I laid there on the floor for a minute, just coming to terms with the fact that I’d survived a mana bomb exploding two feet from my face. Even for me, that was an accomplishment. I was injured, in part from my own force crush spell, but I was still breathing. I did make a mental note to design a more permanent version of a protective force crush to cast so that I didn’t have to tweak the spell’s structure on the fly to avoid being killed by it, just in case something like this ever happened to me again.
Slowly, my body started recovering. Mana filled my core and I sped that process up by processing some of the ample amount of ambient mana in the room. It would take days to regain everything I’d lost if I stayed up here, far more time than I actually had.
The room I’d teleported myself and Ergl to was completely and utterly destroyed. The walls had collapsed, revealing the adjoining chambers. Most of the ceiling was gone, and the devastation had obliterated the room directly above us as well. The ceiling in that chamber also had some holes in it, and a few pieces of furniture had fallen through to shatter themselves on the pile of rubble scattered across the floor.
Somehow, the floor itself was actually intact. I suspected that had more to do with me being in the way than any structural integrity the room might have possessed. My own magic had no doubt reflected a great deal of the mana and kinetic energy away from the floor, which also accounted for the greater-than-expected devastation going straight up.
And yet, for all of that, things were in relatively good shape. Nothing looked to be in danger of falling down, which meant I was unlikely to be buried alive. The spells I’d placed around the base were still functional, as far as I could tell. At least, the important ones were. It was possible some of the ones out where Ergl had self-destructed were too damaged to function now.
As for myself, my clothes were ripped to shreds and I had a full-body ache, the kind of pain I’d felt at the end of my previous life when it had been nothing but life-extension magic holding my body together. Everything hurt. Literally everything.
I was tired and drained and ready to drop. As much as I hated to admit it, Ammun had won that fight without even really trying. The moon itself had been enough of a handicap for a simple golem to defeat me. I couldn’t fight him out there, but at the same time, I couldn’t just let him go through with his plans.
Could I?
He was almost certainly stuck up here now. Even if he appeared in the next second and killed me, that wouldn’t help him get back to Manoch. If he was to be believed, the cabal who’d pioneered the extreme-long-distance spells powered by a moon had needed to build ritual sites on the moon’s surface in order to turn it into a weapon. They’d only finished one of those on Amodir, which had promptly been destroyed.
So, Ammun couldn’t get home, and he couldn’t use the moon core to attack Manoch’s surface without spending years building the ritual sites, and maybe not even then. He was going to succeed in linking his phylactery to the moon core, giving him the ability to go anywhere he wanted on the planet with nearly unlimited mana. Except he couldn’t get off the moon, so that was a hollow victory.
Yes, the ideal scenario was to destroy his physical body, take possession of his phylactery, and shatter it. That was the only way to permanently end the threat of Ammun. But at the same time, if he was stuck up here for even a year or two, that gave me plenty of time to advance my core to stage eight while I tore down his tower and started the process of healing the world core. Even if he made it back, Ammun would be too late to save his demesne, and honestly, him being stuck up here for a few decades while the planet healed was probably the only way it could happen without him being destroyed in the process.
I could wait a few hours, try to recover my mana, and take the fight back to him for round two. Maybe I’d even catch up to him before he completed his bonding ritual and regained full use of his mana. And maybe if I did, he’d kill me anyway.
Or I could put together enough mana to get home, trigger the contingency spells to bring down the moon base and destroy the ritual silo so Ammun would have nothing to reference when he tried to engineer a solo-teleportation version of the spell, and leave him to his own devices while I prepared for his eventual return unimpeded.
I checked the rate I was generating mana against how much I needed. Five minutes, at most. Unless he showed back up in that time frame, I was out of here, and Ammun could find his own way home.
I hobbled across the base to view the explosive enchantments I’d woven into the ritual silo one more time. Those were the most important ones, and I took the effort to manually activate them. When I got too far away or ten minutes passed, whichever happened first, they’d bring the base down. Once I was done, I sat down and started constructing the spell that would take me home.
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Ammun never showed up. I imagined he was digging his way deeper underground, slowly creeping toward the moon core with each passing minute. Or maybe he was frantically trying to put together a functional teleportation spell that would carry him across Yulitar to stop me from killing the diviners he still thought were alive up here.
Whatever he was doing in those last few minutes, he didn’t find me. The ritual went off without a hitch, and I appeared on the peak of a mountain twenty miles from my home. Above me, a flash of light bloomed on Yulitar’s surface – the explosions ripping apart the moon base. It lasted for about five seconds, just a silent speck of light, there and gone so fast I wouldn’t have been surprised if no one else in the world noticed it.
