Chapter 93 Dishonorable
“A chest for my treasures, a place for my pleasantries, a box for my curios, a capsule for my memories.” Karthen chanted. An amorphous swirl of color and liquid fog coalesced in front of him. “I can bring a few hundred pounds of gear back this way. Please, only whole objects. Loose things get everywhere.”
“My Bottomless bag will be better for bringing back loose gold dust.” Alexander replied and approached his old teacher.
Alexander had just finished transferring over all of his gear, that was in his Bottomless Bag, to his old teacher when Isaac wrapped his hands around the golden rod that was just barely sticking out of the pile of gold dust. The entire room shook and they heard what sounded like an avalanche and rending metal coming from inside the pile of gold. “Oops.” Isaac said and stumbled backwards as the dust below him suddenly lost cohesion. Isaac lost his footing but before he could fall onto his back, or teleport to reorient himself, Lenna caught him.
“I don’t think you should have touched that.” Lenna commented.
“You feel that?” Isaac asked her. There was no doubt in his mind that the two wizards behind them felt the massive stirring of mana that was going on inside the golden dune.
“I swear Isaac, if that is a golden golem-” Lenna began but never had the time to finish as a geyser of gold dust blasted out of the pile and into the pair. Isaac and Lenna were sent hurtling backwards. The impact had come so quickly and with so little warning that neither of them had been able to take the hit with any grace whatsoever.
Isaac and Lenna tumbled over each other for thirty feet before they came to a stop. Isaac had been knocked unconscious from the blunt force trauma to his face and Lenna was definitely concussed. Lenna groaned as she rolled Isaac off of her and slammed a heavy handed pulse of healing into Isaac to wake him up.
Isaac sat up with a jolt before he clutched his head in pain. Death flames washed through his system for a couple seconds before he reached out and rested a hand on Lenna. His power washed all evidence of the recent impact away. “Ouch.” Isaac groaned. “What was that?”
Lenna turned at the sound of roaring flames to see Alexander fighting a living dune of golden sand. “That’s a first.” She commented and pushed herself to her feet.
Isaac teleported to his feet next to her. “Yeah.” He agreed. “I think you and Alexander are going to have to handle this one.”
Lenna nodded. “Can you hold its attention?”
Isaac cracked his neck as his boosting skill started winding up. “Only one way to find out.”
—
Alexander put up a reality shield just in time to spray gold dust in every direction as the living mound of gold failed to do to him what it had done to Isaac and Lenna. He realized instantly that the most reliable way to kill the creature in front of him was to melt it down. The problem was that he didn’t have anywhere near enough mana to melt that much gold. If he was right then there had to be a core enchantment somewhere inside of it. Maybe it was made of gold or maybe it was made of diamonds. If it was made of gold then he could melt it down and end the monster but if it was made of something that couldn’t be burned with conventional fire, he was absolutely screwed.
“Uh, Alexander, I will be just over there.” Karthen Eidi’Diasta, his former teacher and Grand Magus of space magic told him.
Alexander’s eye twitched. “Grand Magus,” Alexander began and started pelting the infinite wave of gold with red streaks of embers and flames. “I had thought better of you.” Alexander continued. “I had wrongfully assumed that if one of your students, past or present, were in trouble, you would come to their aid.” Karthen froze in place. “If you were truly a mentor worth following you would, at the very least, attempt to assist your student in whatever plan or scheme they had created to solve the CURRENT ISSUE!” Karthen flinched at Alexander suddenly raising his voice at him. “Open gate to torment and fury!” Alexander yelled and drew a line seventy feet long to completely seal off the animated pile of gold dust from them. Immediately afterwards he whirled around on Karthen. “Well?!” He questioned his former mentor. “Are you a man or a coward?”
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Karthen felt like he was about to wilt under his former pupil’s gaze. Alexander’s green eyes were so much like his own but they seemed to blaze with an intensity that was far beyond him. Karthen took a deep breath as he tried to muster his courage. After all, it wasn’t like he was in any real danger, right? “Yes.” Karthen breathed out. “You are correct. I have acted in a very dishonorable way to my old mentee. What would you have me do, Alexander.”
Alexander blinked owlishly at the ancient wizard for a moment before his rapidly dwindling mana reserves brought him back to the present. “I, uh, yes.” Alexander said and turned back around to face the monster. “Melting it is the first step and hopefully the last. Once it has all been turned to molten metal, if it is still moving around, we will need to rapidly cool it again. Regardless of how this thing functions, that should halt its mindless flailing.”
“Wall of Flames?” Karthen asked. “Freeform Crucible? Sol Invicta? Fireball?” He continued listing off fire spells.
