There might be some minor discontinuations in the text from where I was editing – a cookie for you if you can point them out for me!
Chapter 14: Best or Worst Case?
Shit.
I quickly added another layer of protection to the area by using a spell called ‘mana mist’ to spread out my mana and grant me a general view of whatever it touched. It was mana intensive, but nearly impossible to see, even for sensitive mages, and gave me a mana dome that could sense intrusions.
Soul Mages were the most feared thing in the world, even the wrath of the gods would sometimes be viewed as a lesser cataclysm than a Soul Mage appearing.
There were 3 things about Soul Mages that made everyone relentlessly seek their deaths. The first 2 things were the same, but the third varied depending on whether you were a mage or not. First, Soul Magic could raise the dead. While the Histones had told me that it had been centuries since an undead army had attacked any known city, everyone feared such a reoccurrence that in some kingdoms it was a capital crime to bury anyone. Mages were paid or drafted into public service to use a spell called ‘flesh fire’ to burn away corpses to ashes.
The second thing that made Soul Mages so terrifying was simple, power. The strongest opponent I had ever faced in my previous life had 14 circles worth of mana and the most powerful person in my old world was said to have 16. The most powerful Soul Mage that I knew had been estimated at 28 circles. Of course, since magic circles did not increase at geometric intervals, that meant the Soul Mage would have more than 30 times the mana than the strongest person I had ever fought.
A second circle took 5 time more energy than the primary circle to fill and the third took 5 time more mana than the second. However, the fourth mana circle only took 4 time more energy per circle. That pattern continued until the seventh circle, which took 3 time more energy than the sixth circle to fill and continued on to an unknown point.
That was what led to the third and most terrifying thing about Soul Mages. While non-mages were taught that the most terrifying thing was their insanity, the truth was much different. The single biggest weakness of any mage was the limitations that calorie usage caused by using mana. I estimated that the human body would be unable to both walk and contain enough fat to drain a mage of 15 circles worth of magic without using internal energy to strengthen their legs. This weakness has endured through millenniums of the most ingenious human mages trying to find a way around it, but there was only 1 way ever devised.
Soul Mages could absorb energy from each of their individual undead in a way that seemed to combine my ‘mana roots’ spell with ‘Gorith’s shroud.’ It was not a specifically designed spell, but it still managed to suck the ‘life force’ out of the lands the undead marched over, turning it into blighted land that would not see life again for centuries at the least.
In fact, this capability tends to make mages glad that Soul Mages are insane and therefore never use their power to its full potential. Soul Mage hunter killer squads took advantage of their insanity to kill them in any number of usually indirect ways. After all, it did not matter how powerful you were if an attractive person distracted you from the bit of poison. Ovals, that was how I would have died without my little graveborn’s challenge.
Please concentrate on the corpses! The buried, giant, corpses!
I am concentrating. I am trying to remember everything I can about Soul Mages to try and figure out a way to kill them.
Any mage, no matter how powerful, could be killed by another if they were caught off-guard, with iron weapons and poison being the most common ways. Usually, I would use my favorite little mage killer, but I did not have it with me. My personal favorite weapon was a thin iron pike, used with an atlatl and a good deal of internal energy. The high velocity iron would rip apart any magical shields and usually pierce out the opposite side of the target it hit. I swore that I made a thunder crack with it once, back when I killed an 11 circle mage.
Wait, why would a Soul Mage bother burying the bodies? If he wanted to store them for later, a preservation spell would be a better idea and digging a hole for each body would be an annoyance, even with magic. Even if he used servants to get rid of them and save himself the physical effort, why bury a body instead of just dumping it? Plus, why would anyone bury a body here, near an old settlement, but nothing else?
Granted, no one accused Soul Mages of being sane, but if one had set up here with a human population he would either be very young or very, very old. A young one would be easier to kill and a Soul Mage old enough to be not to be widely spoken of, especially in a place as close as Loco’s village, would be either very stable (not likely) or powerful enough to slow his mental and physical degradation over a long period of time.
…Or he could be very, very, very, old and have been stuck in some elvish time prison until recently.
Oh, thank the gods you are acting like a little kid, it makes the whole situation seem more normal.
I can see in your head! I know it is possible!
Possible and probable are two different things little one. The only way to keep paranoia in check is to know the difference.
Said the old man currently connecting that distortion from the other day to our current situation
I told you to know the difference, I did not say ‘do not worry’ or ‘do not prepare for the unlikely’
Anyway, fear runes or no, if the kingdoms thought a Soul Mage was here, they would have burned the forest down and boiled the river and its terminating lake to track the mage down.
Standing up I quietly I surveyed the surrounding area again, but there was still no sign of any activity. Even when I used an optical enhancement spell there was nothing bigger than a few squirrels.
