Mental visualization is key for working magic, as it is your perceptions that shape your reality allowing your will to actually warp reality itself. Picturing in your head what you want isn’t good enough though as the form without substance effects no change. My ability to manipulate water does me no good unless I can visualize and feel the water doing what I want. Without the will to shape what you see, all of the power in the world will do you no good. But all of that is easy to grasp when you’re working with something physical as it’s easy to imagine water. Everyone knows what that is and what it can do, for the most part. What I’m trying to do now, now that opens up a whole can of worms.
Mental magic works on the plane of thought and will, where what you picture IS reality. My soul-tree is literally and figuratively a soul-tree because it is what I picture, what I believe it to be. The physical manifestations of my combined powers inside of my head are required though because I’m human, and humans believe what we see. Which makes what I’m doing the hardest thing that I could be doing as my shaping of reality inside of my brother’s brain is clashing with the reality that he’s made inside of his brain. I, personally, view the mind-reaper inside of my brother’s brain in a negative light because duh, it’s not a good thing. The silver cube of nanite magitech that was in Colonel Casparai’s head was the base of what I was seeing in my brother’s head, but due to its inimical nature, my own perceptions allowed me to see its true form.
The glistening metallic unthinking creature was a horrific mixture of an angry octopus crushing a crab and a many-legged spiny centipede clicking along. The spine of its processors lay on top of Andy’s brain stem while its neurotransmitter legs hooked in all along the sides of the spine and up into various nodes of his gray and white matter. My brother, on the other hand, viewed it as a benign cybernetic enhancement to his brain allowing him to properly facilitate the use of his abilities. But of course he did since the damn thing was adjusting his thoughts at the speed of thought.
[So this is either going to be really slow or really fast huh?] Kraken murmured as we both scanned the writhing infestation.
[Yup.] I agreed. [Without the Chaos stone, we’d be looking at months of decoding and dissecting his brain to pry out each and every tendril of that hideous monstrosity. With it, we just might be able to cleanse it, purge the bad programming and allow us to rework it so it’s actually under Andy’s control.]
[Yes, that’s what I said. Not in so many words but yes.] Kraken grumbled, my own nerves making me go over what we’ve already discussed just to get me used to the idea.
Gritting my teeth, I knuckled down and pushed my will down through Gungnir, focusing my thoughts and power into the reformed crystal that was covering the blood marked ritual. All I had to do was focus my will and power and let Kraken do the hard stuff. [Breathe in, breathe out.] My focus lasered in on elements of cleansing, healing, restoration, purity; basically, anything that could bleachbit the shit out of the implanted mind-fuckery.
Total power storage calculated to be insufficient . . . Checking alternative reserves . . . Also insufficient . . .Sufficient reserves of sub-molecular particulates detected below . . . Portable Leyline Siphon Protocol activated . . . Extending feeding staves now . . . Overall stability of the connection confirmed . . . feeding
Manipulating the conductive willow wands that I had put in my boots a while ago, SAW formed a metallic covering over them and speared them into the earth, making the flowing power of the city available to me as I opened up my own stores of power so that they were available to Kraken as needed. A sharp yank on my gathered power was all I needed to feel as I instinctively drew on the established connection. With SAW providing the initial connection in place of Gungnir as it had another job at the moment, the flow of power traveled up through the willow wands to the feeding channels up the sides and backs of my legs, up the runic channels under my armor and swirling down my arm into Gungnir.
It felt weird. Magic as I’ve been using it comes from the soul and is then directed out from the body into the world or the other method comes directly from the area around me that my aura or soul has a grip on. Like a wizard generating a fireball, the fireball spell is built outside of his hand and the power, the mana comes from his body to feed the spell hovering several inches or so above his body. But that area above his hand is still within his control due to the mana being wielded.
What I was doing was a bit different though as I usually channel my power through my focus items or enchantments, giving me a depth of power or control that few have at my level of experience. SAW was doing all the channeling, all the directing of the power just outside of me, freeing me from the mental workout of channeling it through my body itself. My mind started to wander as so many applications of this exercise popped into my head. A quick mental smack from Kraken set me back to rights.
[Focus. I’m almost done, and that suit of yours is awesome. That thing just cut the amount of stored Chaos required to fix your brother in half cause of the power link . . . . aaand done!]