“Sol Invicta wastes too much mana on the light and holy aspects of it. How large of a Freeform Crucible can you make?” Alexander questioned.
“Drop the wall.” Isaac told the court mage as Lenna barreled past them.
Alexander did as he was told and watched as Lenna’s Hellflame Strike blasted a large area of gold dust in every direction. The gold dust pulled back in as it had every time before but the heat had been able to almost entirely transfer into the gold. “Cone of Flames!” Alexander called out. “That will have the best mana to heat generation!”
“That spell heats up the caster by a large amount as well.” Karthen replied.
“She’s the type of woman who would break her hand on an enemy’s face if it meant knocking a few of their teeth out.” Isaac commented. “That’ll work.” He told Alexander with a nod and appeared next to Lenna. A thin line of death flames connected Isaac and Lenna to each other. The relentless wave of mortal terror wafting off of Isaac lessened as some of it started to feel like it came from Lenna.
“As for my crucible… I doubt I could encase the entire monster for more than a few seconds.” Karthen continued.
Alexander took in the monster that was a hundred feet across and at least fifty feet deep and tall. Its dune shaped nature meant that there was a bit less gold than it would seem at first glance but the volume was still obscene. Alexander was about to say something when he stopped abruptly and turned to look at Karthen directly. “I thought you could not cast crucible around living creatures.” Alexander questioned with a statement.
“You cannot.” Karthen agreed. “However, if the gold is being controlled by a creature, as a weapon would be as if controlled via telekinesis, then the spell should take hold.”
Alexander blinked owlishly at his former mentor, again. “Grand Magus, you are a genius, if this works.” Alexander praised him. “Cast a spell that cannot be cast if there is something ‘living’ inside of it. Golems have always made those spells fail, right? Do it in sections until you find where the ‘mind’ is located. Once we have it narrowed down then Lord Wexler and Lady V’Nova should be able to retrieve or destroy it.”
“I am not a genius, Alexander, I am a wizard.” Karthen said with more pride than Alexander had ever heard from the ancient mage. “Fix what once was broken, replace what once was lost, return to perfection, my magic is the cost.” Power washed out of Karthen like a gentle breeze backed by a tsunami. The gentle wave of power washed over a third of the monster and the gold dust attempted to revert back into solid chunks. In some places it turned into coins but in others it turned into odd chunks of gold. The heat was thankfully retained but unfortunately the monster still maintained control over it all. Now instead of a punch that held more momentum than solid force, it instead hit with a million maces made of gold.
Isaac and Lenna were suddenly put on the defensive as they attempted to maintain a continuous stream of fire. Isaac had been intercepting any attacks that were made at Lenna with a combination of his own body and solid walls of mana but now he was forced to simply move Lenna out of the way of the incoming attacks.
Karthen repeated his spell on the opposite side of the dune and then again in the middle. The third time the spell failed to even take hold of the random gold in the designated area. “You were right, Alexander.” Karthen told the court mage. “It is in the middle. I will continue to narrow it down.”
Alexander nodded. “Can you get it out once we find it?!” Alexander called towards Isaac and Lenna.
“Damn it.” Isaac swore under his breath. “Shamesh would be really nice right about now.”
“Yes.” Lenna agreed with obvious strain in her voice as Isaac’s death flames continually rebuilt her torched skin. “I’m running out of mana.”
“I’ll need an explosion!” Isaac called back to Alexander. “And its exact location!”
“Reality Prison followed by a perpendicular Levitate.” Alexander directed Karthen.
“How small should the bars be and around what?” Karthen replied between casts of his strange spell that seemed to attempt to revert the gold back to a previous state.
“Two inch holes and around nothing. I need you to use it as a sieve. When it impacts the centerpiece of this madness it should push it against the far wall.” Alexander explained.
Karthen nodded in understanding. “Reality is truth, reality is law, reality is short, reality is tall, in truth of law and reality’s jaw, I hold thee in reality’s maw.” He chanted and reached out with the fingers of each hand touching their twin of the other. Three hundred and sixty ten foot long rods of solid iridescent reality formed a cube shaped cage around nothing at all. The cage was hollow and easy enough to see through but the small holes would prevent anything larger than two inches across from going through it. “If only birds and dragons can fly then what am I?” He chanted with a smirk. “I always loved that chant.” He added in a whisper to himself as a Levitate spell that had its axis rotated to be perpendicular to gravity, instead of aligned in its inverse, took hold of his Reality Prison. The cage of solid reality shot forwards with ever increasing speed as Karthen dumped power into the spell. Isaac and Lenna dove out of the way as the magical construct impacted the roiling mass of coins, dust, and misshapen chunks of gold.