Turning back to the corpse, I did the second most disgusting thing of my new life (Looking at guys had better not be the ‘most’ disgusting thing DeMorte!) and touched the decomposing body. Letting my mana flow into it I analyzed its DNA as best I could considering that I was in a hurry and it was a still decaying corpse.
Thank the gods we did not make our nose any better
Later. Concentrate. Strange.
At a glance I could tell several things about the genetics of the body in front of me, the fact that is was human was not one of the first things I noticed though. It did have 23 pairs of chromosomes, but the genetic information was off. It was not surprising given the likelihood of the humans here being hemmed in by the fear runes, but there was more to it than just that.
Not only was the skeleton obviously larger than most people at nearly 3 meters, its arms were elongated to be nearly the same length as its legs. From what I could tell, the person who was buried here had something Anton had referred to as “the werewolf gene” active, meaning that they were covered in hair, as well as other extensive modifications in their genetic code. Not new modifications, thankfully, but hereditary, making my ‘ancient testing ground’ theory more plausible.
However, if they were old enough to be the results of Elven testing, the genetic makeup and limited variability should have limited them severely. A few hundred years should have wiped them out through inbreeding.
Sighing, we checked our surroundings again and I got to work on excavating the next body. The burial site was fresh enough to signal sometime in recent cycles, but I had no idea beyond that, I just counted myself lucky that I noticed it at all.
What-
Keep watch.
I cut her off because I knew that she was just going to complain about my observational skills. I noticed people and threats before small details, while Bella tended to glance over people and then study everything else. Since she was actually ‘keeping watch’ through my mana, I would feel it if she did notice something.
After a few minutes of digging I confirmed my theory. The buried body next to the first corpse was genetically similar without being identical. That meant that the genetics were close enough to be of concern in the long run, but different enough to confirm that the two bodies were not direct family.
More mysteries, I grunted to myself.
Shaking my head I decided to prepare as best I could and pushed my mana into the remains of the bones. After my quick ‘fluidity’ spells (Bella insisted on naming it) I had two well stocked bone deposits forming an armor under my mender’s robes.
The armor was also dense enough to stop anyone not using internal energy, even if they had a sword. A mace or hard hit from iron shot might cause some serious damage, but slashing and stabbing weapons would find it hard to do any real damage.
By this time it was noon and I wanted to make sure that I was nowhere near this place before dark fell again. Despite my hurry though, I still burrowed into where I thought the next body was. I did not need to excavate this one as much for its genetic information as I thought of its bones as auxiliary weapons… Not that I could really count my little iron knives as primary weapons, but I would need to save them to kill any magically able creature or other danger.
ALARM
Just as I thought I made contact with the remains of the third body, Bella screamed in my head, directing me towards the southeast woods, where a portion of my mana had simply disappeared.
Jumping up out of the hole, I prepared my internal energy as well as reshaping my bone spade into a large hammer. My mana should not have just disappeared, that kind of thing usually only happened if someone was approaching in full-
A pair of large, hairy, but otherwise naked, creatures slipped out of the woods and stopped, staring at me.
-full iron plate?
What in the world? I stared at the creatures, standing on their legs nearly 150 meters away and realized that they were both the humans and the legends that prevailed about this area. Large, hairy, creatures with the ability to run on two feet.
After a moment of shock, I realized that two living samples of genetically altered humans had just all but wandered up to me for experimentation.
As if able to read my thoughts, the creatures turned and fled back into the woods, prompting me to use my internal energy to power my new challenge.
I ran just fast enough to kick up small clumps of earth in my wake and dove into the forest after them. I almost lost them from the beginning too as they split up and one started using trees for a road.
Fortunately for me I managed to find that one fairly quickly as it had concentrated on putting height and not distance between us. Unfortunately, when I started shooting stunning spells at it, the thing started dodging!
That was the major problem I had with stun spells, although they were safe to use, the magic was easily trackable by anyone with a magical talent and flew at a speed just under an average bowshot, making them easy enough to dodge. Most other spells were just faster than a bowshot and mages had various ways to make their spells go even faster. Although, complex spells were often slower than simple spells, making a basic death spell was much faster than a more complex stun spell.
After a minute though it became unnecessary to throw more spells as test subject 1 missed its landing and fell several meters through various branches to land face first on the ground.
I quickly ran over and bound its hands and feet before gaging it with restraints made of bone.
Afterwards, I pondered the difficult task of catching up to the other one before it brought back more, but test subject 2 knew this forest better than me so the likelihood of that happening was decreasing by the moment. I decided after a moment, first I would examine test subject 1 in a secure location, then I would figure out if there were Elves or Soul Mages or just more test subjects hiding out in this forest.
Picking up subject 1 I moved back to my camp as quickly as I could. I wanted to get that third corpse sample before I evacuated to a better location.