Opening my eyes, I gingerly pulled Gungnir off of Andy’s head, the lines of blood perfectly burned into his forehead. With a wave of my hand, I healed the flesh as I blinked away the sudden presence of tears threatening to spill down my face. The heavy feeling in my chest was worse than the burning in my eyes. I barely felt anything fighting the new denizens of the world but knowing that my own brother was one misstep away from being a freaking vegetable tugged on my heart, and it HURT.
Not trusting my voice at the moment, I mentally communicated with Kraken. [Tell me he’s good, please, for the love of all that is good, tell me my brother is ok?!]
Waves of confident happiness and comfort flowed down the link. [It’s a bit too soon to tell, but he should be fine,] Kraken said. [I put him under a localized stasis spell which kept him and the mind-reaper unaware, and then pulled it back slowly from the outside in, using the mana filtered by light-based Chaos to burn out the source code. The stone focused the mana in a particular frequency, sort of like how a lens will focus sunlight. All that’s left to do is to figure out what next?]
[Explain.]
[Well, aside from making him irresistibly an asshole and a stooge for the Centauri, the parasite did do a lot of essential magical functions,] he explained. [Proper mana channeling and control was governed by the mind-reaper, muscle, bone, and nerve enhancements were controlled by the mind-reaper, the list goes on. We can either let him learn on his own, which he'll be a bit defenseless until his mind catches up to his body and powers, or, we can put a basic GUI in his brain. Hell, we could even copy a base version of SAW and stick it in there. It would let your brother have the basic functions that he could customize as well as having an A.I. assistant in his brain to handle extra spells or background location monitoring.]
[My brother would have the nanite version of mind sorcery then, right?]
Kraken’s light chuckle gave me the answer I was hoping for. With his eyelids curving in his version of a smile, he replied, [Yeah, technically, your brother, given some time to figure it out, could be an epic wizard down the road. That processor would help him use the parts of his brain that humans don’t utilize very well, help him break down spell components and make new ones on the fly. Remember, wizards aren’t sorcerers, but they’re still not pushovers. In fact, given enough time, planning, and preparation, wizards can punch well above their weight class.]
Just because I had to know, I pulled Kraken into my mindspace just for a bit of extra time. “How does that work again? I know sorcerers are more powerful than wizards, that’s why they tend to hunt down or bargain for sorcery.’
“Yes, you’re not wrong about the latter part,” Kraken said, rolling his eye as he answered my question in lecturer mode. “But wizards are different. Sorcerers use their will and sorcery, which is its cheat affinity for an element, to work raw magic. Wizards have to build their spells. A fire sorcerer just flings fireballs like it’s nothing as his magic does all the work for him. A fire wizard on the other hand, builds his spells bit by bit, then memorizes that combo, and then he uses it. A wizard’s power also grows more over time, which is why all of them tend to be obsessed with any kind of life extension magic. They turn to sorcery to increase their affinity or power over a particular element or when their own research and spell-building hits a plateau.”
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“Sounds like a scaling ability, the smarter you are and the longer you can hide away equals the amount of power you’ll eventually get.”
“True. Wizards do have their weaknesses though. Generally, their bodies are weak and combat experience is hard and dangerous to get. It’s why most sorcerers die young; they let the rush of power go to their head. Wizards value caution above all, with practice, preparation, and proficiency being the three legs propping it up.”
Mulling it over, I drew the parallels in my head. “What if a multi-faceted sorcerer like myself teamed up with a combat wizard, a cultivator, and a unit-centric necromancer? It’s a beautiful kind of symmetry for a team, right? I can heal, throw up walls, and make epic gear while still being able to dish out all kinds of damage. Andy is a Centauri combat wizard with an A.I. implant that will eventually help him out to epic stages of power, and Reeanth could be a goddamn tank or fighter duo with Johnny! And if we add Spot and Fuzzy to the mix, then we’d have ‘the big guns’ too!”
“Get your head outta the clouds!” Kraken admonished. “You got other worries that really should have your attention.”
“Fuck!” Returning to myself, I noted with mental sorcery that only ten actual seconds had elapsed. “Sweet!”
Mentally communicating again with Kraken for a second, I ordered him to make a basic A.I. template for Andy with a killswitch so Andy would be able to boot it out of his head at any point in time.
