There I was, racing up the road that led to the Stonehenge Memorial in Maryhill, Washington. The asphalt was covered in melting snow and lashed by rain, making the footing treacherous at best. I slipped and slid as I made my way upward toward the near-perfect replica of what the Salisbury Stonehenge would have looked like in its heyday. Sam Hill’s version was a memorial dedicated to the loss of life in World War I. Today it was a Place of Power in its own right and if I didn’t make it in time, quite possibly the end of the world.
My foot shot out from underneath me and my right knee smashed through the snow and against the frozen surface of the road. Pain shot through me and I caught myself with two bare hands, and freezing rain made its way down the neck of my enchanted leather motorcycle jacket. I shivered.
Status update: Chilled: Due to the inclement weather and your poor clothing choices, you are chilled. 10% movement speed reduction.
Excuse me for not putting on snow pants before rushing out to save the world from a madman. What kind of asshole decides to summon a Cthulean crystal god of knowledge in the middle of the Columbia gorge in winter? The kind of asshole who is a fucking douchebag, that’s who. It was not the first time the thought had crossed my mind.
I clawed my way to my feet and trudged on toward the peak of the hill. Half of the way up magic joined the forces impeding my progress. The mystical energy was palpable and thickened the air. Waves of it surged against me, and I could feel each one in my chest like the bass of a hip hop song. The smell of ozone burned in my nostrils, at odds with the fact that my nose was so cold I could barely feel it. Clearly the ritual I was on my way to stop was close to its peak. I could the light from it and the silhouettes of the monument in the distance, but I still had half a mile to go. The jackass I was hunting had set up an EMP ward about a mile from the henge and in my hurry I had driven over it. I was pissed, and not just about the weather. It my own fault that I was here.
“I have a quest for Jack,” my mentor informed me. The Archmage had his back to me, but that hardly mattered. The Archmage’s robes and hood occluded the man’s face and form, so no one knew his true identity. He was just ‘The Archmage’ and leader of the Cult of Knowledge, an underground resistance movement based in Portland, one of the the few Sanctuary Cities in the United States of America where the use of magic was legally protected. Jack should have trusted his instinct that anyone who openly referred to themselves as a cult was up to no good.
“What can I do for you?” I had asked, eager for any opportunity to gain experience and practice magic.
That quest, one of several, had provided all the tools the Archmage needed for the ritual that I was now on a quest to stop. In the rain. Calf-deep in soggy snow.
Two figures lumbered out of the darkness up ahead and into my line of sight. With a gesture of my left hand and a word, names appeared over their heads. Kithazic Treant LVL 21. As they grew closer, I could see that the creatures were about 7 feet tall and looked like bipedal treants with crystal instead of bark. I was only level 20, but skill and intellect provided a lot of advantages in this world, and I had both. And magic to boot. I was momentarily grateful that I wasn’t a pure lightning mage, since treants made of rock were probably immune.
I focused my will as the two monsters moved into range and whispered, “Gravity Well.” Loose snow, water, rain drops, and the creatures I faced were all drawn into the center of the spell as it briefly warped the laws of physics in the area. The treants’ movement slowed to 80% of their original long legged gait. They pressed forward as if moving through invisible molasses while I released my next spell. A high pressure mass of air formed in front my right palm and shot forward. Snow fell in its wake and as it reached my opponents it exploded in a 360 degree swirl of freezing wind. The mass of precipitation gathered by the gravity spell froze around their feet and further hindered their movement. Rime frosted over the surface of their crystalline bodies.
A smirk crossed my face as I prepared what I hoped would be the last spell I needed. Not that I lacked for options if not. A small ball of flame formed between my hands. “Hadoken!” I shouted as I launched it by pressing both wrists together and expanding my fingers away from each other. A classic fireball shot out and exploded against one of the treants. Fire billowed out from the epicenter and engulfed both enemies. Steam rose into the night. A spot appeared in my vision and I blinked repeatedly to get rid of it. A series of terrible cracking sounds tore through the air as the treant my spell had struck shattered from the too quick transition from cold to hot. Fissures laced the body and limbs of the second. The crystal being paused for a moment, then glowed with an inner light. Some of the larger cracks in its skin sealed before it continued its approach. The slow from my first spell had mostly worn off and it was back to its innate speed.
I quickly summoned a swirling shield of rusty and bloodstained iron spikes just in time for a tree branch sized crystal limb club me in the gut. The ground flew by beneath me as I went soaring into a snowbank. The one inch by two inch screen embedded in his wrist flashed yellow as I landed, but a second shattering sound from my enemy accompanied it. I scrambled to my feet to the creature reduced to a pile of broken crystal. I smiled. Shield of the Iron Maiden was to date my favorite of my original six spells. It only protected me from 10 percent of my maximum health in damage, but returned 200% of whatever damage the attacker dealt. In several cases it had been the difference between victory and death. This was not one of those cases, but it had certainly put an end to combat faster.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
I quickly cast Axoltl’s Regeneration and watched my life steadily climb back toward full. Healing was itchy and uncomfortable at beast, and with my spell mimicking the properties of the fastest healing creature in the natural world, it left me feeling like I had just walked naked through a patch of nettles. If it hadn’t been for my abnormally high willpower, I probably would have been useless until the spell ended.
