Dumbass me didn’t even think to ask what ‘Aetherium’ was, just kind of assumed I’d know it when I or Kraken would tell me like usual. Just for shits and giggles, I did a very surface level mindscan of both Rolf and Sybella to help myself out and what I found was interesting. Metaphorically, beneath her surface thoughts, Sybella’s mind was protected behind a wall composed of a thousand screaming faces, each horribly spewing different concepts and lifetimes in a mind-bending wail. A gloomy steel tower sat behind the wall, wicked spikes coming out of the sides at random. The spikes that twisted to point up had platforms on top of it, each with their own differently colored orb of light floating.
Rolf’s mind was much simpler but all the more intimidating because of it. It was a giant half dome of blue ice with an uncountable number of thin blades coming out of it. That was it, no details, no scary voices, just ice cold strength. His surface thoughts though had a clear picture of what we were talking about, the Aetherium obelisk. I was looking for a small version of the Washington Monument with stripes of different colors going up and down its length.
“Thank you,” I said, turning and following the directions I’d been given. The door to the room opened as I approached and a quick wisp of fog escaped. The room was cold and mostly dark, the only light available was a soft red light that came from where the floor met the wall. It lit up the room enough for me to see not one, but five different obelisks in front of me set up in a pentagram with one at each of the formation’s points.
[A Communion Communicator!] Kraken gasped. [Don’t touch it! You don’t know who or what is on the other side!]
[English dude! Please!]
[It’s a telephone of death! What the hell are you jonesin’ after anyway?] Kraken asked, pushing us both away slowly from the inside of Gungnir, my weapon pulling me as if it didn’t want to be anywhere near here.
[Andy is a wizard, not a sorcerer. I need information on them and how they learn, what they need to do to go from wimpy Harry Potter to badass Dumbledore. If I could find a book or document or set of memories conveniently titled, ‘How to Train Your Wizard’, that would be freaking great.] Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself, gripping Gungnir harder and pointing it at the formation as I took a slow step closer. [I was thinking about taking or copying the witch’s memories since they supposedly have generations worth of them stored away, but that mind fortress of hers looked like an insane asylum on crack.]
[Ok, ok, I get it. Just wait for a second, you do not know what you’re doing. The crystals do have that information, probably, because there are a bunch of Centauri here and they do need their spell structure downloads, but that’s one TINY piece of info that could be here. In order to do this safely, you need to separate the obelisks from their formation without actually touching them.]
“That’s it?” Reaching down with my senses, I could feel that the dirt below us was only about five feet away. Flipping Gungnir point down, I willed the three-bladed spear into a classic speartip design but a much thinner version of it. Drawing on my power, I stabbed the floor five inches away from the obelisk and Gungnir effortlessly cut through the floor. Working my way around the first obelisk, I copied my efforts and soon had all five from the formation. Conjuring some dirt while also pulling it up from the sandy Miami earth just beneath the floor, I easily moved the Aetherium obelisks away from each other until they were leaning up against the walls.
[Sometimes it takes a monkey,] Kraken muttered as he extended a tendril of mana to the first one. Working together, our goal didn’t take long to reach as a bit of luck came into play. The first obelisk we worked on actually had all of the information we needed to get my brother spun up on being a proper Wizard, not just a half-assed combat one. [Hold up, don’t disconnect yet, you’re gonna want this!]
Borrowing my brain power, Kraken crafted a couple mental processes dedicated to searching and parsing different data streams. Five minutes of me sweating from the strain later, we had two of them searched for any kind of useful information. [Centauri SITREP, updated global map, vulnerability classification of the sector, classified spelltech-]
[THAT ONE!] I yelled, mentally homing in several keywords. [Spelltech! Grab the SITREP and map too!]
The information slammed into my brain in a three-way punch, two light ones and one heavy Mike Tyson shot. Kraken quickly numbed the pain and wrapped up the information packets, storing it in my brain where it would unravel or distract me for the time being. “We’ll parse through it later,” I said aloud, shaking my head and walking back to the main room.
I ended up being impressed and yet scared as hell when I arrived back in the main room. My butthole puckered something fierce at the sight of big man Rolf in his armor sitting on my shattered golems like a chair. Lucky for me, he hadn’t touched the ones keeping Sybella down but he had taken the time to not only wreck my golems but set up the chunks into an amorphized chair complete with armrests and a cup holder.
“Guess this means you could’ve gotten out at any time and you were just gathering intel huh?”
“Got it in one boyo!” Laughing at my quickly fading shock, Rolf pulled a wide flask from his pocket on his thigh and downed a swigg. “Mighty fine work you done with these here rock fellows but their shatterpoints are too large to miss.” Nodding in Sybella’s direction, he continued. “I’d also make nice with her if ya can, she an’ her clan treat humiliation worse than murder.”
