17

Nerves collected and wits in check, Vander threw open the next door and rushed inside. Just as the floor before, an imp and three fiends. His spear left his hand and impaled the imp to the wall, its bug eyes staring back at him in surprise before dulling.

A fluid motion drew his sword and sent two daggers in the same time. Both hit dead on, chest and throat. Like a sack of potatoes, the fiend fell to the floor and didn’t move again. With a lunge, his sword pierced the frontrunner’s chest. Pushing off his foot, he spun and lopped off both of the third fiend’s arms.

Even armless, the howling devil tried leaping towards him with bared teeth. Stepping aside, the fiend tumbled to the ground. Vander rested his knee against its back and drove his sword through the base of its neck.

Again, he wiped the slick blade free of the black blood and sheathed his blade. Two knives and a spear, just the same as the first floor, yet one fight took mere seconds and displayed his trained prowess, while the other made him look like a first day greenhorn.

“Just caught me off guard is all,” he muttered to himself as he wrenched the spear free from the imp’s corpse and collected the pair of throwing daggers. “Onward and upward.”

Third and fourth floors, an imp and three fiends. Vander approached them methodically, prioritizing the destructive imp first each time. Without the fire power, the time and effort required to fell the fiends remained consistent. Very little. And on the fourth floor, he even managed to take them all with just the spear.

Approaching the fifth door, he could tell things would be different this time around. Red tendrils oozed out of the cracks, spreading down the sides of the staircase. Inching along, slow and steady, the veins of fire charred everything in their path. The walls looked more black then their original milky white and spread halfway to the floor he’d just come from.

Exciting.

The door, strangely unscathed, was twice the size of the others. When he pushed it open, the floor stretched out three, maybe four times bigger than the floors below. Magical artifacts were everywhere, many in various states of completion. Different magical reagents and countless pages had been thrown to the floor, abandoned in some struggle.

In the center of the room, a giant iron cauldron bubbled with something vile. Ominous, a purple mist filled the room. The flaming tendrils of the flame beneath the cauldron had spread all throughout the room, across the floor, walls, and ceiling. Red hues shone through violet mist.

What the hell? Vander pulled the tattered, dirty cloak up over his mouth and nose. If the fumes weren’t poisonous, he had three heads. He kept his spear at the ready, but nothing occupied the room. Again, what the hell?

Inspecting the cauldron closer revealed a bunch of magical stuff thrown into a boiling pot of something red.

(Magic) Witch’s Cauldron

Any good Witch has a trusty cauldron.

Grade: Uncommon

Requirements: 100 Arcana

Effects: All Attributes +3

Enhances all Witchcraft by 10%.

Current Contents:

Remains of three apprentice mages

Various magical reagents

The Witch

A bone hand shot from within and gripped the sides. The red goop set over the bones and hardened into a fleshy outer layer until it finally settled on red, sweltering skin. All of the violet fumes whooshed towards the cauldron, spiraling in a vortex. The hand clenched the side of the cauldron, bending the iron, and pulled the body of the Witch, in various states of reformation, up and over the edge.

Red goop layered over the skeleton, creating a smooth body of perfect proportions, albeit sweltering. Were it not for the tinges of red, the thing that appeared in front of him could’ve been described as a flawless beauty.

One that ripped open his wounded heart and raged against the world as its face formed, a face he thought he’d only ever see in his dreams—Madison. His spear clattered to the ground, and he fell to his knees. She couldn’t be here, yet he couldn’t mistake what he saw in front of him. Seeing is believing, after all.

Violet tattoos hissed against skin, but Madison—no, the Witch didn’t even flinch. The Witch looked on with curiosity, no hint of malice to be found, as her naked body completely reformed. The only thing left now was the violet smoke vortex etching power into her limbs, marring the pure flesh with sickening waves of evil power.

Vander couldn’t move, his eyes locked on Madison’s face. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Nothing made sense. Why did this Witch take such a form? How could it know what Madison looked like? Could she have reincarnated too…?

No.