The remaining Kithazic Treant staggered toward me, its broken crystal jagged and rough. It looked close to death, but if any of those edges came in contact with my skin, they were going to rip me to shreds. With the appropriate gesture and a word, another Gravity Well drew the creature backward and its already hampered movement slowed to a crawl. A slightly manic grin spread across my face as I dipped into my repertoire for a spell I had mixed feelings about using. I reached my hand out toward the monster as if grabbing hold of something in clawlike fingers and pulled. An unearthly green line shot out from my palm and tethered me to the treant. The life force rippled out from the core of the being and down the green line of energy, draining into me and healing me to full. Unlike the natural healing of my regeneration spell, this one felt. . . good, but in a predatory and addictive way. I wasn’t one to avoid using the tools in my toolbox, but I was wary of overusing this particular one. The crystal on the creature’s body clouded as it became brittle, and before the treant could make it all the way to me, it crumbled into a pile of sharp crystal shards.
With combat over, the screen in my left wrist glowed gently twice. I picked myself up from the ground and brushed snow from my clothes with a shiver. It was time to move forward. After looting, of course. I checked the two bodies, or rather, the two piles of quartz. I pocketed two Crystal Cores and a Knowledge Shard and trudged onward.
Several Kithazic Treants and one Kithazic Elder Treant mini-boss later, I stood with my back against one of the standing stones outside the circle of the henge. All the hair on my arms stood on end from the proximity to magic so potent that this close to the epicenter the rain no longer beat down on me. The magic of this particular ritual was violet and the whole area was cast in a purple glow. As I leaned around the stone to peer into the circle, two obsidian pillars rose from the ground while a shimmering portal the color of liquid amethyst rippled between the columns of polished volcanic glass. My nemesis and former mentor, the Archmage himself, stood 15 feet away with his back to me. His hands slowly rose as if his effort physically pulled the portal from the frozen ground.
I had to stop him. Nothing good was going to come out of that portal. In fact, it probably meant the end of the world. Not an apocalypse this time, but full on armageddon. Desperate, I charged into the stonehenge, flinging a Polar Vortex at the man responsible for the upcoming disaster. It was one of the few spells I hadn’t learned or mastered under the Archmage’s tutelage. I hoped it meant that my former mentor wouldn’t be prepared to counter it.
Frozen winds whipped the older man’s robes and frost turned its folds into stiff creases. I launched another of my original six spells, Lightning Rod, as a follow up. Static electricity crackled and sparked in the air around his opponent while I prayed that the spell’s chance to stun would trigger. With a stun I would have time to cast a spell the Archmage didn’t know I had access to and would hopefully even the playing field against a man about to willingly put an end to the world.
Bolts of energy played over the Archmage’s frozen robe like the inside of a plasma lamp, suggesting the stun had gone off. My opponent would be unable to move or speak for the next three seconds and I was prepared to take advantage of the break. It wasn’t quite long enough for what I had planned, but it gave me precious time to set things up. I reached into the inside pocket of my leather motorcycle jacket.
Scroll of Overclock: The next two spells cast have their output increased exponentially.
I read the incantation for the spell as quickly as possible while in spite of my stun, the portal continued to rise. The maniac at the center of the henge shook of the temporary paralysis and continued intoning his ritual as if nothing had ever happened. Neither the subarctic wind nor lightning seemed to phase him. As I watched he shook his head as if sad or disappointed.
“You’re too late, my friend,” the Archmage said without even turning to see it was me. “The time has come.”
He began to walk toward the portal with the clear intent of entering it. I heard him say something unintelligible and gesture as if casting a spell. I was confused. I had thought it was a summoning portal. Was the Archmage planning to sacrifice himself to bring the god through? I shook my head clear. Whatever was happening, I needed to put an end to it, but my original plan wasn’t going to work.
“Stop!” I yelled, willing a Gravity Well into existence just behind my opponent at the same time. Unexpectedly, reality shifted. The whole scene rippled as though made of water. Everything within a thousand feet lighter than the stones of the henge was drawn violently toward the center of my spell. I was ripped off my feet. I attempted to cast a teleport spell, which under the influence of the Overclock scroll should have jumped me outside the sphere of influence. Instead I jumped a mere 150 feet, the normal range of the spell. I briefly hit the ground and was immediately torn back into the vortex. As I was yanked into the maelstrom of snow and debris, the liquid light of the portal warped away from the volcanic glass that supported it. Everything the violet pool touched disappeared. The Archmage vanished from sight. Ice, rain, candles, incense all flew into the expanded portal. My wrist buzzed and I had time to see one last thing before I too flew into the twisted door between dimensions and all went black:
Stop the Archmage
Quest Failed