Weighing the pros and cons in my mind, I pulled a brick shaped crystal mana battery out of Gungnir and held it out as I squatted in front of her. Her eyes went from laser focused hatred to wonder.
“I take it you know what this is?” She barely nodded as my golems’ blades were still kissing her throat. “Good, you take this and it’s all forgiven? I’ll even make it any shape you want.” Another series of very tiny nods.
Kraken ordered the golems off of her as I conjured a cup made out of ice and filled it with conjured water. Handing it to her as she stood up, she swigged the water and spat, cleaning her mouth out from the dirt I stuck in there. Her hand shot out and I placed the battery on her palm, not letting go. As she gripped it and pulled, I pulled her in close until our noses were touching.
“Tell no one,” I growled ominously. “Show no one, keep it to yourself. I don’t want to make my to-do list any longer than it already is. Got it?” A quick, scared nod was all I got, but it was all I needed. I’m glad that her sense of self-preservation and innate greed overrode the current of humiliation long enough for her to think rationally about this. Letting go of the battery, I took a step back and then looked over the mess of shattered golems. Only two of them were still intact from the squad of ten that I led into the building, which means Rolf had taken out the other eight. One fuckin’ scary dude. Making sure that I stayed on his good side, I pulled out another battery and tossed it to him.
“Same conditions, but I mean it in a nicer way,” I said. “My brother might be a bit of a jackass but he tends to make good friends, so I’ll trust him.”
Pulling a block of metal from somewhere, I watch Rolf stand up and magically mold it into a chain link necklace. “Can ya make it smaller, about yea’ big, and round?”
Obliging the much larger, much scarier man, I took the battery back and compressed it slowly, taking great care to remove and re-add the proper runes as I molded it to fit his needs. Handing the crystal disk Rolf, it practically vanished in his much bear sized hand. Fumbling with his necklace, he attached the disk to the ringlet at the bottom and molded the metal to wrap around, covering up every bit of the battery.
“Perfect!” His smile was so wide he could have fit a damn pizza in there. “How does it work?”
Chuckling at his sudden shift in demeanour, I pointed at his necklace. “Two ways, that right there will gather ambient mana and some from you when you’re not using it as well as what you make but don’t use. The other way is you could directly put mana in there through meditation or any kind of mana extraction device. When it's full, should be enough power in there to split a mountain, be careful.”
“Wait!” Turning towards Sybella, she held the mana battery out towards me. “I accept this token as a cessation of any and all hostilities between us, both real and imagined. I agree to the given terms and request per the strictures of said covenant to have this molded in accordance with my desires.” A ball of light appeared between us as she closed her eyes and concentrated. A moment later, the light morphed into a pristine 3D model of a large medallion that slowly spun to show both sides. A ritualistic pentagram within a circle adorned with elemental symbols covered one side and the other was an artistic take on Duality. The Yin and Yang Duality carving was edged with a blending of nature giving life and passing into death.
Taking the battery, I molded it to be just like what Sybella desired, taking care to get the exact details right. Turning it over in my hands to examine my work, I instinctively recognized the worth of this amulet as my own magic seemed to echo with it, a harmony that I didn’t know existed. Looking it over again, I burned the memory of this amulet in my mind before handing it back to her. Seeing the expression of sheer anticipation on her face, I reexamined the circumstances for a second, holding back the battery just before her hand actually touched it.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“I dunno,” I mused aloud. Anticipation, wonder, anger, and confusion warred for dominance in her eyes as I held back. “Seems like this little doohickey outweighs the little incident we had earlier. I mean, you didn’t get hurt and nobody saw you in your particular state, and this is a gamechanger for you if I’m reading the room correctly.”
“What do you want?” she snapped.
‘Well, for one. I still require that we leave on good terms, but I want some insurance too.” Sending her a mental packet of information, I watched on the magical side of things as her mental fortress forced the packet to stop outside its walls as her thought-constructs carefully unwrapped it. Scanning it over and over, the message was taken inside as she fully processed not just the words of the message, but also the feelings and sensations mixed within.
“This is acceptable and the terms are very generous, for the both of us. A month will be required to prepare.”
“Not a problem,” I replied, giving over her amulet. She clutched it to her chest as if it were her own newborn, absently tracing the grooves with her finger. “I’ll be back here in thirty days.”
