I itched lazily whilst sleeping. The shrill wails and sounds of fire spells shooting off woke me up – even worse, it woke up Tacari. Poor dude. In the streets of the southern district, I met with my Aquan-defence clone and August. After eradicating the attackers, casting a strong Vivify and repairing the damages done, this wave of enemies was cleared out without much effort. The battlemages grew used to their tactics and was able to better defend.
Some hours later, sun had fully broken in and the burly blacksmith and I found ourselves preparing for our journeys. We stood in Silverport at the pier, families abreast. Hell, even the king and queen came to see us off. Farron did resort to using us, so he must’ve felt obligated. Either that, or Donna commanded the poor guy.
“How are you feeling? Do you have everything?” Mary held my arm loosely.
I pinched her cheek, “You’ve asked me that a hundred times now!” I sighed. She wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what that was nor had I the balls to ask. I figured she might’ve ended up wholly disagreeing to this whole thing and the last thing I wanted on my conscience was my mother’s crying face begging me not to go.
“We don’t usually have these conversations a lot, but we’re worried about you. And August too. You’re still just kids. We love you, buddy. It’s only natural for us to reject the idea of you going.”
August’s mom agreed, and so did Melissa to a much greater deal than we’d imagine. Funny thing is, she addressed the elephant in the room first, instead of our parents.
After a sigh, she grabbed August’s hands, “I’ve had my entire family killed because of war. I was just like this when they were sent off. Try to imagine how hard it is to watch someone walk away from you for the last time. To endure through everyday with the growing reality that they won’t ever come back to you. That’s how she feels,” Melissa explained, speaking for August’s mom, and my parents indirectly, “that’s how I feel. Yes, we all know you two are strong. But,” she looked to me, “you’re no witch,” then to August, “and you’re no beacon.”
Actually… I thought about correcting her. Eh, I’ll just leave it.
“So, promise me, you won’t be reckless. Be vigilant. Protect yourselves. Underestimate no one.”
August could only smile, “Yes ma’am.”
Some other people came to see us off as well, Pyro and Volt included. “So uh,” I came up close to Pyro and spoke softly, “when you gonna tell us that ‘Valerie’ is Gabrielle?”
His eyes opened wide, then he gave a weak chuckle, “Figured you’d know. Eh, well, I’m not exactly prince material, so–”
“My guy… you’re a freakin’ rank five councilman of the Order of Mages in his twenties!”
“T-thanks dude. I’m supposed to be complimentin’ you right now.”
“Then compliment me. How does my hair look?” I struck a pose, but the guy couldn’t keep his laugh in. We shared some moments for a while. It was still hard for me to talk to Dawn’s parents, but they were my family now. May was definitely the most devastated. I’d feel the guiltiest about not being there for Dawn whenever I saw May. That day, I simply hugged her, nice and tight. She seemed frailer every passing day, and it honestly had me worried. When we get back, I’m gonna give her a lot of attention, I told myself.
The noon sun really began beating down on us, so we decided to be on our way. Anjali, Donna, and Melissa were less than pleased.
Just as I summoned Gale and Phoenix, Bianca was sprinting like a madwoman at us. Of course, the king’s bodyguards immediately took position to protect him, but she passed by everyone and headed straight for August and I, then went past us. Only when she began hearing the difference in sound as her feet hit the wooden pier, did she raise her head up and hit her brakes like I’d never seen anyone do. She skated, then placed her hands on her knees and panted for dear life.
“D-don’t,” she wheezed, “you dare,” continuing to do so until she finished her sentence, “leave wi–”, she placed a hand up, indicating for us to wait. “Without me!” she shouted after.
After a quick snigger from August, I gasped, “Did you run here?! From Endathal?!”
She nodded her head. “Hydra’s ass, sword girl,” I cast Renew on her, “are you trying to kill yourself?”
“And shit,” August added, “don’t run with your head down!”
Farron was about to send some men to apprehend her, but decided against it. They’d gotten whatever information she could provide anyway, and used it to great effect against Ulanosians.
I summoned a few zephyrs, some to get our people back home, and one for Bianca. We bid farewell and gave our thanks to all those present, then took to the skies. Midway through, I hopped off of Phoenix and flew over to Bianca, placing some thin ice around us to block the wind a little. “Hey, are you sure you want to go back there? You know what we’re going to do, right?”
She looked down at the zephyr’s grey feathers, thinking it over, then looked at me and nodded. “I know. I’m ready.”
