Book 3 - Chapter 14_Bog Standard Isekai

It was a solemn little group that left at dawn, all except for Marksi who darted around happily chasing moths and scampering up and down from Brin’s shoulders. He loved going out in the wild and didn’t seem to notice the mood of the other three.

Only Brin, Marksi, and Myra had come with Lumina. Zilly and Davi had both asked to come, and had been turned away since they didn’t have resistance to mageburn. How Myra was resistant to mageburn, Brin didn’t know. Lumina had never used enough magic during their lessons to hurt in that way. Had she trained with someone else? He would ask, but he didn’t think he should. It wasn’t the time for talking.

Lumina kept her eyes squinted nearly shut, and she winced at every single tiny sound like the squawk of a bird or when someone stepped on a branch. She had a look of extreme concentration on her face, and sometimes her mouth moved with silent words. Brin didn’t know if she was casting some long-winded spell, but he couldn’t see or feel any magic. It reminded him more of someone who was cramming last-minute for a difficult test, running through a series of terms and definitions to make sure she really had it all memorized.

So the four of them walked in silence; even Marksi in his cheerfulness didn’t make much sound.

It was a somber sort of morning. Even the weather agreed. The sky was gray and overcast, and the morning mist rising from the ground didn’t seem to have anywhere to go and just hung about underfoot. There didn’t seem to be much color in the world at all outside the people. Lumina in her bright scarlet robes, Myra in her violet dress that hung like silk, and the shifting rainbow of Marksi stood out clearly against what felt like a gray and static backdrop.

While Lumina concentrated and Marksi played, Myra was the only one whose mood matched the situation. She looked extremely worried. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, and she smiled back before going back to looking worried.

The walk seemed to go on forever, but when they arrived it felt too soon.

Marksi gave an excited chirp, and then darted forwards into the forest. Only after that did Brin hear the faint sound of water; the slow lapping waves of a pond.

Lumina sighed. “I suppose it’s now or never. Soon, I will approach. I will do so alone. The two of you will stay back. You may watch, but that is all you will do. Do not summon your magic or use any Skills, not even [Inspect]. Don’t mistake me–everything I’ve read about the Hidden Guardian insists that she is an absolutely reliable protector of children. Any action on your part may distract me, this is why I request this. Any questions before I proceed?”

Brin and Myra looked at each other, and then shook their heads. Sure, he could ask a million questions, but there was nothing he needed to know right now.

Marksi splashed out of the water, and trotted up to Lumina. He gave her a satisfied nod, and Brin understood Marksi enough to know it meant something like, Mom will talk to you now.

Lumina took a steadying breath, and then reached into her robes and produced a small bottle. It shone golden, and the fluid inside looked thick like molten glass. His eyes bugged out when he realized that value sense was telling him that it was worth more than a potion of healing. He used [Inspect].

Potion of Past Glory

Lumina smirked at him. “I caught that. No more [Inspect]; I mean it! As for this, I think it must be quite rare for someone under the age of a hundred to drink one. It’ll make me as good as I ever was.”

Brin nodded in understanding. “As good as you were before the curse on your hand.”

“Even better than the moment I arrived in Hammon’s Bog, since at that time I’d already spent a good portion of mana hastening myself across the country.”

She drank it, though it didn’t look pleasant. Lumina grimaced against the taste, or maybe the texture.

When Lumina turned back to walk through the final distance of the forest, the skin on her hand was already back to its natural color.

The water of the pond was green with algae, less clear than when he’d come here the first time. Much of the surface was overgrown with little three-leafed plants like clover, interspersed with little pink flowers. He hadn’t come here very often, so he didn’t know if this was normal for this time of year. Maybe the current resident simply liked to change the decor once in a while.

“Stay behind the treeline and hold onto something and don’t approach the water’s edge,” said Lumina.

She took a slow, steadying breath, then two more. She clenched her fists, grit her teeth, and then stepped forward to the pond. When she reached the water’s edge, she didn’t stop and marched across the water as if it were solid ground.

Near the center, where none of the weeds on the surface reached, Lumina reached down with her staff and struck the water three times.

Brin expected subtlety. Every time he’d approached this dragon, he’d only got a few meager glimpses. A flash of sight of an enormous body while underwater. A trace of a vast figure, perfectly camouflaged and only noticed with [Know What’s Real].

The sound that erupted from the pond wasn’t subtle at all. It was loud enough to make the surface of the pond boil with sine waves. Somehow, there was no real voice behind it but he understood the words regardless.

None of these words were figurative. With the word ‘mosquito’ Brin felt sharp pricks as if he were being bitten, and the word ‘bat’ gave him the feeling of being slapped with leathery wings. The sentence about being buffeted by wind actually summoned a terrible windstorm that would’ve knocked Brin off his feet if he hadn’t been holding on to a tree branch.

That was only the bare edge of the effect of the words. They were directed entirely toward Lumina and they hit her with a concussive force that would’ve shattered rocks. Lumina withstood it with a shield of air that she summoned intuitively without Language.

As soon as the dragon was finished speaking, Lumina replied. “”

These words were just as effective as the dragon's. He was blinded, and as soon as she said ‘deaf’, Brin’s hearing went out and he lost the rest of what she was saying. He blinked and his vision returned, the sight of Lumina standing in the air while the water of the pond swirled around her, building up to a hurricane.

“<...that stands above humanity the way that gold stands above tin. I am the bright star that guides through the dark. I illuminate the world in edifying light. To the wicked and unjust, I am the meteor that punishes, destroying absolutely. Cataclysm!> I am Lumina, [Archmage of the Mystical Elements].”

Lumina’s statement was punctuated with blasts of fire, bolts of lightning, and a furious swirling wind. All of it together made Brin start to worry that she might accidentally hurt the creature below, even as big as the Hidden Guardian was. Hopefully she was protecting all the little snakes, too.

Then he heard a low rumble. There was no language in it, just the sound of shifting earth. It took him a minute to figure out what it was. That was the sound of laughter.

The water erupted into a spray that went hundreds of feet into the air, and the dragon appeared.

The first glimpse rewrote Brin’s brain, because he thought he’d seen beauty before. In the colors of a sunset, or the smile of a friend, or the iridescent patterns on the wings of a dragonfly. That was nothing compared to this.

Her scales shone in rainbow patterns like Marksi, but unlike Marksi every single one sparkled in an intentional way, pure artistry, to please the eye and compliment her figure.

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She was huge, too large for the small size of the pond to make any sense; there had to be dimensional magic at play. She stretched up and around, her long coils looping through the water until her neck stretched up and over to look down at the puny [Archmage].