Taking a second to banish the remains of my broken golems, I turned on a heel and walked out with the two earthen survivors and joined the rest of the army, silence greeting me even as I saw the crowd of hundreds of people staring at me and my posse. My golems were armed to the teeth, facing outward and forming a wall of crystal bodies around the building. As far as I could tell there hadn’t been any bloodshed but that could change at any moment. Heeding good sense, I sank into the earth and beat feet to the Yggdrasil root while Kraken made sure that the golems followed. Establishing a connection to Sunstone Castle, I maintained the Way so my army could go back to the desert. Once they were all gone, I headed home.
My next week didn’t go the way I planned it. Andy didn’t wake up for a couple days, so there was the whole process of making him his own room in the Hole and then I also had to go back and retrieve Reeanth, Johnny, and Fuzzy from Miami, and then take them to Sunstone Castle and give them the tour, and then after that, return with all of them AND Spot in tow. Andy finally woke up from his sorcery induced slumber in the middle of the night five freaking days later! I had gotten so bored that I had actually started making headway on all of the information I snagged from New Miami; I figured that I might as well get something out of it too instead of just Andy. The traveling, while quick, was oddly more taxing on my mind than actually taking the time to fly around to where I needed to.
**********
My brother woke up in a fit one night, swinging like he had bugs crawling all over him while getting attacked by a burglar. One smack of sneaky mind magic later and I had him out till at least the morning when normal people greet the day. The table in the main room of my home had a nice hot pot of coffee sitting in the middle, a ring of clean stone mugs around it. Andy angrily walked in from his new room and sat down, slamming the chair as he adjusted it so that he was directly across from me.
“That’s freaky and don’t do it again.” His glare was unsettling but I couldn’t help myself. The sense of innate hostility was gone though which was reassuring. This looked like normal disorientation and morning grumpiness which I could handle. Laughing out loud, I poured some coffee for the both of us and slid his mug over to him.
“Sorry man,” I laughed. “I didn’t want my ugly mug to be the first thing you saw in the morning.”
Lyra walked out coquettishly from his room, grinning like a fat cat with a mouse in its paws even as my brother just kept right on cursing me out even as he grudgingly gripped his coffee mug. “But dearest, you didn’t like me taking care of you? I assure you, I was quite gentle.”
Andy glared at Lyra over his mug, refocusing his grumpiness on her. “My asshole of a brother might not have a problem screwing a plant but I know what y’all can do. We ain’t doin’ that ever.”
Laughing at my brother’s discomfort, Lyra walked out of the Hole. I had asked her to wake him up and maybe give him a bit of a scare but definitely no funny business. It was clear that she deliberately misinterpreted the word ‘surprise’, but having my little brother chase dryads was not what I had planned for him. As Andy glared at me again, reluctantly sipping his coffee, I figured that I might as well come clean. Copying his posture, I hunched over my coffee and sipped it, making sure that he knew I was mocking him. “So, you want the whole story or just the cliffnotes, dude?”
A grunt was all I got. Luckily, I had prepared for this as well as sheer stubbornness runs in the family. Next to all the mugs was a little quartz cube with the top side covered in granite and the bottom in iron. Pushing it closer to Andy, I took another sip of coffee. “That’s a copy of all of my memories since the world went to hell. Touch the granite side to your forehead and you’ll get it all as if you were in a narrated movie. The iron side will do the same but all of the emotions and thoughts will be filtered out. Your choice but I gotta say, you’re still my brother.”
His eyes narrowed as I pulled out another memory crystal but didn’t push it over to him. “This right here is the carrot. I know you still don’t like me but you have to at least review the memories I’ve given you in that one,” I said, pointing at the quartz cube near his mug. “But this one, this holds everything I know about magic in it. All of the information I’ve personally discovered on my own, everything a freaking fire dragon hoarded in his brain as well as what I’ve pulled from what I could get from the Centauri. This right here, it even has the Centauri schematics for runic tattoos that your higher-ups use. And . . . you get this AFTER you look through that.”
I watched as his eyes followed me putting away the latter crystal, the entire thing vanishing as it was deposited in the storage space inside of Gungnir. Still nothing from his side of the table. Realizing that he probably needed a bit more, I continued. “All right fuckstick, I should also probably tell you a couple more things. Let’s see here,” I said, finishing off my coffee. “I saved New Miami from a horde of freaky crab things and their cousins, cleaned out the self-destruct software in your brain and put an assistant in there to help you with magic and . . .”
Reaching under the table, I grabbed what I was looking for and set it between my recalcitrant brother. “And last but not least, TA-DAA!” Poking it with a finger, the dark grey orb rolled towards my brother. “You get your very own mini-flesh golem! This little guy can help you do way more than you think, like healing wounds, replacing organs, painlessly putting on or removing tattoos. Shoot, you can even use it to heal other people in a pinch. Just feed him some meat when he gets small and he’ll be good to go.”
