apprentice.


    ¡°Is there anyone left who predates the moon falling out of the sky?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m sure none of the leaders of the Order would appreciate me revealing such information about them,¡± Bakir replied smoothly. ¡°Suffice it to say that we truly are a global organization and that no one has a stronger magical culture than us.¡±


    ¡°If that¡¯s the case, why haven¡¯t you fixed everything?¡±


    ¡°Some things can¡¯t be fixed,¡± he said with a frown. ¡°Why, are you saying that you can?¡±


    ¡°Of course I can. Either your leaders aren¡¯t nearly as strong as they want to pretend to be, or they¡¯ve deliberately left the world in the state it is.¡±


    Bakir sunk back into his chair and studied me. With a helpless sigh, he shook his head. ¡°I can¡¯t tell if you¡¯re delusional or if you truly can reverse even something as catastrophic as a destroyed moon raining down on the world and breaking mana.¡±


    ¡°Technically, that¡¯s not what caused the breakage,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s more like the outcome.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡± Bakir trailed off. After a moment¡¯s consideration, he said, ¡°Could you describe to me exactly what you believe the cause of the mana density shift a thousand years ago was?¡±


    ¡°Your global archmage fraternity doesn¡¯t know?¡± I asked. ¡°What the hell have you all been doing all these years?¡±


    ¡°Please? Just¡­ please.¡±


    This hadn¡¯t been a long conversation, but already Bakir had transitioned from a smooth, confident member of the aristocracy into someone who looked slightly harangued, like a man who¡¯d been called on to defend his beliefs, only to find himself losing ground with every verbal exchange.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Maybe this group wasn¡¯t going to be a threat, but it was also starting to look like they wouldn¡¯t be much help, either. Then again, that wasn¡¯t really fair. Querit wasn¡¯t an archmage either, but his contributions to my work were immeasurable. A whole cabal of mages that were at least at the master level could be useful, once I disabused them of any notion that they were real archmages.


    It would probably be better to hold off on that until I actually met them, though. Bakir wasn¡¯t necessarily the gold standard to represent his entire organization. There was no point in making plans based on a bunch of unfounded assumptions. For now, it would be better to assume that the Global Order of the Arcane was full of potentially hostile archmages who could make my life far more difficult than it already was.


    ¡°Keeping in mind that I wasn¡¯t there to witness the actual event, this is what I¡¯ve pieced together from historical research and my own personal examination of Ammun¡¯s tower. Roughly a thousand years ago¡­¡±


    I outlined what I¡¯d learned, about the faction that had figured out super-long-distance teleportation and taken over an entire moon, about Ammun¡¯s demesne project, an enormous tower that sunk its roots all the way to the world core. I described how the tower had pierced the mysteel shell surrounding the core, and that when Ammun had used it to send a blast of pure mana through the empty space between Manoch and the orange moon known as Amodir, he¡¯d killed off almost all of the living stone that made up the world core.


    ¡°And with the mysteel shell ruptured, it¡¯s never been able to heal itself,¡± I finished. ¡°We need to patch the shell and inject a massive quantity of mana into the world core to act as a catalyst so that things can start moving again.¡±


    ¡°And Amodir¡¯s destruction, followed by the subsequent devastation of fully half the planet as it rained down from the sky, had nothing to do with Manoch¡¯s mana density vanishing? That¡¯s what you believe?¡± Bakir asked.


    ¡°That¡¯s what happened. If Ammun had missed and fired that blast off into the endless void, it wouldn¡¯t have changed the planet¡¯s fate. That he didn¡¯t miss just meant he managed to destroy the people who could very well have been our one chance to reverse the damage before it cascaded out of control.¡±


    I gave Bakir some time while he processed that. It was hard to say whether he actually believed me, but either way, I¡¯d certainly fed him an alternate theory than whatever it was he¡¯d been told before. I supposed I could see how the generations of mages born after the moon fell from the sky could attribute that level of destruction to a global catastrophe that had fundamentally altered the very fabric of magic, but they were grossly underestimating the planet¡¯s durability.


    No, it had taken a deliberate act of worming his way all the way down to the core itself, one foot of stone at a time cut through over decades, for Ammun to put himself in that position. I didn¡¯t think what he¡¯d done was actually common knowledge at the time, though at least some people had figured it out and recorded it in historical records.


    The real question was whether it was merely Bakir who was ignorant of the truth, or if it was his whole cabal. Even that was largely irrelevant next to the much bigger issue of how powerful they were and what they wanted. Now that I thought about it, I¡¯d spent far too much of this meeting humoring Bakir and not nearly enough obtaining information.


    ¡°What else can you tell me about the Global Order of the Arcane?¡± I asked.