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By the time I had secured another camp for myself, this time in a cave with good lines of sight for possible approaches, subject 1 had come to her senses. Right before she started screaming into her gag. In fact, she had come to her senses before I even got a chance to finish excavating the third corpse and she seemed quite emotional about my digging.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Since then, I had been too busy looking for a good camp to set myself up at to do anything more than a brief inspection of the subject. It had been fairly easy to confirm gender once I got a chance to look, but what really surprised me was that, despite her height of nearly two and a half meters, subject 1 appeared to be a teenager.
It worked out better for me though as she seemed more curious than scared of me now that I had stopped chasing her and digging up her ancestors. Since I was not nearly as tall as her at 152cm, it helped that I could convince her to walk (once I changed her bindings to chains) instead of making me carry her.
There was also something else that had completely terrified me that I could finally investigate now that my new campsite was secured by various noise dampening and obscurity runes.
Are you sure that her friends will not be able to follow your trail?
You can see inside my head right? I am fairly sure that those track erasing spells and mana dispersal spells that I set made it impossible to track us. Given the fact that we were not immediately chased, the mana should have dispersed to a natural level by now.
You did that so subconsciously though. I was trying to track what spells you were using, but you were barely even finishing them in your mind before casting them.
The benefits of practice, my mind remembers all of the little calculations required for the spell to work and my subconscious can work them out. You might be able to see that far into my mind in the future so do not worry too much about it right now.
You mean concentrate on hairy here instead?
Exactly.
Concentrated on the currently sitting test subject Hairy, I decided to be extra thorough before I just started hurling spells at her.
“Can you understand me?” I asked her in the clearest language I could muster.
“Dal’tal yea.” Hairy responded in her rough sounding voice.
Did that mean yes?
“I am going to rape you with the bones of your ancestors, cut you up, and eat you.” I told Hairy, still pronouncing each word as cleanly as I could.
“Dal’tal yea.” Hairy responded, pointing to herself.
With the bones of her ancestors? That was way worse than any mental picture of me with any of the men from the villages you know!?
No, trust me, it was not. Especially when you thought about those carpenter brothers together.
I notice that you never complain about my mental pictures with the women.
Of course not, that is probably my perverted memories influencing your young mind. Besides, if worst came to worst I could help you grow a phallus, now back to the subject at hand.
Alright, I established that she is sentient, seems to have a name, has had too limited contact with our language to understand even a small amount. It helped that there were very few languages too as it showed that she also did not likely have contact with anyone to the north of the forest.
Alright then I suppose that it is time to move on to the more important test. Mentally preparing myself, I cast the stunning spell on her from point blank range and watched her flinch as the spell dissolved against her skin.
Creatures with mana resistance should not be able to see spells. In fact, if these were the relatives of the human corpses, I had a hard time figuring out how their bones would be mana conductive after death. It did not make sense. Confused, I decided to up the ante and cast a death spell on her.
This time, Hairy flinched back both before and after she was hit by the spell. The spell itself, seemed to burn on her skin for a moment before petering out like the spell before it. Leaving Hairy whimpering a little.
It looked like her spell resistance was indeed just resistance and not immunity, which made me feel slightly better.
Deciding to take a chance, I walked over to her side and paused, looking at her all too normal eyes. If I was wrong, this might kill me. Taking a deep breathe, I quickly let my hand flick out and touch Hairy’s arm briefly. Sensation and magic flared briefly as my talent tried and failed to understand what I had touched.
It could recognize hair, but when it touched Hairy’s skin, my talent’s ability was broken.
While I was still trying to wrap my head around this, I heard something vaguely reminiscent of a human’s voice, crossed with a howl in the distance. It must have been close and very loud to be heard through my silencing runes.
Regrettably, it seemed I was not the only one who heard it as Hairy took the opportunity to try to attack me. I quickly managed to deflect her using a bit of internal energy, but she immediately started screeching as loudly as she could.
Reflexively, I bit back a curse and flinched in the face of the sudden loud noise that bounced off the walls of the cave and echoed in my ears. Momentarily forgetting myself I even cast another stun spell, which, to my surprise, hit her inside her mouth and immediately nocked her unconscious.
I stared at her limp form for a moment as I repaired the light damage done to my ears and leaned down to confirm that magic could indeed flow through the inside of her body. Her skin just acted like it was an iron sheath somehow to protect her.
Letting my talent flow through where my fingers touched the inside of her cheek, I confirmed that Hairy here was indeed a fairly normal human. Minus the arms, height, and skin that was.
I wanted to investigate more, but I heard another screech, this time, from just outside the cave. I froze, listening at I hear breathing and some rough words exchanged before the voices suddenly became much louder. They were past the runes I used to dampen sounds.