In the blink of an eye, Andy snatched the grapefruit sized flesh golem and hurled him at my face. As it bounced off my forehead, he grabbed the stone table and heaved upwards, causing it to tilt and slam into me, pining me to the floor under its weight. It would have crushed my legs if not for my armor and the stupid amount of mana pumping through it. Grabbing Gungnir from where it had fallen next to me as I lay there in a bit of shock, Andy pointed my own weapon at my face. As he channeled mana into Gungnir, I started laughing.
“You think my own weapon is going to let you blast mana at me? It’s just eating it right now!”
His face screwing up in anger, he stabbed the butt end of it at my face, figuring that since magic damage wouldn’t be forthcoming maybe blunt damage would get the job done. Right as his swing reached max velocity, Gungnir blasted Andy with a low level surge of power blasting him backwards. Using earth sorcery, I molded the stone table to flow around me as I stood up, taking my time to fix it back to where it was.
“Any other stupid things you wanna try? Maybe punch your fully armored brother in the face? Wanna go fight my elementals barehanded? Or maybe whip your dick out and fuck the granite wall in an insane attempt to dig your way out?”
With a wave of my hand, Gungnir returned to me in staff-form, power crackling down its length. As I walked closer to my brother, the snaps and pops of raw mana grew in intensity, almost giving me a supervillain vibe. Standing over his prone form, I nudged my brother in the shoulder. Opening his eyes, Andy rolled over and pivoted, kicking out like a breakdancer to try and take my legs out from under me. SAW engaged the stability protocols, stabbing the leyline wands down into the stone floor even as the stone itself grew up around my legs to take the blow.
It was pointless, this entire fight. But it was kind of necessary. We actually had been through this before, the whole brother fight brother thing. Before all of this madness and time dilation crap, I had seven years and fifty pounds on my brother. Our fights consisted of him trying to fight me and me holding him down, waiting for the inevitable gasp of exhaustion as he wound himself down. Think of a college aged man holding the kid by the forehead as the kid futilely swings for the moon, hitting nothing. That’s what’s going on, that last gasp of a temper tantrum, that anger just before the wind is completely taken out of his sails. My brother wanted to fight, needed to fight, and my job was to let him wear himself out.
Ten minutes of shattered stone furniture, livid screaming and yelling, and some magnificent name calling, my brother sat against the wall of my home in absolute exhaustion. Here, in my home, my place of power, I was basically a magical tank. Without his gear, there just wasn’t much that he was able to do other than chuck any loose item, which thanks to his ungodly strength was pretty much anything. The stone table was in much smaller, much more manageable sized chunks and my dishes were also completely destroyed.
[This is not the sign of a sane individual.] Kraken’s observation was not wrong, but it also wasn’t exactly correct either. And I get it, I kidnapped him, scrubbed his brain, pranked him with a dryad, and then promised explanations of times past and magical knowledge. I’d probably be a bit bonkers after having my head unfucked but a big brother has to do what a big brother has to do.
[True, but we humans also have our ways of fixing things. Guys can fight over something stupid and then be best friends right after. Brothers, well, we’re just reestablishing who’s the ‘big brother’ right now. He’s been off on his own for a long time, thinking I was dead, and now that I’m back, he ain’t gonna listen until he’s sure it’s me.]
[Humans are odd. How in the multiverse did any of you survive?]
[Brains and balls my friend, brains and balls.]
Whipping up a quick bit of magic, I used earth sorcery to fix the trashed area. The pieces of stone table and all of the stone dishes simply melted into the floor as another table with new dishes rose from the floor. The cracks in the walls had already repaired themselves as if nothing had ever happened and I sat in my chair.
“Done yet?” I called out. “We can do it again if you want but I might fight back. You remember when we pissed off the copperhead that summer before I left for college? We kept shooting it with squirt guns to get rid of it but we were too dumb to realize that we were in the way? The whole thing was pointless because the snake just wanted to leave but couldn’t because we were too young and dumb to realize that the only way out was behind us?”
Andy looked at me, sweat dripping down his face as his chest heaved up and down. The anger in his eyes was replaced with exhaustion. “Stupid snake almost bit you too,” I said, smiling at the memory. “Had to drag you away when I realized we were the freaking problem, hahaha.”
“Right before our boxer Juno came in and ripped its head off,” Andy said with a faint smile. Filling up a stone cup with conjured water, I walked over and gave it to him as he held his hand out. “Yeah, I remember. Dad was so pissed. All that blood on his toolbox and it stank up the garage.”
Chuckling to myself, I allowed myself to relax just a bit, the tension flowing out of my shoulders as I sat down on the floor across from my brother whose presence seemed to shrink just a bit. “It really is you.”
“Yeah man, it’s really me.”