    Bakir shook himself out of his thoughts and appeared to collect himself. ¡°The Order? Yes. As the name implies, we¡¯re situated all over Manoch. Our primary tenet is the accumulation and preservation of magical knowledge. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve seen for yourself just how much has been lost. Some places are worse than others, of course. This whole continent was shattered, and I¡¯m afraid the Order never had much success in gaining a foothold within the Sanctum of Light.¡±


    ¡°And since they were the only place that had any real magical tradition here, you basically gave up on this part of the planet to focus your efforts elsewhere,¡± I finished for him.


    ¡°Precisely so,¡± he said. ¡°Archmages don¡¯t grow on trees, and we need to focus our efforts where they can bring about the most benefits. It wasn¡¯t until you and Ammun stirred things up around here that we noticed anything amiss. To be frank with you, we¡¯re still not entirely sure what happened.¡±


    He paused, apparently lost in thought, and let out a rich laugh. ¡°The look on their faces when your name came up though¡­ That¡¯s a memory I¡¯ll cherish. I wonder if you realize how much you¡¯ve strode right out of legend.¡±


    ¡°I am aware,¡± I said. ¡°Thousands of years have passed. The world basically ended. And there are still people eking out a living on its surface who remember my name. Some of them probably curse it. It wouldn¡¯t be entirely unreasonable to blame me for the state of affairs once you consider that Ammun was only able to do what he did by pilfering my libraries and modifying my research.¡±


    ¡°That hardly seems fair to me,¡± Bakir said. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t concern myself overly much with those who hold that opinion, especially when it seems you¡¯re hard at work trying to remedy the issue. But I¡¯ve gotten distracted. You wanted to know more about the Order itself.


    ¡°As I said, we lack the manpower to be everywhere at once, but we do invest a great deal of effort into preserving the art of magic in any way we can. Our vaults are full of books on the subject. We take apprentices and teach them. We¡¯re a well-known and respected organization based on the other side of Manoch, over in Jeshaem.¡±


    Manoch had four continents. What we were on currently was the shattered remains of Olaphun. Jeshaem was the farthest away, and also the largest of the four. It made sense that they were in the best shape, considering Amodir had crashed down on this side of the world. They¡¯d only had to deal with the loss of mana and cleaning up the dust and dirt kicked up into the air from the moon fall. The people here had also faced a devastating death toll and the destruction of their cities, their farms, and their roads. The continent itself had ruptured.


    ¡°And what does your cabal want with me, other than to hear stories about what I¡¯ve been up to here?¡± I asked softly.


    ¡°Don¡¯t misunderstand,¡± Bakir said. ¡°I wasn¡¯t sent here to demand your services or that you join the Order. I¡¯m sure it would make a few people very happy to have an archmage of your caliber working with us, but we just need to know what¡¯s going on with Ammun. He¡¯s a global threat and we take his movements very seriously.¡±


    ¡°So seriously that he¡¯s been active for going on three years now and you¡¯re just now showing up?¡±


    ¡°Yes, well¡­ as I said¡­¡±


    ¡°Understaffed, right.¡± I waved away his excuse. ¡°Very well. Let me catch you up on how I trapped the old lich on a moon.¡±


    He blinked. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, you did what?¡±


    I grinned and began my story.

 Book 5, Chapter 22

    The more time I spent talking to Bakir, the more I became certain that he was only at stage five or six. That didn¡¯t automatically disqualify him from the title of archmage, as it was more of an indicator of skill and knowledge than of raw power, but it did make me question the strength of his organization as a whole.


    It made sense, once I thought about it. One of the problems I¡¯d had to overcome to climb beyond stage six was that with mana no longer being freely available in the environment, there probably wasn¡¯t a single natural resonance point on the planet. Even back in my previous life, they¡¯d been extremely rare natural phenomena.


    I¡¯d had to forge an artificial one, something I¡¯d only been able to accomplish so quickly because of Querit¡¯s expertise and assistance. There was no telling how many years of experiments it would have taken to work out the process on my own. It was possible the Global Order of the Arcane knew how to make a resonance point, or that they¡¯d somehow shielded one from unraveling a thousand years ago and had kept it intact all this time.


    It was also possible that no one in their ranks had advanced past stage six, which meant they were completely locked out of the upper echelon of master-tier spells, the ones that couldn¡¯t be cast using regular mana. If that was the case, it also meant the Order was absolutely not a threat to me, and even better, that I had something they desperately needed, even if they didn¡¯t know it.