Could they ignore basic runes as well as spells? Was that why the fear runes surrounding this place were so darn powerful? I heard something that sounded like an order being given a few moments before a new racket erupted outside the cave and I realized that I might have made a mistake in choosing my new camp location. YOU THINK? However, there was a second, albeit much smaller, exit to the cave I was currently in… if I chose not to fight that was.
If? DeMorte? You are not going to…
Best case: The modified humans are the only danger here and I can beat them into submission.
Worst case: The modified humans obey a Soul Mage or Elven descendent and the master finds out where I am.
I smiled to myself and heard Bella just sigh in the back of my head. I was only a true master rank in 2 areas, controlling internal energy and finding ways to win fights that I should lose. Both of these areas seemed about to be tested, but I was still reasonably confident of my chances to win.
Please be careful DeMorte, these modified humans are still humans.
Shadows and memories of the Guilt washed over me and suddenly I felt less sure of myself.
* * *
Off the southern coast of the eastern continent onboard the Bedlam
“Watch out for the Heho!”
The scream came just in time to save 4 men from the horrible fate of the one who did not hear. The liquid fire, named after the gods of fire and water, sprayed across the side of the boat and engulfed the 5th man.
The screams of a man engulfed by flame are too damaging to a decent soul to hear, to it was a mercy when the man willingly dove into the sea.
The pump that sprayed the liquid fire let up briefly so that the eternally cursed pirate captain could repeat his demands. What type of fool pirate tries to burn up the ship he wants to capture?! The Capitan of the Bedlam cast an eye out to the trails of fire that still burned on the water’s surface.
Barely a bowshot off his the Bedlam’s aft port, between the Bedlam and the inviting safety of the eastern continent’s coast, was an older warship that had been clearly stripped of its iron for the sake of speed. The accursed thing even had a bow pump, enchanted to spray its liquid fire even at such distances.
There were pirates all over the smaller islands between the continents that no one had yet managed to put down and in all likelihood, no one ever would. No one liked traveling near one of those confounded ‘fear forests’ on the interior of the continent Eastern continent, but on days like this one it was hard not to wish that he had stuck to trading on land.
At least they did not have a mage he thought grimly, a mage could make a large profit in the pirate business, provided his target did not have a stronger mage on board. After all, while he could and would fight off this fool, a mage could have just threatened to burn his ship from a distance.
Still, despite the situation, the Capitan found himself smiling. He had gone to sea to find fortune and found adventure instead. Thank the gods for fools like this he thought as he brought the ship about, curving to starboard, away from the larger ship. I would die of boredom if they did not exist.
His adversary quickly fired up his fire pump again and tried to burn the Capitan’s beloved Bedlam, but the smaller ship was made for quick movements and even weighted down with cargo, it was still much faster in a turn than other ships. Even as they started to turn into the wind, the Capitan was still more excited than worried. They would be not able to outrun the bigger ship and her empty haul in a straight race, so why try?
Turning to the 4 men from earlier, he confirmed that his most valuable merchandise was now loaded on and turning to face the pirate vessel.
Now I will be honestly able to tell the buyer that they were tested in combat and they work. The Capitan chuckled to himself as he watched the larger ship try and turn with him, but fail.
As the turn became tighter and tighter, the bronze dragons slowly moved closer to lining up with the other ship. Then, his enemy decided to help by reversing their turn, obviously trying to realign with his ship.
“You ready men?” He called out to his crew and received a broken series of replies that told him everything he needed to know.
Having completed his turn, the Capitan now steered the ship to port and aligned the dragons as best he could. His crew had seen them work and knew what to do without being told. Smoldering pieces of string were touched to the ends of the dragons and they roared their mighty thunder of darkness and flame.
A series of small bronze balls, each one carrying a basic fire enchantments in their small silver core, flew the length of the bowshot’s distance between the two ships and at least 2 crashed into the aft section of the pirate ship.
As the pirate ship and the Bedlam once again matched directions, the Capitan saw smoke begin to poor out of the pirate ship and smiled widely. The worst enemy on the seas was fire, the pirates, even insane ones wielding heho like that one, would not ignore a fire.
Keeping his back to the wind as best he could, the Capitan took a chance and cut across the bow of the now panicking pirates. No heho was pumped.
The crew still kept their guard up until it became obvious that the pirates were still turning, now into the wind, as opposed to the Bedlam’s path, which its Capitan leveled out into a straight sprint away from the burning enemy. Then the celebrations began.
Those dragons will change the future of the sea, the Capitan thought triumphantly, too bad everything about them is so darn expensive
As the moment of celebration ended within the Capitan, he nodded to his executive officer and the old seaman started knocking heads together and got everyone back to work.
Sometime later, there was an explosion that rung out over the waves, signaling a large heho container’s combustion.