We flew until it began getting dark, and stopped off at a random uninhabited island. Phoenix and Gale took to their humanoid forms. We weren’t hiding, but an enflamed bird was pretty damn noticeable. I made beddings, food, fires, everything we’d ever needed. “Hey, Gale,” I called the wind avatar, but she didn’t hear a word because she was too busy clinging onto Phoenix around the campfire.
He took his hand and literally faced her head my way, “The guy’s talking to you, woman.”
“Oh. Yes, Eric?”
“Um, how do you fly? Do you use a spell?”
“Hmm? Well,” she made a miniature cyclone, “I wouldn’t call it a spell. It’s just purely wind manipulation. When you reach the peak of control, manipulation becomes better than any spell.”
“Huh?” I was suddenly intrigued. “Explain.”
“Hmm,” she placed a finger to her chin, then made herself comfortable in Phoenix’s lap before she explained anything. “In magic, creating a spell from scratch always starts with manipulation. The problem with manipulating anything is that it’s extremely hard to control. It’s volatile, and can be messed up easily. But once you keep practising, visualising, you eventually learn a ‘spell’. It becomes much more easily cast once it becomes a spell, because a spell has parameters it cannot exceed. There are always limits to spells, unlike manipulation.”
Hmm, I kind of know what she means. That’s what happened to my Divergence. Ever since I fought Liana and it upgraded, it didn’t feel like a spell.
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“If I cast the spell Fire Breath,” Phoenix explained, “then a big breath of fire will come out. The spell maintains a certain size but by its definition, it cannot be weaker than a certain point, or stronger than a certain point. With fire manipulation though, my ‘Fire Breath’ isn’t really Fire Breath at all, but I can mimic it. The difference here, is that manipulation gives complete control. I can blow fire the size of a grain of rice, or up to the largest size that my mana allows. So, full control. This also means that it could cost less or more mana than a spell.”
“Whoa, how did I not know this?” I questioned myself. It felt like the information was always there, slapping me in the face, but I was numb to it. What they said was exactly what my Divergence became. “Wait, so, how good would you guys say I am with the elements?”
“I don’t know fool. I can only tell you about your fire.”
Of course, I immediately summoned the rest of spirit lords and asked them to rank me out of ten. I got a seven for fire and a nine for lightning. They were elements I abused a lot after all. For wind, I had a three, and that was only because I used Avatar of Wind a lot since I got it. For earth, Kor’zha gave me a five. And for water, I also received a five. I thought it would be my worst element, but it turns out using Ice Wall got me along nicely. Hydra said my water control could be a nine like lightning if I just took some time to learn water spells.
I realised, after the conversation quieted a bit, that I strayed a lot from the reason I brought all this up in the first place. “Gale, can you teach these two flight spells? Maybe something that can keep up with Avatar of Wind.”
“No wind-based flight spell can keep up with Avatar of Wind. I can teach them the next best thing, though.”
“Please do. And Tarit. I’d like to get that ten,” I told the tiger.
He looked at me, and laughed a little. “Lightning is the strongest element, but it is also the most difficult to master. Trying to get you full manipulation control without an equally high score in water will take about,” he wondered, “three years? With high water control, you’d be able to form clouds much, much,” he emphasised, “easier. Getting full manipulation with water and lightning should take you, maybe a year. The only issue with that is…”
“Learning air helps greatly in understanding water,” Gale elaborated.
“And helps out astronomically in manipulating fire. Fire is a gas after all. And guess what?” Phoenix teased, “Adding fire to your lightning spells boosts its power.”
“So,” I sighed, “elements are a lot more intertwined than I thought.”
The next morning, we took a couple hours to dedicate to training. Gale began teaching August and Bianca some basic stuff, whilst a zephyr mentored me. “If you’re not trying for spells, but for manipulation, then it is best to rotate the things you do with wind. Using the same ‘spell’, so to speak, over and over will only result in actually creating a spell for it, which will hinder your progress if you keep using a created spell.”
So, I threw gusts of wind all about me like a madman. Yes, that’s what the zephyr said to do – I’m not crazy. From time to time, I would try using wind to make me fly instead of Avatar of Wind but that was way harder than I thought. The number of uncontrollable rotations my body did made me feel like hurling.
I tried constantly, even whilst we travelled to use wind manipulation solely to fly, but I’d suddenly tumble and descend. “Use the wind to slow your fall first,” Gale advised. Other perspectives were a really nice thing to have, especially from the literal living manifestation of wind itself. I did that all day long, until I kind of got the hang of it. Freefalling was pretty nice. After dozens of repetitions, I began using it to kind of steer me left and right continuously, but finding the right strength of wind whilst falling like that was damn near impossible.