    How best to go about using that to my advantage? What did I need that they could provide? More mysteel was welcome, of course. I had nowhere near enough of it. Raw mana couldn¡¯t hurt, but at best that would just save me time. It wouldn¡¯t solve my issues with advancing to stage nine on its own, no matter how much of it there was. That involved reforging my physical body into something like a solid mage¡¯s shadow, something that could exist inside the Astral Realm and even allow my consciousness to remain intact if my body were somehow destroyed.


    It was in fact the basis for my reincarnation magic, which had worked from a technical viewpoint, but hadn¡¯t really achieved everything I¡¯d been going for. Specifically, losing a few thousand years between my death and rebirth had been an unexpected twist that had completely ruined my original plans. I couldn¡¯t even begin to express how different the world would be right now if I¡¯d been able to regain access to the Night Vale and my full power within a decade of dying.


    By the time I was finished sharing what information I felt like giving to my fellow archmage, he¡¯d long since given up trying to interrupt me with clarifying questions and had sunk into a sort of stupefied horror. It was only after I went silent that he finally roused himself in his seat and said, ¡°Well, that is¡­ certainly a lot to take in. I suppose I shouldn¡¯t be surprised at Ammun¡¯s casual cruelty. All of our records indicated that he was a very selfish man. Given his personal power, it¡¯s a terrifying combination.¡±


    ¡°All powerful mages are selfish,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s how we get so powerful to begin with.¡±


    ¡°Not all of us!¡± Bakir protested.


    ¡°That just means you¡¯re not powerful enough yet,¡± I said with a dark chuckle. ¡°Trust me, at some point you¡¯ll have to decide between power or principles. If you haven¡¯t had to face that decision, well, you got lucky and someone else carried you along on their own path. You don¡¯t get the luxury of morals when you¡¯re fighting to survive.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s an incredibly bleak outlook.¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± I agreed. ¡°It is.¡±


    Silence stretched out between us for what I was sure Bakir found to be an uncomfortably long moment while I studied his reaction. He quickly broke it by standing and saying, ¡°I think I have obtained everything I need to know, but might I be able to call upon you again if the Order has any further questions?¡±


    ¡°You are welcome to leave another knock in my wards,¡± I said. ¡°I can¡¯t promise when I¡¯ll be able to respond. I have quite a bit of work to get done and not a lot of time to do it in.¡±


    ¡°Erm, yes. Quite so. Regardless, you have my thanks for your hospitality and for allowing me to impose upon your schedule today.¡±


    The Bakir of right now was considerably different than the one who¡¯d greeted me. Gone was any semblance of warmth and congeniality. Instead, he looked harrowed and exhausted, no doubt a reaction to finding out that it was entirely possible the whole world would be threatened by a reawakened lich, now truly immortal with a nigh-infinite source of mana and an unassailable home for his phylactery.


    Seeing how poorly he was taking the news was yet further proof that he might be an archmage on paper, but he wasn¡¯t one in reality. I opened the way for him to leave and wondered who would come calling upon me from his organization next, and if they¡¯d be receptive to making a deal or two.


    * * *


    ¡°I went through everything we recovered from the archives,¡± Querit told me. ¡°I¡¯m confident the Global Order of the Arcane did not exist prior to the breaking of the world. If it did, they were either so small as to be unnoticed by anything but local powers, or so incredibly well-hidden that only the greatest of powers knew of their existence.¡±The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°And you don¡¯t think it was the last one,¡± I said. That more or less lined up with what Bakir himself had told me of their history.


    ¡°I do not,¡± the golem said. He was reshelving a pile of books almost as tall as I was, rapidly slipping them back into their assigned spaces using some logical scheme I wasn¡¯t privy to.


    ¡°Which means that it¡¯s entirely likely that none or very few of them were alive prior to the world core dying. So none of them have access to a mana resonance point.¡±


    ¡°Ah, I see,¡± Querit said, pausing in his work. ¡°You¡¯re speculating that at best, their strongest are only stage six.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s only a theory. It¡¯s possible they made their own resonance point just like we did. The knowledge obviously existed back then.¡±


    ¡°It did, but it wasn¡¯t common. My creator was a researcher with a powerful backer. The things we worked on weren¡¯t by any means something a regular mage or even an archmage would have access to.¡±


    ¡°Which just means it¡¯s even more likely than I thought that the very best of them is still no higher than stage six, and that they most likely won¡¯t be leaving their genius loci behind to travel to another continent. Bakir¡¯s going to have a long, expensive journey home, and whoever comes next will have an equally long journey back. I¡¯d say we¡¯ve got a week or two before we can expect a visitor.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re sure they¡¯ll send someone else? Why not just negotiate through Bakir if that was what they wanted?¡±