Clenching his eyes, Vander hung his head. His mana spiraled out of control as a burning rage boiled in his stomach, throat, chest, everywhere. Body alight with his rage, he couldn’t stop the torrent of mana pouring out of him. There was no way he could remain calm. This couldn’t be real. Madison couldn’t be here.

But what if…?

He looked up and begged the system to shine light on things, to give clarity to the situation.

???

“Vander?” The Madison look alike gripped its head, let out a pained wail, and fell to her knees. Something inhuman wailed from the depths of her soul, “NO! This… can’t be happening!”

He closed the distance between them, forgetting all about the last eighteen years of his life to once again become the Storm King, and took his love in his arms. “It’s okay, Mads. It’s me. I’m here.” Pain like his entire body was on fire shot through him. He groaned but held her closer. “I’m not losing you again, Mads. Never again.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

But as much as he wished those words were true, the eyes looking back at him were anything but friendly. “You… shouldn’t… be here!” Something clattered against the ground, but the violet tattoos ripple against Madison’s skin and pulsed a wave of power Vander couldn’t resist.

His body flew through the air and slammed into the far. Limp and breathing raggedly, he slumped down to the ground and forward onto his hands and knees. Through swimming vision, he could make out the shape of Madison fighting against herself, against something he couldn’t see. Weakly, he stretched a hand towards her.

She gripped her skull, pleading eyes full of terror begging him to save her. She stilled. Violet shone from her eyes, regarding him with apathy and indifference, like a mere pest. The tattoos snaked a pattern like shackles across her neck. Flesh hissed as that magic came alive and vibrated the air. When the Witch, or Madison, or whatever they’d become, took a step towards him, she looked pained, like it required an astronomical amount of effort.

“Stop resisting. It’s inevitable.” Again, she tried to step towards him. A barrier seemed to halt her advance. She cocked her head as if listening to something, then eyed him warily. Coming to a decision, she snarled, “Fine, you damned woman! He lives for now, but he will not be spared a second time.” She clenched her eyes closed, and the hostile power in the air calmed, splitting the air in front of her.

A portal.

A calm gaze threatening eradication pinned him in place. “Hear me now, boy. Do not come after me, us. If I even catch wind of you within a half-continent of us, I will make your precious Madison suffer. Her power is mine now. She is mine now. Just go back to thinking she was dead. If you do that, nobody has to suffer needlessly.”

“Who—” Something in his body had broken and stabbed into his side as he spoke. He coughed, and a pool of blood spewed to the floor. He sneered at the pain and blood. He wouldn’t be deterred, his eyes blazing fury as he croaked, “Who are you?”

She smiled proudly. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Through the portal she went.

“Mads…” Pain wracked his body. Shuddering breaths and cold prickles tormented him as he fought to stay conscious, to drag himself forward before the portal closed.

Then it shut, and he collapsed forward. Everything blackened.

***

When Vander came to, he groaned. His body ached in ways he couldn’t describe, and the tower floor did nothing to help. Weak and shaky limbs pushed against the cold and hard floor as he heaved himself to his knees so he could look around the room. Whatever he’d expected when he’d entered, it surely hadn’t been what he experienced.

Nothing remained of the flaming tendrils. No tendrils crawled across the room. No burning veins or charred surfaces. The cauldron was nowhere to be seen. Nor the Witch. As if everything he’d witnessed had been some great illusion, all of the papers and reagents previously spread across the floor were on the circular table taking up the place the cauldron had before.

Shelves were full with various books and reagents, some crystalline and humming with magic and some mundane things like the tongue of a tree frog or the dung of a devibeetle. Cabinets had tools aplenty, all in pristine condition. Anything a mage could want, all of it was tidily stocked in the room.

Everything was so realistic, he almost thought he was going insane. His body told him what he experienced wasn’t an illusion though, and the absence of any mages filling the room helped to remind him just where he was and how he got there.

“Ah, my head hurts.” He reached a hand up and touched the back of his head. Fingers met stick scalp. When he brought his fingers in front of his eyes, red. “Ow.”