[Already done.] Kraken chuffed. [It’s been done since about a day you came up with the plan to fix your brother. Your subconscious is teeming with all kinds of nonsense but there are definitely some diamonds in the rough floatin’ around. Just tap his head with Gungnir and I’ll stick it in.]
Obliging my familiar, I felt a small packet of luminescent power gently seep from the crystal blade into the now cleansed mind-reaper. The leg/tendrils that connected to his brain from its main body retracted into themselves until only the main body of it was left, sitting dimly on his brain stem.
[Don’t worry, it won’t activate until he puts some mana into it and it comes with a user guide, thanks to yours truly!] Kraken chuckled to himself and then stopped. “Oh, and if we can tap into some not very well secured databases in the main building, we can also pick up spell and grimoire schematics while we’re at it. And uh, side note; I forgot one small detail. He probably won’t wake up for at least a day.]
That was too much information going too many directions for me to make a perfect plan. We don’t have a day. We have about four more hours and the clock is a’tickin’. Quickly dragging Andy closer to the other side of the room where the bed was, I had to enhance my strength a bit just to lug his big ass up on the high rise bed. With a flick of will, I called Gungnir back to my hand in knife form where I stuck in on my belt as I confidently started to walk out of the room.
“Is he gonna be ok?” Johnny’s question almost made me shit myself as I had forgotten he was there. A couple months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to shut up and now he can halfway vanish into shadow. Turning to see his face, his eyes still wide open with wonder at the magic working, I kinda wished I got to see what it looked like from the outside.
“Yeah man, he’s good.” I answered, a small tired smile showing that I was content with what I’d done. “He’ll wake up in about a day or so and then we can work on some of his squadmates.”
[Quick interruption here boss, but there’s only enough juice left in that stone to fix about three more people. Or, you could just give him the rest of it.] At this point, Kraken’s mental voice was almost directed towards himself. [It’s not enough for a full blown power upgrade but he is a wizard, so maybe it would be enough for a sorcery seed.]
[A what?] I shot back.
[Well, a seed of sorcery, just like I said. Think of your brother as a mana rich pot of soil, and the stone, or sorcery seed, as an actual seed for a tree. You have a full-grown soul-tree, but your brother could start at the beginning and grow his. Plant the seed and let his powers manifest over time. It may take years for it to become apparent but as a wizard, he’ll probably find out later that maybe his healing or laser or purification spells are supercharged, growing over time so that he could be a sorcerer of pure light. Not a bad way to go.]
Whipping around, I ran the two steps back to Andy and used knife-form Gungnir to cut through his armor like butter. After telling Johnny not to worry, I stood over Andy for a bit more work. Agonizing over where to start as perfect placement mattered just as much as guidance, Kraken made it simple for me. Like a coach giving advice quickly and quietly to the star player at halftime, Kraken said, [Putting the seed of power in his brain would make his future abilities more sight based like Reeanth’s, but if you put it in his chest near his sternum or heart, it might give him all kinds of enhancements like never ending energy as if he had a mini-sun inside of him for power. Or if you decide to stick it in his bones, then his marrow might be affected so that disease would never ever be an issue and healing might be his best.]
Too many options for me to decide off the cuff.
Continuing with his advice, my familiar’s voice picked up speed. [I say stick it behind his sternum, right in that little pocket between his heart and all those other organs. Don’t stick the stone itself in! Just the damn power! Sheesh, what kind of a flesh sorcerer are you?!]
Gritting my teeth, I carefully maneuvered the implanted mass of power, a seed of Chaotic light, right in the tiny gap between the organs. Since the Centauri are much bigger than normal humans, there was actually more space to work with than if I was trying to do it to myself. The absolute best part of this operation was my ability to coax his flesh into accepting the insertion as part of itself. With flesh sorcery guiding my will, my brother’s organs gently moved a bit to give it a bit more space as Kraken softly spoke.
[Ok, good, very good. Now, here’s the really tricky part. You can either put it directly into his soul, or, you can keep the power corporeal and attach it to his body by making it its own organ and connecting it physically to the other organs. If you did the latter, it would be the galaxy’s most beneficial benign tumor, and if you did the former, your brother’s soul would be almost as bright as an angel’s.]