    ¡°Bakir¡¯s a field investigator. His job is to gather information and report it back for other people to make decisions. Either they¡¯ll think what¡¯s going on here is important enough to send someone with real power, or they won¡¯t. Considering what¡¯s at stake if we fail to stop Ammun, I can¡¯t imagine they¡¯ll be content to ignore it.¡±


    ¡°And in the meantime, we¡¯ll continue with our own preparations?¡± Querit asked. At my nod, he continued, ¡°Would you like to do anything in particular to get ready for the arrival of what could possibly be a few dozen archmages?¡±


    ¡°If they¡¯re all as weak at their representative, I¡¯m not concerned. If more than one or two are as strong as Ammun or me, there¡¯s nothing we can do that would stop them from getting in.¡±


    That didn¡¯t mean I didn¡¯t have plans for it. If anything, Ammun¡¯s appearance in the sky over my demesne just long enough to drop one spell on me last year had proven I was a fool to assume he couldn¡¯t get to me. The amount of mana it had cost him was prohibitive and he¡¯d barely stayed for a few seconds before disappearing again, but that move had taken me by surprise and allowed a few dozen of his minions inside my defenses.


    Of course, it wouldn¡¯t have happened that way if he hadn¡¯t picked the moment I was at my absolute weakest to strike, but that excuse felt a little thin when I considered how much potential damage those invaders could have done. I¡¯d made it a priority to shore up those potential weaknesses in the future, which meant I¡¯d already proofed the valley against hostile archmages as well as I possibly could with my current limitations.


    ¡°How did the new biometal experiments work out?¡± I asked, changing the subject.


    ¡°I think we¡¯re heading in the right direction now, but I¡¯m worried about how replicable it will be,¡± Querit said. ¡°No one but you can process the mysteel for the elixirs.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s fine. I don¡¯t need a technique that can be used by any random mage. I just need a quick way to grow mysteel in large quantities. Once we reach the threshold, I don¡¯t care if the recipe never gets used again.¡±


    ¡°In that case, give me about five hundred gallons more of that elixir, and I¡¯m confident that we can grow that much weight back in biometal. I want to test it for possible adverse reactions over the next few months, but assuming the sample survives, you¡¯ll need to head back out and capture a few more of them to ramp things up.¡±


    Maybe that was a job I could pawn off on the supposed archmages I was sure were going to be showing up. It should be within their abilities to complete without getting themselves killed, even if none of them were any stronger than Bakir. I¡¯d keep that on hand as a bargaining chip to use when I revealed that I had control of a resonance point.


    Querit finished up his work and turned to face me fully. ¡°I have a question,¡± he said.


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°Do you think our priorities are right? We¡¯re devoting an awful lot of effort to the long-term problem of fixing the world. Maybe we should be preparing for Ammun¡¯s inevitable return instead.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re doing both.¡±


    ¡°We are, but it¡¯s clear where the majority of our time is going.¡±


    ¡°I get what you¡¯re saying, but you have to understand that I did a lot of my preparations for fighting Ammun back before we ever met. I was hoping to use them on him when I chased him up to Yulitar, but the environment there was so difficult to function in that I didn¡¯t get the chance.¡±


    ¡°That was before we learned about his plans to tie himself to a moon core,¡± Querit said. ¡°Surely things are different now.¡±


    ¡°More difficult, maybe, but my plan hasn¡¯t really changed that much. And I¡¯ve gotten stronger, too.¡±


    Our first real fight had occurred when I was at stage five. I¡¯d beaten him, but only because he¡¯d been freshly awakened and near starved for mana. The second battle had gone to him. I¡¯d barely survived the golem he¡¯d brought with him, one that wasn¡¯t even specialized for combat, thanks to the difficulty of fighting in an environment with low gravity and no breathable atmosphere.


    Now, my core had reached stage eight and our next encounter would take place on Manoch. Ammun would have unlimited mana to fight with, but that didn¡¯t guarantee victory. It simply became one more obstacle for me to overcome.


    ¡°Maybe you should be focusing your efforts on reaching stage nine,¡± Querit said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know if there¡¯s enough time for that, but I¡¯m going to try,¡± I said, only partially a lie. ¡°If this organization has the resources I hope they do, gaining access to them will be part of the price I extract from them. That will hopefully be enough to push me to where I need to be.¡±


    ¡°And if they don¡¯t?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°Then we¡¯ll figure something else out.¡±


    Querit was a bit of a worrier, but in this case, he wasn¡¯t wrong to be concerned. I knew how I planned defeat Ammun. I just wasn¡¯t sure if I could pull it off. Even if I did manage to ascend to stage nine and reclaim all my former strength, that still might not be enough.


    Or maybe I was overthinking things, and I could easily crush him as I was right now. Time would tell.