And that was that. The die was cast. Either I was right and Ammun was trapped on a moon orbiting around Manoch, or I was wrong and in the next few days, he’d show up to personally murder me. Or maybe he’d fire a city-sized mana beam down from the heavens and wipe me out that way.
Time would tell.
* * *
“You just left him there?” Querit asked.
“Yes,” I said as I slowed the drip of liquid mana onto the pane of glass. It darkened to a deep blue color for a moment, then turned silver. I angled the glass to get the liquid mana running across its length, then used telekinesis to spread it evenly. When that wasn’t enough, I fetched some more from the giant tank in the corner of my alchemy lab.
“And you’re not going back?”
“Not anytime soon.”
“But what if he—”
“We’re hoping for the best right now,” I told him. “I lost that fight, and I’m not in any shape to try again. Why do you think I’m making this scrying mirror?”
Querit peered at my creation, specifically at the rune-covered silver frame it was mounted in. “I’m afraid I don’t know what this does.”
“Good for scrying on far, faraway places. I made it using the ultra-long-range scrying portion of Ammun’s moon teleportation ritual.”
“You’ll spy on him all the way from here?” Querit asked.
“I thought I might get some help from our new friends, the gestalt ant colony.”
“Speaking of friends, I spoke to Hyago on your behalf. He gave me the location of the new grove he’s started and says you’re welcome to come visit as long as you promise not to turn all the trees to stone again.”
I snorted. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I also repelled another two zombie invasions while you were gone. It seems that Ammun’s absence isn’t slowing down his generals.”
“Any further attacks on New Alkerist?” I asked.
“Nothing yet, but the last attack was led by a master mage with a stage four core. My combat frame is basically scrap metal now. I won’t be able to stop another one.”
“Just keep watch for me,” I said. “As long as they don’t launch an attack in the next three hours, I’ll handle it personally. With Ammun out of the way, time is on our side now.”
At least, I hoped it was. There was no telling how many more minions like that dragon Ammun might have. With another year of uninterrupted work, I could get within spitting distance of my former strength, but there were no guarantees I’d have that much time. I’d need to make the most of every day, which meant not letting myself get bogged down fighting a bunch of weak mages.
“Maybe you should consider aggressively training some combat mages of your own,” Querit suggested.
“Or suborning some of the enemy into fighting on my side. Plenty of the children of light weren’t happy to find themselves under his command. There were even some rebel groups which I imagine will keep the loyalists busy in the near future. Perhaps we could lend some support to a few of them.”
The liquid mana coating complete, I stowed the mirror away in my phantom space and stood up.
“Where are you going?” Querit asked. “To the eyrie?”
“I have other things to do first,” I explained. “Come on. Time to go.”
The golem paused to make a show of looking around. “It’s a nice lab,” he said. “I’m glad I finally got to see it.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled us both through my demesne to the surface. “Think you can repair that combat frame on your own? I have another errand to take care of.”
“Ehhhh. Probably not,” Querit said. “If it was just the rune structure, I could. I don’t have the skills to transmute steel like you do, and my silver steel frame is missing the chest plate.”
“Ah, right. That. I’ve been meaning to study that and figure out how to replicate it when I get some free time.” I wondered what the odds of that happening in the next six months were.
Recruiting Hyago. Researching silver steel. Stage eight advancement. Destroying Ammun’s tower. Mysteel scavenging. Training Senica. Testing Nailu and possibly training him, too. Lecturing at New Alkerist’s school. Keeping an eye on Yulitar and watching for Ammun’s return. Defeating the remaining loyalists. Opening up the brakvaw portals and watching out for the gestalt ant colony I’d stuck there.
And, of course, fixing the world core, which I still had to figure out how exactly to accomplish. Why did I always have so much to do?
“Where are you going?” Querit asked. “New Alkerist?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s so special about that town?”
I hesitated and glanced over at the golem. After all this, he’d earned some trust. “My family,” I admitted.
Honestly, getting to see the shocked expression on his face alone was worth it. He stood there, completely poleaxed and staring mutely with his jaw hanging open, as I walked over to the teleportation platform.
“Wait, what? You have a family?” he sputtered.
“I do. Is that really so strange?”
“For the most powerful archmage in history, who is a notorious recluse that sees the outside world once every few decades at most? It’s a bit weird.”
I laughed. “I’m not that guy anymore.”
“Can I meet them?” Querit asked.
I was about to say no out of hand, but I paused. What was the harm? I trusted him. “Sure, come on.”
Querit, a sapient golem and possibly the first person I could consider a friend in the last five hundred years, joined me on the teleportation platform.
End of Book 4