Going with my gut and half-baked intuition from many, and I mean way too many, novels that I’ve read, I kept gently pushing the seed until it faded from one plane of existence and took root in another. Fully engaging my consciousness/mind/soul sorcery, I faintly saw my brother’s luminescent self with a tiny dot of brightly shining power right in the middle. Instinctively, his soul pushed back at the intrusion like a wave and I let it as my magic pushed back with his own soul. It was fascinating to watch as his unconscious self retreated like a wave going back to the ocean, dragging the implanted seed further into itself to vanish into its own depths.
[Boy, you got an oddly skilled hand at this kind of thing. I’d highly recommend that you never tell anyone that you have your particular combo of powers, ever.]
Gulping down a stray thought of fear even as I mentally agreed, I rounded on Johnny as reality reasserted itself. “Hey man, do they let you in the headquarters of this city or anything relatively important?”
Johnny shrugged. “Not really. Reeanth has been called inside the command post a few times by your brother but he hasn’t really allowed either of us to be near him much. Kinda resents you and nothing we say has made a difference.”
“Figures. Nobody fights like brothers. Think of us like Cain and Abel right now even though we’ve had each other’s back all our lives, well, at least before shit hit the fan.” We walked out of the room and the door swirled shut behind us. “Just like Star Trek,” I muttered, shaking my head. “God, that’s cool.”
As we reached the main room, the sci-fi version of a living room, Judy sat in one of the super comfy chairs, lounging as if we hadn’t just hijacked a soldier in his own city while the kidnapper himself was charged with murder. Great, just great. Forcing myself to relax as I couldn’t hear sounds of an alarm or any indication that the city had caught on to our madness, I plopped in a chair directly across from her.
“So what’s your story?” I asked, pulling out a meal cube from Gungnir and popping it in my mouth. I drank some conjured water as she seemed to chew over her response, her light blue eyes flashed black just for a second before reverting to their original state. “Got any plans for when the fun starts in a couple hours?”
Smirking at my aloof manner of questioning, she lightly picked up a glass of wine and sipped at it. “What you meant to ask is how a woman like me became a Queen of the Dead?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
Her smile left as she looked down at her half-empty glass. “Life is pretty great if everyone thinks you’re good looking, or, at least it used to be. Men bent over backwards to take me on dates and married men certainly had few qualms about it either. Women either hated me or wanted to be my friend so they could have the man I didn’t want. I didn’t want any of that, in fact, I used to be married. Everything changed when I was visiting my husband’s grave in Ohio, the Spring Grove Cemetery. It’s beautiful there, it’s actually an arboretum, filled with trees and gardens to contrast the feeling of melancholy.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, knowing the feeling of losing a loved one.
“Save it,” she snapped, her face showing that she instantly regretted her quick outburst. “Sorry, it’s just that it was a bad time and I don’t want your pity. I was there, taking some coke in the shade of one of the big trees so the groundskeeper wouldn’t see me, doing anything to help keep the pain away when the world shook.” Her face paled as her next words came out slowly. “The world shook and all I could hear was a loud ringing, and then screaming, and then moans and more screaming. They just started coming out of the ground, skeletons and dead people. Even some of the stone statues came to life, granite men with swords fighting with stone gargoyles with the undead in between them. I’m not sure how it happened, but one of the revenants actually obeyed my hysteric screaming and started ripping the heads off of the others.”
Shuddering at the thought of being in a fucking graveyard when the magic apocalypse kicked off, I didn’t even want to think about how close to death from the start she was. Keeping my poker face on, I didn’t say anything as she continued on, her eyes unfocused as if looking through her memories.
“You know, they don’t get tired, right? The undead? They just keep comin’, never stoppin’. Just my luck to be stuck in one of the biggest graveyards in the good ol’ US of A. When my first one got torn apart by the others, I had to run for my life while trying to figure out how to get another to listen to me like the first one. It took me even longer to figure out how to make them stronger, more durable so they could stand up to the fighting statues. If not for the river there and magic making fruiting plants grow, I would have either died to dehydration or starvation. For three days, I stayed by the river as my revenants stood guard, and then for months I fought my way to Florida where my family’s home was but they were already gone by the time I got here.”
Her wine had been refilled and drained several times by the time her story ended. Looking at me, the tears in her eyes didn’t fall as she spoke, “That what you wanted to hear?”