The next night, Hydra would get me the Dragon Tongue codex and I’d enter the void to read it. I skipped to the wind element part. After hours of yawning, I understood it a lot better after carefully reading that damn chapter-less book. Of course, bookmarks were placed so I could section off the book myself. That damn Donna, I cursed her for how difficult this book was to navigate.
The next morning, I had a sudden improvement in my wind control and Gale couldn’t understand how I bettered myself without her noticing. By the end of the first week, I went from a three in wind manipulation to a five; and for water I went from five to six.
August and Bianca weren’t doing so good. They were learning as fast as their mana allowed, but constantly expending mana without Division was physically exhausting. I’d have to teach August to cast Clone and embed its consciousness into his own at some point. Can I even teach that? I knew doing it was natural to me because of Donna being in my mind for half my life. For now, they somewhat circumvented the stamina problem with my light spells and strength potions.
In the coming days, I could keep a cruising speed with wind manipulation alone. My gusts of wind became a lot stronger from when I first started. I tested Wind Cutter, and that was pretty much the same as it had always been. At the end of the second week, and many rereads of the wind and water parts of Dragon Tongue, wind and water sat at seven, according to Gale and Hydra. The speed I progressed at was the fastest they’d ever seen, even amongst the spirits of their world. I cursed Donna no more.
During the third week of travel, I added earth and fire to the mix, improving them all at a steady pace.
Before we knew it, we were only just a couple day’s travel from Ulanos. The journey lasted about a month, with us taking two hours every morning solely for practise. August and Bianca were a lot better now because they had learned a spell called Windsail. It creates pockets of very dense but harmless gases that anchors itself to the caster. The pockets, which act similar to sails may change angle, size, and quantity to give the caster full control. The spell is the most balanced flight spell in terms of speed, silence, and mana output. They could maintain about half a zephyr’s top speed for about half an hour, which was pretty damn good for first-timers. Continuing past thirty minutes would leave them too drained for battle.
I on the other hand didn’t learn a single spell, but that was fine. My elemental manipulation grew. Earth stood at seven. Water, wind, and fire settled at eight and my lightning was left untouched at nine. However, the next couple days would see my earth reach to eight as well. I was quite balanced now. The Dragon Tongue codex was immensely helpful.
For the rest of the way, we ditched the air and had Hydra swim us to the shoreline. The first thing we sought to do was simply get a very detailed map of Ulanos. “Okay so, we don’t have horses, but that’s okay,” Bianca pointed out whilst we strolled up the beach. “Running to where you want to go is actually very common here. Your potions can keep me going, and August never seems to run out of energy anyway. You can just turn invisible and fly alongside us. So, no suspicion until we get to a town.”
Yeah. I can just use Invisibility on them, though. But eh, don’t trust my Invisibility spell that much yet. We went with her plan and was able to sprint nonstop for a few hours, until the potions could no longer keep her going.
I thought about using the Invisibility, then smacked myself upside the head mentally. It should be more than good enough with my mana power now. I kept imagining it at the crappy level it was before I got any of the mana powerups. I cast it on her and myself, then placed Light Link on both of them. She climbed onto my back after.
“How you feelin’, buddy, need a Renew or some potions?” I asked August.
He looked at me strange, then laughed. “Dude, I use quint to run, not mana. I feel like I didn’t run at all.”
“Oh. Well, that actually makes sense,” I said, remembering his ungodly speed when we duelled. “I’ll follow you from above then dude. Go full speed. If you feel my Renew hit ya, then stop, alright? We’re still more or less lost.”
We were going off of what Bianca told us. She was our navigator. August nodded, “I’ll pump it up but I’m not going full speed. There’s a limit to how fast I can turn without falling down.”
And so, he began running slow… at first. Hydra’s ass, how much damn quint is he using?! I asked myself when he increased his speed, truly wondering if he could run faster than I could fly in a straight line. Although, when I detected other humans with Life Perception, I sent the Renew to him so he could stop and warned him to proceed at a more believable speed.
We went past several villages, skipping them to go to a more urban city. We banked on getting a really good map there. The city, called Taricha, was pretty small compared to Ulanos’ four major cities. The place was quite lively, and littered with soldiers. According to Bianca, some of the best craftsmen resided in Taricha, but I just couldn’t see it. Isana wasn’t lying when she said Ulanos needed architectural help because most buildings were simple, and some shoddy. The bare minimum effort was put into construction of roads as well. It was a dirt road city. Caravans of soldiers passed up and down. A barrack was seen in all its glory pretty much every block. I wondered why so many soldiers were here.
We got to the shop early in the morning morning, grabbed a map with some coins I transmuted from ice, and made our way out of the city. It was time to strategize Ulanos’ fall.