Stinging pain lanced through him when he tried breathing deeply to activate his breathing technique, wishing to restore his empty mana capacity. His body refused to suck in a breath, the pain paralyzing his lungs. Liquid pooled in the corner of his eyes from the pain and lack of oxygen. Panic creeped on the edge of his blackening vision.

Unsteady steps carried him towards one of the three chairs surrounding the circular table, and he slumped into one, ignoring the aches of his body. He pressed a hand against his side and chest, doing all he could to relieve the pain lancing through his pierced lung.

The darkness continued to spread across his vision. He looked at the center of the table and saw a black key next to a piece of paper and two vials. His eyes locked on the vial of red liquid.

Recovery Potion, Very High Quality

Those words felt like a breath of fresh air, one he desired to take with every fiber of his being. Leaping across the table, he took the vial, uncorked it, and desperately chugged down the contents. He didn’t let even a single drop escape. Once empty, he dropped the vial and gripped his sides.

His howls filled the tower as his body reassembled itself. Things tore as they moved into their right spots. Once everything was where it needed to be, he could feel as each bone melded back together, the stitching of muscles and sinew entwining properly, and all the cuts and bruises burning as the potion did its job.

Once he could see straight and the ghost pain faded, he looked at the second vial.

Elixir, Low Quality

An elixir. Even a noble of Avalia wouldn’t be able to afford one, let alone him. With the thought of Madison being subdued by the Witch and the threats it made still fresh in his memory, he uncorked the bottle and chugged it down. He needed more power, no matter how he had to get it.

He didn’t have to wait long for the potion to take effect. His entire body became a tsunami as mana filled him, crushed him, refined him. Black gunk exfoliated from his pores as the purity of his mana increased. Within a few seconds of the potion taking effect, he knew he would die if he let the storm rage through him without direction.

So he fought through the pain and sat the same as when he’d trained with Adrian. Controlling his breathing, he activated his breathing technique and grabbed ahold of the mana flowing through him. Like sand through his fingers, he struggled to assert his control. He doubled down on his efforts, but the more he fought against the effects of the potion, the more he felt himself breaking down, eroding into magical residue.

“Don’t resist, or you’ll die,” an ancient voice whispered in his mind.

Vander didn’t like taking advice from strangers, but if he didn’t do something, he’d die. The voice was right about that. So if he wasn’t supposed to resist, what did he do?

Ceasing his futile resistance, he hoped the voice had another hint. None came, so he searched for another answer. Resisting only sped up the process in which his magic body eroded under the effects of the potion and letting it run rampant through him was doing more harm than good.

“Ride the storm and find your path within,” Strange Head Guru advised.

Is now really the time to be mysterious and cryptic? Vander growled back. But he did as said and tried to embrace the storm’s power, letting it wash over his body. As the mana circulated through his body, Vander calmed his rapidly beating heart.

Ride the storm. Relaxing, he kept his breath even as he practiced his circulation. When he breathed, his mana restored just as fast as he was used to. But when it sank into his body, he felt like he could hold many times more.

His breathing naturally circulated and took hold of the residual mana, and now that he accepted it as his own, it stopped fighting against him. Like putty, his body hummed with power rather than pain. Cycling through the mana bestowed by the elixir allowed him to continue refining his own mana. Impurities were expunged as black ickor through his skin, and his mana pathways grew before shrinking, condensing.

The thinner pathways grew again, then shrank. Two times. Five. Ten. Fifty. A hundred times. When he breathed, he felt as if he’d become one with the ambient mana of the world, or at least the residual mana within the top of the tower. And it gave him life, thundering through his veins with power. Energy unlike anything he’d known before buzzed through him.

Minutes, hours, days, or weeks. He didn’t know how long he stayed there for. By the time he finished, he couldn’t distinguish the mana received from the elixir from his own. When he opened his eyes, he sighed.

“Gross.”

An entire layer of black crud cracked as he moved his limbs. Clapping his hands together, a wave of lightning blasted the impurities off of him. When he stood, lightning danced across his skin.

He grabbed the letter and black key, eyes hard. He stared at the spot he’d watched Madison disappear. “I will find you, Mads, even if I have to go to Hell and back. I promise I won't stop until I find you.”